Kaelyn woke, gasping at the pain shooting through her chest. She was slung over someone’s shoulder, her head wrapped in an itchy, heavy cloth, shrouding her in darkness and muffling sounds.
Stone screeched against stone and her captor lurched down a step. His shoulder dug into her gut. Another lurching step and her stomach roiled. Step after step. The cloth slipped a bit, revealing a dark-clad leg, worn military boots, and a twisting staircase that disappeared into darkness. Waves of painful nausea washed over her. Her captor swayed and lurched. Bile burned the back of her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, but that only focused her attention on her chest and the cramps in her stomach.
With a jerk, the man stopped, but her stomach kept going. It heaved its contents into the blanket and down the man’s leg.
The man cursed and tossed her to the floor. Fire shot through her, threatening her consciousness, but unfortunately didn’t take her.
Someone ordered her cleaned up. The cloth was yanked away and a bucket of cold water dumped over her head. Gasping and sputtering, she stared at her hands, palms pressed to the rough-hewn stone floor before her. The men hadn’t even restrained her. She could run, fight, do something. And yet she lay there, unable to be anything but a victim.
A salty wind swept through the room and she shivered. An uneven spasming mingled with the pain in her chest. Hardened leather boot soles clicked away on the stone behind her. Her captors were leaving.
She didn’t dare look up, didn’t want to see what kind of prison Uthmar or Harcourt had chosen for her. She was such a fool. Such a silly, silly girl. Thinking she could be a hero and save the Queen. If she had just remembered her place and hadn’t agreed to help Wyndham with his fencing, she wouldn’t have been in the warehouse. And yet, she wouldn’t have spent as much time with Wyndham.
“So?” asked Harcourt behind her.
Her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t know if it was good or not that he was still here.
“You are such an idiot,” said a new voice somewhere before her. He sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
She bit her lip and glanced up. Two people in black robes, their faces shadowed by heavy cowls, stood before an intricately carved wood altar. She didn’t think either of them were Harcourt. Candles clustered in each of the altar’s corners, offering the only light in the chamber. Behind them sat a black, vast nothing that smelled of fish and salt. She had to be in the catacombs that riddled the southern cliffs of the island beneath the castle.
“I am no more an idiot than you,” said Harcourt.
The shorter of the two at the altar pushed his cowl back, revealing a ghostly face with white depthless eyes.
“At least I knew enough not to kill our financer’s good will.” Although Harcourt’s tone said he wanted to. “Uthmar would have killed her if it wasn’t for me.”
Small blessings for that, but she still wasn’t going to thank him.
“People will notice if she goes missing. You can’t keep her here,” said the still hooded man.
“And you can’t kill her,” said Harcourt. “All of your precious funding will be revoked and the merchant barons will riot.”
Guess letting her go obviously wasn’t an option. She glanced around. It looked like a natural cavern. Her only means of escape–the void on the other side of the altar and the stairs she’d come down–were both blocked by her captors.
“Which leaves you with what?” asked the cloaked man.
“You’re the one with the oh-so-powerful magician.” Harcourt waved at the man with the white eyes. “Prove he’s worth something.”
The man with the white eyes slunk toward her. She scrambled away, but Harcourt grabbed her collar and shoved her forward. The man grasped her jaw and forced her to look at him.
Her mind screamed to run, but her legs wouldn’t obey. His frozen gaze bore into her soul. The light from the candles flared bright, and a sharp, high-pitched buzzing rattled painfully in her head.
Harsh, disjointed words shook the room. They came from everywhere and nowhere, surrounding her, devouring her. And out of the roar and buzzing a calm voice spoke nonsense to her. The words whirled faster and faster into her on bright flashes of light.
Her chest burned with every beat of her heart. Her eyes watered and her vision blurred.
#
When she could see again she was somehow on her feet, propped up between two men, neither of them Harcourt or the men from the altar. She staggered down a flight of sea-misted steps carved in a cliff wall. At the bottom, a sand and shale beach crunched underfoot, and the men paused.
“And so . . . what?” asked Harcourt from somewhere above her.
“Now her life-long dream is to be a minstrel,” said the other man, also above her.
“Well, what was it before?”
“That’s not important. By sunrise she’ll be on a ship sailing up the coast to Norwell to study with no more thought, nor in fact memory, of the night’s events.”
Harcourt growled. “She better. If she does remember, I don’t care how much money she’s worth. I’ll kill her.”
The men jostled her aboard a small rowboat and set her between them. Her head still buzzed. She didn’t want to be a minstrel. And how could she forget about this night? Her chest still hurt from her untended ribs.
The boat pushed into the swelling waters of the hidden bay. Above, a wide rectangle glowed with candlelight. The men bent over their oars and the tiny craft glided out of the cove. The rectangle grew smaller and smaller and melted into the mottled gray and white wall of the Vitreian Cliffs. Atop, the House of Vitreah, once a small, single-tower keep, now a massive, multi-building castle, rose golden in its own fiery light. Even in the depths of night the heart of Meriduin pulsed with life. And where was her life now? Somewhere up the coast in the shipping city of Norwell?
Her thoughts kept flitting back to Wyndham and the life she’d had with him. Their friendship. But his mother would never allow more. No. There was something else about his mother. Something she needed to tell him. A fog pressed against her thoughts. Something had happened. She’d just been thinking about it. Everything felt like a dream. A painful, foggy nightmare. That man’s white eyes devouring her soul, burning into her heart, buzzing in her head.
