Page 128 of The Shadows Between Us
“Good. I’ll order the staff to move your things over immediately. We’ll get some builders up here to take out the wall while we’re away on our honeymoon.”
“We’re going away for our honeymoon?”
He appears in the doorway, not having bothered to ask if I’m dressed. “Averylong one.”
While I managed to get my dress over my head, I can’t do the laces in the back. “Will you help me, or should I ring for a maid?”
He doesn’t say anything, and in the next instant I feel his fingers sweeping my hair over my shoulder. He works at the strings on my back, pausing every other one to add a kiss to the back of my neck. When he’s done, I reach for my gloves, but Kallias plucks them out of my fingers and tosses them away.
“No gloves.” And he grabs my fingers with his, lacing them together.
“You’ve suddenly become so much more demanding.”
“And I think you love it,” he says, pulling me close, running his nose along my neck.
Oh, but I do.
AWHOLE SLEW OFguards accompanies us down to the dungeons.
It will take some time, I think, to adjust to how many are appropriatethroughout the castle, now that Kallias will be vulnerable to attack constantly, just like any normal man.
When we’re let through a thick door with a barred opening at the top, I’m glad I didn’t wear one of my own designs down here. The ground is positively filthy. I suspect it’s never been cleaned.
Every step echoes loudly, and lit torches shine from their sconces. Electric wires must never have been installed down here. Why would they need to be? Criminals don’t need the light.
“Ikaros first,” Kallias says, and a burly man with a ring of keys leads us through a maze of cells before stopping before an occupied one.
Lord Vasco—just Vasco now that I suppose he’ll be stripped of his title—stands with his back toward the bars, facing an abandoned corner. The other corner holds naught but a bucket, and I don’t want to think about what it’s used for.
No plumbing down in the dungeons, either, it would seem.
“I just want to know one question,” Kallias says. “Why?”
Vasco doesn’t turn, doesn’t make any movements to indicate he heard our approach at all. He keeps his head firmly toward the corner as though it’s the most interesting thing in the world.
“My father and mother—” Kallias swallows. “They loved you. You had their respect. Why would you do that to them?”
Again, no response.
“You wanted the power, is that it? Without the Maheras line, you thought you would rule instead? Well, you wouldn’t have. I have third cousins. They would take the throne before you ever would. So why?”
When Vasco doesn’t move, Kallias screams. “WHY?” The sound bounces off the walls, and I resist the urge to cover my ears with my hands. I only stand by Kallias’s side, holding his hand for support. Thisissue is personal to him. I will respect him by letting him deal with it in any way he sees fit.
When the echoes die completely, Kallias tries again. “Did you think I would be easy to control? Is that it? You thought I would be your puppet king? And when I wasn’t, you thought to get rid of me as well?”
Still, no movement.
Kallias turns, taking me with him back down the hallway, but he says over his shoulder, “You have three days to think it over. After that, we resort to less pleasant means of getting information out of you.” To the guard, “Take us to Zervas now.”
“Your parents weren’t who you thought they were,” a cold voice says from behind us. Kallias halts but doesn’t turn.
“You were never supposed to be king,” Vasco continues. “Your father deserved what happened.”
Kallias’s grip tightens on my fingers, and I wrap my free hand around his upper arm.
“To Lady Zervas’s cell,” I tell the guard. And we put Vasco behind us.
We’re led down another corridor, and where Vasco’s cell was initially as silent as a tomb, Zervas’s rings with music.
