Page 22 of A Spell of Bones and Madness
“Shit!” Ajax sprinted into the room, spinning left and right in search of the Prytan.
“What the fuck just happened?” Dimitris ran his hand over his face, squinting into the darkened room before them. “I can’t smell her. I can’t smell anything. It’s like she was never here.”
That wasn’t possible—they had followed Ember all the way down those spiraling stairs. There was no door along the walls, no other corridor she could have gone down. Ajax had seen her with his own two eyes. She was there. It wasn’t just some illusion. She was there and she was hurt.
Ajax paced around the creaking stone floors, dust kicking up with each stomp of his boots. “Ember’s got to be in here. Maybe there was a trap door or something she fell through. I can’t—” His voice cracked. “I can’t lose her.” His whole body was heavy, muscles strained, temples pulsing, like he’d just watched his family slaughtered before his eyes.Not again.Because that’s what Ember was, whether she trusted him or not. There was not a world where he didn’t get the chance to tell her how he felt—had always felt.
“Did you not just see what happened in front of us? A shadowy ward locked us out of this chamber—do you not think whatever power created that could also whip Ember away with it?” Dimitris spat.
Dimitris circled the perimeter, sniffing about to try to pick up a scent. The wolf irked him, not only because of the way he stalked about like a predator, but the gaze he gave Ember, how he looked her up and down the first time they met. Especially the way hecalled her blondie. What a lame excuse for a nickname, even if the Prytan had seemed enamored by the dark-haired prince.
“I thought you said only your father and brother could aervade? So unless one of them took her, how else do you explain this?” Ajax stalked up to him. “I swear to gods, Dimitris, if your family—”
“You think it wise to threaten me, Ajax?” Dimitris growled. “Do not forget your place in this pack.” Instinctively, Ajax took a step back—a bend to the knee for his alpha, a gods-damned nature he couldn’t avoid. Pack politics would be the death of him someday.
“It was a mistake for us to come here. We should have waited for Nikolaos to send word to Aidon—or Katrin to return from rescuing Ander. It is my fault Ember is missing.” Ajax sighed, slumping his shoulders. He had to think, still his mind and consider the rational explanation for what happened.
So, of course Dimitris had to send him spiraling once more. “You’re right. It is your fault, spy. No one should be down here, in this labyrinth of the lowest levels of Aidesian, especially not a princess.”
Ajax was going to throttle the prince—alpha or not. Ember was so much more than just a princess and she was to be respected. How many times would Ajax need to remind him of that?
“Will you two quit your childish bickering,” Thalia’s firm voice echoed in the damp chamber. Mykonos, now shifted into that large creature, stood beside her, fangs glistening in the low light of the torch above them. “If you idiots could stop being at each other's throat, you would have noticed that there is another corridor out of here. Tartaros is known for hiding them.” She pointed at a small opening on the other side of the chamber, barely noticeable in the dark, but distinctively a second way out.
Ajax would have to remember to thank Thalia more often. He was glad they had the seer with them, even if he could sense her increased frustrations at their power struggle. She was wise, and loyal, and one damn good fighter.
Dimitris raced over to the opening, planting his palm against the cool stone. “How did we miss this?”
Thalia sauntered over to him. “Maybe my sight is just better than yours,dog.” Her painted red lips curled into a lethal grin, one of her black brows arched.
“You insult me while that thing roams next to you?” Dimitris nodded to the frighteningpsychí.
“Mykonos is a delight to be around. I am not sure I can say the same for you. Prove yourself, Prince, and maybe I’ll change my mind.” The vitriol in her voice did not go unnoticed by Ajax, nor Dimitris it seemed. His hands clenched firm and his jaw tightened.
The seer breezed by Dimitris to head to wherever the corridor led them, and Ajax could see the prince’s nose twitch, his silver eyes widening in disbelief. Not at the insult, Dimitris was never known to take those to heart, but something else.
