Page 77 of The Crimson Walls Of Algorath

Ariadne was not unfamiliar with what to expect in such facilities. After all, her father had been Valenul’s General for many years prior to him becoming the Princeps. She had accompanied him to the Hub as a young child and seen much of the same equipment.

Including the single-story barracks on the far side of the grounds, which had no windows for the prisoners kept inside. Prisoners such as her husband, and by his absence in the chateau, she could only assume that was where he remained.

And he would have no idea she was there, looking out at him so close…and yet leagues away.

“Is it difficult,” Ariadne said without taking her eyes off the lone barracks door, “to do what you do, Desmo?”

Melia gave her a pitying smile. “Call me Melia. My title is reserved for those I do not consider friends.”

Ariadne looked at her then and smiled back. What would Melia have been like had she not been betrayed? Perhaps, given vastly different circumstances, they could have been friends. As it were, she recalled Phulan’s cautionary words to steel herself against the Desmo. Melia had no friends. Only allies.

“But to answer your question,” Melia continues, “it is quite complicated. Those housed and trained in those walls are criminals. Murderers, rapists, and thieves. Most who choose to attempt to shorten their sentences by competing in the Pits do not live long. Those who survive are, perhaps, the ones who should not be allowed back into polite society.”

To her dismay, Ariadne had to agree. Only those cunning and skilled enough to live long in the Pits would make it out alive, and they were perhaps the most dangerous of them all. That, however, included Azriel, and he did not deserve to die merely for existing.

“How can you be certain they are guilty?” Ariadne hoped she kept the question light and curious rather than damning.

At first, Melia did not respond. She turned to lean her arms on the rails and stare at the desert foliage. “The Iudex look at the evidence, then present their findings to their District’s Raegi. They make a decision, the Mair signs off on the length of their sentence, and then, provided with the appropriate evidence, they’re given the option: prison or Pits. From there, Emry decides.”

Bit by bit, Algorath’s judicial system fell into place for Ariadne, and bit by bit, she fell into despair. There truly would be no pulling Azriel from Melia’s clutches without force, for she had no evidence to prove his innocence. This woman, who spoke so freely and with so much confidence, was her enemy and could never be seen as anything but.

“To say this position is easy,” Melia continued with a small smile that did not reach her eyes, “would be a lie. When I first began, I told myself I would be different. I would treat these prisoners as people.”

“What changed?” Ariadne asked when she paused, suddenly quite curious as to how someone who had once been an advocate for life now dealt in death. From what she gathered from Madan’s tale back in Monsumbra, Melia hated Azriel for unwittingly sending mages to their death. Now she did it with full knowledge.

“I befriended many who passed through that training yard.” Her silver eyes flickered to the wide expanse of sand. “I thought I could help by giving them hope of freedom and instruction. But one by one, they died.”

“All of them?”

Melia nodded. “I have yet to have a prisoner pass through here and live to see the end of their sentence. Too often, those who would do best in the Pits had the longest sentences and more opportunities to die. Those with shorter terms who choose the Pits rarely last a single match.”

To Ariadne’s horror, Phulan appeared unphased. This was not news to her. They needed to act. Fast. Or Melia would likely see to the end of the one man she hated more than any other.

“Has anyone ever made it out of the Pits?” Even as she asked, Ariadne did not want to know the answer.

Melia leveled her moonlit gaze at her. “No.”

The gaps in Azriel’s memory grew more and more frustrating with each passing day. He seemed to wake midway through trainings with bruised knuckles and angry sparring partners. The fae, who seemed to understand his lapses the best, still glared while sporting new injuries caused by him. Guilt leeched into his everyday life, shadowed only by the pit of magma-hot rage he couldn’t seem to temper no matter how hard he tried.

As he prepared for his second match in the Pits that night, he listened to Raoul recount the details about Melia’s latest party, which he had missed. Yet as the human spoke, describing the different events for the evening, Azriel couldn’t focus on the details as he scrambled to remember how he’d forgotten about it entirely.

Until Raoul said, “A Caersan woman attended this time.”

Azriel’s world spun as those six words slammed around his brain again and again. His friend continued on, rambling about the oddness of such a guest amongst mages, until Azriel asked, “What’d you just say?”

“It was the first time I heard a mage talk about how much she hates the Pits?”

“No.” Azriel couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think clearly. “The Caersan woman. What’d she look like?”

Raoul stared at him over the water ladle in his hand. Another prisoner cursed the time he waited for the water behind him, and the human abandoned the ladle to avoid a confrontation before stepping around to Azriel. “Dark hair—almost black. Light eyes, but I didn’t see what color. Definitely Caersan with those veins.”

The human shuddered, his revulsion over vampires as evident as ever. Azriel didn’t care. He’d force this man to relive those memories again and again if it meant hearing what he was so desperate to. If it had been Ariadne…

Fuck. If it was Ariadne, she was in danger. She was walking right into a trap. What that trap could possibly be, Azriel had no idea. He only knew that Melia would somehow, someway, figure out who she was, even if she lied.

“Anything else?” Azriel pressed, swallowing down his heart pounding in his throat. He winced. “Any scars?”

Raoul raised a brow, but Azriel could see the human clawing for the correct answer in his mind. “She wore a…rather revealing dress, definitely not one from Valenul, and I saw none.”

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