Page 174 of Bound to the Shadow Prince

If I ever doubted Riza’s loyalty, ever, I need to be smacked upside the head. My former servant and forever friend tirelessly hauls my cart through the empty streets of Darkfell. She’s panting and sweaty, but doesn’t complain, and I hold her weapons in my numb arms and feel grateful for her loyalty. If I could hug her, I would.

The palace rises in the distance, and as it does, so do the voices. There are shouts of anger, followed by crashes of what sounds like pottery. Colorful hangings are on fire, ash drifting through the still air as we approach the mob of human slaves and the Fellian defectors.

I can’t help but notice there aren’t many Fellians with us.

I also can’t help but notice that every door we pass has a red mark on it, the mark of the plague. It’s terrifying and it makes me even more afraid for Nemeth. I can protect him from an angry mob, but if the plague is in the palace…

“Make way,” Riza cries as she carts me closer. “Make way for Princess Candromeda! We must get inside!”

A Fellian wearing a bright red scarf over his horns storms towards us. “Riza! You cannot be here. Tolian wants you safe?—”

She shakes her head, pushing past him. “Tell Tolian Candra needs my help. He’ll understand. Where’s the princess Erynne? Where is my mate?”

The Fellian glares at me as if I’m the problem (and I suppose I am) before following behind Riza. “They are deep inside the palace, hunting for Ajaxi and his whore.” He glances at me again and then growls, taking the handle of the small, rickety cart I’m seated in. “Let me do that for you.”

“We need to get to the dungeons,” I tell him, my words slurred because I’m exhausted and it’s taking all of my strength to stay upright. “Can you take us there?”

He looks to Riza, and she nods.

“Follow me,” he says. “And arm yourselves.”

We push into the fray inside the building, and everything is chaos. Many of the Fellians are wearing the bright red scarves over their horns, and they battle with others with bare heads and fight on the ground, their wings tightly protected behind them. The human women surge through the halls, destroying everything they can reach and shouting obscenities I’ve never heard coming out of women’s mouths. I don’t blame them, though. I’d be mad as shite too if I’d been enslaved. They attack everything with a vicious enthusiasm that tells me they’re avenging more than themselves. They fight for the memory of every person that was destroyed in Lionel’s awful war and the Fellian vengeance that followed.

Even if they free themselves, we haven’t won. No onewinsin any of this. We’re all coming out of this battered and shaken, the world far more grim than it was two years ago.

Me, I just want Nemeth back. Even if I have to spend the next five years back in the tower again, I’d do so gratefully. I just want him whole and well. I want to talk to him and understand the machinations behind what he did. I want to hold him close and know that we’re all right.

But as Erynne, my once-gentle sister attacks a guard with a wild, vicious light in her eyes, two other human women spattered with blood at her side, I wonder if anything will be all right ever again.

“Over here,” Riza calls to the Fellian pulling my cart through the madness. She points at a side door, and he shoves his way forward, the cart rattling as he pushes fighters aside—both Fellian and human—with his shield.

The cart rocks and I let out a yelp, only to have Riza come to my side. She grabs a short sword from the bundle of weapons I’m clutching and uses it to stab at a Fellian hand that grabs at the cart. I cry out again as she chops at the Fellian’s hand as if it were a vegetable and not attached to a person. Hot blood splashes my face and I flinch backward.

Our guard moves away from the front of the cart and sinks his axe into the back of the Fellian attacking us, then kicks his corpse away as I stare.

“We can’t let anyone stop us, my lady,” Riza says in a hard voice, kicking at the dead man. “If we stop now, you’re dead. Understand? We won’t be able to carry you out. Not in this mob.”

I swallow hard, looking around. It’s madness everywhere, but no Fellian is using his wings or teleporting. Those things must be too dangerous. I nod at Riza. She’s seen too much of war and I haven’t seen enough, perhaps.

The guard straightens our cart again and then hauls it down the side hall, surging forward until we come to another door, and then a staircase heading down. “The dungeons,” is all he says. “Now I must rejoin the fight.”

“Thank you, Raxus,” Riza says in a sharp voice. “If you see Tolian, tell him to be careful.”

He grins, showing the tusk-like teeth of the Fellian men, and adjusts his shield and axe, then runs down the hall back towards the chaos.

Riza studies me, pulling out another weapon, a dagger. “Can you walk?”

No, I want to complain. My legs still feel shaky and weak, and I’m pretty sure my toes remain numb despite everything. But if Nemeth is in the dungeon, that’s where I need to be. “Aye.”

It takes far too long to get to my feet, but I manage. Weaving unsteadily, I take the blade she offers me and tuck it between my breasts, like I used to with my enchanted dagger. It doesn’t want to remain in place, thanks to my filmy Fellian-make dress, so I hook the crossguard on the neckline of my dress and wrap my shawl tightly around my shoulders, winding it twice so I won’t have to hold it in place. Just those small tasks make me feel utterly exhausted, but I force myself to stand straight.

Riza nods at me and heads down the stairs, her blade in hand.

I follow behind her. The stairs wind down, narrow and circular, and it’s pitch black inside. It reminds me of my days in the tower when I was desperately preserving wood and matches for fire. I lean heavily against the inside wall, my hand pressed to the stone to guide me, and I move down slowly, counting steps.

When we get to twenty-three, there are no more steps. Riza grabs my arm, and I hear the rustle of her clothing. “I’ll find a lamp of some kind. Wait here.”

She moves away and I wait in the darkness, my eyes closed. Again, I’m reminded of my time in the tower, and as I hear Riza’s clothing rustling as she searches for a light, I think of all the times I got by with nothing. I think of how I recognized Nemeth by the sound of his wings as he moved, and the heft of his steps upon the floor. Can I find him now?

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