CHAPTER 129: ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY NINE

Valka

Vise-like grips crush my arms as I’m dragged forward into the black mouth of the dungeons.

The air hits me first--thick, wet, and alive with the decay of a festering wound. My slippers skid through the filth, vomit and urine pooling in the grooves of the stone, something soft and wet bursting under my heel. My stomach lurches. My eyes water from the stench.

I look left. Then right.

Women. Scores of them. Unclothed, covered in bruises. Some heavy and nearly due for birth. Others bent over half eaten crumbs of stale bread, rats gnawing on feet missing nails. There is no light in their eyes. No life.

No one looks up. Not when the guards pass. Not when I stumble by. There’s not a splinter of hope left that they may ever leave those walls.

I stare at their arched ears. Faces that might have once been considered beautiful, but not dried and hollow, skin sagging and grey.

The horror of it brings tears to my eyes.

And further down, they take me.

Further. Until we reach a different part of the dungeons, sectioned off with more guard detail manning the doors.

They move methodically, unlocking the doors and I am shoved inside, nearly falling hard into the ground. My eyes adjusts to the blackness inside and my ears perk up at the sound of tortured roaring.

I see them, then. The men. Muzzled. Hung up from chains nailed to walls of silver, their cages more confined and built to hold them back. The smell of burned flesh is stronger than that of faeces. Every head hung low in surrender bears a brand upon their skin.

"Mongrel." "Filthy." "Unclean

."

There is no end to the depravity of it. None.

My breaths grow short and panicky, especially when I am led past a cell with a male snarling through the bars of the gates. Both his eyes have been gouged out, leaving two black hollows that leak slow tears of blood. When he snarls again, it sounds more like weeping.

Gods...above. And beyond.

Do the gods really exist? Do they look down upon us and see these things happen? Does the Moon Goddess watch the sin her favoured children commit and choose to turn a blind eye instead? Does she despise us Lycans that much, that she’d send a guardian to ensure I won the wolves this war, so that this madness can continue?

At the end of the darkness is a door, large enough to encompass the entire wall.

My heartbeat quickens and I know, I know I will not be stuck here for much longer, not if my plan works, but everything inside me roils against the idea of being shoved in there. It is the wrongness spreading down my spine. The ill feeling curling in my stomach. The airs on my skin rising. I can smell the ash. The whole cell is built in ash and silver.

Because it is not a cell. It is a tomb.

I put my foot down and begin fighting. It is panic. It is fear. It is the thing people feel right before they die. It is wrapping around my neck and suffocating me.

"No," I rasp, breath shredding in my lungs. "No, please--"

They shove me anyway.

Stone and bone collide. My knees split open. And before I can find my footing, the iron door slams shut with a final, echoing clang that feels like the snapping of a trap.

A cruel voice filters through the slit of the metal. "His Majesty bids you to sit in silence and consider what you have done. And when he calls upon you, you will tell him what punishment you deem yourself deserving of." A small pause. "He wants you to know that it was this same cell your dead king was broken in. And now, for you betrayal, you will share the same fate."

***

It takes hours before my sight adjusts to the infinite black stretching before me, and even then, it stretches deeper, wider, staring back at me and daring me to move from my spot in the center of the room. There’s not a stream of light available. No windows. No air. Breathing feels like a privilege.

And it is cold. So cold, my teeth clatter.

I begin fumbling forward on my hands and knees, searching for a latch, a crack, anything that leaks warmth. The stone bites into my skin. My breath echoes too loudly. The cold draft must be coming from somewhere.

Minutes trickle into hours. My fingers grow numb. I find nothing.

What I do find are lines.

Sets of them, clawed deep into the stone, so deep they might as well be part of its bones. At first, I think them random scratches until my hand fits neatly inside one, and I realize they’re deliberate. Tallies.

Marks of passing days.

Five. Ten. Thirty.

Fifty.

Five months.

Eight.

A year.

Each stroke feels older than the last, smoothed by time but not erased. I follow them with trembling fingers until my throat closes, eyes stinging and I have to rip my hand away to stop myself from counting.

He was here.

My breath catches, a sob trying to form and failing. Because somehow, this place remembers him. The walls hum faintly beneath my touch, carrying residues of emotions--despair, fury, and pain. It thrums up my arm, foreign but achingly familiar. My heart stutters. I can almost feel him kneeling where I am now, his body shivering, his claws tearing the walls just to remember what it felt like to exist.

Parts of him didn’t leave this place, not entirely, granting it a little bit of life of its own. And I suspect that is why it’s so cold in here.

The cell stretches farther than I thought, leading me to what feels like a separate chamber. There’s a table in the centre, embedded into the floor like an altar. Chains anchor each corner, worn smooth by years of struggle. When I brush my fingers over one, pain blooms in my palm, the silver burning faintly against my skin.

He was strapped here.

He bled here.

I can almost see it, his body jerking under each strike, his mouth open but soundless from the drugs they pumped into his veins. I can hear his breath, his growl, his plea. Not for mercy. But for them.

There are markings here, too. Writings in the old tongue.

The gouges are uneven, the letters shaky, as though written through a haze of pain. My grasp of the language is terrible, but I recognize fragments.

Some for the days he forgot his name. Some for the days he felt frightened. Ilya’s name is scratched against every surface, more than his own name.

More than his plea; Remember.

"Oh, Lucien," I sigh softly, letting the overwhelming urge to kiss the scratches take me.

There are more. Notes on how long it takes before the guard shift. A tally of hours before the ’next one’ comes. And soon, my fingers find traces of what feels like a map of the entire castle. And below.

I curse the darkness in this place that makes my eye sigh frail. And it takes far longer than it should to finish outlining it. Hours. Many hours. By which time I have heard footsteps outside nearly a hundred times, the pacing of the guards and the thud of food supplies outside the other cells.

Thirst burns hot in my throat, every swallow a rasping agony. Sweat slicks my skin despite the cold, pooling at the small of my back and stinging the raw edges of my wrists. Rafael’s guards give me nothing. Not water. Not food. My stomach folds into itself, gnawing on hunger and fear alike, but I keep moving.

Hours blur together until I discover the entrance to the tunnel is within the cell. I wonder how Lucien knew I’d somehow end up here. If he had predicted what my choices would be.

Hope surges through me as I hurry along the main chamber, nearly tripping on the trail of my skirts. Then, I begin searching.

My nails split and bleed from clawing at every seam in the walls, knocking until my knuckles swell.

There.

The faint, hollow sound. A different echo.

I drop to my knees and press my ear against the wall. There’s space beyond it, air echoing in the distance and the steady drip-drip of water. The tunnel. It has to be.

But when my trembling fingers trace the outline of the wall, I find it smooth. Seamless. Fresh stone poured over the old. Sealed.

Heart racing, I fist my knuckle and punch, hard, but my middle knuckle splinters, like the wall has been carved from lead. I punch harder, a ragged sob tearing from my lips. Again and again, and it doesn’t dent. It doesn’t give. Doesn’t even make a sound.

Hope flickers once, then dies slow in my chest.

I sit there for a long time, forehead pressed to the cold stone, until I no longer know if the wetness on my cheeks is sweat or tears.

***

Lucien does not come to me that night.

I lie awake on the cold floor, staring into the dark. Again and again, I whisper into the fickle walls of our bond what I’ve found, that the entrance has been found. And if it has, there was no guarantee the tunnel still existed. If he’d escaped through there the first time and they caught on, they must have caved it in.

But the bond stays eerily silent.