Caged Heart

Chapter 21

The dungeon was cold. That was the first thing that Serenity noticed as she descended the steps that led there. The second thing she took note of was that it was eerily quiet. She had thought that Emerson or one of the other two prisoners would've been making some kind of noise, but they most likely were told to be quiet if they tried anything—that, or they were just asleep as of this moment.

Her footsteps echoed throughout the stoned basement, and she could hear water dripping from somewhere. The smell was the worst part of the dungeons. She hadn't expected it to smell great, but the rankness of it made her want to vomit. She wondered how the smell had never wafted into the rest of the palace before; that's how bad it was.

As she looked into each of the cells, her anxiousness and her frustration raised each time she didn't find Emerson. She soon came upon the end of the cell block and saw that there were now three paths she could take—straight, left, or right. Looking down each of the paths, she saw that the straight path led to more cells, but the other two paths both had guards patrolling them. She figured either way she took that she would come across any one of the three prisoners that were residing down in the disturbing place. She decided on taking the path to the right first.

"Your highness," one of the guards said as she came into their line of sight, "what are you doing down here?"

"I'm here to speak to a prisoner." She looked at him, donning the court-mask that she always had, her uneasiness being pushed back behind the facade.

"Your father was perfectly clear on his orders. No one is to speak to any of the—"

"It was my father that sent me down here." She lied through her teeth, "Since his maj—Emerson and I were the closest, he wanted me to be the one that retrieved his confession."

The guards—eight of them in total on this one cell block—looked at each other, varying degrees of belief and confusion washing over their faces. Serenity's hand twitched as it always did when she was nervous, so she hid that fact by folding her hands in front of her; she was sure she looked like her mother at that moment.

"In the state my father is in you wouldn't want to keep him waiting, would you?" She raised an eyebrow at all of them, catching their attention again.

At that, they seemed to believe her. One of the guards—she assumed he was the one in charge—stepped forward and bowed to her, gesturing for him to follow her to Emerson's cell. As they walked, she looked into each of the cells that they passed, her breath hitching upon seeing the glittering black uniforms of the Hallow guard. She hadn't realized her father called for their arrest as well.

They walked to the far end of the wall and turned left, coming upon a wooden door. Once it was opened, her eyes fell on a lone cell in the middle of the room. No, it wasn't a cell—it was a cage. She suppressed the urge to gasp to keep her blank expression, but that became hard to do when she saw the crumpled outline of a body on the ground.

Emerson.

He looked to still be breathing—the sides of him were expanding like that of someone that was still alive—but even though his back was turned, she could tell that he was miserable. It took everything in her to not run over to the bars, call out his name, and hold him in her arms. Instead of doing that, she stood close to the guard as he knocked on the bars harshly, making both her and the prisoner inside of the cage jump.

"You have a visitor." He said in a gruff, almost annoyed, voice.

Emerson quickly sat up and turned to face the two of them, the cold look in his eyes wavering when he saw Serenity standing there. He refrained from saying anything, moving back to sit against the bars on the other side so that he could look at them more easily. The princess took a step closer to the cage, noting how Emerson was looking between her and the guard; she got the hint.