Sir Callie and the Dragon's Roost, page 7
“To the caverns,” Willow replies, never slowing. “We have to go the back route. It’s longer but if we follow them directly, we’ll be caught in a heartbeat. This is the safe way. I don’t think anyone knows it but me.”
“And this is the way you used to come when—”
“Yes.”
We turn a sharp right, cutting out of the street and heading straight for the sheer drop of cliff falling into the sea.
My stomach turns. “We don’t have to swim, do we?”
Willow glances back with amusement playing on his face. “Of course not. Well,” he amends, “probably not. Unless the tide is unusually high.”
Thankfully it isn’t.
Not that I wouldn’t swim great depths for El and Edwyn, but still.
“Careful.” Willow puts his arms out and gingerly starts down the incline. “I’ve yet to fall, but I’ve come close a few times. At least it’s daytime.”
“So you, uh, did this a lot, then?” It’s hard to talk and focus on my balance. The sea’s not even that tumultuous, but it feels like Helston’s trying to tip us right into it. I hate heights.
“Every day,” Willow says quietly. “Once I found my way out. And that took a while, of course. I wasn’t really expecting to find an escape, I was just wandering the caverns.” He jumps down a shallow drop and lands on a small outcrop, then turns to offer his hand.
Anyone else and I’d have rejected the help in contempt.
I accept Willow’s hand and hop down next to him. It’s colder, windier, and from what I can see, we’re just facing blank rock.
“Is there, uh, supposed to be a door?”
“These caverns were originally built to retain the magical.” Willow turns back to the cliff and sets about tracing the rock gently with his fingertips, searching every jutting stone for something invisible to my eye. “I suppose it makes sense someone found a way out. But it’s been a while— Ah!”
Something clicks, and Willow steps back with a delighted grin.
I cover my ears, which I’m pretty sure are bleeding, as the stone begins to screech. I’m also pretty sure all my bones are grinding in solidarity. Sure feels like it, with the ground juddering beneath us.
“Seriously? You did this every day?”
Willow shrugs. “It was a small price for a scrap of freedom. Besides, if I hadn’t, I would never have met you.”
A small price indeed.
Little by little—because I guess ancient stone is allowed to take its time—the cliff parts, each rock nudged aside to reveal the smallest hole. It’s so dark, if I didn’t know it was there, I would never have noticed it.
Willow drops to his knees and crawls inside without hesitation or problem. It’s like the hole shifts to fit him perfectly.
“Come on,” I hear him say, voice muffled and echoing. “Don’t be scared. I know the way.”
“I’m not scared.”
But that’s not quite true.
The grass is scrubby and sharp on my palms and knees, and when I tentatively touch the stone, it’s unyielding. I don’t think I can fit. More to the point, I don’t know if I’ll be able to find my way out again. It’s like an open mouth, waiting for me to jump right in and get swallowed whole.
But Edwyn and El are trapped inside, and I’m willing to bet my fear is nothing compared to theirs.
I take a deep breath like it’s gonna be my last for a long time, and I follow Willow into the darkness.
* * *
Even illuminated by the small light in Willow’s palm, every step is the same; every turn leads into an identical passage to the one we just left. And only being down here for a moment, my chest feels already like it’s being compressed. I have to check consciously that there’s still air in my lungs every few steps. I’m fine. I am. But it doesn’t feel like it.
Forget magic; this place would suck the soul out of me if I was trapped down here, even just for five minutes.
“How did you survive?” My whisper is painfully loud in the thick silence.
“I don’t know. For a long time, I didn’t think I had. My body still worked but the rest of me was gone. But that wasn’t because of this place. That started when Jowan died. When Father left. I was already dead by the time Lord Peran brought me down here.”
I suck my lip hard. The words don’t sound like an exaggeration in Willow’s voice. I remember the first day we met, the dead-eyed boy perpetually apologizing just for existing. It took a lot of work to bring Willow back to life.
We walk for what seems like miles. These caverns have got to take up the whole of Helston’s underground, winding around and looping back, because Helston isn’t all that big. It’s like they’re designed to be a trap and we’re the mouse who’s walked right into it.
I just hope we can find our way out again.
It doesn’t help that the farther we go, the paler Willow’s light dwindles, until it’s barely a glow in his hand.
“What’s happening?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
“Magic needs light and air. There isn’t enough of either down here to sustain it. We’re nearly there, though.”
“How do you know that?” It comes out more irked than I really mean it to but I don’t much like the thought of being gulped down into pitch-darkness.
“Look.” Willow closes his fist, extinguishing the last flickering remnants of his light, and points.
Around the next bend are dancing amber shadows.
But even with the torches hung in brackets, the cells are a void—sucking the light into the darkness and snuffing it out. Except in one—
My breath catches in my throat as something in this cell glints. Eyes. Bright yellow eyes.
The Dumoor kid.
I stop at the bars, my fingers going around the chilled iron. “Hey.”
There’s a shuffling, a clink of chain, and the kid creeps closer, peering at me as curiously as I’m peering at them.
