MARKS - Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

Time stops. Nothing but screaming silence and the beat of my own heart echoes inside my head. Those papers are mine.

Mine, and Ward’s name is on one.

The King kneels in front of me and fans my papers out. Some are crinkled and covered with dirt. Others are browned and ragged, as if they have been peeled from the bottom of a river. As though he held out his hand and from all across the land my words came flying to him.

The King reaches a hand to my face and sweeps my hair off my forehead. I bite my lip to keep my ragged breaths inside me. His hand brushes down my chin, following the slope of my shoulder to my arm. He pushes up my sleeve and exposes my bare arm.

“No saves?” He raises his eyebrows, a look of mocking. A reminder of why guilt is my second skin.

The King pulls up my other sleeve and runs his fingers over the three marks. Goosebumps flare to life under his touch. “And yet you’ve killed three. Interesting.”

His hand brushes over my face again, tracing lines over my nose and lips that feel like poison, a web of horror I can’t escape.

“Oh Gretta,” he says. “I’m so glad you’re here. I have plans for you.” He rises and nods to the Blackfeet. “See to it.” Then he strides out the door.

The Blackfeet grins down at me, a sinister smile the color of darkness. “Get up.”

My legs are like fragile stems, but I manage to stand. The Blackfeet unshackles my wrists. “Undress.”

A thousand images explode in my mind, all colored in horror. The urge to turn from him and undress is unbearable, but he’d only take my sign of fear and use it as fodder in his games. So I don’t turn and I don’t look at him as I unlace my dress and let it fall to the floor.

He stares only at my face, not at my body in just the thin shift I’m wearing. Then he snatches my dress and leaves, slamming the cell gate behind him.

He returns later with shackles and fastens them around my wrists with such a look of pleasure I want to knee him in the stomach. The shackles are tighter now, no doubt something of his own design and pleasure. A long chain is attached to each one. He secures it to the iron hooks on the wall.

“Shoes off.”

I stand rooted. He whips a large hand out and grips my throat. I gasp but can’t get in air.

“When I give you an order, I expect you to follow it,” he barks over clipped teeth.

His breath smells of ale and meat. I nod, tears leaking out of my eyes. He drops his hand, and I gulp in air and collapse to the ground. I have just enough slack in the chains that I can reach my feet. My fingers fumble over the buckles of my shoes as I suck in deep breaths of air. My shoes and stockings are off within seconds. He swipes them up and secures heavy shackles to my ankles.

And just like that, I’m bound to my King, fastened to his dungeon in irons.

The Blackfeet leaves and time turns to mud, heavy and drudging. Time is just one of the weapons the King will wield. I take to using the waste bucket in the corner, my shackles giving me barely enough room to reach it. Sleep comes in fitful bits, the stone floor too rough and cold to allow for any real comfort.

I wake to the turning of a key in the lock and the rough scrape of the iron door against the stone floor. Two men enter. Guards. I scramble backwards, sliding up against the wall, my back pressed into it, willing it to collapse so I can get out.

Their faces are expressionless. No glee or mirth; just a grim resolve to their duty, which involves being in here with me. I swallow down the bile that has built in the pit of my stomach. One of the guards clangs the door shut, and I draw in half a breath before the other guard smacks me across my face.

I can’t recall ever having someone lay a hand on me. I feel shock more than I do ache. But when a second smack lands across my other cheek, the sting is like fire on my face. I duck and throw my hands up, but with my shackles still holding me to the wall I can’t get them up far enough.

The two guards separate, one on my left side, one on my right, and with the shackles at my wrists, I can’t move my arms in time to block the blows from both of them. Pain blossoms all over my body. I can’t react to one blow before throbs from another erupts and sends ripples of pain through every nerve I have. One strikes a blow to my stomach. I bite my lip and slide to my knees.

The pain is hot and sharp, like they are pouring liquid fire in my veins. When will it stop? A punch lands on my side and I want the floor to open up and swallow me.

Let him think he’s winning, Gretta.

“Please,” I sob and cover my face. They don’t stop, and this time I yell louder. “No! Please!”

Over and over I scream the words, clinging to them as an outlet for my agony. Within a few minutes the guards leave me in a heap on the dirty floor and stride out. A plate of slop is shoved under my door minutes later. My stomach lurches at the sight of it. It’s a test though, surely. Someone is watching to see if I have the strength to eat it. So I lay on my side, curling my toes as wave after wave of pain pulses through me.

My left eye swells and soon I can see the plate of food only out of my other eye. The food looks like cow dung, but still my stomach growls. I haven’t eaten in over a day. Has it been more than a day? Already I’ve lost track of time, the difference between night and day disappearing between the grey stone walls.

I stare at the brown blob on the plate and my stomach churns. But no, it’s a test.

My stomach does not care about tests. I crawl to the plate and grab the edge, sliding it to me. The glob of brown mess on my plate must have come from an animal that had been dead since last spring. And the bread is spotted with mold. I grab it first and it’s hard as a rock, so I soak it into the goo and plunge it into my mouth before my good reason can tell me not to.

When I’ve swallowed the last of it and licked the plate for good measure, I collapse to the floor again. Cold seeps through the stones, but I cannot move. A cup of water appears through the slot under the door an hour or so later. Energy surges through me as I grasp the cup and swallow every drop. I sink to the ground, the room zooming in and out of focus.

