MARKS - Chapter 43

Chapter Forty-Three

Ward will escape the dungeon alive, tonight. It will happen. I have no idea how.

           

My feet strum a staccato rhythm on the cold floor. What if I was too late? What if they’d already killed Ward before I wrote what I did?

Hours have passed. The King hasn’t returned. Kent was relieved from duty, and no one else was sent to replace him. It’s still night; at least I think. The hallway is quiet: no sounds except the breathing and occasional groans or grimaces from others in their cells. My head pounds and my legs ache, my body screaming for sleep, but I want to stay awake. Ward is getting out, I keep telling myself.

Ward is getting out.

And please, sweet Saints above, don’t let me have hurt him with my words. He could get injured- my seven words wouldn’t prevent that. But he has to be alive when he gets out.

Please let it work. Please don’t let my words have killed him.

He was found because of my words. My stupid words telling him I loved him that had both of our names on it. What was I thinking? They only found him because of me. It makes sense that the last words I write would be to write Ward freedom.

And now I can go home.

My body throbs with exhaustion. I curl up on the floor. Just to rest. Just for a minute.

I’m dreaming in color when something startles me. I jerk awake, my chains rattling in the darkness. I’m still here, chained to the wall and all alone.

Muffled yells bounce down the hallway. I hold my breath and listen. Voices, frantic ones, and then a chorus of yells and shouts rises up from somewhere nearby. Pounding footsteps. Someone shouts orders.

I push up and press my face to the door of my cell. A rushing of feet echoes down the rock hallway, and more voices chase after it. All of them growing closer. Amidst the blur of noise, I hear men yelling. In pain. Or surprise.

My heart hammers and I grip the bars of my cell. A shout comes yards away, where the guards are posted at the end of the hall. I hear the crisp twang of metal on metal. Who’s fighting who? Others have come to their cell doors, straining to see. The torches in their sconces are few and far between, and darkness shrouds the entire dungeon. They could be coming to kill all of us. Footsteps pound down the hallway, and I scoot back, hitting the rough rock wall behind me.

          

A man races down the hall and stops at my door, rifling through a key ring.

“Kent?”

Kent shoves a key in the lock and pushes open the door, then drops to his knees in front of me. He pulls another key from his pocket. The shackle around my ankle clatters to the ground. Kent reaches for the other one.

“What’s happening?” I ask him.

“A riot.”

My second shackle falls free and Kent moves to the ones around my wrists.

“A riot?”

“Prisoners revolted, got out of their cells, and stormed the guards on duty. Half of which joined them in fighting off Blackfeet.”

My left wrist is free. “How’d they get out of their cells?”

Kent unlocks me from the last one and looks at me. “They might have had some help,” he says with a smile. He grabs my elbow. “Come on.”

He pulls me from my cell and leads me down the other end of the hallway. We pass cell after cell.

“What about them?”

“Someone is coming for them.”

I watch the last prisoner, his face pushed up to his door. Kent pulls me up a set of stairs and stops. Then he unsheathes his sword and grabs my arm again with his left hand.

The stairs dump us into a hallway clogged with men. Guards fight other guards. Kent turns and heads up another flight of stairs.

"The Chancellor is really the King,” I tell him.

“We figured that out.” He pulls me up and into another hallway.

“When?”

“Earlier tonight when he thrust a knife through the heart of the man we thought was King.”

Sweet mercy.

“Lyran prophecies are true, so we knew the man we thought was King clearly wasn’t.”

He comes to a stop and peers through the stairway opening. Then he pulls me down the hallway. We round a corner, and a large room opens up. Men fill it. A blur of tunics. Green. Not blue and red.

Colors of another Kingdom. Faraday.

They dash here and there, calling out orders and shouting to each other. One looks at us as we rush through the room. Kent nods to him, and the man lets us pass. Then I notice, Kent isn’t wearing his guard tunic.

He yanks me down another hallway. We burst through doors into an outdoor courtyard. Stars hang heavy overhead, and the night air bites at my skin. Men are everywhere.

A cloaked figure appears in front of us and Kent thrusts me forward. Strong hands grip my shoulders. I stare up into chocolate brown eyes.

Ward.

“Thank you,” he says to Kent, then takes my hand and once again, I’m being pulled to who knows where.

Ward is here. Alive. With me. Sobs spring up inside me, taking energy my body doesn’t have. But I can’t stop them.

Ward spins and pulls me to him. “It’s all right, Gretta. I’m here.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I need to get you somewhere safe.”

He leads me through a gate in the castle wall. People clog the city streets.

“Ward, what’s happening?”

He wraps an arm around my waist. “People are taking back control of their kingdom.”

“But how?”

“Nolan made contact with the Lyrans we’ve been using. One of them knew about another press. So they started printing. All about the King and what he’s doing. They got passed around. To the guilds. The docks. Even among the guards. It stirred things up, Gretta.”

My words come rushing to mind. The King’s evil will be written down.

We reach the end of an alley. A wagon hitched to two horses sits idle on the street. Ward picks me up and sets me in the back, then climbs up after me. The wagon jolts forward, sending me flying back. Right into Ward.

“Hang on,” our driver says. Nolan. Nolan is our driver.

Ward scoops me into his lap. Tears rush down my cheeks. I put my hands on Ward’s face. Bruises stain his cheekbones, and dried blood clings to the corner of his mouth.

“My words.” I rub my fingers over the bruises on his cheeks. “I thought he’d kill you because I wrote those words and it had my name on it.”

Ward shakes his head and covers my hands with his. “Your words kept me alive, Gretta.” He cups my face and with the gentleness only he possesses, presses his lips to mine.

I curl into his chest and rest against him, his solidness keeping me still as the wagon jostles down the bumpy road. “What’s going to happen now, Ward?”

He wraps both arms around me. “We’re going to live again, Gretta. All of us.”