Heart of Ash (The Dark Arcane Series: Book 1)

Chapter Twelve

Shock held Darius captive on the floor for half a second before the adrenaline kicked in and he raced for the door.

It was barricaded shut.

Grunting, he bashed on the door, again and again, barely feeling the splintering pain in his hands. His head still spun from the beating he took, not helping the confusion that he was drowning in.

All he could see was his mother's face as they had dragged her away.

That had to have been a dream, a nightmare, a falsity conjured up by some higher being—the gods, the Mothers, whoever was up there.

Breathing heavily, he rested his forehead on the door, and slammed his hand into it a final time.

Her last request was not for him to save her, but to save himself. He could try to get her released but—what she had said, don't trust the Elites. He wouldn't be able to free her the official way, no matter how many fancy words he used or bribes he gave.

This was not real. There was no reason for her to have been charged. What was it the damned Elite said, treason? Impossible. It just could not be, treason just didn't happen.

And, vaetterre? Even more impossible; he knew his mother, the thimble she wore when sewing to protect her thumbs, the way she sung out of tune with a straight face, the times he had seen her destroy every single opponent in pyesheu with a proud smile—she was not a witch.

Her long since given up trying to save those burnt in the pyres but this—Darius was not going to let her die.

That thought became a mantra, that pushed him through the moonlit hours. 

Darius endured the night—barely—by wringing his brain for a solution. Whatever he did, it would have to be tomorrow; no one charged with those crimes lived longer than that. His heart tightened at the thought. He also wouldn't be able to do anything inside the castle; there were too many Elites, and too high a security.

By the time morning came, bags weighed under Darius's tired golden eyes, like purple shadows, but he barely felt the lack of sleep clinging onto his bones as he snuck out of the castle, again.

He was headed over to the orphanage on Yeri street, where the burning in joint retaliation of the deathstalker murder and the Ka l'asterei attack was taking place. There was a reason he sat in on those court meetings, he was yet again reminded.

It was logical, Darius reasoned—or rather he hoped to the mighty gods or else he was in entirely the wrong place—that if his mother was sentenced to death, it would occur at the same time and place as the other burnings that day. Even though she was the queen, she was infamously known as Queen by Name, and so Darius knew—Darius hated that he knew—his father would place her death equal along others.

He had his largest hood on, the one that draped most his face, in an effort to remain inconspicuous among the mandatory mourning crowd that was no doubt gathered around the orphanage. Although, his aim was to hopefully avoid the Elite positioned there altogether.

Gods, he must be drained to be avoiding the Elites instead of searching them out to pick at them.

As he walked the cobbled streets under the hot sky, it occurred to him he could go to Kade for help, or even Nala. With a forced smile that probably looked as manic as he felt, he dismissed the thought; this was his mess to sort out.