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It was dark. Hard. And so, so cold.
I awoke with a pounding in my skull and the cloying scent of damp earth clogging my nostrils. At first, I feared I’d gone blind, but it only took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim. It took a moment more for me to realize exactly where I was. Or at least, the type of room I was in.
Iron bit into my ankle, thick and pockmarked from years of erosion. The floor was stone. The walls were stone. It was a cell.
I was in a cell. But this was not a cell in my palace—that much I knew. The cells at the Night Court were above ground, and I was without doubt, below.
It was a bad dream. A nightmare.
Yes, that’s it.I just had to wake up.
I gave myself that hope, but it lasted only seconds. I reached back and felt the raised lump on the back of my head. The dried blood caked into my hair.
This was no dream. I remembered the memorial. Dancing with Tiernan. Watching Kade and Finn laugh with their old comrades. Embracing Alaric.
Valin—he was there too. He had seen me, and then when we were about to leave he came. I had hidden from him behind my males, and then… and then… nothing. I couldn’t remember anything after that. But I had obviously been hit in the head and brought here. It was him, it had to have been orchestrated by him.
Gods!How long had I been here? I had to get out. Had to find Alaric and the others. I drew on my Grace of fire, ready to melt the iron cuff from my skin. The heat rose, warming my numbed extremities, building. And then sputtering. Fading.Gone.
Of all the damned…I moaned in frustration. It was bindstone. The same stone we used in the palace cells, and the only thing able to almost completely nullify a prisoner’s Grace. I pounded a fist against the stone wall, wincing when the rough surface opened the flesh across my knuckles and my ring jabbed into the bone.
My ring! Whoever they were, they hadn’t taken it. Why? It was what the Mad King wanted, wasn’t it?
A shuffling sound pricked my ears. It was coming from outside the door. I scrambled to it, the chains dragging along behind me. My ankle snagged with my fingers only a hairsbreadth from touching the wood.
“Who’s there?” I shouted.
No one answered.
My jaw tightened, and a rage unlike any I’d ever felt gripped my chest, “Bastard,” I shouted, my voice cracking, “Answer me you damned coward!”
The shuffling sound moved away.
My males’ faces flashed before my eyes and hot, angry tears pooled behind my eyelids. They would go mad looking for me. They would blame themselves for this mess. All because Iinsistedon leaving the palace. Iinsistedwe go to the memorial. I thought I had done it for them, but the truth was, I had done it for myself, too. Maybe even more so. I wanted to escape.
And now I got my wish. I didn’t know where I was, but I wasn’t in the palace, and if the freezing air was any indication, I was far,far,from it. In the Wastes. Exactly where we thought the Mad King would hide out. And if the age of the cracked stone and eroded iron was any sign, I was in the bowels of his palace. The original Night Court palace, the one that clung to the sides of Mount Noctis in shambles.
It was a ruin. But of course, this is where he would want me. This is where he wanted to end Morgana’s line. But if he thought one man could take on the night court armies alone and retake the throne of Night, he truly was mad.
It didn’t matter who sat on my throne—they would fight with all the power they had to ensure his tyrannical rule could never touch our people again.
The thought gave me a modicum of peace.
But it was wrong.
I couldn’t think like that. As though I was already dead.
My males could have seen the direction they had taken me. They could already be on their way. And if they weren’t, who says I need saving? I smiled at the thought and the tears dried on my cheeks.
With a renewed fervor, I searched the floor for something—anythingto use as a weapon. And when I was done, I’d search the walls too. If there was even so much as a crack in the stone, I’d somehow find a way to use it to my advantage.
I’d see my males again. And if that was to be in the next life, at least I’d know I’d done everything I could to get back to them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tiernan
Arrow hadn’t returned with us from the top of the mountain. The falcon was still searching for her and wouldn’t stop until he found his mark—or until I went to call him home.
