Page 51 of Her Cruel Redemption (The Dark Reflection #3)

Chapter Fifty-One

A ll the doors in the dungeons were heavy. I clicked the latch and pulled hard to get this one open, revealing the dank, dark room beyond. It was cold, windowless, with flagstone floors and air that smelt of damp, and it was split in two by the thick iron bars of a cell. A cell with nothing in it but a single prisoner.

DRaven sat on the floor, arms strung over his knees, and he looked up as I approached. A shadow of a smile flickered across his face.

‘I was wondering when you’d come,’ he said.

I swallowed the tightness in my throat. I had nothing cutting to say, no clever remark, no mockery. It all felt so hollow as I looked down at him.

With some difficulty he rose to his feet, his movements stiff, wincing as he limped towards me. His face was bruised, one eye swollen and purple, his lip split. A mixture of blood and mud smeared anywhere skin was visible.

I couldn’t breathe.

‘So, was it curiosity that drew you here?’ he asked.

I blinked In surprise, his words drawing me out of my shock at seeing him like this. ‘What?

‘Did you hear I’ve lost the ability to use magic and wanted to see if it was true? Are you hoping to finally prove to yourself that everything you’ve felt for me has been a lie?’

‘That’s not why I’m here.’ It was a partial truth. It wasn’t the only reason I was here.

He wrapped his fingers around the bars of the cell, his expression suddenly softening. ‘I don’t care why. I’m just glad I get to see you before it’s all over.’

My stomach twisted, my heart convulsed. He sounded… defeated. ‘You can’t expect me to believe that you’re just going to… to...’

‘Let them execute me?’ he finished for me. ‘I find I’m out of tricks. There’s nothing else to do but wait.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I blurted out. ‘You don’t just give in. You always have another move.’ It sounded like I was pleading with him. I hated it. But I couldn’t stop.

‘You would have another move, wouldn’t you?’ he said, smiling that rare, unguarded smile, accompanied with a flash of dimple. ‘They’d have to drag you kicking and screaming to the pyre. You’d take out a few of them on your way there, too. Your instinct for survival is so vital. Mine is less so.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose I’m not afraid to die.’

My breath caught in a half sob. Why was he speaking like that, with that tone of finality, like it was all a foregone conclusion? Was he trying to wind me up? ‘How could you let this happen?‘ I demanded. ‘ Why would you put me in this position ?’

He cocked his head. ‘What position is that?’ When I didn’t answer, he closed his eyes, shaking his head. ‘The last thing I want is for you to feel like this is your responsibility. There’s nothing to fix. When you play the game the way I did, your allies will inevitably turn against you. I’m bearing the consequences of my own choices, and I don’t want you pitying me. I definitely don’t want you to suffer for it.’

‘Just because that’s what you want doesn’t mean you can have it.’

He moved closer to the bars. ‘Not even if it’s the last wish of a dead man?’

‘You’re not dead,’ I said instantly.

‘Not yet.’ He smiled again, bitterly this time. ‘But give them a little longer.’

I bit my lip against the pulse of frantic emotion welling in my chest and behind my eyes, emotion that felt like a pent-up scream.

‘But if you won’t give me that,’ he continued, his eyes sparking with a little of his usual trouble, ‘maybe there’s something else you can give me instead.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A kiss.’

I laughed, semi-hysterically, though I had never encountered anything less funny in my life.

‘Come on,’ he crooned, ‘you can do what you came here for and prove to yourself that all those feelings, everything between us, it was just magic and trickery.’

Kiss him. Kiss him and know once and for all. Kiss him while he was stripped of magic and trapped in a cell and living on borrowed time. I moved closer to the bars, watching him as he watched me, that face I knew so well so damaged, and felt how much I wanted to kiss him. To feel his mouth against mine, as though it would somehow take away the pulsing sense of doom and despair pounding in my chest. I wrapped my fingers around the bars below his. He slid his down until his hands were cupping mine, his skin surprisingly warm for the cold room. He sighed quietly as our skin made contact, and that sound, the relief in it, like he’d been fearing I’d deny him, drove me to close the distance and press my lips to his. And it was like the touch of his lips broke some wall that had been holding back everything that had happened, that had been imprisoning that welling pulse and finally released it. But it didn’t come out as a scream. Instead I was weeping, tears pouring down my cheeks, making the kiss taste of salt and sorrow.

He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against the bars. Our breath was hot as it mingled in the cold of the cell. The tears didn’t stop.

‘What’s your conclusion?’ Some of the cunning was back in his voice, some of the challenge. I opened my eyes to find him watching me with a gleam of triumph. ‘Just magic?’

