Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,115
where the streets soon emptied and turned quiet.
The northeastern quarter was a place few people had reason to go. The vast majority of the quarter was devoted to helping former Bullets through their addiction. They stayed behind closed doors, venturing out only at specified times and only on specified routes through town. It was a massive undertaking, and one Cepheus had offered to take on. Ares was helping, and to everyone’s surprise Pine was not.
Guards stood at each door along the barracks, where windows glowed with warm light. It wasn’t a prison, but it was close. Anyone who had once called themselves a Bullet had a lot of work to do before they earned the city’s trust. But Caledonia had made it clear that violence toward former Bullets would not be tolerated in South Haven. It was hard enough containing their violence toward each other, and they’d lost hundreds of lives in the fight.
Even walking through town, she had to confront the two sides of Caledonia Styx. There was the side that people adored, the part that was being spun into legend and splashed across walls, and then there was the side people feared. The part that made people stop when they saw her on the street. Neither side felt true, but she wasn’t sure she knew what was true anymore. It was that feeling that drove her past the barracks toward the low bank of the prison.
At Caledonia’s approach, the guards opened the door with brisk nods. She met the bailiff inside and without asking, the woman handed Caledonia the keys she’d come for, then led her through the fortified interior doors.
Caledonia had struggled with this decision for weeks, but Oran had been encouraging. She had nothing to fear, after all. Not anymore.
The prison was a labyrinth of narrow corridors that reminded Caledonia of a ship except these were built of stone, and they pinched together at several points so that only one person might pass through them at a time. She’d only been here once, but the way to Lir’s cell was seared in her memory.
Lir was alive and he would live here until something other than Caledonia’s blade or her order took his life. The decision hadn’t been an easy one. Caledonia herself had argued for his death at first, but after several days of discussion, the command crew had decided Lir would live. Killing him would be to align themselves with his own tactics. It was better to let him live. Even if he was imprisoned.
For days, Caledonia had tried and failed to quiet the drumbeat at the back of her mind: Lir. Lir. Lir. She’d won, but there was a part of her that needed to know she hadn’t simply become the thing she hated. She needed to look into his eyes and know that they were not the same. Then she would finally be able to close the door and walk away.
The air was cool and a little damp this far inside the building. There were no more windows to give a sense of direction or to offer the rhythm of day and night. Here, the world was nothing but stone and solitude.
She’d practiced what she might say to him. The temptation to reflect his own cruelty was strong. That was part of the reason she’d come. She needed to see what she would do, who she would be now that they’d traded places. She was in power and he was not. It had changed them both, though she wasn’t sure what she would find in him. Would he cling to his arrogance? Beg for death? Would he show her fear? And how would she respond?
Lir’s cell was at the end of a short, narrow hallway. There was a window at eye level with a hatch that could only be opened from the outside. Just inside, Lir likely lay on his cot. While his wound had nearly healed, his recovery had been complicated by his withdrawal. The healers reported that he would remain weak for many moons to come.
Without meaning to, Caledonia reached for the old scar on her belly. Her fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt and for a moment she imagined that Lir had been right all along. Their lives had been connected from the moment they’d met on that beach. Without her, he’d never have risen to power. Without him, she’d never have had to take it.
That wasn’t right. But that plaguing thought was exactly the reason she’d come.