There were half a dozen guards in the hall. And one of them held shackles.
I retreated, only to bump into the bare chest of another guard who had circled behind me. Grabbing my arms, the man shoved them forward while the other clapped the shackles on me so quickly, all I could do was gasp.
“You will come with us,” the man behind me growled, his grip shifting to my shoulders. From the corner of my eye, I saw spikes emerge from his skin, the points dangerously close to my face and the implicit threat more than clear.
I swallowed. “Zeke sent you?” I asked, hoping desperately it wasn’t true and that he didn’t honestly think I had something to do with this.
Or that like the guy from the bookstore or the EMTs or all the other crazies who had tried to trap me in the past week alone, these guards weren’t members of the Sylphaen too.
“Silence.”
He pushed me forward, not letting go as I moved. The others fell in around me as I swam along the hall, and when we reached the archway and the open space beyond it, servants turned to stare. As he guided me downward, the guard’s face could have been made from stone, but for the disgusted twitch his lip gave with every few seconds that passed by.
“I want to talk to Zeke,” I said, looking from the guards to the motionless servants.
The guard released my shoulders to thumb a small stone clipped to his belt.
I shrieked as electricity shot through the shackles.
“Silence,” he ordered.
Gasping, I stared at him, but he simply resumed his grip on my shoulders and shoved me forward.
We reached the ground floor and the men around me continued on, swimming away from the throne room. My eyes tracked across the water above us, hoping to find Zeke amid the countless dehaians floating there, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ina was likewise gone, and among the rest, I didn’t recognize anyone at all.
The guards passed through the enormous castle doorway and out into the courtyard beyond. The veil parted ahead of us, allowing access to the city.
My gaze twitched to the larger veil in the distance. I didn’t stand a chance of reaching it, not even if I managed to get away from the guards. They’d electrocute me before I swam a hundred feet.
And that was assuming I’d even know where to go once I was outside.
I shivered. The guards led me through the city to a smaller stone spire that stood alone on a span of sandy ground, isolated from the other buildings of town and lost on the outer fringes of Nyciena’s lights. No plants blocked the entrance to this place. Instead, its only feature was a single gate of strangely shimmering metal at the spire’s base. Guards surrounded it, though they moved aside when the soldiers with me drew nearer.
One of the men removed a stone from his belt and then approached the gate. The shimmering of the metal diminished, leaving only a hint of oily luminescence on the black surface of the bars.
He pushed on the gate and it swung back. The other guard thrust me ahead of him into the darkness.
“Keep moving,” he muttered.
Trembling, I swam forward, my weird dehaian senses unable to find a floor in this place, and my eyes seeing nothing but a tunnel of rough stone in the shadows ahead of me.
Metal clanked. I spun. The men blocked any retreat to the closed gate, their bodies silhouetted by the dim light from the outside and their eyes gleaming in shades of green and brown.
“I said keep moving,” the nearest guard growled.
“Where?”
His hand twitched to the stone on his belt. I flinched back, watching him.
“Move.”
Fear and disbelief bubbled up in me, but I turned, swimming into the shadows and trying to trust every other sense I had to tell me what was below.
“Go down,” the guard ordered.
Swallowing hard, I swam down. On the walls, I began to sense openings, though quivering feelings blocked them and sent shivers through the water around me. Whispers twisted through the darkness, emanating from beyond the strange vibrations and murmuring words I couldn’t understand. I bit my lip, fighting not to draw their attention with any sound.
“Sexy…”
I gasped, jerking away from the lascivious whisper at my side. Yellow-green eyes glinted in the darkness.
“Come closer, sexy girl…”
“Shut it,” a guard snarled.
A clang echoed through the shadows, followed by a retreating growl.
“Go,” the guard told me.
My heart pounding enough to choke me, I looked to the water behind me. With everything in me, I wanted to flee back toward the distant light of the outside world. But the shackles still held my forearms and, again, I knew how that would go.
Trying to ignore the inarticulate whispers still coming from the darkness nearby, I did as the guard ordered.
