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Every step made Tiiran’s head pound. The guard carrying him did not take care and his steps were not gentle. Neither was the hand holding Tiiran in place over the guard’s shoulder.

They had tried to get Tiiran to walk, but since Tiiran appearing to willingly go with them was not what he’d wanted, he had fallen to the floor and forced them to move him as though he was a child throwing a tantrum. He’d been struck again and then lifted off his feet when it had become clear that pulling on Tiiran’s arm to drag him only drew more attention, but Pash hadn’t seemed concerned beyond that.

A sign of confidence, but Tiiran wasn’t sure Pash was wrong to feel that way. The palace was emptier and quieter than it usually was before the evening meal. Many of the nobles were gone, so who was there to see an assistant being wrangled but palace staff and other palace guards?

The staff, at least, would talk, as Niksa would if he fled the palace as Tiiran thought he should.

Tiiran’s death would be a small note in the margins of a librarian’s account someday, perhaps in a request for more funds to hire a replacement. If the library continued. If the country did.

But someday didn’t matter to Tiiran any more than the grand notions about the country. Niksa had to get out and tell Amie or Po or anyone else, and they had to tell it to others so word would spread that the Great Library was once again no longer safe from a pitiful ruler. If for some reason Orin considered returning, that should keep him away. And if Nikoly had not already left, then Tiiran could only hope the story reached him in the capital before he came back.

Nikoly worried him the most. There was a faint chance Nikoly had already tried to enter the palace gate and been taken as Tiiran had, and Tiiran would have no way of knowing unless the Rossick attacked the palace to retrieve him. Maybe the Rossick did that sort of thing. Other noble families might.

Piya should prepare for that, Tiiran reflected, dizzy and sick as he was carried upside-down with a throbbing head through unfamiliar, cold halls of darkened, damp stone. It would have to be some other force from some noble family, since the Canamorra were few. They could hardly invade a fortified palace. Were one or two Canamorra supposed to sneak through the ruins of the original walls? Maybe use one of the tunnels or passageways said to exist?

There were maps. Hard-to-read and often fanciful maps that supposedly depicted old buildings and paths in the palace. The passageways had most likely been destroyed by time or the rebuilding efforts throughout the palace complex over centuries. But there were also ancient buildings, their stones and bricks raided for other projects, their purpose and design known only to the few scholars interested in such subjects.

He had a feeling he was in one of those buildings. Pash had disappeared some time ago, then the other guard as well. The air smelled wet and earthy, and the windows were framed by heavy stone, without glass in any color. He didn’t recognize the building, not that Tiiran recognized much of the palace outside of the kitchens or library.

His thoughts were difficult to keep in front of him, but his pulse was loud in his ears and he kept worrying that he ought to be more concerned with whatever his last view would be. There were execution grounds in the palace. Not labeled as such on any palace sketches or maps, but there was a space where executions of beat-of-fours had taken place or were rumored to have taken place. A spot where not even grass would grow, they said.

Then there were other places. Unknown spots where people like Lanth, not noble, not charged with anything before the ruler or anyone else, had met their ends.

Orin had said outguards were about justice. That anyone was supposed to be able to seek it. If a magistrate or mayor could not help, then there were the local noble families, and if they could not or would not, then the ruler was supposed to be the one to hear all cases, all pleas.

That was a nice idea, Tiiran decided, blood rushing through his skull. But who did one plea to if the ruler was a selfish, cowardly, useless sack of dung and goat spit—the fae?

He snorted, then hissed as he was jostled then dropped to his feet. He got a glimpse of a long hallway lit by a few torches and braziers, with more palace guards gathered around several doors.

“You can’t bring that here!” one of the guards cried out.

Tiiran turned toward the sound, squinting at the smoke from the torches and the lack of light, and thought he saw people through one of the openings in the heavy wooden doors. The openings were about head-height for any adult who was not Tiiran, and crosshatched with metal.

He did see people. Wide-eyed faces pressed to the crosshatching before the guard shoved Tiiran onward, and Tiiran fell clumsily and painfully against a wall he hadn’t seen with his closed, swollen eye.

If there were executions, then there were places to keep people while they waited to die. Tiiran hadn’t considered that part of the histories before, but it made sickening sense now. Yet he didn’t think this was where the elder Canamorra had been held before their deaths. He didn’t think even Mattin knew of this part of the palace. Most had probably forgotten it, as those held captive here were meant to be forgotten.

He didn’t know them, or why Piya had chosen this over their immediate deaths, or if some got death and others were left to rot with the building. He couldn’t think and was given no chance to. He was pushed through a doorway into a shadowed space under a stone staircase already fallen to ruin. Then the door slammed closed and he was alone in the dark.

