by Carol A Park
His heart sank. Gods, no!
He sagged against the doorframe. His heart was squeezing so hard, he thought he would collapse.
“Vaughn? What’s going on?”
Priorities. He could deal with the betrayal later. For now, he had to stop her.
“I think she took the key to the cell where we’re keeping Airell,” he said, turning to head down the hall to the next room. He banged on the door.
Aleena stared at him and then disappeared back into her room. She reappeared, dressed, just as Danton opened his own door. “Vaughn?” he asked blearily. “It’s the middle of the—”
“Yes, I know. Get dressed and meet me at the dungeon—now.”
He didn’t wait for Danton, but Aleena joined him as he strode down the hall.
“All right, explanation,” she said, hurrying to keep up with him. “How did Ivana get the key?”
He had to swallow three times before he could speak with a steady voice. “I assume she took it off the top of my pile of clothes, where I left it.”
She grabbed his arm and dragged him to a halt. “Your pile of—” There was a long silence in which she stared at him and Vaughn assumed she was making connections.
“Yes,” he said simply. It was all he could manage.
She closed her eyes. “Oh, Ivana…”
Vaughn didn’t respond, and Aleena said nothing more.
They started back down the hall toward the dungeons.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Always, Yet Not
The Cohoxta palace dungeons consisted of a single large, circular room. Four metal doors with a slot at the floor were set into the walls; two had barred windows, two did not. In the middle of the room was a table with four chairs, three of which were occupied by guards tossing dice.
Ivana came back down on the flat of her feet from where she had been standing, tip-toe, to see through the small barred window into that very room. One last time, she checked the pouch tied to her belt to be sure she had everything she needed. She had stopped by her room to quickly change into something more appropriate for murder and flight, and to gather a few supplies.
She glanced at the guard to her right, who, unlike the three inside the dungeon, stood at attention next to the door.
However, much like the three inside the dungeon, he stood stock-still, unmoving.
Frozen in time.
She plucked the keys off his belt, unlocked the main door to the dungeon itself, then put the keys back.
Then she sprinkled a bit of crushed paltic into his mouth. In a few minutes, he’d be fast asleep and wouldn’t hear a thing.
Just to be on the safe side, she burned moonblood aether before entering the dungeon and shutting the door behind her.
Ignoring the cells for now, she dosed the three guards at the table with paltic as well, then shrank against the wall, stopped burning her own aether, and waited for the drug to take effect.
She heard the first guard collapse outside the door first, with a soft thud and a quiet grunt.
The three at the table looked up—one even had time to rise to his feet and draw his sword before they all met the same fate.
She stepped back out into the room and surveyed the unconscious guards.
That had been painfully easy.
Ivana circled the room to peek into the two cells with barred windows. One was empty, the other held a figure huddled on the ground, against the wall, head down.
She lifted the key that now hung around her own neck, unlocked the door, and dragged it open.
The figure scrambled to its feet, and the light of the lanterns from the dungeon flickered on his face as he lifted his head to peer toward the door.
Him.
That same half-cocked grin spread over his face. Self-assured. Cocky. Even in his situation, having the gall to let his eyes rake over her as though she were a serving girl he intended to proposition—or worse.
She had prepared herself for rage. Perhaps even pain—an opening of old wounds. The things that had driven her here in the first place.
Instead, and not for the first time that night, she was unprepared for what she felt.
Cold. Bone-chilling cold that seeped out from within, freezing the cursed blood in her veins—the embodiment of the bitter, empty place of death and despair that had been caged inside of her for a decade, covered over with contempt at worst and cold apathy at best.
And whatever strides she thought she had made in understanding herself evaporated. She no longer did.
“Hmm,” he said, his eyes sweeping over the sleeping guards. “Are you here to rescue me? I actually would rather you leave me here until things settle down.”
Though she half-expected her breath to fog the air when she spoke, she didn’t shiver. “Oh, I’ll leave you here, don’t worry.” She stepped inside.
His smile faded, and now he searched her face. “Who are you?” he asked.
She faced her tormentor for the first time since he had left her alone with her confusion and broken promises.
She had him at her disposal, with no interruptions, and all a sudden, she no longer wanted to lunge at him to slit his throat.
He was the reason her family was dead, her life destroyed.
He was the reason she’d hated herself then and hated herself still.
She wanted to make him bleed. Suffer. Crumple to the floor screaming soundless screams at the knowledge that his own miserable wretchedness had brought him to this place.
All the things she denied herself in the dead of the night when the bars of the cage rattled and whispers seeped into her dreams.
“An old acquaintance.” She tugged the cell door closed behind her, and, using moonblood and iceblood aether, gathered water and froze the lock. Then, hand close to her thigh, she approached him. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember me, of course, but I would like it if you could try. It would enhance the experience so much more.”
His eyes darted back and forth between her face and the hand now fingering the hilt at her thigh. “All right. So—I offended you somehow, once upon a time. Look—I don’t know—”
“Offended me somehow? Even your own father remembered me, you bastard.”
