King's Cage, Page 2

  “Mare Barrow is a prisoner of the crown, and the crown will do with her as it sees fit,” Maven says, his voice carrying past his volatile bride. His eyes sweep through the rest of the court, making his intentions clear. “Death is too good for her.”

  A low murmur ripples through the nobles. I hear tones of opposition, but even more agreement. Strange. I thought all of them would want me executed in the worst way, strung up to feed vultures and bleed away whatever ground the Scarlet Guard has gained. But I suppose they want worse fates for me.

  Worse fates.

  That’s what Jon said before. When he saw what my future held, where my path led. He knew this was coming. Knew, and told the king. Bought a place at Maven’s side with my brother’s life and my freedom.

  I find Jon standing in the crowd, given a wide berth by the others. His eyes are red, livid; his hair prematurely gray and tied into a neat tail. Another newblood pet for Maven Calore, but this one wears no chains that I can see. Because he helped Maven stop our mission to save a legion of children before it could even begin. Told Maven our paths and our future. Gift-wrapped me for the boy king. Betrayed us all.

  Jon is already staring at me, of course. I don’t expect an apology for what he did, and do not receive one.

  “What about interrogation?”

  A voice I do not recognize sounds to my left. Still, I know his face.

  Samson Merandus. An arena fighter, a savage whisper, a cousin to the dead queen. He shoulders his way toward me, and I can’t help but flinch. In another life I saw him make his arena opponent stab himself to death. Kilorn sat by my side and watched, cheering, enjoying the last hours of his freedom. Then his master died, and our entire world shifted. Our paths changed. And now I sprawl across flawless marble, cold and bleeding, less than a dog at the feet of a king.

  “Is she too good for interrogation, Your Majesty?” Samson continues, pointing one white hand in my direction. He catches me beneath the chin, forcing me to look up. I fight the urge to bite him. I don’t need to give Evangeline another excuse to choke me. “Think of what she’s seen. What she knows. She’s their leader—and the key to unraveling her wretched kind.”

  He’s wrong, but still my heartbeat thrums in my chest. I know enough to be of great damage. Tuck flashes before my eyes, as well as the Colonel and the twins from Montfort. The infiltration of the legions. The cities. The Whistles across the country, now ferrying refugees to safety. Precious secrets carefully kept, and soon to be revealed. How many will my knowledge put in danger? How many will die when they crack me open?

  And that’s just military intelligence. Worse still are the dark parts of my own mind. The corners where I keep my worst demons. Maven is one of them. The prince I remembered and loved and wished were real. Then there’s Cal. What I’ve done to keep him, what I’ve ignored, and what lies I tell myself about his allegiances. My shame and my mistakes eat away, gnawing on my roots. I can’t let Samson—or Maven—see such things inside me.

  Please, I want to beg. My lips do not move. As much as I hate Maven, as much as I want to see him suffer, I know he’s the best chance I have. But pleading for mercy before his strongest allies and worst enemies will only weaken an already-weak king. So I keep quiet, trying to ignore Samson’s grip on my jaw, focusing only on Maven’s face.

  His eyes find mine for the longest and shortest of moments.

  “You have your orders,” he says brusquely, nodding to my guards.

  Their grip is firm but not bruising as they lift me to my feet, using hands and chains to guide me out of the crowd. I leave them all behind. Evangeline, Ptolemus, Samson, and Maven.

  He turns on his heel, heading in the opposite direction, toward the only thing he has left to keep him warm.

  A throne of frozen flames.

  TWO

  Mare

  I am never alone.

  The jailers do not leave. Always two, always watching, always keeping what I am silent and suppressed. They don’t need anything more than a locked door to make me a prisoner. Not that I can even get close to the door without being manhandled back to the center of my bedchamber. They’re stronger than I am, and forever vigilant. My only escape from their eyes is the small bathroom, a chamber of white tile and golden fixings, with a forbidding line of Silent Stone along the floor. There are enough of the pearly gray slabs to make my head pound and my throat constrict. I have to be quick in there, and make use of every strangling second. The sensation reminds me of Cameron and her ability. She can kill someone with the strength of her silence. As much as I hate my guards’ constant vigil, I will not risk suffocating on a bathroom floor for a few extra minutes of peace.

