I'll have Malachi rue the day he ever let his guard down around me—I mean,Prince Malachi.The prince. Whatever the fuck I'm calling him.
Athud echoes from down the hall.
My back stiffens against the cold stone wall, but I’m the only one who seems to startle. The sound was so muffled, it didn’t rouse anyone else, which is almost more concerning. Who would be coming down here at this hour? And why are they trying to be so quiet? The dungeon door alone is usually a deafening and whining thing.
On the soft feet of someone who has traversed a treacherous, noctis-filled realm on her lonesome for a decade, I slink toward the cell door, keeping to the shadows that the torches cast my way.
I try angling myself to get a better look. The dungeon hall is too narrow to see much farther than a few cells down though. I can't hear anything either, so I can't say for certain if someone approaches.
Not at first.
I trust my instincts more than my senses though, and right now I have the distinct feeling that someone's coming. The air thickens with the heat of their breaths. The quiet of the dungeon livens in that subtle, eerie way it does whenever someone is nearby but out of sight.
Whoever they are, they are skillfully silent, which is both impressive and terrifying.
I'm tempted to call out. At best, one of the guards will yell at me to shut my trap. And at worst? I'm not even sure what could be worse than being locked away in a noctis stronghold. Death, I suppose…
Just when I decide nothing quite so dire could be headed my way and that I have nothing to lose by calling out, I see someone's silhouette in the dim torchlight.
Thanks to the hood that shrouds one of their faces in shadows, the other man comes into clearer view first. I recognize him instantly. His buoyant, curly hair. The colorful rings decorating his fingers and ears.
But even before I recognize him as one of the guards from Valor’s Rest, I don't need to see the cloaked person’s face to know who's leading this infiltration. I would've recognized him even if he'd waltzed in without a head. That uneven gait. The way he clutches the hilt of his sword as he walks like he's prepared to draw it at any second. The dark, dreaded locks peeking out from his hood.
"Rowland?" I whisper, pressing up against the bars.
He rushes to the cell, my name a harsh breath on his lips. "Charlotte! I can’t believe it. We actually found you."
His hood falls back when he reaches me, revealing the only face left in the realm that I've known my entire life. If I were the sentimental type, I'd confess that in the mere seconds it takes him to reach me, our whole lives flash before my eyes. Watching the sunsets on Hulbeck's beaches. Finding each other after our village fell. The many nights we've spent together in my hovel.
His hand closes around mine and my heart becomes as full and serene as a calm blue lake.
"You have no idea..." he begins, but he isn’t able to bring himself to say more.
His head hangs and he presses his forehead against the bars. When his fingers squeeze tight against mine, I wish he could hold me like he has on so many nights, his fingers idly caressing my every curve as I drift off to sleep.
But Elison stirs behind us—a smooth stone across my calm surface—shifting onto her other side like she does every thirty minutes or so thanks to her softening hips. Thanks to the baby Rowland put in her belly.
My hands drop to my sides, and he stares up at me.
“What are you doing here?" I whisper, glancing to his accomplice, the colorful guard who Rowland summoned when we were speaking in his office. I can't say that I would’ve pegged him as the breaking-into-a-noctis-stronghold type. Then again, the dark charcoal lining his eyes does make him more menacing than before.
As if remembering what he’s holding, Rowland shoves himself back from the door and begins fumbling with a ring of keys that belonged to one of the guards.
"You're not the only clever one," he says, a hint of pride twisting into a smirk as he crams the first key into the hole. It doesn't turn. He tries the next. "Besides, you'd be surprised how unguarded this place is. We were expecting a challenge, but there was no one patrolling the perimeter, and only one guard down here."
“Cocky sons of bitches,” his friend says.
Cocky as they may be, they’re also paranoid. I can’t imagine that they just left the perimeter unguarded, especially not days before their precious Hunt. Noctis are gathering from all over the realm. Surely, they have some kind of security. If not to help newly-arriving noctis to find their way once they arrive, to at least deter any non-participating noctis from breaking into the dungeons and eating us for themselves.
Something about this isn’t right.
Rowland tries another key.
"Still clear?" he grumbles over his shoulder, frustrated by yet another failed attempt.
"No signs of trouble yet,” the man replies. With one hand patting his buoyant and curly hair, he mumbles under his breath, "Unless you count the trouble we've made for ourselves by wandering into a bloodsucker-infested castle."
"I don’t want to hear it, Julian," Rowland growls, moving onto his sixth or seventh key.
