“Are the prisoners underground?” I asked, eyeing a stairwell that ended somewhere below my feet.
“Some of them,” Marik answered, taking my hand and pulling me away. Up the stairs, across a hallway, and between a number of guards.
The walls weren’t wood. They didn’t groan and squeeze. But the air reminded me of the cargo hold in theAspire. Damp with mildew, saturated with cold. A draft nipped at my heels, and I wondered from where the current of air came. He strode through a wide hall, thick exposed beams overhead, and the scent of mint and rain made me whip my eyes to my right. Just in time to see tall shoulders and a head of thick, chocolate-brown curls. But the sight vanished as soon as it appeared, covered by a uniformed man standing at attention just outside the door. He tilted his head at us in interest.
The guard from the market gate.
I turned my cheek as he and Marik spoke in Rivean, my thoughts racing.
The guard from the gate, waiting just outside an office door.
Somewhere in the room just beyond my feet, Kye stood in Captain Cenek’s office.
“What is your name, miss?” Marik said.
Forced to look at them, I tossed my dark hair behind a shoulder, fixing them with a smile. “Diara.”
Across from me, Marik smoldered. The guard from the market gate nodded, heat sparkling behind his own eyes. “I’ll let the captain know you’re here.” Something about the way he studied me made my scalp prickle, and I quickly glanced away.
“I’ll wait with her,” Marik said, already moving down the dim hallway, guiding me with him. I counted how many doors we passed. One, two, three—
He pulled me through an opening, using the toe of his boot to slam the door closed behind him. A long table stretched before us, thick oak chairs lined on either side, an empty fireplace next to an open window. I didn’t have the chance to see anything else before Marik pressed me into the wall, his hungry mouth suddenly on mine.
18
Kye
Wrists in irons, I stared across a wide desk at an unsmiling man with short-cropped hair and heavy blue eyes. He leaned forward on his elbows, hands laced together, brows furrowed as he took me in.
My hands still bound behind my back, I knew I was just as ragged and fucking dirty as the two pirates I’d killed. Every bit the scoundrel as he thought I was.
“Where are you from?” Captain Cenek asked in Rivean, already finished studying me as his eyes dropped to the papers in his hands. Witness accounts of my transgressions.
I didn’t answer him. I knew my fate within these walls. Rivea was notorious for their harsh legal system. Nearly every crime was punishable by death here. I hadn’t spoken a word since they’d bound my hands and hauled me off, too worried my accent might give me away.
I didn’t need a Rivean captain wondering why a Calderian man and a Leihaniian woman had wandered this far in the bastard north. Not that keeping our identity a secret made any difference for me.
But it might for Maren.
I wondered for the hundredth time whether our disappearance in Cynthus had been reported to the Calderian public. On the eve of impending war, I’m not sure if the King would have been willing to announce our sudden disappearance. Intuition told me he'd be more likely to keep it hushed for the sake of kingdom morale. Aalto knew he'd stopped reporting when I ran off by myself years ago. But he hadn’t been at Cynthus Castle when we’d been taken. If anyone had raised the alarm, it would have been Hadrian.
Or no one at all.
I wasn’t sure. So, I kept my fucking mouth closed.
The man lifted his brows at my silence, then licked his thumb to turn a page. “And the woman you were with? The pirate girl?”
My jaw clenched.
“Piracy is outlawed.” He licked his finger to turn a page. “You murdered two men in cold blood.” He paused for me to do what I’m sure most men did when faced with the swift approach of death by rope. Plead their innocence. Swear their loyalty. Offer gifts or money. I wondered how rich he’d grown as the captain of this prison just by hardening sentences and waiting for his prisoners to bribe their way back to freedom.
Knuckles rapped against the open door behind me. “Sir?”
Captain Cenek motioned toward the owner of the voice, inviting him in. “What is it, Kazimir?”
Boots thumped, a man swerving around my body to hand a weathered scroll across the wooden desk to the captain. Cenek stood to take it, and the man glanced over his shoulder at me—the same guard stationed at the entrance of the market.
Something in the pit of my stomach tightened.