“What was that about?” Ajax asked, striding up next to him. Dimitris didn’t answer, only stared down the hall at the woman before them, back rigid. Ajax shrugged off Dimitris’s antics—there were more pressing matters at hand. He closed his eyes, stilling his mind with a slow, deep breath. What horrors awaited them below, Ajax was not sure, but he would meet each one with a vengeance until Ember was back safe in his arms.
Chapter Sixteen
Kohl
Competition between rulers had always been a plague on civility in the isles, especially since the war. It was no different between Kohl and Alexander, but this hatred, this need to win, stemmed from so much more than the idea of power. Kohl never knew where his father’s hatred of the Kirassos family came from, but it had been instilled in him since he could remember. Nexos was not to be trusted. Not its current king and queen, and certainly not the offspring they’d born. Dimitris and Chloe were stealthy and conniving, supposedly taking after their mother’s powers if what Kohl’s father had told him was true. More dangerous was the fact that no one had seen the young princess before; she could be among them and no one would know. But those two childrenonly took after their mother. Alexander was a clone of his father. Shielded in fog and shadow. Manipulative. Aggressive. Took what was not his.
It was disgusting, hearing the man he hated most in this world speak her name with such passion in his voice. Kohl never liked torture, thought it a poor way of making people do or say what you wanted, but in this case he had decided to make an exception. For days he sat idly by as his father and Edmund peeled away Alexander piece by piece, recoiling from every scream, every trickle of blood. Then the words got too much to bear, the lies he spewed about her.
Because Katrin was not Alexander’s. She was Kohl’s. By laws binding them, by what he claimed from her months before, from the vows they shared. Something Alexander did not, and would never have, even if the tortured man muttered her name as he was ripped apart and barely breathing. Even if he claimed to love the very woman he’d once captured and stripped of home. Even if he denied that he hurt her, said he would make it back to her. It was driving Kohl madder than his damned headaches. This time he would do something about it—teach the prince what it meant to lie to a king.
Pacing back and forth outside the dungeons, charred flesh and vomit stung Kohl's nose. Edmund must have been here recently. His kind of torture differed from Khalid’s. The northern king preferred branding, and this strange form of something he did not quite have a name for. One time Kohl had wandered down during that particular bout of torture, seeing Ander kneeling on the ground before the king, screaming as he bent forward, cupping his ears, even though the King did not touch him. The entire time,Edmund only whispered ancient words Kohl did not understand under his breath, the black veins of the skilledpharmakoscovering all of his exposed skin. When the chanting stopped, Ander’s eyes had shot open right before he heaved the contents of his stomach onto the floor.
Screams were nonexistent tonight, only a shallow panting of breath reverberated off the walls. Ander sat propped up, head hung low. Sweat and blood and salt water from the leak in the ceiling dripped down his paled skin. Even when Kohl approached the dungeon, Ander did not look up. Instead, he kept repeating the same word over and over with a raspy voice.
Starling.
Ander often repeated that word, a bird foreign to these isles. Maybe he thought if he chirped out the word enough he’d somehow transform into the chattering creature and fly away. Kohl would not let him, not after everything he did. He would be bound to this iron prison until the day he died—and Kohl hoped he was the one that was given the honor of killing him.
Thick stubble covered Ander’s jaw, his hair stringy and crusted together in tight patches. Burn marks lined his forearms, accompanied by deep lacerations that even a healing tonic and the blood of a god could not heal. Those golden cuffs were working, draining the very will from the bastard's soul. Every marking was deserved, every lash, every scream that Kohl delighted in. He would need to remember to thank Edmund for crafting such a unique and useful imprisonment. Though in the back of his mind, he wondered what kind of sacrifice had to be made to create such a powerful tool that couldstifle the power of a god.
Kohl knelt on the other side of the dungeons bars, taking in the man he’d envied and hated for so long. After all these years, Kohl had finally won. And it would stay that way.