Seconds crept past, each one a frightening eternity all its own. The ceiling sloped, tracking us as we swam downward. The dim glow of light from the world above gradually melted away, till even my glowing eyes couldn’t make anything of the black around us, rendering me truly blind. The whispers faded the deeper we swam, until only silence remained.
“Here,” the guard growled.
I jumped at the sudden sound, and heard one of the others scoff, his senses picking out the frightened motion where his eyes could not. Swimming past me in the darkness, a guard did something to a quivering space on the wall at my side.
The quivering feeling dissipated, and then a door-like shape moved back, making a metallic scraping noise as it went. I swallowed.
“In.”
“Why are you–”
My shriek cut through the blackness, and somewhere overhead, shouts and howls broke out.
“Quiet!” one of the guards bellowed.
The noises diminished.
Tears choked me. I hovered in the water, shaking with the desire to just swim for the exit I knew was somewhere above me, past the black.
“In,” the guard repeated.
I shivered.
And I felt his hand moving toward his belt again.
I retreated through the opening.
“Hands out,” he said.
I extended my arms. The shackles dropped away.
“Don’t move,” the guard ordered as he swam back through the opening, the other guards hovering outside it.
Metal scraped over stone. A clank rang out, and then the water trembled as the quivering feeling returned.
The guards left.
A soft gasp escaped me. I could feel that walls surrounded me, only a few feet away on any side, with the floor and ceiling the same. Shaking, I inched toward the strange quiver in the water ahead. My hands reached out, my senses guiding me in the utter darkness.
Sparks bit my fingertips and sent a crackle of electricity through my arms. Choking on a cry, I jerked back.
A prison cell. They’d locked me in a prison cell.
Trembling, I hovered in the darkness, my tail moving to keep me afloat. Ren had blamed me for whatever had made him sick. And the guards had heard him. They’d been right there when he’d said this was all my fault.
Distant moans carried through the blackness beyond the cell. I drew an unsteady breath.
So this was Ren. His doing. Probably, anyway. And Zeke… Zeke would find out about it. Or Niall. Or Ina. But regardless, someone would come for me. They’d get me out of here.
Unless it
was
actually the Sylphaen and they were heading this way right now.
I closed my eyes, fighting back a surge of panic. It wasn’t. I was fine. Sure, it was dark. Cold. Filled with whispers and God knew what else down here in the black, but I was dehaian. Half landwalker too, and till a few weeks ago I hadn’t known either existed, but that wasn’t the point. I
was
dehaian. I didn’t need light to know what was around me. I didn’t need anything. So I wasn’t going to freak out about this. I’d survived changing, survived the neiphiandine.
For that matter, I’d survived a run-in with the Sylphaen barely twenty-four hours ago.
I’d survive this.
And somehow, some way, I wouldn’t be down here for long.
Chapter Nine
Zeke
Ina hadn’t stopped crying since the soldiers escorted us back to my apartment. Her quiet sobs formed an undercurrent to the senseless words that everyone kept insisting upon saying. Guards and physicians swirled around the room, blurring into one another while they checked and confirmed and asked things about which I couldn’t find it in myself to care.
Because Dad was dead.
And I didn’t know how to wrap my mind around that.
He’d always been here, a part of our lives even if the times we actually saw him were rare. He was our king as much as our father, after all, and it wasn’t like we could ever really get close to him as a result. But he’d still been here. Constant. A shape defining the world we lived in.
And now he was gone.
On autopilot, I nodded to something Orvien had said, and then looked away as the old chamberlain swam off. He could handle this. The servants and the questions. I didn’t need to tell him what to do. That wasn’t my job.
At least, it hadn’t been.
A breath pressed from my chest. Ren was sick too. He was laid up in his rooms, where Kyne was trying to keep him stable. As for Niall, he’d been found in his own apartment, collapsed on the floor, unconscious but alive.
There was only one conclusion. Only one thing on everyone’s mind.
Someone had tried to kill my family. They’d gotten past every soldier, every checkpoint, and all manner of protections, and they’d tried to kill my family. Somehow, they’d missed Ina and me, though from the guards surrounding the room, palace security wasn’t taking any chances that the assassins wouldn’t try again.