His mouth worked, open and closed, as if struggling to remember. “A name?”
“Ivana,” she said. “I would give you the name of the daughter you paid me to dispose of, but she didn’t live long enough to bother naming her.” She drew her dagger.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, that narrows it down to about half a dozen women.”
She struck him across the face, hard enough that blood trickled from the side of his mouth. “I’m not amused,” she hissed, pressing the flat of the dagger against his throat. He backed away from her until he ran into the wall, then stared at her.
She realized that he hadn’t meant the quip to be humorous; he had been thinking out loud. Wholly unlike his brother in that regard.
The stray thought of Vaughn pierced and cracked her cold shell like an unexpected arrow from the dark. The shock of the blow made her reel, and the realization of what she had done trickled out of that crack like the blood trickling down Airell’s neck.
She had grasped at light, tasted freedom. Yes, she had had a chance to start over…and she had thrown it away.
She was no different than she had ever been. She was just a killer who had learned how to have a good time in bed.
Despair choked her throat.
Airell must have seen something change in her face because he dared to mock her. “What’s wrong? Can’t do it?” He gave her a patronizing smile. “Don’t feel bad. You should only expect a whore from a backwater town to be worthless at murder, hmm?”
She stepped toward him, brandishing her dagger again, and he snapped his mouth shut, his face going pale.
But he needn’t have worried. All she’d heard was “whore.”
Once a whore, always a whore. Couldn’t stop with just one brother?
All desire to torture him
had evaporated. Only one questioned remained now. Which way did she point the dagger?
Vaughn burst through the door to the dungeons, followed closely by Aleena.
He skidded to a halt inside the chamber, his gaze taking in the unconscious guards, just like the one outside the dungeon door. All the cell doors were closed, and he heard no voices.
For one panicked moment, he thought he was too late. But why would she have shut the cell door when she’d left? Maybe she hadn’t come after all; maybe she had changed her mind…
Aleena darted to the first cell door and peered through the small barred window. “Damn…” She tugged on the door, but it didn’t budge. She turned to Vaughn. “It won’t open.”
Vaughn hurried to the door and looked through the bars himself.
Airell, his face both bloodied and pale, plastered to the wall, a trickle of blood running down his throat.
Ivana was in front of him, dagger in hand, close enough to finish the job.
“Ivana!” he shouted.
She didn’t move.
He tried to grab the water in her body, but, strangely enough, it didn’t seem to work—not like in the abyss, or when Airell had kept him drugged. As if it were…resisting. A passive ability of Zily’s Banebringer?
Good thing he had found a backup in the supply room outside the dungeon—if he could get in the cell to use it.
He tugged on the door himself, but just as Aleena said, it wouldn’t open. He touched the metal lock. Ice cold.
He cursed and ran a hand through his hair, looking around the room for a solution, while Aleena stood at the door attempting to rouse a response from their wayward assassin. “Ivana?” she called. “Ivana, come on! It’s Aleena.”
He’d burn his hands trying to melt it with one of the lanterns on the walls, so first, he tried force. He backed away from the door, rammed his foot into the lock, and then tried the door again. Still frozen shut.
It took a few kicks, but the ice holding the lock in place and the door shut finally shattered and broke. With Aleena’s help, they managed to wrest the door open.
He darted into the cell and skidded to a halt, surveying the scene.
“Ivana, stop!” he said.
He didn’t know if it was the urgency that had infused his voice, or if she hadn’t been ready to draw the dagger across Airell’s throat.
Either way, she neither moved away nor acknowledged him.
“Ivana,” he said, taking a step closer. “Put the dagger down.”
She barely flinched. She stood unmoving, almost as if frozen, but it wasn’t his doing.
He cautiously approached. “I need him alive,” he said. “You know that.”
She stirred. “You seem to think I care.”
His throat tightened. No. He knew she didn’t care. Had she ever cared about anything? He moved closer. “You will not destroy everything we need to accomplish here on a quest for personal revenge.” And yet, if she wanted to kill Airell, she could do it. Now. She didn’t even need to stop time to accomplish her goal before any of them could do anything about it, with her blade already almost at Airell’s throat.
And yet she hadn’t—yet. What was stopping her, after all of this?
It didn’t matter; he couldn’t take the chance that she would give this up on her own.
Before she could reply, before he moved into her peripheral vision, he slid a syringe out of his pocket. Hoping to the gods the label on the bottle he’d filled the syringe from was correct about the bottle’s contents, he gathered himself up and sprung.
The needle sank into her arm, and Vaughn dispensed the contents of the syringe before she shoved him to the side and whirled on him instead, outrage on her face.
Vaughn scrambled to put himself between Airell and Ivana. “Put. It. Down,” he said through gritted teeth.
He knew instantly that she tried to burn aether, because she reeled and staggered back, one hand to her head. Even so, she didn’t let go of the dagger.