A sharp kick to my ribs wakes me. The Blackfeet’s boots loom not far from me and rear back again. I scramble up as fast as my aching muscles allow me and fling a scowl in his direction. He frees me from my shackles and wrenches me up by my elbow. The hallway reeks with decaying flesh and blood and waste. The Blackfeet files past guards and other Blackfeet. We travel up stairways, pain throbbing through every bone in my body. With only slop and a cup of water in me, my breaths pull at my sides before we even reach the top.

A heavy wooden door opens. The Blackfeet drags me down a hallway draped with fine rugs. I stare at the dirt smudges my bare feet are leaving as we walk across the marbled floors. The castle. We’re no longer below it but in it.

The room I’m ushered into boasts a crackling fire that casts light and warmth on the entire room. Plush chairs sit in front of it. The Blackfeet pushes me down into one. Other things are in the room. A wooden desk with a chair behind it. Paintings on the wall of previous kings and vignettes of Dracon before she was a paled out version of her former self.

The King enters without pomp, and the Blackfeet wrenches me to my feet then shoves me down on my knees. My hands shake under my own weight as I bow. Finally, the Blackfeet grabs me and thrusts me back in the chair.

“Gretta,” The King stands towering above me. “How are you faring?”

Pompous slug. “You boast a fine dungeon, Your Majesty.”

He looks to the Blackfeet and grins. “Why thank you.”

He pours himself glass of wine and sips. Then he fills a second glass and hands it to me. I would guess it laced with poison if he himself hadn’t just drank from it. I hold it in my hand and wonder how severely they’d beat me if I threw it back in the King’s face.

“You know,” he says. “I’ve always been fascinated with the Lyrans.”

Fascinated? More like hell bent to seek us out and destroy our lives before killing us.

"Have you seen much of Dracon, Gretta?”

I watch his face as he walks across the room and sits in a chair. It’s a simple question, but one laced with accusation and knowledge he has that I am ignorant to. He could know about the cavern, or he could be fishing.

“I’ve seen parts,” I tell him.

“Much of Dracon has been bled dry since the war.”

A war you started, I want to retort. Is he trying to gain sympathy from me about the state of his Kingdom?

“Wars bled our coffers dry and taxes were raised to pay our men.” The King stares at his wine as though he can see the horrors that have ravaged the Kingdom in it. “Dracon has been torn asunder.” He raises his eyes to me. “You can help change that, Gretta. No more famine. No more taxes. People could live their lives.”

The hair on my neck prickles. Live their lives? “You speak as if you haven’t killed any of your own people.”

He is not taken aback by my words. Indeed, he nods knowingly, as if my words are a truth he can’t run from. “War is a hard thing. And we may be headed for another one with Faraday.”

“I thought you were making an alliance with Faraday?” Great Saints, I’m conversing with the King as though he were Nolan sitting across the fire from me.

The King glances at the Blackfeet again. “Rumors travel fast in the city, I see. Where did you hear that?’

“How did you find my papers?” I ask, ignoring his question.

The King settles back in his chair, as though gathering his words for a story. Rage surges within me. I’m not interested in his tales and twistings of truth.

“When the Lyran Wars broke out,” he said, “they were using their words to cause infection among my men.”

My own mother was part of the group that did that. Lyrans wrote the King’s army would be diminished by half. By the time the plague had swept through the Kingdom, not just half the army was gone, but half the Kingdom as well.

“They killed innocent people, Gretta. My son included.”

Son? I didn’t even know the King had had a son. Word of that never reached us, or if it did I don’t remember. Granted, I was young when the plague hit. Not a single Lyran got it - that had been written. But he’s right. Many innocent people did die.

The King stares into his cup again. “Braxton was three.”

His words hang in the air like a veil. “I had to come up with ways to find their words, Gretta. So we could try and be prepared. So no more people would die. That’s why I used the Lyrans I found to find the words of others. I did it to save people.”

Like hell you did.

My glare must speak volumes because the King crosses his leg and sips more of his wine. “Well, now the Prince of Faraday has Lyrans and is threatening to send a second plague. It would wipe the people of Dracon off the map.”

Not likely. They’d write a plague that hits his men again.

That hits Ward.

My empty stomach tumbles over itself. I bite my tongue to keep from poking.

“You’re the only Lyran we’ve found, Gretta. The only words in Dracon we've found are yours.”

There are more words than mine. The ones in Ward’s paper. The woman we found dead in the sewers. He’s lying.

“You can help me Gretta. I need you to write something for me.”

I’m sure he does. I ease my face into a look that is hopefully more eager than curious and filter the rage from my voice. “To write what?”

The King stares at me, his manicured brows arched above his eyes. “I need you to write that Faraday’s prince will not be welcome home.”

I repeat the words in my head. Faraday’s prince will not be welcome home. What does he hope to accomplish with that? No heir in Faraday? Has the prince been forced to stay here? To what end?

The words make no sense, something that hardly seems important. Seven words, and I could leave.

But there’s no way I’ll do that: write in such a scope that an entire kingdom is affected by my words. I think of my parents. Of Ward’s. Of Sam and Meggie and Ashtin. Of Blair and Nolan and their children. I’ll not be the one who paves the way for destruction. I’ll not play the King’s game.

I set the wine on the table and stand. “I’d like to go back to my cell now.”

The King cocks his head and smiles. “I thought you would say that.” He sets his glass down and nods to the Blackfeet behind me. “Don’t worry, Gretta. You'll be begging to get out of it soon enough.”