City in Ruins (16 page)

The baby kicked.

I paused, pulling Catriona’s hands up over her
stomach so that they hid the movement, my gaze flicking once more
to Gabriella. She was staring hard at the trees, her frantic gaze
roaming from one spot to another. The knife in her hand
shook.

“Don’t let go,” I ordered. Catriona
nodded.

Standing, I threw my weapon to the ground and
faced Gabriella. “I’m yours.”

The Greemallian princess laughed. “No,” she
threw me a deranged look, “but I’ll make sure you get to the person
you do belong to.”

Chapter 20

Over and over, I kept telling myself I’d done
the right thing.

With a sweep of her hands, Gabriella released
Lochlen, Oran, and Reenah, They rushed to Catriona and Gryphon,
releasing them before the dragon hauled both of them over his
shoulders. As they backed into the trees, Lochlen threw me a look,
his eyes full of fierce promises. I held those promises close to my
heart.

My world went black, my eyes covered by a dark,
stinking cloth. Despite her madness, the princess was not stupid.
She knew about my powers and knew what I was capable of. By using a
mage to silence the forest and blindfolding me, she was limiting
what I or Lochlen could do. It was impossible for her to get far,
for her to hide for long with a dragon and a battle hard Cadeyrn on
her trail, but I didn’t think she needed long.

I was going to die.

Hands lifted me, my body weightless as the
laughing, drunken men from before gripped my body, carrying me
through the humid forest. There was no way for me to know how much
time passed.

The air changed, growing saltier. My back hit
wood, and I gasped at the brutal contact.

“Row, you idiots!” Gabriella
commanded.

Water sloshed against the side of a boat, the
sound of oars cutting through the waves loud to my blind-sensitive
ears.

“Come on!” Gabriella roared.
“Faster!”

Shouts rose up into the air, and I knew by the
calls that they came from a ship, the commands those used at
sea.

More time passed. Water sloshed.

“Haul her up!” a man yelled.

Hands gripped me, heaving me forcefully over a
bony back. My body slackened as we moved upward, my stomach
dropping.

“Put her in the hold and set sail! Let’s be
gone before the dragon finds us!” Gabriella called.

“He won’t burn us knowing the girl’s aboard,” a
man replied. “I’m more worried about the prince. I’ve heard tell
he’s a fierce sight when angry.”

His words were met with a slap. “Don’t ever
speak unless you’re told to do so, do you understand? Tell the
Captain to hurry!”

A musty odor invaded my nostrils as I was
carried away from the deck.

In the end, they left me alone in a stinking
cell in the ship’s hold, my hands lashed together, the coarse rope
digging into my wrists. They didn’t remove the
blindfold.

The small cage holding me smelled of blood,
urine, and fear. I soon discovered why. Other than a tepid, hard to
ingest meal that was brought to me twice a day, I went mostly
hungry. I also had no way of relieving myself in a dignified
way.

That first night, they removed my blindfold and
untied my hands when they brought me my meal and they didn’t
replace them. I was in a square cell, just large enough to hold one
person. A hole was cut into the floor in the corner, and I was
forced to stand over it to defecate.

Days passed in this fashion, most of my time
spent curled up against the side of the cell avoiding the corner
with the hole. The only things that broke up the passing of time
were miniscule meals and an hour every morning when I was
blindfolded and tied up so that someone could be brought into the
hold to observe me.

I knew it was an hour because the third time my
visitor came, I counted the seconds he sat there, his breathing
loud beyond the bars. Who watched me was beyond me. I only knew it
wasn’t Gabriella. Had it been her, she would have been unable to
remain silent so long. Her madness would have driven her into
multiple conversations.

On the fifth visit, I managed to ask, “Who are
you?”

The ever-present inhale and exhale were my only
reply. The breathing drove me mad. In my hour long world of
darkness, I kept envisioning terrible things; monsters and insane
men.

Time passed. I counted the number of days by
the strange morning visits. We were nine days in when the visitor
quit coming.

We were ten days in when the ship I was on
docked.

We were eleven days in when the true horror
began.

Chapter 21

Another blindfold, lashed hands, and another
row boat soon found me in a second cell. This one was larger than
my last, the floor damp, and I knew once they uncovered my eyes
that I was in a palace dungeon. Groans echoed down the corridor
beyond the bars of my cell, and guards yelled ribald comments that
made references to their king.

“So you’ll be at the feast tonight?” one guard
hollered.

“Aye. Hopkins has shift, and a good thing too
because I plan to fondle a lady’s tits tonight.”

The first man guffawed. “All these palace
wenches got right nice places to fondle.”

More laughter, the sound echoing down the row
of cells. Worse yet, these weren’t normal cells. I was in a torture
chamber.

The first thing I did when they left me was
crawl to the bars, my gaze searching the torch-lit darkness, my
horror-stricken eyes noting the shackles, the lit braziers, pokers,
ceiling hooks, spiked racks, raised cages, boiling pots, and
malevolent-looking weapons that lined the walls.

My hands flew to my mouth, my palms holding
back the need to scream.

“It ain’t pretty is it?” a wry voice
asked.

Startled, my gaze flew to the corridor beyond
my cell to find me face-to-face with a haggard-looking woman with
long, stringy hair and only a few teeth left in her mouth. She
grinned, and I recoiled.

A bucket of water dangled in her hands, and she
threw it at me, leaving me sputtering and wet inside the chilly
cubicle.

“You’ll see plenty o’ me,” she promised. “I’m
sent to keep the prisoners from smellin’ too putrid, and to mop up
the blood.”

