Haven (War of the Princes) (25 page)

My attention was immediately fixed to him. He had been there in the group the whole time and I hadn’t noticed. To still be standing he must have beaten several of the Dragoons sprawled on the stone floor. Now he faced one of the men who looked to me like the best.

Something inside of me recoiled. I was still deeply wounded by the betrayal of him bringing me here. There was anger in me, but I didn’t hate him. I couldn’t stand to watch Rune be hurt, but my alternative was unthinkable. How could I turn away now?

Judging by the way he stood, I could tell that Rune was tired. There was a glint of sweat on his brow and his chest heaved slowly. Despite his evident exhaustion, there was a predatory focus in his narrowed eyes. In one hand he held a sword with a solid silver knuckle guard and in the other, a relatively short chain with a small, dull hook.

The brown haired man smiled knowingly, darted toward Rune to force him backward, and swept downward with his axe. Rune responded by parrying the blow with his sword. His opponent’s smile deepened as he gripped his axe with both hands and pressed Rune to the defensive with a series of powerful strikes. When the brown haired man brought his axe down in the end of a heavy sweep, the blade of Rune’s sword snapped from the hilt and clattered to the floor.

I stifled a gasp. It was over.

I was wrong about who it was over for, however.

In a rapid series of motions, Rune kicked the broken blade toward his opponent’s feet, distracting him long enough to swing the hooked chain in his left hand. It wrapped twice around the neck of the axe, locked in place by the hook. Rune wrenched the taught length of the chain with all of his strength. Surprise broke across the brown haired man’s face as his weapon was tugged nearly out of his grasp. Capitalizing on this second distraction and the closeness of their position, Rune pulled the fist of his right hand back and punched the brown haired man square in the temple with the solid silver knuckle guard of the broken sword hilt he still held.

My jaw dropped open as the brown haired man fell to the floor, knocked out cold.

Time felt like it moved slower in that moment. Rune straightened up and for an instant, and his fierce blue eyes lifted in my direction.

Overwhelmed by the violence and frightened by the fire I had never seen in Rune’s countenance, I backed up three steps. I don’t know what I was thinking in that moment. In fact, I may not have been thinking at all.

I ran.

My surprise tactic worked because I was able to dash clear out the door. In fact, I had even surprised myself.

I’m pretty sure the words, “What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?” were screaming in my mind as I sprinted down the hall and skidded around a turn.

I could hear the pursuit behind me and that only made me run faster. I didn’t know where I was going and could only hope the hall led me out somewhere.

I exhaled with relief when I saw the stairwell through a stone archway just ahead of me. Once downstairs, I only needed to reach the stables to get away.

Before I could make it to the stairs, the unthinkable occurred: the stones of the archway began growing inwards. Like rocky plants, they crackled and laced toward each other, blooming, unfurling and pressing together until they made up a solid wall blocking my path. I had been sprinting so quickly, I couldn’t help but stumble directly into it. The rock that I hit was cold, hard and real. The impact hurt, but I was more concerned about being cornered.

In my frantic disbelief of what I was experiencing, I remembered what Dylan taught me. This was someone’s Ability, and I had to admit, it was a lot stronger than levitating cider from a cup.

I turned around with my back against the wall to face the Dragoon who had caught me.

It was March. She was crouched with her palms flat on the floor and after making eye contact with me, rose slowly to her feet.

She didn’t look even remotely phased by my attempted escape.

“Can you really blame me for trying?” I asked her. Her sober disposition didn’t soften at my frankness.

“Come with me,” she ordered rather than asked.

I sighed almost feeling hysterical with frustration.

“Well,” I said abysmally, pushing myself away from the stone wall. “What you said about keeping your Ability a secret until the most critical moment makes a lot of sense now.”

“Indeed,” she agreed, walking me back the way I had come. Three other Dragoons who had followed us took up a position behind me.

“Now that I know what it is, can you tell me what it’s called?” I asked, hoping that at least I’d glean a little knowledge from my failure.

She was silent for a few steps, probably considering the damage an answer could cause.

“The Shift,” March finally responded, and she did so quietly. “If this floor was tiled with wood instead of stone, it wouldn’t have been me who caught you.”

“Hurray for you. At least one of us is having a good day,” I said drolly.

When we returned to the balcony deck of the sparring room, I saw that the Dragoons training below were all gone, leaving only a few spatters of blood to prove that there ever was a fight.

“I trust your jog was pleasant,” said the deep, craggy voice of the Senior Commander. “Feel welcome to practice your escapes as frequently as you can. My Dragoons enjoy the sport. I can’t promise you won’t be harmed, however. Not everyone has as much… finesse as March.”

I was at a loss for words. The last thing I expected was encouragement. His absolute confidence that I would be easily captured time and again was very convincing.

“Interesting, though. Very interesting,”
Fallux
said stepping close enough to make me feel uncomfortable.

I had no idea what he found so “interesting” but whatever it was, I didn’t like it.

“What say you we bring her to the isolation room?”

“Yes, Senior Commander,” March replied, bowing slightly.

