Chapter Text
CINDER
I retrieved the shackles from where they'd fallen earlier and put them on the king. He was much less composed than I remembered, but I'd only seen him at a distance... And without the bruises.
When I'd imagined breaking into the castle, punching the king hadn't been on the list of things I'd wind up doing. I hadn't planned it. It was just that when I saw him, I lost control for a second. He'd hurt so many people I cared about, and until now, he'd gotten away with it. Not many things pissed me off more than someone in power hurting innocent people and getting away with it.
Alaric hauled the king to his feet and shoved him forward. For once, Alaric wasn't even trying to hide how he felt. His jaw clenched, and his hands balled into fists so tight that his knuckles had gone white. He was breathing hard, holding himself back from finishing what I'd started a few minutes before. It reminded me of the day he'd learned the truth about his past, but unlike then, Alaric was in complete control, not the spirits.
I wanted to ask him if he was all right, but I'd already done it twice before. He hadn't answered either time. Obviously, he wasn't all right, and he hadn't worked out how to deal with it yet, so I was trying my best not to push him.
"Where is Ryan? Is he holding the siege tunnels?"
"He was when I left," I replied.
"Any trouble?"
"No. It was all clear. We can meet up with Nate and..."
"Not yet."
I glanced toward the window. Outside, the sounds of fighting continued. We'd been discovered. Yes, we had the element of surprise, and more numbers than the king's men were expecting. It also helped that Alaric had sent Nate to lock the armory beforehand... But the Corpsmen were putting up one hell of a fight, regardless...
"I thought we were taking the king to Nate?"
"We were. And now we're taking him to the siege tunnels."
"All right. But Nate's probably waiting..."
"He'll be fine," Alaric replied.
He'd never left Nate to his own devices before, always worrying about him nearly to the point of self-sacrifice.
I caught Alaric's arm and pulled him away from the king, toward the corner of the room where we could talk. He didn't resist, but I could feel the tension in him.
"What's going on? If the plan changed, I'd like to know."
"As I said, he knows where my mother is buried. I believe he told me the truth about where she is, but I don't trust that he isn't sending me into a trap. If that is the case, I will make him walk into it first. He's a coward, so he'll tell me where they are, if there are any. And if he doesn't tell me, he'll be the one taking the brunt of it."
It was a fair point, but it was still a risk. "What if he dies? Won't that be kind of a political mess?"
"If he dies in the tunnel, then Nate will be absolved of any guilt in the eyes of the nobility, and the Lower Enders can't be blamed if we can stage it to look like he had an unfortunate accident in the tunnels while trying to escape the castle. Very few people are aware that the tunnel collapsed because the king told no one that he'd done it..."
"He did it?" I'd missed a few things, apparently.
"So he claims. Please, Cynthia... I don't want to do this alone, and you are the only person I trust. I need you with me. "
I huffed, blowing a few strands of bloodstained hair out of my face. Obviously, I wasn't going to say no. "All right. Let's go."
He took one of my hands in his. "Thank you."
I looked over at the king and found him staring back at me through eyes that were quickly swelling shut. He watched me like he was seeing something he didn't understand, but was desperately trying to figure out.
"What are you looking at?" I asked him, just to be sure, and hoped it'd make him look away. It didn't. He was a king, and I was sure he was used to staring people down and making *them* look away first. Well, he was out of luck with me. I frowned at him and put my hands on my hips.
Alaric leaned close to me and whispered, "Will you watch him? I need a minute."
I nodded.
"If he tries anything, or looks at you wrong... Kill him."
I smiled and pulled my dagger from its sheath. "Gladly."
Alaric headed for the door and stepped out, leaving me alone with the king. I briefly thought about just killing the man right then and there. I honestly didn't think Alaric would really care if I had a reason or not... But we needed him. For now, anyway.
"He listens to you," the king said.
I snorted. "If you're about to try and play to my sympathetic side and get me to talk him out of killing you, you're wasting your breath. And he does what he wants, by the way."