Their hair was once some shade of blond and some kind of curly, but now it’s a filthy mat on top of their head. They still bear the marks they arrived with but if they were in a sorry state before, now it’s dismal. Beneath the dirt and bruises, their skin is parched and their lips are cracked. They’re so thin their eyes are like globes in their face.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t been fed since they arrived.
“What’s your name?” I ask, my whisper loud in the silence.
The kid has to give it a couple of goes before they manage a hoarse, “Teo.”
Willow joins me. “We’ll come back,” he promises. “We’ll help you. We’ll—”
Then, in the near distance, there’s a crack and a yelp, and Teo cowers back.
Elowen and Edwyn.
“Callie, no!” Willow grabs me before I can pelt toward the sound.
“We have to help them!”
“I know. We will. That’s why we’re here. But if you charge in, all that will happen is you’ll be arrested and I’ll be sent away.”
“So what?” I hiss. “We’re just gonna wait and let Adan—” I swallow. “Do whatever he likes?”
“If you confront Adan down here, he will kill you,” says Willow flatly.
I stare at Willow. I don’t understand how he can say this so easily, like it’s just some kind of fact I have to accept.
A thud, a whimper, and a tear-soaked snarl that I recognize as Elowen.
“Stop it! Leave him alone!”
And Adan. “Learn to shut your mouth, girl, and I will consider sparing your worthless brother.”
My chest heaves, adrenaline coursing through my blood. If I had Satin, I would be in there, my blade at Adan’s throat. Every molecule inside me is ready and wanting to fight.
But Willow is right.
Adan would snap my neck, and a dead Callie isn’t useful to anyone.
I have to wait. I have to stand here and listen and do…nothing.
I close my eyes.
“It’s been a while since we were here last, hasn’t it, Edwyn?” Adan muses. “Isn’t it nice to fall back into familiar routines.”
The thud of the blow rattles through me like my own body took it.
“Get off him,” Elowen begs. “I—I meant what I said! I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” I can hear the grin on Adan’s face. “Go ahead, snap your fingers and see what happens. Down here, your tricks can’t help you, girl. Down here, all we have is the truth.”
“L-leave her alone,” Edwyn mumbles, hoarse and thick like his mouth is full of soup. “Please. Do whatever you want to me, just…d-don’t touch her.”
“Now, that is a bargain I might consider.”
Elowen’s fury drowns out most of the other sounds, but I hear enough, and my head fills with hot red rage. Only Willow’s pinching fingers keep me in place.
“You are lucky,” says Adan after what feels like a thousand years. “If it was up to me, I’d do everyone a favor and rid Helston of the both of you. Be. Grateful.”
There’s the thump of something heavy hitting the floor, boots retreating, the squeal of old hinges, then Adan’s voice one final time: “Anyone asks, the boy fought. Understood?”
“Yes, Captain,” a second voice replies, blank, unaffected by the cruelty he’s witnessed.
I hold my breath, listening to the disappearing footsteps and counting the seconds before I let myself break free and run.
Willow is less than a pace behind me.
On the other side of the salt-worn bars, their cell is small, dark, and damp. Edwyn is slumped against a glistening wall, his face a mess of blood and blossoming bruises. He ignores Elowen as she reaches for him. He ignores us as we approach. No, “ignores” is the wrong word. It’s like he doesn’t even know we’re here.
But El’s eyes go wide and her fingers curl around the bars. She, at least, is free of damage; the only outward sign of her ordeal is the mess of her hair and the dirt from the cell.
“Callie!” Her voice is a rasp from screaming. She coughs, harsh and wheezy. “Willow…you shouldn’t be down here.”
“We weren’t going to leave you on your own.” I wrap my hands around hers. Her fingers are frozen and rubbery, like she’s been out in the winter rain for too long. I swallow hard, trying to keep my head. My sadness isn’t going to help her. It’s not my turn to freak out.
Willow crouches beside me and whispers into the cell, “Edwyn?”
Nothing. Not even a blink.
We need to get him out of here. Both of them.
I let go of El and search for the lock. It’s a cruel, rusted thing that might as well laugh at me when I pull at it.
I swear through my teeth. “Willow, help me.”
The prince joins me but there isn’t a flicker of magic left in his fingers.
We are powerless.
“I hate him,” Elowen snarls, stalking the cell like a caged wolf. “I will make him pay for what he’s done. I will make him feel every ounce of what he did to Edwyn and then double it.”
“And I’ll help you,” I vow. “Soon as we’re out of here, we’ll go straight to Her Majesty and show her—”
But Elowen’s contemptuous bark of laughter shuts me up. “She’ll what? Help us? Punish Adan? This was on her orders.”
Willow’s head jerks up. “No! That’s not…El, she didn’t mean for this—”
“I don’t care if she meant it or not! She sent us down here with him. She lets him do what he likes. She didn’t help us! And nor did Sir Nick. They both just—”
“Papa tried to help.”
“He didn’t try hard enough!” Tears roll furiously down Elowen’s face. “No one ever tries hard enough for us. No one has ever put us even close to first. We’re just collateral in their little political games and I’m so…sick of it.” Her forehead hits the bars with a thunk. “If we ever get out of here, we’re leaving. I don’t care how. I don’t know where. But Helston is not our home.”
