Page 18 of To Dance with Death
To use them against me.
I leap to my feet and slam against the door, shouting—to no avail. Even so, I don’t stop. “I will tell the Syndicate everything, you hear? Your days of silencing women are over!”
His footfalls recede down the stairs.
Frantic, I whirl and race to the tapestry, yanking it back. Barreling inside the stairwell, I descend the stairs as fast as my feet can carry me, but the scuffle below is already echoing as an outraged Sundar demands to know why he’s being apprehended—and Copelan, too, when he argues on the prince’s behalf. I reach for the handle of the door, but pause.
I can’t stop this from happening. And if they catch me here, I will lose even more freedom. But I won’t let my father get away with this.
So I remove my hand. I painstakingly climb the stairs and wait, counting down the minutes.
I have one card to play—the only way I can think to protect them.
The dinner they serve me in my room later is strangely extravagant. Loaves of stone-fired bread sliced into ovals and smattered with plum preserves beside thick rounds of sausages glistening with a drizzle of honey. A cup of root vegetable stew. Baked pears smothered in cream and layered with berries for dessert.
I know why.
My father wants me to feel the guilt of dining in luxury while knowing my friends are hungry and alone behind the bars of a cell. I manage only a few bites before I shove back the tray, sick with worry. I’m sure he anticipated that, too.
I can only hope he doesn’t anticipate Sofya.
When the maid brought my dinner in, I noticed Silas outside my door, now that the rotations have changed.
I summon him, on the pretext of taking my untouched dinner away, and ask him to send for Sofya. He tells me it is too dangerous; she can’t be seen coming back here now that the tower is more heavily guarded.
“Then pass a message along to her,” I beg. “Tell her Prince Sundar and the Master of Revels are both in my father’s personal holding cell.” I explain my encounter with my father as quickly as I can. “Please, she must tell the council. He must be held accountable.”
My father is doing this without their permission, and if they find out, surely they will stop this madness, what with the Syndicate watching more closely than ever. He will have to release Copelan and Sundar.
Otherwise my father might ascertain Anton’s location.
All he needs to do is torture it out of Sundar—a job he’ll make swift work of in secret. If Sundar doesn’t break, he’ll use Copelan—or perhaps torture the both of them to get what he wants. Then once he learns of Anton’s whereabouts and has him assassinated, he need only wait for the clock to run out, knowing that Antoncan’tappear before the Syndicate.
I’ve done all I can do, save for praying that Sofya moves quickly. That the council does, too.
Because Anton might not be able to evade death this time when I have his pendant.
Fear closes in as swiftly as the dark. I sit in the stillness of it now, not bothering to light a candle as the room plunges into shadow.
We have no way to break Moranya’s curse before the thirty days are up.
I have no way to make it back to Razam to try, now that I am trapped.
And my father will find Anton.
At first, I dismiss the chill as a draft from the window—which was repaired while I was with my father earlier. It isn’t until the hairs on my arms lift that I feel it—a presence, like the one I felt last night.
Then a voice, soft as it is, echoes into the abyss of my mind.
Locked away again, are we, Vastianna?
My spine straightens, yet there’s no one in the darkness. No contours, no light. Nothing reflected in the window, in the mirror above the basin. Slowly, I rise to my feet. The presence is thick and pervasive.
I feel Illian the way I would a cloud blocking the sun—a sudden absence of warmth.
Then a flash of something pale, there in the mirror above the basin. As I watch, it materializes softly into the shape of a hand—long fingers, bone-pale and slender.
They stretch out around my reflection to curl underneath my chin, though I feel nothing.
