VIOLENT TIDES (gxg - editing)

33

The inside of the palace seemed more restricting than Gael remembered. Luca led her down halls made of white stone and decked in long, scrolling tapestries and decorative swords and shields that glinted in the flickering lamplight.

Luckily, with Luca's authority as one of the guards and his clothing in Ellay's colours, they passed through the darkened halls without much more than a second glance. They had waited until nightfall even though the delay had killed Gael—every moment they waited was another moment that someone could be hurting Ainsley.

"Wait. There's something I need to see." Luca stopped them with a gesture, then carefully pulled open a heavy wooden door set into the stone wall. Gael and Nathe followed him inside.

The room they were welcomed into was large and dark with disuse, wall lanterns casting minimal amounts of light. Most of the space was taken up by a single massive wooden table, most of which couldn't be seen through the layers of paper and equipment strewn across it. The vast majority of the space was covered by a large map.

"What is this?" Gael asked.

"The strategy room." Luca ran his fingers over the map, examining the icons drawn on it. "It's as I feared. These symbols here represent ground troops, and these are new ones—doesn't take much battle strategy knowledge to know what they mean, however."

Gael leaned closer. Drawn along the coastline in dark ink were unmistakable representations of dragons, wings spread in flight. The ink was fresh and bold black against the paper.

"He's using dragons to stage an attack?" She touched her fingers against the dark squiggle of coastline on the paper, forming the shape of a large bay. "This is Fortra's coast."

Luca nodded, expression grave, brows drawn. "He's going to attack Fortra. I can't be sure when; there's no dates on here. But it will be soon."

Gael swallowed, dread coiling in her stomach. Nathe's hands were clenched around the edge of the table, knuckles pale. "Okay. Let's just find Ainsley for now."

The cold, damp air of the dungeon closed around them as soon as Luca opened the door, telling the guard posted at the entrance that he was there to relieve him and take a shift. After that, it was a simple matter for Gael and Nathe to wait until the soldier left, and then follow Luca down into the depths of the prisons.

The stench was awful—human waste mixed with mold and decay and the coppery smell of blood. Gael's hands trembled as she followed Luca down the steep staircase, careful not to step in the unknown stains that mottled the stone floor. Torches spaced at regular intervals along the walls threw their flickring shadows against the roughly-hewn rock.

Luca flicked through the ring of keys he had taken from the previous guard, the sound echoing hollowly off the walls. Gael swallowed, peering into cells as they walked by.

The prisoners inside looked absolutely wrectched. They huddled on the floor, shackled to the walls, faces emaciated and hollowed out and their clothes dripping off of their worn frames.

"Gael!"

Nathe beckoned them over.

"Get over here and bring the damn keys!"

Luca and Gael hurried in his direction, the guard already slipping the keys into the slot before he had even glanced inside the cell. Gael grabbed at the bars built into the heavy door, attempting to peer through the gloom inside. Her heart hammered in her chest.

The door opened and Gael practically fell into the cell.

In the corner, a figure stirred.

Ainsley was slumped against the wall, not an ounce of vitality showing in her slouched posture and the way her hands hung limp where they were shackled to the stone. Gael's heart thudded an unnatural beat, and she felt hot tears rise in her eyes and sickening rage burn in her stomach.