Fortunately, even though his water magic didn’t work on Zily’s Banebringer, it seemed the old-fashioned method Airell had used on him still did. Frankly, he was impressed that she had managed to stay on her feet. He remembered well what that felt like, and how often he had passed out trying to burn aether while the substance had been in his body.
She regained her equilibrium, and a bitter smile twisted her lips. “You think I won’t hurt you?”
“No,” he said softly, his heart thudding painfully. “I know you will.”
She met his eyes. Her jaw twitched. She said nothing.
“But I’m a Banebringer,” Vaughn said. “You won’t chance killing me.”
Something flickered in her eyes then. And for a moment, he wasn’t as certain about that as he had felt only seconds before. “Some people just want to see the world burn.”
He saw Aleena move cautiously into the cell out of the corner of his eye. “Aleena? She won’t kill me, will she?”
There was a long silence. “I’m ninety percent sure,” Aleena said.
“I’ll take those odds,” he said.
“But I won’t,” Airell said. “So while you two argue about who is or isn’t going to kill whom—” He lunged for the now open cell door.
The room exploded in a flurry of activity.
Vaughn, Ivana, and Aleena all leapt toward Airell.
Vaughn took a punch to the gut, and then stars flashed as he was kneed in the groin, but he wasn’t sure who had done what.
Airell grunted, Ivana let out a feral growl, and when the dust had settled, the situation had changed entirely.
Ivana’s attempt to get to Airell first had been more like a drunken stagger, and she had paid for the sudden movement. Her head was pounding, her vision blurring.
The situation in the cell had changed. Danton had arrived during the scuffle. Airell had been backed into the corner of the cell. And Aleena had spread her body over his like a net, facing Ivana, who now stood before both of them with her dagger.
“But I’m one hundred percent certain she won’t kill me,” Aleena said grimly, locking eyes with Ivana.
Damn her! “Aleena,” Ivana said. “Please.” It was taking everything she had not to collapse.
Aleena said nothing.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“I am on your side. But more importantly, I’m your friend.”
Ivana gave a short, slightly hysterical laugh. “And now I suppose you’re going to give me some trite statement about how you’re doing this for my own good?”
“No. I wanted you to know that even though you’re my friend, some things are more important than friendship.”
Ivana stared at her. There was nothing she could do. Aleena was right. Ivana wouldn’t hurt her.
The rage, the cold, the despair of earlier had dissipated. She was left with nothing. Emptiness. She shoved her dagger back into the sheath on her thigh, a little harder than necessary.
Aleena shook her head and pointed to the dagger, wiggling her fingers.
Ivana clenched her teeth, drew it again, and surrendered it to her friend.
Who promptly surrendered it to Vaughn. They filed out of the cell, and at the point of her own dagger, Vaughn, with Danton’s help, marched Airell into the next cell over, just in case the lock had been compromised on his, and locked him in it.
Only then did he turn toward Ivana. “Search her, Danton,” he said, his voice hard, his eyes not leaving her face.
Danton moved forward and ran his hands lightly over Ivana. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I-I really am.”
“I don’t have any other weapons,” she said.
Danton glanced uncertainly back at Vaughn.
Vaughn rolled his eyes. “For Temoth’s sake—” He stepped forward and searched her himself.
He wasn’t rough, but neither was there anything gentle in his touch. He was just thorough. He skimmed his hands down her thighs and her ankles, made her take off her boots, and then patted dow
n her entire upper body.
His eyes never left hers while he did the latter, and she couldn’t help but remember how those same hands had slid against her skin so tenderly only hours ago.
She looked away.
He found her pouch of aether and the packet containing the paltic she’d used on the guards, and retrieved the stolen key, but she truly had no other weapons. Nothing but the weapon in her own blood, but she couldn’t use that without, she suspected, passing out.
Vaughn stepped back and handed the three items to Danton. “Now lock her up in another empty cell.”
Aleena started forward. “Vaughn!”
He spun on his heel to face her. “She broke into a secure area, incapacitated four guards, and attempted to murder a critical prisoner. She will stay locked up until I decide what to do with her.”
Aleena’s brow furrowed, and she glanced at Ivana and shrugged. “Sorry. If I had known he would lock you up…”
“Why in the abyss is everyone apologizing to her?” Vaughn said, his voice rising. “As if she’s some sort of victim? She let her personal feelings get in the way of what I’m trying to accomplish here.”
“I don’t think she’s the only one letting personal feelings get in the way,” Aleena muttered.
Vaughn tossed her a sharp glance. “Lock her up,” he repeated, and then he spun on his heel and left the room.
Even if Ivana could have used her powers, all the time in the world wouldn’t allow her to break down the heavy metal door to the cell Danton had reluctantly locked her in.
She’d been in worse conditions for far longer, but given her churning mind, splitting headache, and roiling stomach, she doubted sleep would come easily.
The dungeon was damp and chill, so she sat against the wall, drew her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them, trying to conserve body heat.
The cell was also dim. Airell was now in the other cell with a window, so the only light she had was from what filtered through the food slot at the bottom of the door.
She was alone in the dark and cold.
A familiar and fitting place for her.
