It seemed there was little other choice. If Blythe had to play the role of a respectable young lady, so be it. She’d certainly had enough training.
A pale man with a severe face and splotchy red cheeks met them at the gate. He held out his hand as they approached. “Perhaps the young miss would prefer to wait in the carriage.” His voice was low and thick, as if he had a perpetual sinus issue.
Blythe clenched her fists, biting back bitter thoughts about how he’d be the one wanting to hide in a carriage once she gave him a piece of her mind.
Before she could do so, Byron pressed two coins flat into the man’s palm. “She stays,” was all he said. The man grunted and pocketed the coins before he drew the gate open and stepped aside. His eyes lingered on Blythe for a beat too long, and it was an effort to restrain herself from flashing the man her most diabolical glare. Every inch of her skin was angry and prickling, as it had been since she’d last spoken with Signa. She wanted an excuse to be angry. But for her father’s sake she bit back that roiling emotion and clenched her shaking fists at her sides. She hoped that anyone who saw them would think she was nervous.
“You’ll have an hour,” drolled the splotchy-faced warden, his steps brisk as he led them through the prison and down a stone staircase so cracked and steep that Blythe had to brace her palm against the wall to steady herself. The air grew more frigid with each step, and soon enough she realized exactly where this man was leading her. They had her father in an ancient, freezing dungeon.
“It’s only for the visit,” Byron whispered, as if he were able to feel Blythe’s simmering rage. “He’ll be back upstairs with the rest of them once we leave.”
Blythe didn’t like that notion any better. She braced herself as the door opened and she prepared to see her father for the first time in a month. But there was nothing to prepare her for who waited behind the door.
Elijah Hawthorne was a husk of the man he once was. He’d lost too much weight too quickly, and he had skin that hung loosely around his neck to show for it. His face was gaunt and his frame so withered that he looked as though one solid breeze might topple him. The skin beneath his eyes was corded with lines of deep purple, and he was even more disheveled than he’d been the year prior, when he’d been grieving the death of Blythe’s mother. There was a cut on his lip, too, red and raw—and so obviously someone else’s doing that Blythe gripped the bars of the cell door to steady her rage.
She hardly recognized her father like this, made small and drab in his dingy gray uniform, his legs chained to a chair and his wrists in shackles. It was his eyes alone that kept Blythe from despair—not as bright or mischievous as they once were, but not so forlorn as those of a doomed man, either. The spark of fire within them had dimmed, certainly, though she was glad to see that it had yet to be extinguished.
The cell door groaned shut behind them, and Blythe’s breath caught when her father glanced up at her, his face softening.
“You are truly a sight for sore eyes.” He leaned back in his chair, the manacles clanking. “ How are you, my girl?”
Heat surged in Blythe’s eyes, tears she had no intention of letting him see threatening. She wished so deeply that she could hug him without getting thrown back into the carriage.
“I’m better now that I’ve seen you,” she told him. “But you’re most certainly not. What happened to your face?”
When Elijah adjusted to try to discreetly cover his cut with his hand, Blythe turned her attention to the guard outside the cell. If he was the one who did this, she’d burn him at the stake. Before she could ask, Byron took hold of her shoulder and squeezed tight.
“Enough,” he hissed under his breath. “This is not the place nor the time.” There was no overlooking the scrutiny in Byron’s eyes as he assessed Elijah, who tilted his head back with the most vicious scoff.
“I suppose it pleases you to see me like this?” His bitterness was so unexpected that Blythe hesitated to take one of the seats across from her father, looking between the two men as Byron sat. Given the force of the guard’s scrutiny, she had no choice but to follow suit.
“There is a week left until your trial, Elijah. We have other matters to discuss.”
Panic lodged itself in Blythe’s throat. A week. She’d been so distracted with Signa that she hadn’t realized the trial was so close.
“Are you keeping up with Grey’s?” Elijah sneered. Blythe again looked between him and her uncle, wondering what she’d missed.