Page 33 of The Rebel and the Rose
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 ranthrough 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 whatare 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 asthey 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. Whereverherewas.
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.
