Page 14 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

Plink .

Plink .

Pink .

First, there was darkness. Then pain, blooming like a flower in her skull. Noise filtered in, with a slow and steady dripping. And with it, the scent of seaweed and brine.

Plink .

Plink .

Plink .

There came a low, furious clacking. By the time Sera realized it was her own chattering teeth, she was finally coming to.

Her cloak was gone, her bare arms half frozen.

Beneath her cheek, the ground was cold and damp.

Roughened stone scraped her as she turned.

Sitting up was a struggle. Everything hurt.

Her nose. Her jaw. Her wrists. She ached .

Her hands were bound in front of her, the roughened rope chafing her skin.

Rising with a grunt, she came to her knees. It was dim here, almost black. In the distance, an oil lamp flickered on a stone wall. But there were bars between Sera and that solitary kernel of light. Thick metal bars.

She was in a cell.

Great .

She whipped her head around, regretting the quickness of the movement.

Her head screamed in protest, her nose so blocked it was surely broken.

The cell was small and windowless, and yet the smell of the sea seeped through the walls, borne on a howling wind.

Salt water dripped from the ceiling and pooled in puddles around her.

This place was too damp to be the catacombs.

And Hugo’s Passage didn’t smell like this…

like piss and sweat and brine. A dungeon, then.

A hell she had not been to before. She scoured her aching mind for fragments of her last memory: Theo and Bibi shouting as a group of men descended upon them.

Triumphant guffaws, the errant glint of a sword, the heel of a tall black boot…

then the rattle of carriage wheels over stone.

Panic shot through Sera. Where the hell was she? And where were her friends?

‘Hello?’ she croaked out. Her throat ached. She could feel bruises there too. ‘Val? Theo? Bibi?’

There was scrabbling nearby, followed by a pained grunt. ‘Sera? Are you here?’

Theo! Theo was here. And he sounded just as sore as she was.

‘I’m here!’

‘Are you all right?’ His voice was a low rasp.

‘Been better.’ Inching towards the bars, she laid her forehead against them, letting the cool iron soothe the pain along the bridge of her nose. When she spoke again, her voice carried a little further, into the narrow walkway and towards his neighbouring cell. ‘What happened?’

She hated how her voice broke on the question, like she was no more than a child cowering under her bed. She wanted to be strong for her friend, but she was aching and frightened and failing not to panic.

She heard him shuffling on the other side of the wall, making his way to the bars. ‘Whatever the hell that was, we survived it,’ he said, steady now, playing the role of protector. ‘And whatever else comes, we’ll survive that too.’

She closed her eyes, willing a flicker of courage into her heart.

‘I glimpsed the royal crest when they shoved me into the carriage,’ said Theo. ‘Right before they knocked me out. Looks like we’re in one of the king’s dungeons. By the smell of seaweed coming through the walls, I’d bet we’re under the Summer Palace.’

South-west of Fantome, then. Near the mouth of the Verne.

‘Bibi? Val?’ Sera’s voice cracked from the strain.

No answer.

Theo rattled the bars of his cell. ‘BIBI!’ he bellowed, the call echoing around them and reaching into the shadowy bowels of the dungeon. ‘VAL!’

‘SHUT THE FUCK UP!’ a gruff male-sounding voice called back.

‘Where are they?’ hissed Sera.

‘Probably still out cold,’ said Theo, a note of hope in his voice when he added, ‘Or maybe they got away. I never saw them get dragged in. Did you?’

‘I think I heard Bibi scream. I don’t know about Val.’ It had all happened so fast. Sera’s lips twisted. She felt a cut there too. ‘Do you think it was Mercure who tipped the soldiers off?’

He ground out a curse. ‘I don’t know.’

Regret needled Sera. It had been a mistake going to House Armand. They had played with fire and paid for it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, weakly.

‘Don’t be. We’ll figure this out.’

‘Any opening suggestions?’

‘Start chewing on your binds. If we can get our hands free, at least we’ll be ready for whatever happens next.’

With little else to do, Sera started chewing on the rope around her wrists. It was damp and it stank, and she had a vague image of herself like a rat gnawing through wood. Definitely a low point. But at least they were in the gutter together.

Theo went quiet for a while, doing the same. Every so often, one of them would stop to call out Val and Bibi’s names. When no answer came, they’d return to their task, the time passing in the steadily dripping water around them.

Sera was down to the final threads around her wrists when bootsteps sounded nearby.

