The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(60)

“Blake! I need your help!”

The ground dissolves before I can touch him.

I fall through endless darkness.

I’m in the Church of Light and Sun, only the wilderness has taken it. Moss coats the stone altar, thick like green velvet. Vines burst through the ground and curl around my ankles. They snap from the walls and twist around my wrists to hold my arms outstretched.

But I didn’t sin. A version of my voice whispers through the foliage that lines the domed roof.

All women sin, child. The shadows respond and they sound like the High Priest. Your mother was a sinner. And you are a sinner too. Do you want the Sun Goddess to be angered?

Vines crack down on my back and jerk me forward. Hot tears swell in my eyes. I don’t want to plead. I don’t want to beg. I try to remind myself that this is a dream, but my back is being torn open and blood pools on the floor tiles. A copper scent hangs in the air.

I’m screaming when a figure emerges from the crypt. His footsteps echo as he walks toward me.

His eyes glow, feral and amber.

“Fight,” he says.

***

I breathe in sharply. I’m sprawled across the floor and my head is thumping. The air tastes like stagnant water, and my dress is damp. There’s a barred wall in front of me. I’ve been here before.

I scramble to my knees. A cot is pushed against one wall, and there’s a bucket in the corner. Shackles hang from the ceiling on rusty chains, and fear prickles down my spine. This is the cell in the manor house, a stopping point that Blake brought me to before I was given back to Sebastian. Blake taunted me here, then tried to get me to marry James.

It’s close to the Borderlands. James must have organized a trade with Alexander, and he could be on his way now.

I shiver. I slide my hand into my pocket and grasp the small vial of wolfsbane. It’s not much—James’s army could be waiting for me outside these dungeons—but I can’t go back to the south. I can’t be the property of another Borderlands lord—especially not Alexander. I think he’ll use me so my father will pardon him. I’m sure he’ll hurt me, too. The ghost of his shouts in the throne room after I told my father he was planning to commit treason haunt the cell.

My head fuzzy, I start to form a plan.

I pray to any goddess that will listen for the strength to survive.

I pray that Callum is okay, and Blake knows I’m gone.

I’m sure that both of them will try to find me. I only hope they get here before it’s too late.

***

Where is he?

The torchlight flickers. The hours bleed together. I shiver on the cot with my knees pulled up to my chest. Everything in the cell is damp—the walls, the sheets, my dress. I ache with the cold.

I have felt like a prisoner for most of my life, but my gilded cage was very different to this one. I want to feel the sun, and the tickle of pine-scented wind on my face. The hike to Dawn’s Craig, where the earth muddied my hands and the air was so crisp I could taste it, feels like a lifetime ago. I’m not sure how much time passes by, only every drip seems to count down to the inevitable. I’m going to be sent to the Borderlands—a fate that may be worse than death. Or perhaps James merely means to execute me to antagonize Callum.

At one point, a man in a blue kilt, his fair hair tied into a knot atop his head, passes me a hard bread roll through the bars. I recognize him from Madadh-allaidh. Duncan, I think his name is. I ask him what’s happening, where James is, what James plans to do with me. He answers each question with a grim smile before turning his back and heading up the stairs.

I wait, my jaw clenched, for James to appear and seal my fate. I wait for Callum. I wait for Blake. Insecurities gnaw at my insides like the rats that scurry through the dungeons, their little feet tapping against the stone floor. Hunger hollows my stomach. My head thumps and I don’t know whether it’s dehydration or the onset of the short bursts of fever that keep washing over me.

Why hasn’t Callum come?

I see faces in the shadows—midnight hair and feral eyes and taunting smiles. Blake haunts me. The darkness shifts, and I think it’s him. Screams echo through the dungeons, even though I’m alone, and I hear the scrape of metal scalpels and Blake’s laughter. I wake, tangled in the sheets, whimpering. Darkness rages inside me, cold and endless, and it tastes like pine and poison.

I vow to myself, to the Goddesses of the Sun and the Moon, that I’ll survive this. Callum will end James and take his throne. I’ll break the bond with Blake, and never return home to the south. We will both be free.

Yet Callum is not here. I’m alone.

I don’t know whether it’s day or night when footsteps approach. For a moment, I let myself imagine it’s Callum and he has come for me.

There you are, Princess. You didn’t think I’d leave you alone, did you? I imagine his thick Northlands voice, warm and comforting. I imagine his arms around me, and the solid safety of his body.

Duncan shatters the illusion. He is flanked by two men in green kilts, who enter my cell, grab me under my arms, and drag me into the corridor. My legs barely support me as they escort me up a narrow stairway. I’m cold and sweating as something wild inside me tries to surface.

“Where are you taking me?” I gasp.

“Quiet.”

Noise hits me as soon as we reach the ground floor. Shouts infiltrate it from outside. I’m pulled past a window, and catch a glimpse of men guarding the building, their swords glinting in the moonlight. My heart beats faster.