Page 25 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams
“I admire you, though,” I say truthfully. “They tried to make you totally dependent on the Temple, completely brainwashed into loyalty and obedience, and you still came out of it able to recognize something was wrong about the lies they were feeding you. It took the truth basically hitting meover the head for me to even begin questioning things like the potion my nursemaid gave me.”
As the hours and days have stretched on, I’ve told Lafia more and more about my life. Nothing that Caledon would want to torture out of her, of course—I wouldn’t risk that. But plenty that I never thought I’d willingly tell a cleric.
“But that makes sense,” Lafia says. “It sounds like she actually?—”
She stops mid-sentence, interrupted by the clunk of a door and several sets of footsteps, and lets out a sharp gasp. I know she’s frozen with terror, wondering which of us is about to say goodbye to the other, because that’s exactly what I’m feeling too.
By the time the footsteps stop in front of my cell, my heart is hammering against my ribs. The barred opening at the top of the door darkens for a moment, and then a voice sounds through the gloom.
“Didn’t I say I’d come find you? I always keep my promises.”
Those words—an echo of ones spoken to me in a dream—hit me like a lightning bolt. The heart that was hammering in my chest a moment ago skips a beat, and I release a sound that’s half sob, half delirious laughter.
“Leon?” I gasp, not daring to believe it might be true, and at the same time knowing, deep within me, that this is how it was always going to end. Him coming to save me was as inevitable as the rising sun. There was no other possibility. Not where Leon is concerned.
“It’s me, actual flesh and blood this time.”
He says my name so tenderly, it’s like a balm on my battered soul. His words are followed by a deep rumbling from the earth. My whole cell shakes, and I know what’s coming.
The cell door is thick, and it takes the floor splitting clean away from the frame for a big crack to finally run up the side of it. No human, no matter how powerful, could use their terrial magic on a door reinforced with dimane, but the Temple forgot to take into account fae when they built these rooms. It only takes Leon and his soldiers a few minutes to pull the loosened sheet of metal out of the wall.
When I see them all standing there in the doorway, I have to fight not to burst into tears. The weeks—even months, I think it may have been—that I’ve been captured hit me all at once. I see myself through their eyes: crumpled, filthy, and bloody on the floor. It makes all illusions of bravery I have break open. I’m nothing but a terrified, hurting child, desperately relieved she hasn’t been forgotten.
“Phaia, get those chains off her,” Leon orders as he closes the gap between us in two long strides. He crouches down and pushes the hair from my face, his thumb wiping the stray tear that’s escaped down my cheek. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched by kind hands that I’m hardly surprised when more tears well up instantly.
“Don’t cry, princess. It’s over now,” he says. His eyes fall lower, taking in my bloody fingertips and the red stains on my shirt. His hands reach out to brush the fabric, and I flinch. His eyes, so soft and inviting a moment before, darken with rage. “My darling, what did they do to you?”
But before I can answer, Phaia is gently taking my wrists.
“Sorry, Ana, I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.”
She wedges something small and sharp into the hinges of my cuffs. A stone, I think. Then she holds my arms away from my face, and there’s a sudden ping as the hinges snap open.
Losing the weight around my hands makes me feel oddly unreal, like I could float wrist-first off the ground. I suppose I’m a bit delirious, and I feel even more so when Tira kneels beside me, pulling me into a hug so tight the breath leaves my body.
“I’m so sorry, Ana,” she squeals. “I’m so sorry I let us get into that stupid fight and?—”
“We need to go,” Damia snaps. “Even if they didn’t hear us destroying the door all the way down here, it’s only a matter of time before they find the bodies.”
Leon wraps his arm around my back and carefully starts to lift me, but I put out a hand to stop him.
“Wait. We can’t leave without Lafia.”
“Who?” Stratton asks.
“In the cell beside me. The Temple threw her down here when she worked out Caledon’s a solari.”
Leon hesitates.
“Please,” I beg. He meets my gaze and must see how important this is to me, because he nods.
“Alright, come on,” he says to his soldiers. “Check she’s safe first.”
He helps me stand and guides me as we leave what remains of my cell. At last, I get a sense of where I’ve been all this time. We’re definitely underground, in a corner of a corridor that slopes steeply upward into a set of steps. Lafia’s cell door sits right next to mine.
“She’s not chained,” Alastor says, peering through the barred opening at the top.
“Well, that makes things easier.” Leon grunts, and the ground starts to shake once more. This time, however, the vibrations are much more contained, and only a small section of the floor splits open beneath the cell door. Just big enough for a slight girl to crawl through.