I was gasping, clutching his hands through the bars, my heart aching and twisting and shrivelling because he was in a cell and he was going to die. And I couldn’t answer him.

He stroked my face. ‘No such luck, my love. There was never any magic in the way our souls reach for each other. No explanation or easy solution for you. I never tricked you or enchanted you. There’s just you and me.’

The tears flowed faster. My desperation was bitter and frantic. ‘I can’t watch them execute you.’ It came out a sob. I couldn’t even hate myself for the weakness.

‘You don’t have to watch.’ His voice was strained now, wavering. He cupped my chin. ‘I hope you don’t watch.’

I opened my mouth to respond but suddenly became aware of the faint echo of footsteps in the hallway behind me. ‘Someone’s coming,’ I whispered, drawing away from him, my hand leaving his to fumble around in my pocket. I froze when I heard a voice quietly calling out, ‘Rhiandra.’ A few moments later Gwinellyn was standing in the doorway, sending the shadows cavorting away with the glow of the lantern in her hand.

‘I came to make sure he was really locked up,’ I said hurriedly, scrubbing the tears from my cheeks and willing my voice to be steady. It sounded too loud and echoed strangely off the stone. ‘I needed to see him behind bars with my own eyes.’

She studied me for a long moment, a strange sadness licking at the edges of her expression. ‘Is that why you attacked four guards, locked three more in a room and stole two sets of keys?’ She fixed her gaze on Draven now. ‘Including the key to his cell.’

My fingers twitched against my skirt, where the keys were concealed in a pocket against my leg. ‘I wasn’t really going to do it,’ I said, my voice much quieter this time. ‘I just wanted… I thought I could prove to myself…’ The words died away when I realised how empty they sounded. And she didn’t believe me, anyway. What was the point in telling more lies?

‘I could smooth this over,’ she said. ‘If you return the keys and come back with me, I could excuse you for a moment of madness. I could say that it was just the last of the enchantment still clinging to you. Not everyone would believe that, but they’d accept it so long as they get the outcome they want.’

I said nothing. Outcome was a fine way to phrase tying someone to a post and setting them on fire. Which Draven himself had done, I reminded myself. He’d burned people. The inhumanity of the act was not a good enough reason to spare him from it.

‘Or,’ she continued after a long silence, stepping further into the room, ‘I could let you finish what you came here to do.’

‘What?’

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, as though she was about to say something that would result in her being torn apart. ‘I will never forgive him for the wrongs he has done, but I will let you release him. I’ll let you get him out of the city and save his life.’ Another pause. Then, ‘if you’ll go with him.’

Had I misheard her? She was talking about the man who had stolen her throne and dragged her kingdom into a war. He’d torn down the Sanctum and the Guild, been responsible for more deaths than I could even begin to tally, and he was dangerous even without magic. ‘Is this some kind of test?’

She shook her head. ‘No test. Just an offer. The choice is yours.’

‘Why would you offer that? Is it because I’m done being useful to you? Do you want to discard me now and this is the perfect way to do it?’

She stepped closer and took my hand. ‘Rhi, I love you,’ she said. ‘But I can’t trust you.’

I flinched, tried to pull my hand back, but she held on tight.

‘And while you’re in my court, no one will trust me,’ she continued, her expression beseeching now. ‘They’ll think you’re manipulating me. I’m already trying to rebuild and alter our entire political system. I don’t need any extra doubt or suspicion. You have done so much for me, but the tally against you, the things you’ve done… I can’t ignore that either.’

‘So it’s convenient for you to exile me.’

‘It isn’t an exile. You want to go with him.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘Rhi, you love him,’ she said firmly. It was as though the words knocked all the fight out of me. My shoulders sagged with the weight of it, with the truth of it that I’d been denying for so long. ‘I don’t understand why,’ she continued, ‘but it’s clear you do. Everything you’ve done has been for him, to seek revenge on him or protect him or provoke him. And anyone can see he loves you. So stop pretending. Take his life as your due for all you’ve done for me. Go with him.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘But if you do, you can never come back.’

I stared back at her, searching her wide blue eyes, seeing all I’d done to test her trust, seeing how desperately she wanted to hold onto her loyalty to me all the while knowing how it was fraying and becoming more and more difficult to justify. She couldn’t trust me. Her court wouldn’t trust me. And suddenly I was so tired. So, so tired. Exhausted by the thought of the politics to come, the wrangling and the shmoozing and the double-dealing and negotiating that it would take to win and rebuild her kingdom.