The king got up, hands half-raised and open to show he had no weapons, and moved stiffly to sit behind his desk. I flipped my knife, adjusting the grip just in case, and watched him. I could bullseye a target with a throwing knife at three meters, no problem. The dagger wasn't weighted correctly for throwing, but Mye had made me practice with all sorts of knives. I could kill him from here if he slipped up and gave me a reason to.
"Do you still have what you stole from me? I assume you understand the value of what you have, since you went out of your way to take it. He wanted to leave, but he's fighting for you, which must mean you still have it..."
He really believed that I would do that? Even more ridiculous, he assumed Alaric didn't care about anyone but himself and would only help other people if he was forced to.
"You mean the control? No, I don't," I said, leaning back against the wall and offering him a grin that wasn't even remotely friendly. "I gave it to Alaric. I assumed you were smart enough to figure that out by now," I threw his own words back at him.
He nodded, watching me warily. He should. I was tempted to punch him again, just for that assumption. The only thing keeping me back was the fact that Alaric needed to find where his mother was buried, and if I beat the king senseless, he might not be much help.
"You know, Alaric just wanted to be left alone. Even after everything you did, he just wanted to be free. If you'd let him go, none of this would've happened."
He opened his mouth, but I held up a hand. I didn't want to hear an excuse or explanation for why he'd hunted down someone I loved. It would only make me angrier, and I was trying very hard not to kill him while we still needed him.
"Who are you to him?" the king asked.
I didn't know how to reply to that, and even if I'd had a perfect answer, the king didn't deserve to hear it. He should learn to mind his own damn business, but before I could tell him as much, the door opened.
Alaric seemed calmer now, if only slightly. "The hall is clear. We need to go now."
I crossed the room and dragged the king out of his chair. He resisted, not used to being manhandled. I shoved him, and he staggered forward, catching himself before he went down.
"It's not too late to stop this," he said, now trying to win Alaric over since he realized I wouldn't listen. "We can come to an agreement. It doesn't have to be like it was before."
Alaric didn't even glance at the king when he replied, "You'll do as I say, for a change, then perhaps I'll consider hearing you out. Not before."
"I know you're... I know you're angry, and that what happened hurt you, but it doesn't have to be like that now. We can fix this, son. Don't do something you'll regret..."
Alaric went completely still, and for a second, I worried that he wanted to believe the king so badly that he'd ignore logic, but I really should've known better.
"I won't be your son only when it's convenient for you. I wasn't then, and it's too late now."
The king's shoulders drooped. He didn't reply, perhaps because he didn't know what to say. He'd never been the powerless one in the dynamic between them, and now he was.
Alaric glanced back out into the hall to double-check that it was still clear and nodded back at me.
"What do we do if someone sees us with him looking like that?" I gestured at the king's battered face.
"No one will stop us," Alaric replied in a tone that suggested that if they tried, they'd be sorry.
I believed him.
We left the king's study and made our way down the hall. It was empty. Surprisingly so. I'd had to fight my way up earlier. Now, it was unusually quiet and very, very cold. Trying not to be obvious about it, I glanced around, wondering exactly how many spirits were close by right now. Each exhale came out in a haze of steam, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I'd only felt this much energy in the cemetery, so there must be dozens of spirits, if not more.
We came to the landing above the stairway, and I flinched back when I nearly ran face-first into a castle-guard, but he only stared at me blankly, not reaching for his weapon. His eyes were glazed, and his hands were on the stone wall, pressing his fingers into the time-worn texture there.
"Been so long since I felt anything..." the man said.
"Possessed?" I whispered to Alaric.
He nodded and addressed the spirit. "Excuse me. We need to get by."
"Right, sorry. I forget I'm solid now." He thumped the guard's chest and laughed as he sidestepped, stumbling a bit and then heading into the hall we'd just left, feeling the tapestries on the wall as he went.
The king had gone a shade paler as he looked over his shoulder to watch the man.
"What's the matter?" Alaric asked. "It's not as if you've never seen someone possessed before. Or does it only bother you if that someone isn't me?"