I can’t tell her she’s wrong. Nor can Willow, though it’s clear he desperately wants to.
“They promised things would be better,” she continues. “They promised we would be safe. They promised and we were desperate enough to believe them.”
“They meant it, El,” I say slowly. “Papa and the queen…They mean it, it’s just things turned out more messy than—”
Elowen rounds on me with a snarl. “That’s not our fault! So why are we the ones being punished?”
I want to tell her she was right to believe, that the promise still holds true and this was all a big mistake. Just one bad day, soon to be over.
Except it feels like a lie.
I want to tell Edwyn sorry for what they did to him, for the queen, who let it happen, for Papa, who couldn’t stop it, for not realizing what was happening before it had already happened. For the kingdom he was about to pledge his life to, which failed him.
I want to, but that means admitting those things are real, and I don’t know how to do that and keep being me. Sir Callie, Champion of Helston.
So I say nothing.
I do nothing.
And the nothing floods my body like poison.
Willow slumps against the bars, eyes squeezed shut.
“What’re you thinking?” I ask softly.
“I’m thinking I hate this,” he says. “I’m thinking I can’t believe Mother would…I can’t believe she’d allow this.” His shoulders begin to shake, and when he speaks again, it’s through gritted teeth. “I—I never told her about what Lord Peran did to me. She never asked and I didn’t know how to bring it up. She thinks it’s all over and done with, but it isn’t. Not nearly.” He opens his eyes and looks across the cell at Edwyn, a silent broken bundle in the corner. “Nothing has changed because no one believes it needs to. And they want me to rule this place.”
Willow stands up straight and stares around at the dungeons, at his friends on the other side of the bars, at me. There are tears in his eyes. “This…isn’t my Helston, Callie.”
The statement is small—a guilty confession that would be treason in the wrong ears—and raises bumps all the way along my arms.
“Nor mine,” I whisper, and I wonder what that means for us, the prince and the champion.
But before I can ask, raised voices charge through the stillness.
“This cannot be the Helston you are willing to fight for, Ewella!” Papa’s voice is a boom, louder and angrier than I ever knew he could be. “How can a kingdom where children are treated like criminals be one you are proud of?”
“Those children threatened my court,” Queen Ewella snaps back, just as sharp. “They gave me no choice! I had to make a show of it. To protect them! I don’t know how to make that clearer—”
“Protect whom? Not the children. Certainly not your son!”
“Everything I do, every choice I make, is to create a safe world for Willow and those like him.”
“By criminalizing the very thing that makes them special?”
“By drawing attention away from the elements that put them in the most danger. Please,” she begs. “I need you to understand. I need you on my side.”
“I cannot support you if it puts my children at risk, Ewella!”
“I am trying to help them!”
“You are failing. You are failing them. You are failing Willow. You are failing yourself if you think that submitting to the court’s fragile sensibilities, a court who still believes in Peran, is the way forward. You are the queen. You need to stand up—”
“Yes, I am the queen, and you do not have the authority to give me orders, Nick! If it was Richard, you would never dare.”
“Richard would never allow this to happen!”
“Richard left us!” Queen Ewella roars. “He left me on my own, and I am doing my best to make a safe world for my last surviving son, and everyone—from every side—is telling me I’m wrong, that I’m not good enough. Well, I am your queen, and for once in your life, Nick, you will do as I command!”
The grown-ups round the corner and nearly plow straight through me and Willow.
Papa curses loudly at the sight of me.
The queen, on the other hand, is silent in her fury.
And that makes it ten times scarier.
I’m suddenly way too aware that this is kind of a big deal—not just a matter of being caught sneaking in where we’re not supposed to go, not just something that can be wiped away with an apologetic grin, but actually illegal.
And we’re in big trouble.
The queen turns on Papa, jabbing a finger toward me. “I told you,” she hisses. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, Nick. Your children run wild! They make it impossible to defend you against the court. This is why Elowen and Edwyn are in here. This is why I cannot allow Willow to—”
“Wait, what?” My heartbeat spikes and I don’t care that I’m being rude. It’s not like I can get in more trouble than I’m already in. Right? “Can’t allow Willow to what?”
Queen Ewella purses her lips with a quick glance at Papa. “Willow is the future king of Helston,” she says carefully, like we don’t already know that. “I don’t need to tell you that this kingdom…struggles with different, Callie. Even on his own, he stands out—”
“Why’s that a bad thing?”
“It isn’t a bad thing. Not by itself. His father and I have always supported and loved him for exactly who he is, against all the advice of the council. I wish this was a world where Willow—where all of you—could be safe exactly as you are, but it is both foolish and dangerous to pretend it is. The simple fact of the matter, child, is that association with you is a risk I am no longer able to excuse.”
It takes way too long to understand her. My head’s buzzing too loud, and those words are too big to make sense of fast enough.
But I get it all the way through when Papa growls, “Ewella, you go too far.”