I pulled her in, wrapped my arms around her. Her breath shuddered out in a sob as she hugged me back.

‘You’re going to be a brilliant queen,’ I whispered. ‘A far better one than I ever was.’

She pulled away, swiping at her eyes. ‘I would never have had a chance to learn that if you hadn’t been one first.’

‘Just don’t let them push you around,’ I said, my voice thick. ‘You’ve fought damn hard to sit on that throne. You deserve to be there.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll remember that. I promise.’

The quiet was shaken by distant shouts, the sounds of alarm and activity. Gwin glanced at the door, which was still shut. But perhaps not for much longer, if the chaos I’d caused on my path to the keys in my skirt had been found.

‘I’m going to go and buy you some time,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘But I don’t think I’ll get you much. Don’t linger.’ She delayed only one more moment, long enough for me to scan her face, to see in it all the ways she’d grown from that hesitant, nervous girl I’d first met in the infirmary. How she’d managed that growth while still holding onto that compassion, that softness, that belief in the good of those around her that was letting her do what she was doing now was beyond me, but I knew that was what set her apart from the rest of us, with our fear and our suspicion and our scheming and our power-grabbing. That was why she would be a ruler the likes of which the three kingdoms had never seen.

And then she was slipping back out of the room, closing the door behind her with a final, echoing thud. My heart ached to lose sight of her, already missing the way her strength and her idealism made the world around me seem lighter and less hopeless.

But the time to mourn endings wasn’t now.

I flew to the cell door, wrenching the ring of keys out of my skirt, fingers trembling as I began jamming keys into the lock, focusing entirely on cycling through them, on finding the one that fit. Thinking not at all about what I was doing . I didn’t have time to allow the doubt in if I still wanted to have a choice in the matter. Because it was not the choice itself that terrified me, but the fact that I was making the choice for him . The sounds beyond the door were growing louder. I fumbled the keys. Gasped as I dropped them. Bent to scoop them up only to have them fall form my clumsy, shaking fingers again.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ I swore, panic swirling around my head and blurring my vision, the impossible pace of my heartbeat rendering me breathless as I picked them up and couldn’t seem to make the next key meet the lock, like the hole had shrunk. A pair of hands caught mine between them, stilling the trembling.

‘ Breathe ,’ Draven said. I looked up at him through the bars, felt myself steady in the hold of his gaze. Took a breath. Smoothly, he guided me to the lock. I focused on the warmth of his hands as the sounds beyond the door seemed to draw closer, then further. The key turned. The lock clicked. And then the door was swinging open, and his arms were around me for just a moment, just long enough for me to catch another, fuller breath, to inhale the smell of him and let it soothe me.

Because then we were running.

We were yanking open the door to a miracle of a clear hallway beyond, even though it echoed with voices and footsteps that seemed to come from every direction at once, soldiers shouting to one another. We didn’t pause. Draven picked a direction that seemed to have no reason to it, his grip on my hand tight as he tugged me after him, our footsteps falling as quietly as we could manage on the stone, as quickly as he could manage with the faltering gate his injuries had settled him with. Down a long hallway lined with alcoves housing guttering sconces, then a fork in the path. Movement to the left, flickering and shadowy. Two soldiers headed towards us. Fear jolted through me, stilling my heart. But they were walking, not running, talking to each other in murmurs. Not looking at us. We hooked right, slipping quickly through another hall, away from them.

A staircase through an opening. I tugged on the hand in mine, halting pace. A wordless conversation spoken in glances. He changed course, and we took the stairs up two at a time, Draven leading, one hand braced against the narrow, curling walls, the other still clutching mine. We reached a landing and he halted, pressing me against the wall as he held still. Noise, raised voices. We held our breaths. The pound of footsteps, someone running, tearing through the doorway to the right in a blur. Passing us by, footsteps descending the connecting staircase, curling away from us. They hadn’t seen us. It seemed like an unlikely gift from the gods. We weren’t going to waste it.

We slipped through the doorway the soldier had come from instead of following up the staircase, emerged into a wide room filled with long, narrow tables and lined with tapestries.

‘Where now?’ I hissed.

Draven quickly surveyed the room. ‘There,’ he said, pointing towards a door I hadn’t seen for the gloom. We headed for it. Opened it, only to find a storage cupboard. There were footsteps behind us, coming down the stairs. We ducked inside the cupboard—we had nowhere else to go. It was dark inside, with barely room for the two of us to stand pressed against each other, shallow breaths competing in the musty air. The voices followed us into the room, men’s voices. Having an argument.

