Page 56 of Tower of Tempest


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“Hush, my dear

Let the fear

Fade and ebb away

Sweet little dear

Know that I’m here

Night and day”

But even the song couldn’t stop the hammering of my heart.

“The view is a bit of a shock at first, but you’ll get used to it,” a voice said.

My head snapped up, and I realized I wasn’t the only one here. The wind whistled through the bars with an eerie tune.

I reached for my magic but couldn’t grasp the thread inside of me. Iron. Of course. The iron dulled my powers. Gran had told me all the prisons across Arathia were made of iron to keep elementals from using their magic to escape.

My vision adjusted to the dark, my surroundings crystallizing around me. I sat on a gray floor, bars surrounding me on all sides, Winded far, far, below. So far below all I could see were the flickering lights of the city that looked like pinpricks. My gaze traveled to the high castle peaks surrounding me, the sweeping glass windows, the silver-studded walls, and I realized where I was. My back sank against the bars. I’d been brought to the castle prison cells, which apparently, were located at the highest point—and were outside.

My gaze landed on a woman, wingless, who stared at me, smirking. “There you go, putting it all together.” She spread out her arms. “Welcome. It’s a beautiful view, no? Unless, of course, you’re afraid of heights. But you have wings, so you’ll be fine.”

I clutched my stomach, which roiled with anxiety. “Please stop talking.”

I turned and rattled the bars again, then noticed the glass walkway that stretched all the way to a single door, which led into a high tower.

“That’s where the prison guards are.” The woman nodded her head. “All the cells lead to that tower.”

My gaze swept around the sky, and that’s when I noticed all the other cells. Every single one the same as ours, four sides of iron bars, all with a single glass walkway that led to the tower. The cages floated, suspended in air. Likely with the same magic that made the castle float.

The woman leaned forward, her blue eyes twinkling. “A few prisoners have actually managed to escape, but they unfortunately didn’t make it across the walkway. Wind blew them straight off.” She glanced at my wings. “Wings help, but even then, the wind is sometimes too strong.”

I pressed a hand to my forehead. I’d gotten myself into such a horrible mess, and now I feared there would be no way out. I’d escaped my tower, gotten to Winded, all for this to be my end. I had no idea what the king and queen were after, why their guards had taken me.

My head thunked back against the bars.

“I’m Emory, by the way,” the woman said.

Right. I had a cellmate. I looked at Emory, her white-blond hair short, brushing her shoulders, her blue eyes so pale they almost looked like ice. They twinkled like this was all some game and not our lives at stake.

“I’m Poppy.” I shivered and rubbed my arms. “How long have you been here?”

She shrugged. “A day.”

“How can you be so nonchalant about all of this?”

Emory picked a piece of lint from her dress, a bright blue woolen frock that reminded me of the sky on a sunny day. “What am I supposed to do? Be miserable, sink into a depression?”

“Well, this is a rather depressing place,” I said. “You’re okay with just dying here?”

She waved her hand. “Oh, I won’t die here. This is actually a vacation compared to my real life, but he’ll find me eventually—sooner than later—and I’ll be taken away once again.”

“Who will find you?”

She shot me a curious look. “The better question is why are you here? Ms. Doe-Eyed. You don’t look like you’d harm a fly, so what could you have done to get yourself thrown into the sky prisons?”

My jaw locked and I looked away. “I don’t know.”