Page 194 of The Iron Flower

I can make out the foul stench of nilantyr long before we reach the arching entrance to the dungeons, the odor triggering a wave of nausea and dark memory.

And there’s something else. Something that sends ice knifing down my spine. Somewhere far ahead, hidden in the bowels of this malignant place, a child is screaming.

The surgeon pauses to grab a large brass ring of keys from a hook set in the wall. A series of iron-barred prison cells bracket the hallway just ahead of us.

It’s hard to make it all out, the lumenstone more sparsely hung down here, the greenish glow fainter. But I have a strange sense of déjà vu.

A dream I once had. A dream in which I was trying to free Marina and little Fern from a cage. In this exact green-lit dungeon.

My eyes are drawn up to the ceiling of tangling, stone branches as a translucent white bird shimmers into view, then blinks out of sight. Apprehension ripples through me, and the White Wand pressed into my boot warms against my ankle.

We pass under an archway of branches into a hallway filled with cavernous, barred cells. I can’t make out anything at first, but my eyes soon adjust to the light.

I turn, pausing in front of the first cell, and that’s when I see him.

A male Icaral is crouched inside, eyeing me with milky white, soulless eyes, his spindly arms wrapped tight around even spindlier legs. Wingless, ragged stumps jut out where his wings used to be.

The cell is cold and small, empty except for a hard wooden bed without blankets and an iron chamber pot.

And a metal bowl full of nilantyr berries.

The Icaral opens his blackened lips and hisses at me, baring sharp, rotted teeth.

Recognition spasms through me.

I know thisIcaral—he’s the one who escaped that day I was attacked in Valgard.

Horror and pity rush over me like a black wave, forcing me backward, away from the broken creature, until I collide with the iron bars of another cell.

Clawed hands come from behind and grasp my arms, pinning me to the bars at my back, foul breath at my ear. Terror leaps into my throat as I whip my head around and stare into the empty eyes of another male Icaral. “I will rip its arms off,” he hisses at me, hatred burning in his emaciated face. “Like they rip and tear at our wings.”

The surgeon jams his wand through the cell’s bars and mutters a spell. A bright blue explosion bursts all around me, and the Icaral’s piercing grip falls away.

I stumble forward and whirl around to find the Icaral knocked to the ground, a network of glowing blue lines traversing his body as he writhes in agony.

I struggle to catch my breath, trembling with both fear and horror at the surgeon’s casual use of torture. My hands rub at my stinging forearms as the surgeon considers me with a slightly perplexed expression.

Like something doesn’t quite add up.

“You need to stay away from the Icarals’ cells, Mage Damon,” he says, his brow creased, as if he’s surprised by the need to advise my aunt.

My heart blasting against my rib cage, I struggle to regain my composure. I force myself to take a few deep breaths while the surgeon eyes me with budding suspicion.

You have to beAunt Vyvian, I chastise myself.Calm down! You have to get Ariel out of here!

“Where is she?” I ask, forcing my chin up and assuming a haughty expression.

The surgeon’s face relaxes, as if he’s more comfortable with my predictably imperious behavior. “The creature is housed at the end of the hallway.”

Housed.

What a wildly inappropriate way of describing this nightmarish dungeon.

Horror and acute distress seep into me as we walk down the curved, winding hall and I come face-to-face with the Icarals imprisoned here. I try not to stare, try not to slow my regal, unsympathetic gait, but I can’t help but hear them, to see them out of the corner of my eyes.

There’s one, a female. She looks to be about thirteen years of age, dressed in rags, her hair pulled out in scabby patches. She’s banging her head against the stone wall of her cell again and again as her wing stumps frantically flap behind her, the rhythmic thud echoing after us as my heart begins to fracture in my chest. We pass another female, this one even younger. She’s crouched in the corner of her cell, muttering darkly to herself in a high-pitched voice.

Other Icarals cry out strange, twisted things, rattling the bars as we pass them.

---