Page 20 of The Shattered King

The dungeon wasn’t as bad as I remembered it.

Not to say it wasn’t horrid, dark, cold, and smelly, but perhaps because I knew what to expect this time around, I wasn’t caught by surprise.

They’d locked me in the same cell I’d occupied before, and I was sure the straw hadn’t been changed in that time.

If the queen couldn’t be bothered to provide her son’s official healer parchment to write home, why would she see to it that the straw was changed in the dankest parts of the castle?

At least I got no sense of death down here.

Maybe my death will be the first.

“Imagine she trips down the stairs, twists her ankle. Or gets a fishbone stuck in her throat,” I whispered aloud, “and I say, My apologies, I’m to only serve the prince, and walk right out on her.”

“ You wouldn’t do that, ” Ursa protested.

“Oh yes I would.” I winced, my voice a little too loud.

I listened for the guards in the narrow, dripping hallway outside the door, but didn’t catch any movement.

Not there, and not in the cells next to me, not that so much as a shuffle could pierce these stone walls.

I sighed. “I wonder what the king does through all of this.”

“ Matters of state, I suppose. ”

Prince Renn was King Grejor’s son, and yet I’d never seen the man visit. Even Prince Adrinn visited, however annoyingly. “He’s doing well,” I said to the darkness. “She might keep me down here for two, three days.”

“ I don’t think it’ll be so long. ”

“I’m sorry, you must be elsewhere when the good queen is around if you believe that. I’d love to have Winvrin under my thumb for one day in Fount. Soulbind some bees to her until she’s covered in welts.”

“ That would only hurt the bees. ”

I’d never seen soulbinding, it being illegal.

Only heard about it. Soulbinding craftlock connected one soul to another.

Scripture says all souls were created equal, whether man, beast, or plant.

I wondered if that carried into craftlock.

I didn’t entirely understand how one would use such a magic.

Two oxen together to pull in unison, I supposed.

Or a wife tying her husband to her side so he couldn’t sneak off with a mistress. I snorted at the idea.

No one could work more than one kind of craftlock.

Still, I wondered what Queen Winvrin would do if I were , somehow, a soulbinder or mindreader as well.

Would she keep the law and hang me, losing her son’s healer, or bend the law and keep me, thus saving him?

My guess was the latter, but she would make me sorry for it.

I sneezed, shivered, yawned. I determined I should probably try to get some sleep tonight.

I’d just settled against the straw when I heard nearing footsteps and then spied shifting torchlight outside my door. A key entered the lock, and I felt Ursa fade away. It had to be around midnight. I started to worry. For the queen to come so soon, Prince Renn must have fallen ill.

I shielded my eyes from the torchlight when the door squealed open, peeking between my fingers. I thought it two torches in the doorway at first, but no, there shined only one, and then its reflection off the prince’s golden hair.

I lowered my hand. “Your Highness?”

He wore casual clothing, still regal but without the usual pomp and color, and leaned on that fancy cane of his. The night’s weariness weighed on him, his back not quite straight. I rushed to my feet to meet him at the door.

“Yes?” the torch-holding guard asked.

Prince Renn nodded, then turned to pass him. “Come on, Nym.”

I held my fingers to my chest to warm them and followed at his heels. He didn’t move quickly, but any step away from this place was a step I appreciated. I didn’t speak until after we’d climbed the dungeon stairs and exited into a sconce-lit hallway. No windows here, either.

“Thank you. It’s dreadful in there.”

He sighed. “One of my mother’s men mentioned it to Ard, who relayed it to me. She should not have done that.”

The defensive tone in which he spoke warmed me. “Will she be angry to have me out so soon?”

“Not if I’m the one to release you, no.”

We walked a little farther, him pausing to take a break before the next set of stairs.

I stepped around him. “Here, I can help.” The dungeon had, at least, given me some time to recover from my magic surge to save that soldier’s leg.

I touched the prince just under the jaw and dowsed.

Everything looked fairly good, just needed the usual straightening, tightening, gluing.

I still had not sorted out why my administrations didn’t stay permanent—they never unwound in other patients I’d had.

Such was the nature of the prince’s shattered lumis, I supposed. Broken, and continually breaking.

I soothed away fatigue before switching back into myself. Looked up at him. He was about a hand’s length taller than I was, and even in the dark corridor, his vibrant eyes seemed to glow from within.