With no one to hold him up, Tiiran collapsed to the floor, hitting his head on what must have been stone, then lying still until his moans stopped echoing around him. He slowly became aware of the door in front of him, with an opening for air or light like the other doors he’d seen, but so small that there no need for any crossed metal bars to keep the person inside from escaping. The floor was damp, or so cold it felt damp, without even straw to keep the chill out.

Scratching sounds around the ceiling made him suspect the floor above him had rats, and he doubted the ruined staircase kept the creatures away from this level. He wondered if the rats were meant to scare him, then doubted Pash or anyone else had given Tiiran a second thought the moment he was out of sight. That was probably meant to scare him, so that Pash or some other ranking palace guard could show up to ask him about Orin and Nikoly again. More fool them, because Tiiran wasn’t afraid of rodents or dirt or cold.

“Slept in worse places,” he informed no one with a great, wracking shiver.

When he felt he could move without vomiting, he probed around his eye as lightly as he could to gauge the damage, tested his teeth to make sure none were broken, then sat up to find a wall and curl against it. He pulled his robe around him and held it closed with the arm that didn’t hurt.

He didn’t remember any injuries to his arm, but getting dragged halfway down a corridor by a furious palace guard twice his size must have done some damage.

Nikoly would fuss. Tiiran worried over Nikoly’s reaction for the half a moment before he remembered there wouldn’t be one. Then he put his head down, his face to his knees, and sucked in a shaky breath.

“It’s fine,” he whispered to Nikoly and Orin, who wouldn’t show up to stand in the doorway and glare at him for his blackened eye. “Worry more about all those people out there, and how long it will take before one or more of the noble houses decides to do something about it.”

More fighting in the palace. More bloodshed. Tiiran was so tired. And cold, and pained, and hungry, if he thought about it and how long it had been since he had eaten or even had tea. Although he wasn’t certain any food would stay down.

“You did try to tell me, Orin.” He nearly smiled to himself about it. “You were wrong about why the guard might be interested in what I have to say, but you weren’t wrong to give my words back to me.” If Piya would kill a noble child by neglecting it to death, why would he hesitate over someone like Tiiran, fae or not?

Orin had been so concerned for Tiiran. That had been real too. Tiiran was briefly warm again at the memory.

“I don’t think even Lanth was ever really worried for me,” he remarked softly to the lovers who weren’t there, then closed his eye to wait for the pain to recede.

He must have slept. He woke as the door opened and didn’t even make it to his feet before it was slammed shut again after a bowl and a bucket had been shoved into the room with him.

He supposed he should be grateful for the bucket, although he was confused by the bowl, which held porridge and a spoon.

They must not have decided his fate yet. Strange that they would hesitate. If Piya kept the throne, no one was going to challenge him over Tiiran. If Piya lost the throne, no incoming ruler would likely care much either when they had nobles to worry about. That only left the fae, and Tiiran didn’t see why, in Pash’s imagination, the fae would be more forgiving of imprisonment and possible slow death over a quick one.

The fae were not concerned about Tiiran, though even Tiiran would have had enough sense not to say so to the Guard Captain’s face. Not that anyone was there to question him. Perhaps that was for the best; Tiiran didn’t feel much like talking at the moment.

His head and especially half his face pounded and were hot to the touch. His arm and shoulder were stiff and numb until he moved, and the sun—for he assumed it was now day—did not bring much light into the room. He ate the porridge slowly, only to keep it from the rats, then put his head down again.

He stirred at the sound of the door and the arrival of another bowl of porridge, and could not have said whether it was day still or if night had fallen. His eye remained shut but some of his headache had lessened, so he dutifully ate as he had no doubt his lovers would have wanted him to, then stumbled to his feet.

On his toes and swaying wildly, he could see hints of movement through the opening in the door: guards occasionally walking past, a flicker of a shadow from a torch. He could hear the guards better than he could see them, most of them grumbling about the smell of the place, or the work of feeding people and retrieving slop buckets. Tiiran vaguely wondered if they were being punished with this duty. They certainly seemed to think so. Of course, they didn’t need to be here. They could resign their posts or simply leave at any time. Yet here they were.

Maybe they imagined it would be worth it, to do such things for such a ruler. As if a ruler would ever do more for guards like them than perhaps promote them to a new level of guard. Commoners weren’t even worth a trial to Piya, and these fools thought they mattered to him? Or to Pash, for that matter?

“Bunch of fucking idiots!” Tiiran shouted through the door. Or tried to shout, but pain shot through his skull, so it was more of a loud whisper. The only reply was a guard hitting or kicking the door hard as they went by.

The door felt solid and quite heavy. The handle held a lock, which Tiiran later tried when the guards were silent and hopefully too far away to notice, but the handle didn’t budge. Then, with nothing else to do, he walked along each wall, trying to get a feel for the space. It was a cell, but very small.