Again, my only option was to go where they told me. The height of my mounting resentment for being held prisoner was indescribable. I’d never felt so helpless in my life. It was maddening. I gritted my teeth and swore I’d never let myself be put in such a position again. It was lucky that near starvation was the sole brutality committed against me. No matter how tough I felt, I was still a seventeen-year-old girl among soldiers. I supposed that whatever a Lodestone was for, it was important enough not to let me be physically harmed. Something told me that Commander Stakes was waiting for a loophole to breach such protection. The mere thought of him gave me chills. I was glad
he
wasn’t in charge, but that wasn’t to say that Commander
Fallux
was any comfort. There was a great deal he was concealing and none of it good. Although his malevolence was steadier than the chaotic evil in Stakes, he was equally dangerous.

Fallux
personally accompanied March and me down to the first floor. When we arrived at a curving, narrow hall made of wood and stone, March plucked the night goggles from the top of my head and held them away from me.

“Hey!” I protested.

Without so much as a word of explanation, I was pushed into a pitch-black room. My skin prickled and I nearly panicked again for being locked in another cell.

“Wait!” I cried, spinning back around at the closing door. The last thing I could see was the shrinking sliver of light from the outside corridor and Senior Commander
Fallux’s
wolfish silver-fanged grin.

The door was locked and the sound of it echoed throughout the room, hinting to me that it was much larger than I had first thought. Beyond that clue, I had no idea what to expect from the utter blackness.

Chapter 24: Isolation

           
The depth of the darkness surrounding me was absolute. I held my hand out in front of my face and saw nothing. There was a very slight draft and the airflow helped me keep calm. I wasn’t underground or in a small space, so there was no reason to let my fears take hold of me.

           
“Not afraid of the dark,” I whispered, finding some comfort in the sound of my own voice, just as I had in the mausoleum. “I’m not five years old. There’s nothing to worry about.” In truth, there was a lot to worry about.

           
There were no sounds to indicate that I wasn’t alone, so I put one hand on the door, holding the other ahead of me, and groped my way around one side of the room. My thighs hit something and I was startled enough to flatten myself against the wall.

           
“It’s okay,” I said, calming myself down. “It’s just… what is this? A table. Just a table.”

           
In fact, the table was so long it would have been impossible for me not to run into it. I held out my palms over the surface and touched something waxy: a candle. Hoping there were matches somewhere about, I patted around the table’s surface. My hands brushed what felt like an electric lamp and it gave me a slight zap, but no amount of prodding made it turn on.

           
“A candle and no matches. A broken lamp. What kind of a cruel joke is this?” I complained bitterly.

           
I couldn’t even begin to make out the next item I found. It was a small metal contraption. There was something bulb-like attached to the object, but again, I had no luck switching it on. I tossed it down in front of me and heard it clang into the lamp. There were no matches anywhere. Nothing worked.

           
Giving up on the incomplete items, I clambered around the table to explore the other side of the room. My hand felt the hollow material of another wooden door. I brushed the metal hinges with my fingertips, but found no doorknob. There was still a draft in the room, so I stood up on my tiptoes, scaling the door with my hands as high as I could reach. Sure enough, I touched some kind of latch, but just barely. No matter how hard I tried, how far I jumped, or how much I stretched, I just couldn’t get a grip on it.

           
“Ugh!” I growled, hitting and kicking the door. I couldn’t see a single thing, and nothing would function. My frustrating helplessness was driving me crazy and my knuckles ached after they slammed into the door for one last furious punch.

           
That was when it became clear; this was a test. It had to be. I didn’t know what they expected me to do.

I was finished playing their games and sick and tired of being pushed around like a corralled animal. I was going to find a way out of this place or tear it apart trying.

It was a strange sensation, being completely blind. The child in me wanted to give up and cry for my dad again, but what good would that do me? The answer was, none at all. I got myself into this mess, and was determined to get myself out of it. My anger and defiance became the fuel that powered me on.

           
Stepping carefully around the black room, I found a narrow passage.

I could tell I wasn’t going in circles because when I put both hands out at my sides, I could touch both walls. The corridor became disorienting when the walls of the narrow hall broke apart in multiple places. Comfortable in trusting that nothing would hinder my steps, I hurried my random course. I turned left, left again, right, straight, made another left, and found myself at a dead end.

           
Reaching out, I felt the smooth paneling of another door. I exhaled with excitement and relief when I gripped and twisted a cool metal door handle. The responding click was like music to my ears. A short triumphant laugh escaped me and I pushed it open.

           
Light spilled out, handicapping me with a different kind of blindness. The brightness was painful and I squeezed my eyes shut and used my hands as shields.

           
I had barely been able to tolerate squinting when a shadow moved between me and the source of light. I straightened up, rubbing my eyes and blinking as my vision adjusted to a more comfortable medium.

           
The source of the shadow was the twisted visage of Commander Stakes, standing before a barred window. No Dragoons accompanied him. No Senior Commander stood by his side. It was just him and me. I stood like a rabbit, frozen before its hunter. We stared at each other and a wicked smirk peaked the corners of his mouth. There was a hunger in his eyes that frightened me to my core.

           
He lunged for me just as I tried to run. To my horror, he was quicker, and caught me by the throat. His hand was a grotesque mutilation of flesh and metal and as his grip closed around my neck I could feel the icy chill of his two inhuman claws ready to puncture my skin. I gasped for air, struggling to pry his hand away. Stakes jutted his lower jaw, clenched his teeth and slammed me against the wall. What little breath I had been struggling to hold on to was forced out of my lungs. The pressure around my neck made me want to throw up and it felt like my struggle for air was tearing at the inside of my throat. He may have looked gaunt, but his strength was inhuman.

           
Stakes brought his face close to mine and I squeezed my eyes shut rather than look at him.