  Funny, I used to think my greatest fear was being left alone. Now I am anything but, and I’ve never been more terrified.

  I have not felt my lightning in four days.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seventeen.

  Thirty-one.

  I notch each day in the baseboard next to the bed, using a fork to dig the passing time. It feels good to leave my mark, to inflict my own small injury on the prison of Whitefire Palace. The Arvens don’t mind. They ignore me for the most part, focused only on total and absolute silence. They keep to their places by the door, seated like statues with living eyes.

  This is not the same room I slept in the last time I was at Whitefire. Obviously it wouldn’t be proper to house a royal prisoner in the same place as a royal bride. But I’m not in a cell either. My cage is comfortable and well furnished, with a plush bed, a bookshelf stocked with boring tomes, a few chairs, a table to eat at, even fine curtains, all in neutral shades of gray, brown, and white. Leached of color, as the Arvens leach power from me.

  I slowly get used to sleeping alone, but nightmares plague me without Cal to keep them away. Without someone who cares for me. Every time I wake up, I touch the earrings dotting my ear, naming each stone. Bree, Tramy, Shade, Kilorn. Brothers in blood and bond. Three living, one a ghost. I wish I had an earring to match the one I gave Gisa, so I could have a piece of her too. I dream of her sometimes. Nothing concrete, but flashes of her face, her hair red and dark as spilled blood. Her words haunt me like nothing else. One day people are going to come and take everything you have. She was right.

  There are no mirrors, not even in the bathroom. But I know what this place is doing to me. Despite the hearty meals and the lack of exercise, my face feels thinner. My bones cut beneath skin, sharper than ever as I waste. There isn’t much more to do than sleep or read one of the volumes on Nortan tax code, but still, exhaustion set in days ago. Bruises blossom from every touch. And the collar feels hot even though I spend my days cold, shivering. It could be a fever. I could be dying.

  Not that I have anyone to tell. I barely even speak through the days. The door opens for food and water, for the change in my jailers, and nothing more. I never see a Red maid or servant, though they must exist. Instead, the Arvens retrieve meals, linens, and clothes deposited outside, bringing them in for me to use. They clean up as well, grimacing as they perform such a lowly task. I suppose letting a Red in my room is too dangerous. The thought makes me smile. So the Scarlet Guard is still a threat, enough to warrant such rigid protocol that even servants aren’t allowed near me.

  But then, it seems no one else is either. No one comes to gawk or gloat over the lightning girl. Not even Maven.

  The Arvens do not talk to me. They don’t tell me their names. So I give them some of my own. Kitten, the older woman smaller than me, with a tiny face and keen, sharp eyes. Egg, his head round, white, and bald like the rest of his guardian kin. Trio has three lines tattooed down his neck, like the dragging of perfect claws. And green-eyed Clover, a girl near my age, unwavering in her duties. She is the only one who dares look me in the eye.

  When I first realized Maven wanted me back, I expected pain, or darkness, or both. Most of all I expected to see him and endure my torment under his blazing eyes. But I receive nothing. Not since the day I arrived
and was forced to kneel. He told me then he would put my body on display. But no executioners have come. Neither have the whispers, men like Samson Merandus and the dead queen, to pry my head open and unspool my thoughts. If this is my punishment, it is a boring one. Maven has no imagination.

  There are still the voices in my head, and so many, too many memories. They cut with a blade’s edge. I try to dull the pain with even duller books, but the words swim before my eyes, letters rearranging until all I see are the names of the people I left behind. The living and the dead. And always, everywhere, Shade.

  Ptolemus might have killed my brother, but I was the one to put Shade in his path. Because I was selfish, thinking myself some kind of savior. Because, once again, I put my trust in someone I shouldn’t have and traded lives as a gambler does playing cards. But you liberated a prison. You freed so many people—and you saved Julian.

  A weak thought, an even weaker consolation. I know now what the cost of Corros Prison was. And every day I come to terms with the fact that, if given the choice, I would not pay it again. Not for Julian, not for a hundred living newbloods. I wouldn’t save any of them with Shade’s life.

