Falling Kingdoms 6: Immortal Reign (First 2 Chapters)

Chapter 2

The guard led Cleo down the dark and narrow dungeon hallway to where the empress of Kraeshia, Amara Cortas, waited.

Amara smiled at her in greeting.

Cleo didn't smile back. Instead, her gaze flicked to the brace on Amara's freshly broken leg and the cane she leaned upon. She winced as she remembered the gruesome snap of the bone last night, when Amara had been thrown into a deep pit along with the rest of the group, waiting for their deaths, both rebel and royal alike.

Carlos, the empress's captain of the guard, stood like a menacing yet protective shadow next to Amara.

"How are you feeling?" Amara asked tentatively. "I haven't seen you all day."

"I'm well enough." Cleo fisted her right hand that now bore the water symbol—two parallel wavy lines. The last person who'd shared this marking had been a goddess.

But Cleo didn't feel like a goddess. She felt like a seventeen-year-old girl who hadn't slept at all last night after waking abruptly from a vivid dream in which she'd been drowning. Her mouth, her throat, her lungs filling with a sea of water. The more she struggled, the more impossible it was to breathe.

She woke just before she would have drowned.

Cleo nodded at the wooden door to Amara's right. "He's inside?"

"He is," Amara said. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I've never been more sure of anything. Open the door."

Amara gestured toward Carlos, and he opened the door that led into a small room no more than eight paces wide and eight paces long.

A prisoner was inside, his hands chained above his head, lit by two torches on the stone walls on either side of him. He was shirtless, his face bearded, his hair shorn short against his scalp.

Cleo's heart began to pound hard against her chest at the sight of this man. She wanted him dead.

But first she needed answers.

"Leave us," Amara said to Carlos. "Wait in the hall."

Carlos's heavy brows drew together. "You want to be left alone with this prisoner?"

"My honored guest wishes to speak with this former guard—one who would choose to do Lord Kurtis's bidding rather than mine." She sneered at the prisoner. "Yes, I want you to leave us alone with him."

Honored guest. What an strange description for Amara to use for someone she had offered up, along with the others, to the fire Kindred as a willing sacrifice only last night.

Of course, the night had not gone nearly as smoothly as the empress had anticipated.

Very well, I'll play the role of your honored guest, Cleo thought darkly. But only as long as I have to.

Carlos bowed, and with a gesture toward the guard who'd led Cleo there, they swiftly departed and closed the door behind them.

Cleo's gaze remained fixed on the bearded man in the shadowy room. Once he had worn the same dark green guard's uniform as Carlos and the others, but now his dirty trousers were in tatters.

The room stank of rot and filth.

The symbol on the palm of Cleo's hand burned.