Page 159 of A Heart of Bluestone

Lifting the crook of my arm, I bury my face in it to mute the stench.

The West Dungeon is exactly what it sounds like.

An old stone dungeon now used as a storeroom under the West Quarter. What it was used for before it became a storeroom, I don’t care to know.

I learn one thing about it.

Not very well ventilated.

No matter how large it is, the stink of the bagged fertiliser stacked up against the far wall is too strong, too potent.

I retch.

Dray presses his back to the door and, with a gesture, says, “Waifs first.”

Still, that word strikes me cold.

I shudder out a breath, then push into step.

Dray reaches up for the lanterns fastened to the wall. He unhooks two, then carries them into the dungeon after me.

The door creaks shut, slow and groaned.

I look over my shoulder at it, an unsettled frown pinched to my brow. Then it shuts with a clatter.

I’m submerged in complete darkness, save for two streaks of orange flames I can hardly make out across the room. The lights start to flare, expand—until, in a sudden blast, they erupt into hearty fire.

I stagger back. My spine connects to the draughty door.

My glare is fixed on the fire.

Not a blazing one, like I thought, like the panic in me expected. But a small, cosy one—eating through old wood sleighs.

Dray stacked the sleighs in the corner, of the fallen stone wall and crumbled ceiling, right where the wind is spearing into the dungeon, and he makuted the lantern flames.

My cheeks swell with an exhale.

Thought he was about to burn me alive in here.

Instead, “Stay away from this corner,” he says and his face is angled up, his narrowed gaze assessing the gap in the stone roof. “The smoke might build up here.”

“Smoke?” I echo, my back still pressed to the door. “Won’t it fill the whole room?”

He shakes his head and takes a step back. Then, he lifts his hand, “Even if it does…”

Even if the smoke does start to fill the dungeon, it’s within his power to extinguish.

He stalks down the row of crates that are stacked and toppled by the wall. From under an old desk with a broken rear left leg, he kicks out a rickety stool.

The stool isn’t unlike those sometimes used in labs, tall and narrow with a slight cushion. Dray plants it on the stone floor, then, hand gripped onto the edge and thighs spread, lowers himself onto it.

I watch, uneasy, as he does everything but retaliate, everything but strike.

So I know he’s gearing up for it. That’s part of my punishment, to suffer the relentless anxieties lashing in my gut, the worm pit that’s writhing, before he finally strikes.

I have a fleeting memory, one I should have forgotten, when I was only eleven or twelve. In the heart of Seville, so long ago, my parents had taken us to the theme park. Me and Oliver were on this ride—one that drops. Only it didn’t drop for a while, and the more seconds that passed, the more I started to squirm, the harder my heart beats, and then, ultimately, the more I begged that I had changed my mind and to get me off.

They never did that.

---