Hooves on cobblestone. Cheering from a tavern. Guards laughing from the wagon’s seat. From somewhere, a cry for help that won’t be answered.
An older woman who was crying earlier has sobbed herself out and is now nothing but a tremor beside me. Crammed as we are, I can feel the shake of her shoulders as they brush against mine. The smoothness of her skin makes me think of luxury. What could she have done to get captured by the Second Sweep?
Trying to make more space for myself, I grab the chains that link my manacles together and tug them, doing my best not to think about the sticky substance they leave on my skin. My elbow hits something soft.
“Watch it,” a deep male voice growls inches from me. There’s a sliver of light filtering in from the gas lamps in the palace courtyard. A face that’s all angles and covered in bruises, and his breath stinks of liquor gone sour.
I pull my arms tight to my body and try not to breathe through my nose. Waste and urine mingle in the midsummer humidity, which eventually bleeds into the smell of rotting food as we pass by the kitchens. And beneath all that is something sweet. Something that doesn’t quite belong. We must be near the narrow alleys that link the cathedral and the palace.
My lungs long for the clean air; my heart craves light. For a moment, I try to imagine that I’m back in ángeles, in my drafty, small chamber in the San Cristóbal cloisters with creaky wooden floors, a window narrow but tall that lets in the sun to wake me up. I’m never going to see that room again. I’m never going to walk through the wide halls or sit in the library with a stack of parchments the elders encourage us to read. Learn our histories before they are rewritten by the Bloodied King, they said. I’ll never sneak down the turret to meet Dez at the waterfall, or skin my knees falling during sparring drills. I will never.
I made that decision, but a shudder rips through my lungs because also I never thought I’d be back at the palace. I picture a younger version of myself walking hand in hand with Justice Méndez. A rag doll in Dauphinique lace and satin gloves.
The wagon halts, and there’s the rattle of a cylinder lock’s keys turning until they sigh with release and reveal the guards in the flickering light. The first guard, the one with a gap-toothed sneer, gives his torso a bit of a stretch. He’s dramatic in all of his movements, like he’s taunting us with his ability to move freely. I can tell he likes to cause pain. I’ve seen that look before. Castian had it in his eyes when he fought Dez in Riomar and when he drove his spiked gloves into his own guard’s face.
I’m dragged out of the cart with the rest of the prisoners, and that’s when I finally place the smell: incense. The stench of it does little to cover up the filth of the capital and the dungeon. For a moment I see nothing, only feel the steady beating of my heart concentrated in my ears.
I promised myself I wouldn’t come back here. If my old mentor could see me now—what would he say? Méndez is not a man with remorse. But he was never cruel to me. Would he order me killed on sight or chain my hands and use me for my power once again? If I managed to sneak into the palace, he’d never believe that I was there of my own free will. No, this deception has to start in the belly of the palace.
My palms itch with the anticipation of magics. Castian’s face takes up most of my waking thoughts. He clouds everything. Worse than the other memories and the Gray. The promise of emptying the prince’s mind and leaving him in a comatose state thrills and horrifies me. I will be the monster I’ve feared. The kingdom will mourn their prince, and I will live with the memories of Dez’s killer. At least I won’t have to live with them for long. But the walls in my mind darken. There is a shadow around my vision. I do not, cannot, see another way out.
You are not a girl. You are vengeance in the night.
That’s what I have to be for Dez.
The dungeon’s gate nestles in a depression that links the palace and