Page 19 of A Dance With Fire
It silenced everything else.
“I was carrying her and she vomited on me—”
“Her stomach couldn’t handle the ashwood the circus freak slipped into her drink.”
So Shula had been right. Fannyhadslipped something into her drink. Ashwood was as poisonous to Fae as iron was.
“And yet that still doesn’t explain why you are abusing her,” the captain continued in deadly tones.
“She vomited on me!”
Shula peeked her eyes open in time to see the captain strike at the man who had spoken. Vomit was dripping from his shoulder, disappearing down to his back. The slap had him jerking back, surprise in his eyes.
“You fucking fool,” the captain hissed. “We are meant to take her in unharmed. Do you not realize how important she is? She is the emperor’s property now.” The other man opened his mouth to answer, but the captain shoved him away. “Of course, you didn’t realize. You know nothing except what you are told, and I recall I gave you specific orders not to harm her.”
Then the captain turned to Shula and bent down. His eyes didn’t soften into caring, not exactly. He looked at her not like she was a living being, but like he was staring at a prized possession he didn’t want taken from him.
“Are you alright?”
Shula didn’t have an answer for him. How could she even begin to answer that? Shewasn’talright. She was chained, beaten, poisoned. Betrayed.
Just like Davina said she would be.
But he seemed like he was truly waiting for an answer, one that Shula couldn’t give. Captain Brannon pulled her towards him by the chains and lifted her into his arms. His touch was careful, and yet it still burned; it didn’t fit against her skin.
Cradling her to his chest, he walked along corridors and Shula finally took in her surroundings. High arched ceilings loomed above her, curved structures with stained glass windows and mosaic walls in bright colors and images. The place reminded Shula of the temples she’d seen in passing in the kingdom of Dana. All somber tones and echoing footsteps. Gas lanterns lit up the shadows, and a thousand flickering candles held up on bronze tapers lined along the walls.
It was like following will-o’-the-wisps, leading Shula to her fate, whatever that may be. She wasn’t sure anymore. If they wanted her relatively unharmed, that had to mean something. Something worse than immediate death. He’d also called her ‘the emperor’s property’. That was worse.
She counted the corridors he turned, leading them all the way down a dark hall and a set of stairs. There were no candles here to illuminate their way, but the captain’s footing was sure as he stepped down into the darkness. There was a door down there, one he knocked on. Shula knew that whatever was on the other side would change her life forever.
The door opened as if by its own volition and the captain stepped through. This room was different from what they’d wandered through upstairs. It was damp and not at all pretty; like catacombs beneath the temple, it wreaked of death and was decorated like a graveyard.
Ivory skulls lined the walls in clusters, a latticework of bones spread across the ceiling, as intricate as a spiderweb’s design. In the center of the room there was a table of lit candles that cast buttery light across the marble floor and the designs carved there. It looked like the floor had taken a knife to it, thick slashing lines that curved into a circle, like a pentagram with six points around it.
It wasn’t until the captain set her on her feet and shoved her forward, her feet giving out under her as she crashed onto the circle, that she realized what it was. Images cut into each point, and her knees had come crashing down onto the exact replica that now lived on her spine.
Twin flames.
Shula’s heart began beating at an alarming rhythm. The chains clattered together as she pushed herself up from the circle. It felt wrong to be inside it, to touch the same design that mirrored in new wounds along her back. It was like touching poison, a blight.
She remembered looking at the wounds on her back earlier. They had hurt, they still did; they’d even been confusing, but they hadn’t feltwrong. Not like this. She scrambled away from it until her back hit armor. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming at the jolt of pain. Tilting her head up, Shula met the eyes of Captain Brannon.
He stepped away, his voice echoing through the cavernous space. “Here is the fire Fae.”
“That remains to be seen.” The voice that answered was ominous, and it prickled the back of Shula’s neck. She twisted her body, her skirts catching against her ankles as she tried to find the source of the voice.
“Let her go through the trials. Let us see if she is the one we’ve been seeking.”
The clattering of the captain’s armor began to fade as he walked from the room. Other footsteps joined and then the door closed.
Shula instinctively knew that she was alone.
She stood to her feet, knees wobbling. The iron was taking a toll on her body, and the ashwood in her veins made her stomach roil. But it was the fear that was the worst of it. Sweeping her gaze across the room, she tried to gauge the situation. It all seemed ceremonial somehow, and she didn’t know what to make of it.
She was still bound in her chains and they dragged across the floor, weighing her arms down as she studied the circle on the ground.
Each point of the circle was decorated with different designs. A single circle in the shape of the cresting waves of an ocean was across from the twin flames. Shula’s feet grazed the edge of the circle and she followed the curve, staring down next at the three small circles with whorls and curves that looked suspiciously like clouds. Across from that, four circles with curving lines and leaves etched through it; the fifth point looked like glass shards broken into the center of five circles. The final point in the circle didn't show a design at all, but a single, bold line that cut across the whole pentagram like a crack splitting the earth.