He couldn’t imagine even someone as bold as the first ruler ever holding a fae captive. That this room was meant for a child was a less pleasant possibility, but Tiiran imagined that tormenting someone like Orin by putting them in a room of this size was its real purpose. Which made him wonder which ruler had ordered this place built and why.

He walked the length in slow, shambling steps while he tried not to think of his injuries, or if Nikoly had escaped, or if Orin was still in danger, or how his lovers had possibly betrayed him.

Had Piya inspected this place before sending nobles here? Had Pash chosen it? They had better offer to the fae in hopes that Tiiran never got out, or he was going to shout their crimes at every street corner in the capital. He would tell Mattin to put it in a history.

“And then what?” Tiiran asked the air. “What good will that do? No one will know of it. Nobles won’t care or will forget the moment their studies are over. And commoners have no idea they can request information from the library. Most of them don’t or can’t read.” Tiiran hadn’t, before coming to the palace.

Nobody needed to read for most daily tasks. But they should know things, their own histories the way the nobles learned theirs. In songs maybe, if bards ever sang about anything other than fucking or heroic nobles or the fae.

A crunch beneath his foot stopped him. Tiiran crouched down to feel in the dark until he found the remnants of one of Mattin’s clasps under his boot. It must have fallen from his hair or been smashed against the stone when Tiiran had been first shoved into the room. He put the wire carefully into his robe pocket and tried to kick away the broken glass. He felt for the other clasp and found it still in his hair, although his braid was falling apart. That clasp went into a pocket as well. He didn’t want to ruin the only other fine thing to have ever been in his possession.

Then he realized his face was still hot and then that his thoughts were strangely slow.

All at once, he was shaking. He would have said he was cold, shivering in his tiny frozen cell, but his throat locked and he could barely breathe except for gasping, too large breaths that hurt his chest. His eyes were wet, stinging, and wiping them on his sleeves did nothing.

He was tired and cold. All of him hurt. He’d forgotten what being alone felt like. Only a few days and he’d forgotten.

He could hardly blame Orin and Nikoly for that. That was his own stupid fault.

“When someone takes in a kitten off the street and gives it a night by the fire, they don’t expect the kitten to defend them from burglars, now do they? I can’t put that on them. But I do wish—”

He stopped at hearing that word said aloud, then closed his mouth and resumed his walking until he could no longer continue.

The next bowl of porridge came with a cup of water. Tiiran drank it all before considering the possibility of poison, but then didn’t think it would have stopped him. Nikoly would have been upset. Orin would have punished Tiiran for not thinking of himself.

The fantasy of their concern was pleasing, although Tiiran didn’t think he’d be too good of a duckling at the moment, even if he’d been clean. His braid was more or less a bird’s nest since he had no way to do anything with it. He had no stubble but was certain his face was filthy. He could crack his blackened eye now for all the good it did him in his dark cell. And some time during what he was going to call the night, he’d developed a faint cough. From the damp or the cold, he couldn’t say.

He got up with some effort to peer out the door, heard guards complaining and rats scuttling about, but nothing about Piya, or Pash, or anyone else being held in whatever ruin this building was a part of.

The guards should either question him or stop feeding him. That was only logical, though Tiiran shushed Orin’s growl before he could imagine it into existence. Tiiran was right and even Orin would have to admit it sooner or later.

Maybe they wanted Tiiran weakened even further before Pash asked for him. That was fair enough. By then, Orin and Nikoly should be long gone, and whatever they had been plotting would stay concealed, and they would both stay very much alive.

Tiiran wished they were with him, though. In the dark with his stomach knotted with hunger and his mouth dry and everything so cold, he wished he had Orin on one side of him and Nikoly on the other, warm and strong and calling him sweet names that didn’t suit him.

Tiiran’s wishes were never answered anyway, so he could dream of it without worrying about tinkling fae laughter. It would be nice to feel it again, being loved. Or, if he was being technical about it, what he imagined being loved felt like.

They likely did not love him, although they might have cared for him. But it felt the same to Tiiran and that was all that mattered. Maybe if he’d had that feeling before, grown up with it, he would have understood the songs the bards sang, or told Po that he was fond of her, or played with Mattin’s hair in return. He might have known that Orin and Nikoly had not been offering real courtship and must have had another reason to spend time with him.

He banished that thought before it could fully return. He didn’t actually care why they had done it, even if it had been for treasonous plots against Piya. Tiiran didn’t give a fig about treason, particularly against Piya, who committed treason just by having a royal librarian here, and locking up a child, and hiding captives instead of trying them publicly.

If a king did not act in a just manner, then he was not doing the duty of a king. Orin wasn’t here to keep Tiiran from explaining this to the rats and the air, so he did, once and then again between fits of coughing. If the fae were listening, they should take note.