Queen Of The Great Underworld

69

A key scraped my lock, and iron rang.

“Come out of there.” yarrow grabbed my arm and yanked me from the cell. I staggered out and stood in place while he shouted instructions to someone at the end of the hall. I could barely hear over the new surge of anxiety filling my head.

Movement fractured the tunnel of darkness.

Aaru.

His head dropped downward, and his stubble-covered face was ashy with grime and nearly two months in the dark. His clothes, which hadn’t fit right to start with, were tattered and filthy. And his shoulders curled inward, his posture bent under the weight of the Pit.

But then he looked at me—met my eyes. His were still the black of extinguished noorestones, framed with ragged hair, and they pierced through the panic boiling inside me. My quick breathing slowed to something normal and the black fog around my vision retreated. A sense of cool relief whispered through me, and for an entire second, I forgot—

Then his gaze cut to my cheek, and I burned with shame. I couldn’t turn my face fast enough to hide it, to prevent him from seeing what would surely become a spectacular scar. When I glanced back, he was gone.

Just a shadow in the cell.

What had he thought? I hadn’t noticed any shift in his expression—his face was as silent as his voice—but surely he’d been repulsed. I was ruined now, and if he’d ever thought of me in a way that one might call fondly, that, too, was likely ruined as well.

“Embarrassed?” Amusement filled yarrow’s tone as he turned toward me again.

I’d been born with one gift: my face. There was no way yarrow could understand what it was like to lose that.

“I have a surprise for you.”

Most certainly I didn’t want any surprise from yarrow, but when a low whine—and a rattle of chains—came from down the hall, I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

A dragon waited in the anteroom. Drakontos ignitus.

She was a juvenile, if the nubby facial horns and brown scales were anything to go by. In a few years, she’d look like a four-legged flame with fierce horns and a wingspan that rivaled even the larger species. But for now, she was a small creature—her shoulder would come up to my hip—and she crept low to the ground, shaking her head in small, determined motions.

Then I saw why.

She was muzzled and shackled, with heavy rings on each leg. Iron chains let four warriors hold her in place.

“What’s happening?” I whispered. “What are you doing?”

“This is Kelsine.” yarrow jerked me toward the anteroom—and the dragon. “Her parents were taken with the others months ago. We managed to hide Kelsine and a few of the other juveniles, but they haven’t been the same since.”

We were twenty steps away, walking fast. I hadn’t even had a chance to look inside Jan’s and Ilina’s cells.

yarrow kept talking. “The muzzle puts pressure on her spark gland, keeping her from breathing fire. This is the first time she’s been out of the Hall of Drakon Warriors. She’s probably frightened.”

Ten steps.

The dragon lashed her head as we neared, but one of the guards gave his chain a sharp jerk, and she stilled, fixing her gold eyes on me. Accusing.

Five steps.

yarrow guided me around the tethered dragon and paused me in the anteroom.

“What’s happening?” I asked again.

yarrow only glanced at his fellow warriors and nodded.

Together, the four men prodded Kelsine forward, into the doorway. The two at the rear bent and unlocked the shackles, and Kelsine’s talons scraped against the floor at the sudden freedom. A sharp grunt squeezed from her clenched jaws.

While the front two men bent to unlock those shackles, the two at the rear pulled copper rods the length of my forearm from their belts. Dragon reins. Kelsine didn’t notice, though. Or care, because the front shackles were off, and the guards were working on the muzzle.

Her wings twitched as the iron fell away. Flame lurched from between her teeth as the guards nudged her through the door.

“Wait—”

My cry was too late.

The guards put Kelsine, the frightened young dragon, into the cellblock with my friends.

KELSINE WAS GOING TO KILL MY FRIENDS.

But before I could take even a step toward the cellblock, yarrow grabbed my collar and hauled me back. “Don’t worry. She’ll take her time. That’s why I unlocked the other cells: to give her something to investigate before she reaches your friends. Imagine how frustrated she’ll be when she can’t open their doors.”

My stomach turned over and anxiety swarmed back. I had some time, but not enough time.

Time to do what?

Escape. Save my friends.

I needed to count. Breathe. Make a list. Something. How could I even think about saving my friends if I couldn’t save myself from my own traitorous mind?

My body betrayed me as well, trembling and stumbling. With my vision fading in and out, I lost track of where I was going. Suddenly, I was in the interrogation room. The same one as before.

One table stood in the very center of the room, holding nothing but a map, a stack of papers, and a pencil. Two chairs were pushed all the way in, both facing the side walls so that neither of us would have our back to the door. Twenty noorestones ringed the room.

We were completely alone.

“Have a seat.” yarrow motioned to one of the chairs. “We have a lot to talk about.”

My hands shook as I pulled out the nearest chair and pressed myself against the cold wood. I scanned the room again. Still twenty noorestones. Still too heavy with memories of bloodstains and Aaru’s screams and the unnatural silence.

