Page 58 of Her Cruel Redemption

The woman traipsed into the adjoining room on nimble feet, singing to herself in a voice high and sweet as Tallius opened another door and spoke to a guard standing there dressed in Oceatold livery.

‘In the bath. Make it quick,’ he said. The guard nodded, entering the bedroom to wait by the bathroom door. The floor seemed to shift beneath us, the space shrinking to carry us along, until we were in the bathroom. Time seemed to speed up as we watched the blond woman flit about the room far too fast to be possible, her hands almost a blur, as a maid filled the great copper tub in a matter of moments. I averted my eyes as she undressed and slipped below the water, leaning back with closed eyes. When the guard entered the room, still moving at an impossible speed, I cried out to warn her, but she couldn’t hear me. In a blink, he was by the tub. In another, his hands were on her, pressing her down below the surface, her arms thrashing about. Her head broke the surface for barely a glimpse, then she was under again, clawing at him as she tried to get free. The next moment, he was straightening. Her arms hung limply over the sides. And the scene went dark.

I spun, whirled through a vortex of space, to come crashing back into my body. I staggered, my stomach churning, and for a moment I thought I’d be sick. Rhi steadied me as I doubled over, gasping. When I finally straightened, my eyes were wet with tears.

‘Wh-why would you show me that?’ I stammered, voice thick.

Rhi’s expression was tight, her eyes hard. ‘Because you cannot marry that man, Gwinellyn. This is the turning point. This is the place where the path diverges. You can keep doing as you’ve always done and let those entitled pricks rule the world, amassing piles of collateral damage like Senafae and the Yoxvese in pursuing their pleasures and ensuring they stay on top of the heap. Or you can go into that meeting this afternoon, look that smug, smarmy prick Tallius in the eye and tell him to go fuck himself.’

I chewed the inside of my cheek as stress began to buzz in my fingertips and blur the edges of my vision. I took a few deep breaths, blowing them out noisily, trying to manage it, trying to keep the terror and the fit that would follow it at bay.

She watched me with her brow crumpled in consternation. ‘What are you so afraid of?’

‘Tallius,’ I managed to choke out as I steadied myself against the wall.

‘I don’t understand.’

Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t understand how terrified I was of standing against him. How much I’d dreaded his visits when I was younger. She wouldn’t understand my fear, not when she’d lived through such terrible things, far worse than anything I had experienced. Tallius’s cruelty would seem petty and childish in comparison. What would I say? That he’d liked to pinch me until I cried? That he’d laugh and whisper while shooting looks my way when I was in the room? That once he’d told me a story about a headless ghost who roamed the palace, then he’d tricked me into the panty in the kitchen on the pretence of finding me a treat to make me feel better, pretending he wanted to be friends, only to lock me in there all night? I could tell her how I’d cried, how afraid I’d been of the strange sounds and the spectre of the headless ghost, how I’d had my first fit there in the dark and had returned to consciousness all alone, with no one to tell me what had happened. The cook had screamed when she’d found me in the morning as the scullery maids scampered about in a panic. I’d never told anyone Tallius had locked me in there.

The thought of that pretty, blond woman came back to me, of her singing so sweetly. Of… of the way she’d struggled as she was held beneath the water.

‘I know it isn’t easy,’ Rhi said, her voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. When I looked up at her, her eyes had softened. ‘I know you’ve been taught to be quiet and doubt your voice. But I’ve seen your determination and your compassion and your dream for a different world. You’re worth so much more than as a silent key to the castle. And if standing up for yourself isn’t enough of a motivator, then stand up for Elias and your friends and the Living Valley. Stand up for the woman drowned in a bathtub for being an inconvenience.’ She lowered her voice, bringing the energy back down, and there was something desperate in her intensity now. ‘Stand up forme.’

I held her gaze, feeling the words all the way to my bones in a way that felt similar to the night we’d danced with Baba Yaga, surrounded by drums, our feet bare and something wild and powerful running through me. This was why I’d come to Oceatold, wasn’t it? Because that night, I’d got the sense that I had more strength and nerve than I’d ever thought I did. I’d been able to feel it, thrumming deep down inside me, this fierce energy that I’d spent my entire life beating down. And maybe she was right and I couldn’t do it for just myself.