I stood very close to him. I pulled my hand away and took a step back. “You are a little warm,” I offered.

A small smile ghosted his lips. “I did have to walk down several flights of stairs to retrieve you.”

I considered this, us alone in the corridor, and turned around. “Where are your guards?”

“Close enough.” Sten’s voice came from around the stairwell. I hadn’t seen him for the shadows.

Before we continued, however, Renn touched my elbow and took a few steps back toward the dungeon, putting space between us and Sten. “Just then, too.” He seemed contemplative.

“What?”

He shook his head, as though incredulous. “It will sound odd, but ... sometimes when you dowse into me, it feels like someone else is here.”

The skin on my arms pebbled.

“You know that sensation when someone is watching you?” he went on. “Kind of like that.”

I noticed tension in my shoulders and bade them relax. “Sten is just around the corner.”

But he wasn’t convinced. “Not them. Like ... I suppose it seems a little silly.”

I did not want to tell him I agreed, not when he had rescued me from the bowels of the keep, not when he felt comfortable in telling me so.

And yet neither could I explain to him what I was sure he felt, even if I did not understand how he felt it.

She had no connections to anyone but me.

Not even to my siblings. So what was it about Renn Noblewight that let him sense her presence, and not for the first time?

I sought to change the subject instead. “I think I smell of mildew.”

He nodded. “Right. Let’s get out of here.”

The prince walked a bit straighter up the stairs, waving off Sten’s hand when he tried to assist. He wasn’t as out of breath as one might have thought when he reached his suite, perhaps due to my last dowsing, but he had been working steadily with the castle doctors, and I truly believed that helped.

As he stepped into his suite, he said, “Good night, Nym. And please try to avoid future incarceration.”

I smiled. “Yes, Your Highness. I will try .”

Oddly enough, spending fewer hours with the prince seemed to benefit both of us.

Because I was no longer exhausted, I worked more efficiently, and I didn’t have to beg for leave when three healers from Rove came to the castle to meet with me.

Two men, one woman, who met me in the same small room where I had waited to meet the prince for the first time.

We sat together. A tall, bald man with tan skin, wearing the red cincture of Alm, took the farthest chair from me.

“Are you the one who healed me?” I asked.

He side-eyed me. Tipped his head in confirmation.

I’d had a hunch, with his behavior. “Thank you, for doing that. You saved my life.”

He made no response.

Addressing the others, I asked, “Your names?”

The woman answered first. “Sarra.” She smiled at me. “I never thought I’d be back here again.”

“Fil,” answered the closer man. He was notably the oldest, his hair nearly white with age.

A beat passed before the man who’d healed me spoke. “Brekk.” His voice was as severe as his countenance. “I live north of the castle wall. That is why they summoned me. I am ... close.”

It felt as though he was defending himself from healing me. Did the darkness in my lumis bother him so much? But I wouldn’t let him bother me, not now. Not only because I truly owed him a debt, but because I wanted to get answers as swiftly as possible. Heal the prince so I could finally go home.

“Please, share your experience healing His Highness Prince Renn with me. I’m hoping one of you might have some insights to better my work.” I gestured to Fil, on my right.

He shrugged. “I came, I dowsed ... it was a ripe mess in there. Like ... if you gave a puzzle to a woodcutter and let him have his way with it for a fortnight. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t have anything to do.”

I hid a frown and looked to Sarra.

Her whole face turned a pretty shade of pink. “I ... It’s a lot like he said, though I thought it looked more like broken hard candies.”

She hesitated; I gestured for her to continue.

“So much of it ... I thought I’d sort some of the pieces together by color. Picked out all the red ones and tried to see how they fit together. I ... I tried to force a couple, and then the prince started coughing and the queen dismissed me.” The pink darkened to red. “I was so embarrassed.”

Fil snorted. “You did more than I. Don’t know what they expect, given—” He cut himself off and looked around the room, as though remembering he was in the castle and might be overheard. He did not finish his sentence.

Brekk exhaled slowly and leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees. His long legs filled up half the room. “I always take my time with the prince. He is damaged, but he is also alive, which means something.”

My thoughts caught on his words. “Always?”

“The queen has requested me four times over the years, in hopes my experience has given me new insight, as you hope to glean today.”