My stomach churned, the damp chill cutting into
me. “Where am I?” I asked.

The woman cackled. “Don’t see why it matters if
you know or not.” She gestured at the walls. “Welcome to New
Hope.”

Turning away from me, she trudged to a trough
full of water, refilled her bucket, and threw it into the cell next
to mine. Whoever resided there never even sputtered.

New Hope? Was I prisoner of King Brahn or
Blayne Dragern now?

My fingers wrapped around the cell bars, my
head falling against the iron. The cold bit into my
forehead.

King or prince, it didn’t matter. I was a
prisoner of at least one man I knew was guilty of treason along
with a woman madness had made an ally.

I slid to the floor. How had this gone so
wrong? How had a simple rebellion against a mad king who’d robbed
his people of knowledge and magic turned into this mess? So much
senseless death. So much pain.

Boots sounded on stone, hinges creaked, and a
begging young man was dragged to the chamber just in front of my
cell. It was then that I discovered why I’d been locked up in this
particular cubicle.

The first prisoner put to death in front of me
was boiled alive.

Chapter 22

As with the ship’s hold before, I found ways to
track my time in prison, my mind full of horrible images and
terrible screams. I remained at the back of my cell, only coming
forward when a plate was shoved under the bars. They fed us twice a
day, and the woman—who’d told me she was called Mags—came once
every other day to throw water into the cells. I was never
warm.

By counting the food trays and the strange
baths, I’d determined that I’d been locked away in New Hope for
five days—five days full of tortured hollers, blood, and death—when
the guards came for me.

Like the men I’d seen dragged down the
corridors, I was yanked from my cell, the guard’s hand wrapped
painfully around the strands of my tangled hair, and thrown onto
the floor of the torture chamber. Two men stood over me, but it was
the sound of boots thundering down the corridor that sent fingers
of dread curling around my heart. There’d never been a third
presence in the tortures I’d witnessed.

“Stand clear!” a man hollered.

My eyes widened, hatred filling my veins.
“Blayne Dragern,” I spat.

He looked no different than the last time I’d
seen him, his clean shaven face all clean angles with high
cheekbones and slanted eyes, his black hair cropped
short.

He smiled. “The girl, the boy, the dragon
rider, the savior … is there a title you haven’t had?”

“Queen,” a shrill voice answered.

Blayne’s smile grew, his arm reaching into the
darkness, his fingers closing around a dainty glove-covered hand.
Princess Gabriella stepped from the shadows, her dark hair a mass
of curls around her face, her body covered in clinging black silk,
a golden serpent coiled just under her breasts. The New Hope
crest.

“I do apologize,” Blayne said, his head bowing.
“Have you met my wife?”

My chin rose, my teeth clenching together,
shock radiating through my system. There was no doubt now that New
Hope and Greemallia were allies.

Gabriella sneered.

Blayne’s hand rose, signaling to the guards,
and I was jerked backwards. My back crashed against the chamber
wall, my breath knocked from my lungs. From the ceiling, two chains
were drawn down, open shackles dangling from the end.

“Tell me,” Blayne asked, “how many gods do you
have?”

My stomach curdled, my gaze dropping to the
floor. So, this is what my life had become? From prophesied phoenix
to a Medeisian martyr for the gods. Blayne didn’t need a reason to
torture me. I’d already given him reason enough, but I knew by his
question what he was looking to do, and I recoiled.

My chin rose. “I am the daughter of many gods,”
I said firmly.

“Blasphemy!” Gabriella cried, her mouth open in
horror, her hand clutching her chest.

Again, Blayne signaled the guards.

My hands were shoved into the dangling
shackles, the metal closing around my wrists. A lever was pulled,
and I was heaved upward, my toes the only thing left sweeping the
floor.

“How many gods do you have?” Blayne
repeated.

New Hope was a monotheistic country known for
its sadistic methods of controlling the way their people
worshipped.

I inhaled, drawing strength from the stale air
around me. “I am the daughter of many gods,” I answered.

A whip was jerked from the wall, the back of my
tunic ripped open to reveal my flesh.

Blayne grinned. “How many gods do you
have?”

“Many.”

The leather strap tore across my skin, sending
burning pain radiating across my back. My head fell, my gaze
falling to the marks on my wrists.

“Help me,”
I
begged the gods.

Silence.

“How many gods do you have?” Blayne
growled.

My head rose, my hard gaze meeting his.
“Many.”

Another lash. The force of it sent my body
reeling, the chains swinging. The gods did not save me, and I
wondered if this was a test of my loyalty.

Two more times Blayne asked me about my
gods.

Two more times I answered with,
“Many.”

Blood dripped onto the floor at my
feet, and I watched as the drops flattened against the dark
stone.
Splat, splat, splat,
I told myself. The drops were like distorted
flowers, starting out as a tightly closed bud before blooming. Like
red roses.

Words
, I
thought suddenly,
are powerful.

It seemed oddly profound that words had brought
me here. That I’d started this journey in an Archive, that I’d
written an order for the man standing before me in the name of a
king, and that I now found myself hanging in front of the same man
after using the document I’d been forced to write to charge him
with treason. Words were powerful.

“How many—” Blayne began.

“Many gods,” I interrupted, my head
rising. “I am the daughter of
many
gods. I am a girl, a boy named Sax, a savior, a
dragon rider, a scribe, a mage, a consort, and a diplomat. Most of
all, I am a dragon, and I am the daughter of
many
gods.”

Blayne Dragern’s cheeks flushed, his eyes
flashing fire. His hand rose. The whip fell.