  And it was all the same in the end. Maven had asked me to return for months, begging with every bloodstained note. He had hoped to buy me with corpses, with the bodies of the dead. But I’d thought there was no trade I would make, not even for a thousand innocent lives. Now I wish I’d done as he asked long ago. Before he thought to come for the ones I truly care for, knowing I would save them. Knowing that Cal, Kilorn, my family—they were the only bargain I was willing to make. For their lives, I gave everything.

  I guess he knows better than to torture me. Even with the sounder, a machine made to use my lightning against me, to split me apart, nerve by nerve.

  My agony is useless to him. His mother taught him well. My only comfort is knowing that the young king is without his vicious puppeteer. While I am kept here, watched day and night, he is alone at the head of a kingdom, without Elara Merandus to guide his hand and protect his back.

  It’s been a month since I’ve tasted fresh air, and almost as long since I saw anything but the inside of my room and the narrow view my single window affords.

  The window looks out over a courtyard garden, well past dead at the end of autumn. Its grove of trees is twisted by greenwarden hands. In leaf, they must look marvelous: a verdant crown of blossoms with spiraling, impossible branches. But bare, the gnarled oaks, elms, and beeches curl into talons; their dry, dead fingers scraping against one another like bones. The courtyard is abandoned, forgotten. Just like me.

  No, I growl to myself.

  The others will come for me.

  I dare to hope. My stomach lurches every time the door opens. For a moment, I expect to see Cal or Kilorn or Farley, perhaps Nanny wearing another person’s face. The Colonel, even. Now I would weep to see his scarlet eye. But no one comes for me. No one is coming for me.

  It’s cruel to give hope where none should be.

  And Maven knows it.

  As the sun sets on the thirty-first day, I understand what he means to do.

  He wants me to rot. To fade. To be forgotten.

  Outside in the courtyard of bones, early snow drifts in flurries born of an iron-gray sky. The glass is cold to the touch, but it refuses to freeze.

  So will I.

  The snow outside is perfect in the morning light, a crust of white gilding barer trees. It’ll melt by afternoon. By my count, it’s December 11. A cold, gray, dead time in the echo between autumn and winter. The true snows won’t set in until next month.

  Back home we used to jump off the porch into snowdrifts, even after Bree broke his leg when he landed on a buried pile of firewood. Cost Gisa a month’s wages to get him fixed up, and I had to steal most of the supplies our so-called doctor needed. That was the winter before Bree was conscripted, the last time our entire family was together. The last time. Forever. We’ll never be whole again.

  Mom and Dad are with the Guard. Gisa and my living brothers too. They’re safe. They’re safe. They’re safe. I repeat the words as I do every morning. They are a comfort, even if they might not be true.

  Slowly, I push away my plate of breakfast. The now-familiar spread of sugary oatmeal, fruit, and toast holds no comfort for me.

  “Finished,” I say out of habit, knowing no one will reply.

  Kitten is already at my side, sneering at the half-eaten food. She picks up the plate as one would a bug, holding it at arm’s length to carry it to the door. I raise my eyes quickly, hoping for a single glimpse of the antechamber outside my room. Like always, it’s empty, and my heart sinks. She drops the plate on the floor with a clatter, maybe breaking it, but that’s not her concern. Some servant will clean it up. The door shuts behind her, and Kitten returns to her seat. Trio occupies the other chair, his arms crossed, eyes unblinking as he stares at my torso. I can feel his ability and hers. They feel like a blanket wrapped too tight, keeping my lightning pinned and hidden, far away in a place where I cannot even begin to go. It makes me want to tear my skin off.

  I hate it. I hate it.

  I. Hate. It.

  Smash.

  I throw my water glass against the opposite wall, letting it splatter and splinter against horrible gray paint. Neither of my guards flinches. I do this a lot.

  And it helps. For a minute. Maybe.