No death chair.

No noorestones in basins.

No weapons, save the baton at yarrow’s hip.

“You’re not allowed to kill prisoners,” I whispered.

“I can’t control what a young dragon does, Mira.” He smirked. “Her flame only reaches so far. I suspect it will get rather hot in there, but they’re probably not dead.”

yarrow was a liar, I knew that, but I told myself this had to be true. Young dragons did have a very short flame. So maybe . . .

“Let’s start with something simple.” My nemesis moved near his chair, but he didn’t sit. He remained on his feet in a display of dominance. To show that though there was a chair, he had a choice about whether he’d sit.

I glared at him, wishing he’d burst into flames and die.

He did not.

Instead, he pressed a fist to the table and leaned forward, his fury barely contained beneath his skin. “Now,” he said, “tell me why the Luminary Council really sent you here.”

“I told you the truth.”

His mouth pulled back in a growl. “Warriors went to Crestshade and Thornfell. They scoured every port, ship, cargo hold, and warehouse. There was nothing. No trace of dragons.”

Chills swept through me, numbing. If the dragons weren’t there, then where were they? All this time, I’d consoled myself with the knowledge of their whereabouts. Part of me had imagined I might be the one to rescue them, but after Kyhan—

Well, I’d known then something must be different. That was why Kyhan and the other two had been at the Shadowed City docks, rather than Thornfell, where the shipping order had said they’d be.

“I’m waiting.” yarrow loomed too close.

“They changed the schedule.” My voice was small and weak, but I lifted my eyes to yarrow’s and willed him to see that I was telling the truth. “When I came to the Luminary Council with the shipping order, they must have realized there was a possibility I’d tell someone—like you—so they changed the schedule to keep anyone from rescuing the dragons.”

He seemed to grow larger, but he said, “You might be right.”

A knot of tension in my chest eased a little. “I love dragons,” I whispered. “I truly hoped you would find them. Better they return to the Fallen Isles with you than get sent to the Algotti Empire.”

Tense moments passed between us. Three, four, five. Then yarrow pulled back and crossed his arms. “All right. Say I believe you.”

He did believe me. Everyone knew what kind of liar I was—a terrible one—so he did believe me. He was just trying to scare me.

I counted the noorestones. Twenty.

“What other route might your council use to send the dragons to the Algotti Empire?”

As if I would know that kind of thing. He was the one with the strategic mind. I was just some girl the Luminary Council had liked to parade around. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why they would do this. The Mira Treaty is supposed to protect dragons—”

“The Mira Treaty is a sham,” he said.

I shook my head. People declared that from time to time, often at me, as though there was something I needed to do about it, personally. “It’s no sham. Just . . . some people are ignoring it.” Like the people who signed it.

yarrow blew out a long breath, glaring at me like I was a fool. “You’ve caught the Luminary Council in enough lies, haven’t you? You’ve seen enough to know that they aren’t the benevolent government you once believed.”

Well, that was true. But that didn’t mean that the entire treaty was a lie. “The government is made of people. Humans are fallible creatures. But not the Mira Treaty. It is an ideal.”

“Created by fallible humans.” He stood taller. I forced myself not to shrink back; I couldn’t show my fear. Not now. “The Mira Treaty holds all the appearance of being something good, but underneath, it is a sinister thing. A lie.”

I didn’t want to waste my time defending the treaty to yarrow, but he wanted to talk about it. Needed to, maybe. I just couldn’t decide whether allowing him to rant would put him at ease or make him more volatile. With yarrow, it could go either way.

I forced my shaking hands into the folds of my dress. “What do you think they’re hiding with it?”

He stared down at me, eyes hooded. “The Mira Treaty sold the islands to the Algotti Empire.”

“That’s preposterous.” I bit my cheek. Like always, the wrong thing just fell out of my mouth, without guidance from my brain.

“Of course you think so. You were conditioned from birth to believe in the treaty.”

If only I could make that preposterous comment disappear. Now that I’d brought up a dissenting viewpoint, I had to continue this argument. I had to let myself be convinced of his rightness.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me why you believe the empire owns us.”

He shook his head and paced the length of the room; my brain uselessly counted his steps (three, four, five . . .). “I have a lot of reasons. I doubt you’d believe any of them.”

“I am literally your captive audience. Tell me why you think my entire life was a lie.” Too glib. That was far too glib. I clenched my fists in my skirts.

Anger laced yarrow’s tone. “We aren’t in negotiations. You don’t get to make demands.” He pivoted and paced the other way. (Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen . . .) The anger ebbed, but didn’t fade.

I had to be careful. He had my friends trapped in a small space with a scared dragon.

yarrow kept pacing, and the echo of my question feathered into nothing. He had said we weren’t negotiating, and I’d kept quiet, so he’d decided he’d won.