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CHAPTER THREE

I blinked at the slow trickle of blood which rolled its way down my side, trailing over the bare skin where my tunic was torn before sinking into the waistband of my trousers to add to the stains that marked them.

Cold stone dug into my knees, my right arm chained to the roof above and keeping me from sinking any lower in my kneeling position. There had been a stool at first, but Dragor had kicked it out from under me in a fit of anger before summoning his pet mind reader, Merika, to join us.

My head ached with the aftermath of the Cyclops interrogation I had endured at her hands, her wicked claws having torn through my mind for every scrap of the truth.

She’d found nothing more to my downfall than what I had willingly told my prince, but she had scraped the corners of my mind bare for every scarring detail.

Dragor had joined her for parts of it, taking her hand so he could view my memories via the bridge her magic created into my mind. He’d lingered in the whispered words of poison Cayde had offered me while he sneered at how easily I had been fooled.

Dragor had never even assigned Cayde to me.

All of it had been a fabrication which I had bought into all too easily.

It was far easier for me to believe that Dragor had doubted me and sent a spy to watch over me than it was for me to dare question my prince on the matter after all.

So while I had let myself fester in the sting of being spied on by my prince, I had failed to realise that the spy wasn’t working for my kingdom at all.

Even Dragor had been surprised at how simply Cayde had snuck into our kingdom.

How he’d taken the place of a little-known, second son who in truth he had murdered alongside every person who might have been able to recognise him for the fake he was.

With one act of brutal violence, a spy had slipped into our midst and spent years working to wrap himself in the identity he had stolen until finally daring to move closer to his target.

And I’d been the fool who had almost let him succeed in his task.

The bitterness of that reality burned my parched throat and only added salt to the sting of my tears which had finally ceased. Moraine and Dalia had no use for my tears now anyway. The only thing I could truly hope to offer them was vengeance.

I’d spilled every drop of the truth in every way I could and then I’d taken the beating I’d earned for my idiocy without so much as a gasp breaking from my lips.

I wasn’t shivering anymore, though the cold still clung to me, but either I had gone beyond feeling it or my limbs had lost the ability to complain about its presence.

Dragor stood over me, the Cyclops dismissed, her memory of our interaction erased with a potion the prince had instructed her to drink before leaving this dank cell in the bottom of the prison.

The secrets in this place were ours alone now, their whispers filling the dark corners of the dungeons below Wrathbane Castle just as so many had done before them.

Dark walls surrounded us, dank and slowly dripping moisture to the ground where nothing but a small grate awaited it - though its true purpose was for the blood which so often wetted its floors.

Prisons in Stormfell weren’t designed to hold captives for long.

They were simply a place to contain Fae while their deaths were prolonged in punishment for their crimes.

“The guards you saw on your way into the city are dead.” Dragor spoke at last, though I kept my eyes on the slow trickle of blood from the wound I could hardly recall receiving.

I said nothing. I had no space in my soul to even question his words. I was empty. Void of all but the worst of what I was and the depths of loss I now lingered in.

“No one knows you are here but me,” he went on.

There it was. Harsh and bitter on his lips, teetering on the cusp of spilling from them. My death sentence. But I wasn’t ready to let death have me yet. That was a fate far too easy. One which I did not deserve the mercy of.

“Let me kill him first,” I rasped, my voice a cracked and broken thing, like a shard of glass piercing the air.

“Let me hunt him and gut him and make him scream for mercy before you enact your vengeance on me. I’m not asking for mercy.

I’m not asking to keep my life. I deserve every bit of your ire, your punishment, your torture.

But he deserves worse. Let me give him what he is owed and I will lay myself before you and smile while you carve me apart in payment for my crimes.

Just let me die with his blood on my hands and his death cries echoing in my ears. ”

I lifted my gaze to Dragor’s at last, the icy blue piercing me to my core, but not my soul.

That wretched scrap of nothing, the keeper of my most desperate, secret wants, which had seen so much abuse at my hands yet still sparked and flared with hope, had at last fled with the deaths of the women I loved.