  I follow the usual schedule, the one I’ve developed over the last month of captivity. Wake up. Immediately regret it. Receive breakfast. Lose appetite. Have food taken away. Immediately regret it. Throw water. Immediately regret it. Strip bed linens. Maybe rip up the sheets, sometimes while shouting. Immediately regret it. Attempt to read a book. Stare out window. Stare out window. Stare out window. Receive lunch. Repeat.

  I’m a very busy girl.

  Or I guess I should say woman.

  Eighteen is the arbitrary divide between child and adult. And I turned eighteen weeks ago. November 17. Not that anyone knew or noticed. I doubt the Arvens care that their charge is another year older. Only one person in this prison palace would. And he did not visit, to my relief. It’s the single blessing to my captivity. While I am held here, surrounded by the worst people I’ll ever know, I don’t have to suffer his presence.

  Until today.

  The utter silence around me shatters, not with an explosion, but with a click. The familiar turn of the door lock. Off schedule, without warrant. My head snaps to the sound, as do the Arvens’, their concentration breaking in surprise. Adrenaline bleeds into my veins, driven by my suddenly thrumming heart. In the split second, I dare to hope again. I dream of who could be on the other side of the door.

  My brothers. Farley. Kilorn.

  Cal.

  I want it to be Cal. I want his fire to consume this place and all these people whole.

  But the man standing on the other side is no one I recognize. Only his clothes are familiar—black uniform, silver detailing. A Security officer, nameless and unimportant. He steps into my prison, holding the door open with his back. More of his like gather outside the doorway, darkening the antechamber with their presence.

  The Arvens jump to their feet, just as surprised as I am.

  “What are you doing?” Trio sneers. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard his voice.

  Kitten does as she is trained to do, stepping between me and the officer. Another burst of silence knocks into me, fed by her fear and confusion. It crashes like a wave, eating at the little bits of strength I still have left. I stay rooted in my chair, loath to fall down in front of other people.

  The Security officer says nothing, staring at the floor. Waiting.

  She enters in reply, in a gown made of needles. Her silver hair has been combed and braided with gems in the fashion of the crown she hungers to wear. I shudder at the sight of her, perfect and cold and sharp, a queen in bearing if not yet title. Because she’s still not a queen. I can tell.

  “Evangeline,” I murmur, trying to hid
e the tremors in my voice, both from fear and disuse. Her black eyes pass over me with all the tenderness of a cracking whip. Head to toe and back again, noting every imperfection, every weakness. I know there are many. Finally her gaze lands on my collar, taking in the pointed metal edges. Her lip curls in disgust, and also hunger. How easy it would be for her to squeeze, to drive the points of the collar into my throat and bleed me bone-dry.

  “Lady Samos, you are not permitted to be here,” Kitten says, still standing between us. I’m surprised by her boldness.

  Evangeline’s eyes flicker to my guard, her sneer spreading. “You think I would disobey the king, my betrothed?” She forces a cold laugh. “I am here on his orders. He commands the presence of the prisoner at court. Now.”

  Each word stings. A month of imprisonment suddenly seems far too short. Part of me wants to grab on to the table and force Evangeline to drag me out of my cage. But even isolation has not broken my pride. Not yet.

  Not ever, I remind myself. So I stand on weak limbs, joints aching, hands quivering. A month ago I attacked Evangeline’s brother with little more than my teeth. I try to summon as much of that fire as I can, if only to stand up straight.

  Kitten keeps her ground, unmoving. Her head tips to Trio, locking eyes with her cousin. “We had no word. This is not protocol.”

  Again Evangeline laughs, showing white, gleaming teeth. Her smile is beautiful and violent as a blade. “Are you refusing me, Guard Arven?” As she speaks, her hands wander to her dress, running perfect white skin through the forest of needles. Bits of it stick to her like a magnet, and she comes away with a handful of spikes. She palms the clinging slivers of metal, patient, waiting, one eyebrow raised. The Arvens know better than to extend their crushing silence to a Samos daughter, let alone the future queen.

  The pair of them exchange wordless glances, clearly coming down on either side of Evangeline’s question. Trio furrows his brow, glaring, and finally Kitten sighs aloud. She steps away. She backs down.

  “A choice I’ll not forget,” Evangeline murmurs.