‘—the fuck would that have been your first action! You should have reported the bitch as soon as you saw her!’

A murmured response, too quiet to hear.

‘Who do you think will give a damn about that when she’s gone and sprung him?! She’ll be lucky if all she does is burn.’

The footsteps shuffled around the room, drawing closer. Some thumping sounds, like they were flinging things on tables. My breathing was just a series of shallow gasps. I was so terrified, knowing that if they opened this door—if they needed something out of this cupboard—we were done. Even if we fought them, killed them. The scuffle would bring the rest of their number, and there’d be no escaping. The whole place seemed to be just a series of long hallways, tight staircases. How would we escape if they were choked with soldiers? Our only hope was in them not knowing where we were. As soon as they pinpointed our location… There were footsteps just on the other side of the door now. I stared at the handle, waiting for it to turn, clapped a hand over my mouth to muffle my panicked breathing.

Arms wrapped around me. Draven drew me against him, stroking my hair, my back. I closed my eyes, turned my face into his chest.

‘It’s alright,’ he whispered, barely audible even to me, even with his lips brushing the shell of my ear. And then the footsteps were drawing away. The angry voice was yelling again, but further away now, leaving the room. We waited in the echoing silence that followed, and I hardly dared believe we hadn’t been found. Yet. We still had to get out.

Draven turned the handle slowly, inched the door open. The room beyond was empty.

‘The staircase?’ I asked softly.

He blew out a breath. Nodded. ‘We’d better move quick.’ As though we hadn’t already been running for our lives up until that point.

We made for that staircase that seemed to keep producing soldiers, and my ears strained for the sound of footsteps to announce we were about to be caught as we snuck up another flight of stairs, the light of the torches on the walls casting long shadows that kept tricking me to fright. When we reached the top, there were slitted windows looking out into the night on the opposite wall, and short distance away… a door. Leading outside, if the windows were anything to go by. And three guards stationed before it, their halberds glinting in the torchlight. They looked on high alert, fists gripping weapons tightly, eyes actively scanning their surroundings. They were expecting us.

I scanned the ground on the landing, picking out a scattering of loose stones. Bending low, I scooped a few up, held them out to Draven. His gaze flickered from the stones to the guards, then down the hall, quickly reading my meaning. He picked the largest stone, leaned around the wall and hurled it as far as he could. We crept back down a few steps, crouching low in the shadows as it hit a wall, clattered to the ground.

‘What was that?’ The voice of one of the guards. There was a strained silence as we all seemed to wait for movement—us for theirs, them for ours.

After a pause, they began debating whether they should go and investigate in low voices, finally deciding two would venture further down the corridor while leaving one behind to guard the door. The pair passed the stairwell without looking our way, and slowly Draven rose, pulling me to my feet behind him.

‘How do we get the other one?’ I mouthed, barely giving breath to the words lest they be heard.

‘Fast,’ was Draven’s reply.

‘Helpful,’ I said, released from the tension enough to roll my eyes. His mouth twitched with a smile. Footsteps punctured the brief levity and we both glanced behind us, holding still as hunted rabbits. The footsteps were below, maybe a floor, maybe two, but they were headed our way. We were out of time to make plans. We peered around the corner at the remaining guard, and with another stroke of luck he was looking the other way, staring at the shadowy far end of the hall.

Draven didn’t hesitate. He moved like lightning, crossing the space between us and the door on footsteps so fleet and quiet he could hardly have been touching the ground. He clamped a hand over the guard’s mouth, yanked the dagger hanging from the scabbard on the man’s belt and drove it into his side. With a muffled groan, the man went limp. It happened so fast I barely had time to register it before I was darting forwards to catch the halberd to keep it from clattering to the ground.

Draven lowered him to the stone, hand still clamped around his mouth as blood began to bubble through his fingers. In another movement so swift it seemed like he’d done it before, he yanked the dagger out of the guard’s side and drew it across his throat. I shuddered, closing my eyes at the last moment as though I hadn’t done the same thing myself this very day. As though I’d never done worse.

‘Open the door. We’ll move him out of sight,’ Draven whispered. I jolted to my feet, fumbled with the latch. The footsteps on the stairs were getting closer, and down the hallway the guards who’d chased the stone would surely be returning, and I couldn’t get the damn door open! The latch was jammed!

But then suddenly it gave way, the door was swinging open and cold night air was rushing in. Draven hooked his arms around the fallen soldier and dragged him through the door. But we were too late. The footsteps had reached the top of the stairs. I could see the top of a head, an armoured torso, swinging hands emerging from below. My heart hammered as I tried to help Draven pull the body. We should run. We should just leave the body and run!

