The Sleeping Prince - Melinda Salisbury Page 0,113
on me, in the voice I recognize from my dreams. He moves his gaze to Twylla. “The Sin Eater’s daughter?” He nods to himself before continuing his survey of us, eyebrows rising when they reach Amara. “And the Sin Eater? How neat.” He smiles, a long, lazy smile that spreads across his whole face. Then he lunges forward, to be driven back by Silas.
“Run!” Silas bellows.
I push Twylla past him and the golem swings a massive arm at Silas. We immediately run into one of the black-clad men, leaning over a body. I can’t tell if it is male or female; all I can see is dark blood soaking into once-white hair. The man looks up and smiles horribly, raising his sword, and I pull Twylla away from the scene.
The man runs at us and my arm snaps out, yanking a torch from its bracket on the wall and smashing it into his face. His scream is awful as he collapses to the ground, clutching his head. The stink of charred flesh fills the cavern. Still clutching the torch, I reach for Twylla’s hand and begin to run, away from the Great Hall, and the burned man, and the Sleeping Prince.
I don’t look back. As our feet pound the stone floor, I try to keep track of left and right, throwing open curtains to see if I recognize anything. The air starts to feel cooler, telling me we’re deeper now, but that’s no good; we need to get close to the surface to have any chance of escape.
“Stop,” Twylla says, her breath coming in pants, too loud in the ringing silence of the tunnels. “We’re not going to find the way out without help; there are miles of tunnels down here. We’ll end up hopelessly lost.”
“Better that than caught,” I say.
She opens her mouth to argue, but then we hear it. Footsteps, heavy ones, the clinking of metal. Of armour plates. Coming towards us. I feel the blood drain from my face. But this time she’s taking my wrist and pulling me. When I see the door I understand the mistake we’ve made, trapping ourselves in the heart of the Conclave, but the footsteps still echo towards us.
“We have to hide,” she whispers urgently. “We have to.”
Realizing she is right, I follow her into the temple.
The grandeur from before has been replaced with a scene from a nightmare. With the chandelier fallen, the room is dim, lit by the torches on the wall. The floor is littered with a hundred shattered skulls, eye sockets stare emptily up at us, and broken jaws and teeth cover the battered pews. I look up at the ceiling, where bones now hang freely, and I wonder what the Sleeping Prince was doing above us to bring the ceiling down.
We clamber over the dead to get to the altar, slipping on treacherously sharp shards of bone and slivers of wood, dust clouds swirling under our boots as they crush the bones beneath them. My heart beats frantically; I feel sick with anticipation and dread.
“Where will we hide?”
“I don’t know.” She looks around frantically. “There must be something. Some cave, or shelf in the rock.” She begins to peer behind the screens and I do the same, shifting ribs aside with my feet as quietly as I’m able.
When I hear her gasp I think we’re saved, that she’s found a way out for us. But she’s not looking behind the screens; she’s staring down the aisle.
My brother stands inside the doorway, clad head to toe in silver armour, staring back at her. A helmet is tucked under one arm; the other, his right, hangs limply, the armour splattered with blood.
The Bringer isn’t the Silver Knight. Lief is.
His eyes are fixed on her as he walks down the aisle, seeming not to notice the bones beneath his feet. There’s something eerily matrimonial about it: her standing in a torn and dusty dress before the altar as he makes his way towards her through a river of bones.
He’s alive.
I was right, I think wildly, he’s alive, I knew he wouldn’t lie down and die. But my joy fades as soon as it rises. Because he’s here with the Sleeping Prince. Working for him – with him. My own brother. This is why he didn’t come home.
I watch him, half hoping he’s not real, that I’m hallucinating. His lips have widened into a smile that is nothing like the one I remember. Though his mouth stretches and curves, it’s