I’d worried at first that it was the Sylphaen, except that made little sense. Why go after Dad and not Chloe? Why try to kill half the royal family and leave her alone?
Besides, it wasn’t like we didn’t have enough enemies, even without counting the Sylphaen.
Kyne said it had been poison. It had to be. Dad had no injuries, short of the blackish discoloration of his lips and the horrible way the blood vessels in his eyes and skin had broken.
I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forget that.
“Your highness?”
I blinked, looking up at the dark-haired and bronze-scaled guard. Tiberion, I thought his name was. One of Ren’s commanders.
“What?” I asked vaguely.
“Captain Renekialen is awake.”
Ina surged up from the seat. “He’s okay? Is he–”
“It was close, but the physician thinks he will recover, yes,” Tiberion answered.
She was already heading for the door.
I swam after her, Tiberion coming behind and ordering the others to follow.
“Niall?” I asked the commander.
“Still unconscious, highness. Physician Liana remains with him.”
I exhaled, fighting to appear calm as I slid past the plants into the hall. Up ahead, a dozen soldiers chased Ina, each of them struggling to stay with her as she raced onward.
She was already at Ren’s bedside by the time I reached his rooms.
“I’m fine, Ina,” he assured her, his hoarse voice belying the words. Strain showed on his bloodless face as he pushed away from the sand-bed. With his free hand, he patted her fingers, which were clutching his own.
Then his gaze found me by the door.
Anger drove everything else from his expression.
“Get out,” he growled.
My chest tightened, fury making it hard to breathe. Dad was dead. If he didn’t wake up soon, Niall might be too. And Ren had the audacity – the sheer, pigheaded
audacity
– to try to take that out on me.
“Ren,” Ina tried.
“Stay out of this, Ina,” he ordered, his voice rough. He looked back to me. “I said get the hell–”
“Why?” I demanded. “So you can pretend this is
my
fault? That it has something to do with… with
what
? The parties I have? The girls I’ve slept with? Something
else
about me you don’t fucking
approve
of?” A scoff escaped me, painful in its strength. “God
damn
you, Ren, I was there when Dad
died
! I was
right
there
when the poison–”
Ina gave a choked sob, and I cut off, shaking. “I did everything I could to save him,” I continued, my voice tight. “I tried–”
“Save it,” Ren snapped. “You’re the reason he’s dead.”
I stared, speechless.
“Ren,” Ina protested, “you don’t mean–”
“You brought that spy here,” he continued over her. “You gave her access to Dad, me, everyone. You insisted she stay, when I told you–”
“It wasn’t
Chloe
!” I shouted. “Dammit, it
couldn’t
have been. She never went
near
Dad, except for the time
you
hauled her into the throne room in chains! She’s hardly even been out of my sight since–”
“I’m sure.”
I choked on a breath, shaking with the urge to slam a fist into his condescending face.
“Spies don’t have to work alone, brother,” Ren said. “So rest assured, we’re going to interview every servant and courtier on the premises to learn which ones are her allies. And in the meantime, I’ve made certain your stupidity won’t harm the only sister we have left.”
I froze. A shiver built in my stomach, rippling outward. “What have you done?” I whispered, afraid to know.
“What you should have.”
The trembling grew stronger.
Ina’s brow twitched down warily. “Ren, where’s Chloe?”
He glanced to her, saying nothing.
Ina’s gaze slid to me, fear in her eyes, and she pulled her fingers from beneath Ren’s own. “You didn’t hurt her… right?”
“I’ve only put her where she can’t do any more damage,” he told her.
“
Where
?”
The word came out hot and savage, and Ren paused, regarding me for a moment before he responded to it.
“As the new king of Yvaria – no thanks to you – I’m going to say that’s no longer your concern.”
I surged forward. “Where
is
she, you pompous son of a–”
Guards circled in front of me, blocking my path. Past their shoulders, I stared at him.
“Commander Tiberion,” Ren called. “Have your people escort my brother back to his apartment and keep him there.”