But I could, Iwould, do it for my friends.

‘But how do I get them to listen to me?’ I asked, barely beginning to entertain a ray of hope that the future I’d been dreading might never need to come to pass.

A slow smile unfurled across Rhi’s face as she took me in, the light of triumph gleaming in her eyes. ‘Actions have consequences,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we give them a taste of the kind of monsters they’ve been creating?’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The mood in the Astronomy Tower felt like it would take only a spark to ignite, even as I entered it with Gwinellyn. The members of Brimordia and Oceatold’s council flitted about the room, muttering to each other in tight, fast voices, relaying rumours they’d heard about the fall of Port Howl to one another, speculating on what would be the next best move to keep the invaders from moving deeper into Oceatold and taking another city. Around them all, Esario’s instruments whirled and clicked, measuring Aether knew what of the sky while the land erupted with chaos.

Gwinellyn’s advisors shot her looks ranging from curious to resentful. I took Dovegni’s curled lip to be a sign of outright victory, though Gwinellyn seemed to shift under their regard, ringing her hands. Perhaps she had held her nerve against her own advisors, but whether she could still wrangle an alliance out of Oceatold’s king was another story.

When Esario entered, followed closely by Igor Lidello, the talk fell to murmurs and whispers as everyone headed for the great central table, now laid with several maps marked out with pins. I took them in with interest, noting what looked like the positions of Oceatold’s forces, again measuring the distance to Port Howl. It really was too close for comfort. What a brash move to make, taking such a city. If Draven had made it purely in the hopes of rattling his enemy, then he had definitely achieved that end.

This time, I was sure to snare a seat beside Gwinellyn before I could be relegated to the sides of the room. There was a moment of hushed expectation as everyone waited for the king to speak.

‘As I’m sure you are all by now aware,’ he began, bracing his arms against the tabletop. ‘Port Howl has fallen to the enemy. A wave of civilians have now fled the city, but the reports are fragmented and we know little of the soldiers tasked with Port Howl’s protection. I fear the majority have been either captured or killed.’

‘We should have seen this coming,’ one lord spat, his fingers clenched against the table. ‘The skirmishes were warnings. We ignored them.’

‘They were provocations,’ another countered, his voice tight with frustration. ‘Nothing more. We couldn't risk open war without certainty. And now? Now we have certainty.’

‘Port Howl was meant to be impenetrable,’ Lidello interjected, tapping his steepled fingers together. Just the sound of his voice set my teeth on edge. ‘Those walls are laced with magic. I have seen to parts of the construction and repair process myself. It is arduous and resource intensive and they should have held against any kind of force attack. How did they breach so quickly?’

‘Our information is that the walls were not compromised,’ Esario replied. ‘Which begs the question of how they managed it at all. A city like Port Howl should never have fallen in a single night, and certainly not without a brute force attack.’

‘They wouldn’t need brute force,’ Tallius drawled, leaning forwards to insert himself into the conversation for the first time. If he noticed the burning glare I was directing at him, he didn’t show it, instead looking to Lidello, who continued to stare at his hands as he tapped them against each other, his mouth twisting this way and that as he seemed to think. ‘Not when they have a fall spawn mongrel as their leader who can compel men to do as he tells them.’

‘Speculation will not win back the city,’ Esrio cut in, voice cold. ‘We need to take quick, decisive action. And it is to that end that I have called you all here today. The usurper has sent an envoy once again offering the opportunity to talk terms of peace.’

Quietly, I snorted. Offering the opportunity to talk peace, indeed. I hardly thought that single, provocative line could have been described in such diplomatic terms as that, but perhaps Esario knew better than to work his council up into a frenzy with a report of the goading slight.

Esrio exhaled slowly. ‘I’m inclined to hear him out. Or at least, I feel obligated to do so before I steer us into the first outright war our country has seen in centuries. But before I arrange such a meeting, I want to solidify the alliance between my crown and that of Brimordia’s rightful heir.’ At this, he directed a faint, almost mechanical smile in Gwinellyn’s direction. ‘An alliance which I hope is ready to be signed and sealed.’

---