"You—you said we'd go free if she returned the keys!" Rowland bellows, a last-ditch effort to appeal to the prince.
Malachi doesn’t heed him. He continues marching down the dark corridor, cape billowing behind him as he leaves his guards to do their work. "I am the prince. I can do whatever I please."
17
A HEART’S BETRAYAL
Whatever insight Malachi gleaned into my relationship with Rowland had apparently been lost on his guards, for when they divvy up his crew into separate cells, they place him in the one beside mine.
He waits until they leave before coming to check on Elison and I.
"Genius plan," I tell him. "Now you're stuck here too."
“I was trying to help," he growls.
"By getting yourself caught and leaving your community leaderless?" I fold my arms and turn around to slam my back against the bars. "You didn't think anything was off when there was no noctis standing between you and the humans they’ve captured for the Hunt?"
"We scoped them out all night!" he insists. "They've only had a few noctis on patrol. I figured they were just busy preparing."
He did everything correctly. Even if he hadn’t, I should be grateful he came after us.
But I can find no such appreciation for him condemning himself and making our escape all but impossible now. They’ll be on high alert if they weren’t already. And now instead of needing to get Elison, Mira, and I out, our numbers have doubled.
"You shouldn't have come.”
Even without watching him, I know the look on his face. The quiet indignation.
My heart puckers at the bitter sting of retribution that settles there. He thinks he’s mad? He knows nothing of it. I didn’t betray him by sleeping with his only friend. I didn’t send him off on a suicide mission to search for said friend, ultimately leading in his capture. And I didn’t come traipsing after the both of them, getting myself caught and alerting the guards to the weaknesses in their watch.
We stand there in a familiarly charged silence, one that feels oddly comforting considering the rest of the gloom around us.
Until Elison joins us
Withone hand on her nearly-flat belly, she approaches Rowland as if I’m not even here. Even from the corner of my eye, I can see his hand reach for hers. It’s so tender. So caring.
It makes my heart bleed anew.
I wonder if I’ve ever seen them interacting before, or if this is the first time? If I had, how could I have missed the way they behold each other? The gentleness with which they take each other in and relish the company?
There's a tear in her eye when Elison says to him, "Thank you for trying to rescue us. It means a lot, Rowland."
"We're in this together. All of us," he says, turning to me almost as if he thinks I need a reminder about being a team player. He doesn't give me enough credit. The only reason I'm even in here is because, against my better judgment, I wasbeing a team player. "Now we just have to figure out how to get out of here."
Elison looks curious. "Until you arrived, we weren't sure there was a way out. How did even you get in?"
"It wasn't anything special," he says. "We came in through the main entrance."
Despite wanting to put as much distance between me and them and bolt to the opposite corner of this cage, my curiosity piques, as does my desire to get the fuck out of here before it's too late.
"Did you see any other ways in?” I ask begrudgingly. I don’t want him to think he was right in coming here, but maybe he’s gleaned some new intel that might be of use to us. “Was there another door, or are there any windows leading into this place that you think we could sneak out of?"
I glance over my shoulder and find Rowland shaking his head. "No, nothing like that. But...on our way down here, we might've found a passage that led from the dungeon into the castle."
"What do you mean? Like a secret corridor?"
"Something like that. We didn’t know which way to go so we followed every hallway we came by. One of them led us so far astray that I was pretty sure we were beneath the castle at one point. But we kept going. We needed to be sure they weren’t keeping you down that way. We reached a dead end and were about to turn around before Julian noticed a dim light that was bleeding from the bottom of the wall. I gave the wall a shove and it opened into a room colder than even the dungeon, but it was furnished and carpeted with fancy rugs. It seemed like the kind of place that might be inside a castle."
"And then what?" I press him. "Where did it lead?"