She scrabbled backwards, hitting the wall of her cell just as they came to a stop.

A tremor ran through her at the sight of two towering nightguards leering in at her.

Longswords glinted at their hips and by the matching hostile glint in their eyes, she sensed these were the same soldiers who had kidnapped her.

‘Look who woke up early,’ sneered the one on the right. A bald man with red cheeks and a high forehead.

‘Guess you didn’t hit me hard enough,’ said Sera, bitterly.

The other one snorted, his thick moustache twitching. ‘Look in a mirror and say that again.’

Grant me one and I’ll crack it over your thick head .

Rage rushed through her, making her palms spark expectantly. She looked down, accidentally drawing their attention to the rope fraying around her wrists.

The cell door swung open and they stomped inside. Sera reared backwards but there was nowhere to go. She kicked out as they rebound her wrists tighter than before. Her hands were pressed inwards, her fingers interlacing. Her magic, now turned against itself, winked out.

Useless.

Not that she knew how to use it anyhow.

Still struggling with the binds, she was too distracted to fight off the cloth they balled up and stuffed in her mouth. Panic surged again. With her nose broken, it was already hard to breathe. Her head grew both light and heavy at once.

Next door, Theo was shouting.

‘The Shadowsmith is awake,’ grunted the bald soldier, taking off in a clatter of footsteps.

‘The Shadowsmith has questions!’ Theo roared. ‘Like, what the hell are we doing here? Where are our friends? And what are you going to do with that—’ He broke off, descending into a string of muffled swears.

The other soldier remained, looming over Sera like a reaper. A sack was tugged roughly over her head. Her protests turned to frustrated whimpers as she struggled to suck in air around the gag. Soot marred her lips and filled her nostrils, the stained fabric sitting heavy against her tongue.

Bound and unseeing, Sera was dragged to her feet.

With her airflow restricted, her head throbbed even worse than before.

From the cell next door, she heard a similar scuffle.

Theo was still hissing and cursing, fighting the guard that dragged him down the narrow walkway alongside her.

Any relief at leaving the dungeons was short-lived.

Now she had to worry about what awaited them beyond it. The gallows or the noose. Or maybe they’d put blocks around their feet and chuck them into the Verne, let them wash up on the shore in three days’ time like the rebels across Fantome.

Sera stopped fighting the guard’s hold on her. Better to preserve her energy for wherever they were headed. She wondered what crime they had pulled her in for.

Had word of her involvement with the monsters of Fantome reached the king, or was it their recent trial shipment of exploding Lightfire that had drawn his ire?

Or had it been a vengeful Cordelia Mercure, watching them from the windows of House Armand, who’d used one of her ravens to send a missive to the nightguards?

Perhaps it had been a trap all along.

Theo stopped fighting too, both of them falling silent as they were dragged up a winding flight of stairs.

On and on they climbed, away from the dank squalor of the dungeons to lamplight and warm air and the faint smell of the sea.

Distantly, Sera heard waves crashing against the rocks.

She pictured the Summer Palace in her mind, the decadent white-stone castle that sat on a sloping cliff overlooking the South Sea.

It was one of several extravagant royal dwellings throughout Valterre, but the one the king favoured when the last of the winter frost melted and the weather brightened.

Doors groaned as they were opened for them, soldiers muttering under their breath.

Their surrounds grew warmer still, the scent of fresh lilies trickling in.

The floor changed from rough stone to polished tile, the rooms they passed through growing larger and grander.

Sera could tell by the echo of her own footsteps.

Finally, they came to a stop, the door closing behind them with a thud. Plush carpet softened Sera’s footsteps as she drew a shallow soot-choked breath. Her lungs screamed for air, her head swimming dangerously from the exertion of getting here. Wherever here was.

This room felt smaller than the others. Closer, somehow. Though her head was covered, she glimpsed firelight flickering through the grainy sack, felt its heat rippling along her bare arms. And yet, she still shivered with an uncomfortable mix of anger and fear.

She felt, rather than saw, the sharpened attention of others in the room. Their breaths were loud in the silence as she was manoeuvred in smaller steps. Her hip bumped the edge of a table.

Her guard’s voice then, too close to her ear. ‘ Behave . Or I have orders to run you through with my sword.’

Sera resisted the urge to jerk her head back and shatter his nose as his hands came to her shoulders, shoving her roughly into a chair.

Beside her, Theo received the same treatment.