There was nothing of it left to me now and as Dragor looked at me, I got the feeling he could see that.

“There is a quote in the old Tome of the Stars which comes to mind while I look upon you now,” he mused, curling a finger beneath my chin to keep my gaze pinned on his.

“‘When death beckons us into the embrace of the beyond, there are only four ways in which to greet it. Grief. Anger. Despair. Acceptance.’ None of those options seem fitting for you, Sky Witch. None of those paths hold the justice I seek from your destiny.”

I swallowed against the thick lump in my throat, holding his gaze, drinking in his disgust, his wrath and waiting for his judgement.

Dragor’s upper lip curled in a sneer, the back of his hand colliding with my cheek hard enough to break the skin.

I was knocked aside by the blow, my shoulder screaming in agony as my weight swung from the chain, my knees scraping across cold stone. Then suddenly I was falling, the shackle unclasping from my wrist and that unwelcoming floor racing up to greet my face.

The heavy thud of Dragor’s boots beat a path from the cell and I peered up between strands of matted pink hair to watch as he pulled the door wide and strode through it, leaving it open at his back.

I wasn’t fool enough to feel relief at the continuation of my pitiful life, but as my fingernails scraped against the bloodstained floor of my cell and I pushed myself to my feet, I did embrace the cold fury which settled into my bones.

My prince was granting my wish. And I wasn’t going to disappoint him again.

Pain bit at me as I limped after him, blood dripping to the dark flagstones as I crossed them and made it into the torchlit corridor beyond.

A man was softly sobbing in a cell further down the passageway, another shrieking at monsters in the dark, but my focus was solely fixed on those retreating footsteps.

I pushed my body to move faster, ignoring the numbness in my frozen feet and the ringing in my skull as I hurried to catch up to Dragor.

I passed more cells, iron doors locked tight so there was no way of knowing if they were occupied or not before I rounded a corner and spotted my prince as he strode for the stairs which led out of the dungeons.

No guards lingered to see us pass, no eyes trailed our movements as we ascended the twisting stairs.

Torches burned brightly in the passage at the top of our climb and Dragor paused by the iron gate that stood there, curling his long fingers into a fist around the top of it while waiting for me to pass.

I slipped beneath his outstretched arm as quiet as a shadow, though the soft drip of my blood onto the stone by our feet still marred the silence.

Dragor caught my arm before I could pass him, the space between us so slight that I could barely catch my breath in it as he leaned down, closing the distance between our heights.

“I am yet to decide whether or not you still exist, Vesper,” he growled, his hand twisting in the fabric of my sleeve before yanking sharply and tearing it. The motion jerked me forward, my body colliding with his before I could right my footing and press myself back against the doorway.

Dragor seemed entirely uninterested in my discomfort as he balled the shredded fabric of my sleeve and pressed it firmly against the wound on my side, staunching the blood.

“A creature which does not exist should leave no mark and go unseen at all times. Do you understand me?” he asked, his voice deadly calm, a mask upon his features which I had no intention of trying to lift.

“No one can know I still live?” I asked, placing my hand over the fabric so that he could release it. Clearly the gesture was no kindness, simply a way to stop my blood from marking the stone.

“No one,” he confirmed before pushing me aside and thrusting the gate closed.

I waited while he locked it before falling into step at his back once more, following him as he led me deeper into the palace.

We didn’t head towards the royal chambers, nor the wing where my chamber lay empty.

Instead, Dragor led me along deserted corridors and around forgotten passages, his pace sharp and unrelenting, forcing me to scramble along in his wake, pain biting at my every movement.

I’d never known the palace to be so abandoned. Even late at night like this there were usually servants running errands, preparing for the next day or guards on patrol. Clearly this silence was the prince’s doing and his promise to make a secret of me was not made lightly.

Finally, he led me through a door into a small courtyard, the snow only thin on the ground, presumably having been cleared recently.

With a flick of his fingers, Dragor pulled shadows from the world around us and wrapped us in a magical concealment, coating us in darkness and hiding us from any prying eyes.