Page 1 of Merciless Prince
Prologue
Shay
October 27th,2019
New York State
My eyes fluttered opento find nothing around me but darkness. I quickly became aware of a throbbing pain in my head. Then odor—dirt, sweat, and stagnant water.
I blinked slowly and tried to situate myself in place and time, but it was like someone had reached into my brain and dialed down my capacity for memory and logic. It took several seconds for me to even remember my name, age, and occupation. Once I did, I realized I wasn’t in my college dorm, and I sure as hell wasn’t back in my Manhattan apartment, either.
So where was I? Did I get drunk and pass out in an alley somewhere?
The pounding in my skull and the sudden feeling of nausea bubbling up my throat told me that the answer was probably yes, but my brain’s remaining rationality told me that it wasn’t possible. Sure, I liked to drink at parties, but not to the point of blacking out. My friends would never leave me alone in an alley, either.
Something terrible has happened,a little voice whispered in the back of my mind. But what? And why?
I rubbed my bleary eyes, straining to remember something.Anything.All I had in my mind was a hazy feeling of regret and a few blurry fragments of an image.
I kept concentrating. The thoughts in my head remained jagged and disrupted, a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, but then a few solid pictures finally formed.
A ceremony in the darkest woods. Men and women in red cloaks and black Anubis masks. Torches burning with strange green flames. A wild party with a roaring bonfire. Naked people writhing around, covered in gold paint. A dim grotto with a stone altar in the center. A glinting ceremonial dagger. Blood.
So much blood.
I groaned and pressed a palm against my forehead, trying to parse the flurry of twisted images. What did they mean? Where had I seen all of those things? And what did they have to do with my current predicament? Had a bunch of cultists kidnapped me so they could ritualistically sacrifice a virgin on an altar?
I dismissed the last thought as quickly as it occurred to me. Of course it wasn’t right. I wasn’t even a virgin. But I saw all those things. I knew it; felt the chilling truth of it in my bones.
“What the hell is going on?” I murmured to myself, rubbing my forehead again. Was it some sort of freshman hazing thing? A sick joke taken too far?
My eyes finally began to adjust to the darkness around me. I tried to stand up so I could explore my surroundings, but my limbs were too heavy with exhaustion to manage such a feat. I slowly sat up instead, trying my best to swallow the awful nausea.
A sudden metallic clanking noise made me sit up even straighter. I whipped my head around, searching for the source of the sound until I realized it was coming from me. My left leg, to be specific.
There was an iron cuff around my ankle, attached to a length of chain. The other end of the chain was attached to a hulking pillar on my right.
“Oh, fuck,” I whispered, reaching down to feel the cold metal. Part of me was still desperately hoping that all of this was a sick joke and the cuff was just a trick device that would spring right off, but it was real and firmly locked into place.
This was no joke. Someone had taken me as their prisoner.
The brutal shock of the realization brought the rest of my memories hurtling back into my mind, forming an ugly, twisted picture. I was left with a fairly good idea of how I ended up in this bleak place—and why—but that didn’t answer the question of where this place was.
I peered around, gut clenching with apprehension. The dim space surrounding me was massive with rugged basalt walls, a high vaulted ceiling, and soaring gothic pillars. All of it appeared to have been carved right out of an enormous rock, like the chamber below Chillon Castle in Switzerland. It was actually quite beautiful in a ‘cathedral crypt’ sort of way, but given the situation I was in right now, it was difficult to fully appreciate that beauty.
I swallowed thickly and kept looking around. Lengths of chain ran from the other pillars, making it look like a medieval dungeon, and black metal sconces had been placed in regular intervals along the craggy walls. Large red candles sat in them, unlit for now.
Several yards behind me lay an inky stream, gurgling softly as it flowed along the back wall. Something about it seemed familiar. I stared at the dark water with furrowed brows until I realized where I’d seen it before. It was a subterranean river, like the mythological Styx; a supposed boundary between Earth and the Underworld.
I’d been here before. Not in this exact dungeon area, but somewhere very close.
That meant I was in the dank underbelly of Beaumont Castle, which stood on a small island on the Hudson River, about an hour’s drive from New York City. The underground stream behind me fed right into the Hudson, and somewhere nearby lay the grotto that I remembered earlier.
If I could get to that grotto, I could make my escape, because I knew there was a tunnel leading up and out of it. My captor must have considered that already, though, hence the cuff around my ankle.
“Shit.” I slumped downward and shook my leg with frustration, making the chain jangle. The sound echoed through the cavernous space around me, followed by a distant scream.
I sat bolt upright.