‘Eden, any news?’ The call came from down the hall. The other guards returning. The new arrival turned their way instead of ours. The guard’s attention was fixed for just long enough for us to get the body clear. I quietly pulled the door shut while still in a crouch, and the latch clicked home. Draven leaned the soldier against the wall by the door, then he took my hand, drew me to my feet. Pulled me into a run. Now, we didn’t have to worry about our footsteps on stone, muffled as they were by the dirt as we sprinted for a nearby alleyway. Draven flagged, stumbled, hissing as he pressed a hand to his stomach. I doubled back, wrapped an arm around his waist and took some of his weight. I was fit to burst with the fear of it, with adrenaline racing through me and that incandescent hope that we would make it, we would make it, now staring me down from so close. Just a few more steps. Five, four, three…

We made the alley. Disappeared down it, embraced by its blessed shadows, its winding walls, and beyond it another alley, then another. Quickly, we were lost in the streets of Port Howl, tangled with regular citizens now, the night dwellers who sold street food and entertainment out celebrating the end of their occupation. We avoided them where we could, given that Draven was covered in blood, now a mixture of his own and the soldier’s, but while we drew some curious glances, none lingered long enough to suggest they knew we’d just escaped Saltarre Castle’s dungeons.

Eventually, we stopped. Draven needed to stop. His pace was flagging, and even though he didn’t say it, I could hear the way his breath was bound with pain, could read it in the rigid way he held himself. We leaned against a wall a few turns away from a small market. Music drifted to us through the night, along with the scents of roasting meat, as the people of the city celebrated their liberation. I chewed my lip as I surveyed Draven, noting the way he sagged against the wall, the way he looked back at me with something tormented and hollow in his eyes.

‘When was the last time you ate?’ I asked. ‘Drank?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How hurt are you?’

‘I’ll be alright.’

‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

He huffed a laugh. ‘It’s hard to quantify.’ I was chewing my lip ragged as I continued to study him. I could taste the blood in my mouth. He seemed to notice it, frowning as his gaze rested on my mouth. Reached out. Brushed a thumb across my lip. ‘Don’t do that.’

‘I don’t know how we’re going to get out of the city,’ I admitted in a hushed voice. ‘They’ll be watching the walls. They’ll likely close the gates until we’re found.’

‘They won’t close the port,’ he replied after a moment. ‘They’ve been blockaded for too long. Getting fresh supplies into the city will be more of a priority than us. And their merchant class will make too much of a fuss if they try it after business has been grounded for so long.’

‘That’s a possibility.’ My mind was spinning, forming a plan. ‘Maybe our best option.’ We both sank into the shadows as a rowdy group passed by the ally, their raucous laughter stained with liquor. ‘I want to speak to Leela first,’ I said when they were gone. ‘I’m not fleeing another city without warning her. And… I think she’ll help us.’ I hoped she would, anyway. I’d never pushed her loyalty to this, helping me smuggle the land’s most notorious villain—the one who had kept her prisoner, no less—out of a city that was hunting for us both.

I expected him to protest. He didn’t. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Do you have an idea of how to get to her?’

‘I left her a message before I came to the dungeons. I asked her to meet me at the city’s cathedral at midnight. If she’s found the message, then it should just be a matter of waiting for her.’ Unless she’d heard what I’d done and decided this was a step too far. Perhaps there’d be soldiers waiting for us at the cathedral instead of her. But it was a risk I had to take.

Draven didn’t reply, staring at me like he wasn’t sure who or what I was. ‘What?’ I asked, unnerved by the intensity in his gaze.

‘I thought Gwinellyn had forced your hand,’ he said slowly. ‘But you already knew you were going to free me when you set out tonight.’

‘Well, no, I guess… I just left the message… I suppose I thought…’ I trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence. I hadn’t fixed on any path, any decision, before I’d set out to enter the dungeon. Every step of the way, I’d told myself I wasn’t making this choice, that I would turn around, that each step in this direction had been something it wasn’t. I dropped his gaze, unable to hold it, heat flushing my neck and cheeks. Which was ridiculous, given that we were on the run and likely going to be caught and killed at any moment. ‘Let’s just head for the cathedral,’ I managed, pulling myself together. ‘There’ll be somewhere we can hide for a couple of hours. Somewhere you can rest.’ When I looked back up at him, he was still watching me with that same expression. And I was struck again with the dizzying magnitude of what I was doing.

‘Which way?’ he asked, and then we were on the move again.