The king wisely kept his mouth shut this time.
We took the stairs slowly. Alaric went first, keeping a steadying hand on the wall beside him as he descended the steps. The king followed him, and I went after the king, keeping a tight grip on one of his arms, and my dagger pressed against his side, just enough that he'd feel it there and know I was perfectly happy to shank him if he did anything I didn't like.
We passed three more possessed guards, none of whom stopped us.
Halfway to the siege tunnels, we narrowly avoided a guard patrol, momentarily stepping into a small alcove and waiting until their passing footsteps were no longer audible. Just to be on the safe side, I covered the king's mouth in case he got any ideas, and he had the audacity to sound offended.
Once the coast was clear, I pushed him out ahead of me again. He seemed resigned, but I wasn't going to take any chances and let my guard down for a second. Just because he could play the docile prisoner didn't mean anything. I could pretend to be something I wasn't, too.
"What do you intend to do once you find what you're looking for?" the king asked.
Alaric ignored him, glancing both ways down a narrow hall before stepping into it and turning right. He glanced back, past the king, toward me. "There's a servants' hall this way. The guards won't use it, and it opens near the safe room."
I let him pick our path. Occasionally, he would stop and wait until distant voices up ahead would fade, and then we would move again. Alaric paused beside a tapestry depicting a royal hunting party. He pushed it aside and revealed a narrow door.
"No one wants to see the help," he explained. "Even their doors are hidden."
He was right. I'd sneaked into the castle to help him, dressed as a servant, and it only worked because nobody really looked at me until it was too late.
The servants' hall was cramped and smelled faintly of dust. Ahead of us, Alaric knew just when to turn to avoid running into walls, even in near-complete darkness. Either he'd come this way before, or he was following a spirit who knew the path.
After a few minutes following the narrow corridor, we came to a set of death-trap stairs that were so narrow the king missed the first one and nearly fell. He was lucky I'd been holding onto his arm, or he would've gone down.
Thankfully, at the foot of the stairs, a little door let us out into a wider hall that I recognized. At the far side of it, I could see one of Ryan's mercenaries standing guard outside the safe room door, leaning against the wall and holding his crossbow under one arm while he smoked a pipe with his other hand. I rolled my eyes. Hopefully, Ryan wasn't paying them for that level of service.
When he spotted us, he momentarily raised the crossbow and then lowered it when recognition hit him. "Hey, boss!" he said, grinning at Alaric. He didn't question why we were here, which I suppose was for the best. The man opened the door for us with a sweeping bow, pipe clutched between his grinning teeth.
Inside the large circular room, lounging on expensive pieces of furniture, Ryan's men had taken to sampling various goods they'd stolen from the castle: wine, a cheese wheel, and some kind of fruit tarts. They were *supposed* to stay here, but some of them must've gotten carried away - to the kitchen. I frowned at the nearest one.
"When you said you'd be 'guarding the tunnels', I didn't know you'd be detouring to the kitchens after I left."
"What?" Ryan asked. "My men have been doing a fair bit of charity work for you lot. I need to keep 'em paid somehow, don't I? Besides, looks like we're entertaining royalty!" He raised his glass toward the king.
The king, whose wine Ryan's men were in the middle of drinking, wasn't impressed. He looked like he had something scathing to say, but Alaric interrupted before Ryan or the king could trade jabs.
"Is the tunnel clear, or did you all leave it unguarded on your little venture?" Though his tone was neutral, there was a cold undertone to it that stopped everyone in their tracks.
Ryan glanced at Alaric, opened his mouth to reply, but he thought better of whatever snarky retort he'd planned. "I stayed behind with half my crew. Nobody came in or out. It's clear."
"Keep it that way. If we haven't returned within two hours, tell Mye where we've gone."
"Need backup?" Ryan asked.
"I have backup. Keep the tunnel open for us."
Ryan nodded. He got up from where he'd been lounging, crossed the room, and pulled the heavy door to the tunnel open for us. Alaric paused for a moment, retrieved a torch from the wall, and led the way into the dark.