Page 15 of A Kingdom of Destruction

Her arms, wrenched behind her by the magic keeping her contained, had gone numb somewhere along the way. She no longer felt her fingers, and the crick in her neck from her fetal position wouldn’t go away anytime soon. She could not move, could hardly draw a breath, yet somehow felt the change in the air as the cart rolled over the border.

A thickening pressure made every fine hair on her body stand on end. The pressure increased to the point where she worried how she’d ever be able to stand it before it released her with a suddenness that made her ears pop.

After a few hours, someone called out to the horses pulling the carriage and to the other soldiers and their steeds in the caravan. Aven barely heard the call outside of her own misery, although the voice inside her head begged her to pay attention. Her limbs refused to obey the command, the one carved out of years of experience on the field. If nothing else, she should have been tracking the landscape to see exactly where she entered the fae lands.

Something.Anything.

Instead, she’d done nothing but wallow.

Her half-thought dissipated under a stream of shame, and although her toes twitched in her boots, her body did not move again. Minutes blurred together until the cart rolled to a stop. Hooves clattered on stone, and the fabric flap rustled.

A strange fae popped his head into the cart and grabbed her by the ankle. With no effort, he tugged Aven from the rest of thebodies and slung her like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. She grunted at the impact.

“Where does he want her?” the man carrying her asked.

“The orders came down from His Majesty himself. Bring her down to the cells. And for gods’ sake, clean her up,” a second man called back.

She had to wake up. To claw her way back from the heavy grip of unconsciousness. The effort was exhausting, but Aven forced her eyes open, desperate to take in her surroundings. The world greeted her as an agonized blur, an indistinct mess of smeared colors.

The sharpness of the green, the trees and grass, took her by surprise. It wasn’t raining here. The storm seemed to stop at the border, and the sun seared her retinas. She blinked against the sting and struggled to clear the haze. The guard took no care in how he carried her, and every step jostled her further, the bony points of his armor digging painfully into her stomach.

Her next deep breath brought with it the scent of flowers and baking bread.

It wasn’t like her not to fight back. She’d always been the type of person to stand her ground, even against impossible odds. Her body trembled, and the shaking set in within seconds. The soldier’s grip on her tightened as if he somehow had to make sure she stayed in place.

The cool interior of whatever building they brought her to was a distinct contrast to the heat of the sun on her back, and then they went down. One set of steps, and then another, the stone echoing every footstep.

Keep it together.

Stay awake.

Had anyone guessed at the fae’s plan? Had any of them even remotely considered that their enemy might have planned outtheir moves so far into the future it wasn’t even possible for the humans to follow?

Aven had let her dreams of success distract her. Then, she let her conversation with her father rattle her to the point where she’d missed the signs. That’s what she told herself.

Once they reached the dungeon, they tossed her into a cell. A guard hauled in a bucket, sloshing cold, filthy water over her without warning, the icy shock hitting her like a slap. She gasped, choking on the taste of grit and metal as the water dripped from her face and soaked into her clothes. They didn’t wait for her to recover; the guards tossed the empty bucket aside, snapped the gate shut, and left her shivering on the cold stone floor.

“No need for magic to keep this one inside. She’s weak. A mortal.”

She caught the guard’s sneer as he spoke to one of his cronies. The darkness of this space ensured she never got a good look at them, the details too murky to make out. A world of hurt was about to come crashing down on her, much more potent than her failure.

“Should we use the manacles?” the second soldier asked.

“The bars will be enough to keep her contained.”

One of them barked out a laugh, and her heart constricted. Without another word, the two of them took off back to the world of light and fresh air and left her alone to rot.

The spell binding her limbs released her the moment they disappeared, and she sagged down to her chest. The cold stone floor pressed to her cheek.

Aven forced her fingers to move and gasped when blood rushed back to the area along with pain. Pins and needles prodded at her, and eventually she rolled onto her back, the wetness of the floor cooling her. There were no windows here, the dungeons set too far underneath wherever they were to have access to the outside world. The air had gone stale, probably centuries of rot and decay and forgotten souls moldering down here.

At least they didn’t rape her.

The thought soured her stomach, and Aven scrambled onto her hands and knees, her hands too twitchy to hold her, and she ended up going face-first into the floor. The sharp bite of the scrape against her cheek didn’t matter as she rushed to the corner and the bucket there, grabbing hold of the edges.

Her stomach revolted, and she puked all over the floor and partially in the bucket. There was no one there for her this time, as her sisters had been before, to wrap their arms around her or pull her hair back.

Her internal organs constricted. She puked until there was nothing left in her except her sobbing. The shaking resumed, hard enough to snap her bones, and once her stomach was satisfied it had emptied everything, she slumped back.

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