Page 62 of Fires of the Forsaken
Cheriour said nothing as he grasped my arm and guided me toward the main stairway.
We passed an armory on the right side of the steps. The door sat ajar, giving me a chance to peek into the cavernous room that was packed, from floor to ceiling, with hundreds, maybethousands,of pointy objects. Swords. Bows. Arrows. Axes. Things that would make die-hard LARPers go nuts.
And then Cheriour and I went up. And up…and up. Had to be ten, maybe eleven floors. On a coiled stairway barely wide enough to fit two people. It was dark too. No windows. No lights. Just the white stone walls, which were not nearly as luminescent on the inside as they’d been on the outside. I banged my elbows at least a dozen times. Cheriour, however, sidled through with no issues.
After getting off the dizzying stairway, we walked down a narrow hall lined with closed doors on either side. The place was pretty damn desolate. Lotta stone. Still no windows. It was like a prison. And the air was hot and stagnant. Sweat poured down my back as my lungs struggled to get oxygen into my body.
“This is your room. Eighth door. On the right side.” Cheriour shoved the aforementioned door open.
The room was as sparsely decorated as the rest of the castle. It had a bed, a desk, a fireplace, a few wooden buckets, and…that was it.
Oh, and two postcard-sized windows. Both covered with wood shutters.
The place smelled musty. Stale.
“Is it just me, or is the air kinda thin up here?” I wheezed, leaning against the doorway as white spots danced before my eyes.
“You may want to open the shutters.” Cheriour snatched a tinder box off the desk and moved toward the bed…and the candle that sat on the headboard.
My mouth was suddenly drier than the damn Sahara.
“Until you’ve earned Quinn’s trust, you will be confined to this room.” Cheriour lit a match.Woosh.Acheery little flame now bounced above the candle, so very close to those dingy, unmade bedsheets...
A low ringing sound filled my ears. I shivered, even as beads of sweat slid down my cheeks.
“You’ll be assigned guards.” Cheriour moved around the room, lighting another candle over the desk. “Be mindful of your mouth around them…”
His words melted into gibberish as my brain soared far, far away.
The flash of memory came on abruptly—it always did. Hot, dry air rushing over my skin as flames sashayed closer to me. Smoke filling my lungs; the taste of sulfur on my tongue. The odor of pork chops oozing into my room.
And, above all else, the raw, pained scream of my mother…
My ass hit the ground with apphhlapp.The back of my head cracked against the door frame. Didn’t feel the pain though—was too busy, y’know, trying tobreathe.
Cheriour spun around. “Addie?”
“Put them out!” I gasped.
“Wha—”
“Put them out!” I yelled. God, thestench.
“What is wrong?”
I wrung my hands together. “Put them out…I…I don’t—I don’t like fire.”
Cheriour’s eyebrows shot up—the first time he’d seemed shocked at something I said. “You don’t like fire?” he repeated slowly.
“No. Not while inside. Do you know how quick fire spreads? Okay, yeah, the walls are stone. But those sheets would gopoofin minutes.Minutes.And it’s not easy to get out of a burning building. Peoplethinkit is until…and flesh burns are...” My eyes burned as tears threatened to fall. “Put them out. Please.”
To his credit, Cheriour didn’t argue. He licked his fingers and doused the candles.
Of course, without them, there was zero light. The room was dark. Dreary. Creepy AF.
“I’ll take it you don’t want me to start a fire?” Cheriour drawled, gesturing to the empty hearth.
“Fuck no.” I pressed my head against my knees, still fighting for oxygen, and screamed when his hand touched my shoulders.
