“Spirits. Why?”
“Who knows with her? Scare tactics, probably. Make him watch, then threaten him with the same fate if he doesn’t talk. Either way, that’s probably going to be his…”
The words trailed away as footsteps carried around the next bend.
Tayel grabbed Shy’s arm. “I think they were talking about—”
“I know,” Shy whispered. She sighed. “Xite. Let’s tail them.”
“Wait. What? Really?”
“Yes, really. I want to know more about that indoctrination.”
“What do you think it is?”
“Not sure, but if it’s what I suspect, then it might answer the question of why my people are working with the Rokkir at all.” Shy peeked out of the nook. “Let’s go before they get too far. And stay quiet.”
“Shy. If the prisoner they’re getting is Jace…”
Shy huffed. “Let’s deal with that if it happens. We don’t have time to argue."
Tayel nodded, and slid out of the nook. Even if Shy was moving forward with a different purpose, she was still there. Tayel wasn’t about to press her greatest source of help.
The prisoner the guards were talking about had to be Jace, and if it wasn’t, then at least they would lead her to where prisoners were kept. She was close. She could save him. He just had to hold on a little longer.
“Okay,” she said to Shy. “Lead the way.”
Chapter 17
Tayel and Shy followed the two guards deeper into the castle. The shouts of search parties on the hunt for them dwindled as they descended another flight of steps, but Tayel was under no illusion they were safe. Every turned corner was a chance to be seen. Every long hallway could have been a trap. She didn’t know which was worse: the unending tension, or the unending burning in her arm.
Shy stopped at the next turn. “Wait.”
Footsteps from the guards they were tailing dissipated, moving farther away. Moving down. After they’d disappeared entirely, Shy peeked her head around the corner.
“Coast is clear,” she whispered.
She moved forward into the next stretch of hall where the guards had gone, and placed her hand on a plaque in the wall. A map. Her eyes scanned.
“What are we waiting for?” Tayel asked. “Aren’t we going to follow them?”
“According to this, they went down into the dungeon.”
“Okay. Good. Let’s go.”
Shy grabbed Tayel’s arm, eyes stern. “I’m not walking into a dungeon.”
“Then how are we supposed to keep following them? Don’t you want to find out what that indoctrination thing is?”
“Apparently the only way in or out of there is down these steps.” Shy gestured to the stairwell to her left. “We just have to wait, and when they come up, we can keep going.”
“But what if Jace isn’t with them?”
Shy’s eyes widened with exasperation. “Holy Alhyt, do you ever shut up about him?”
“Do you ever experience empathy?”
Tayel started at a door creaking open from below. Orange light cast shadows up the spiraling staircase. She met Shy’s gaze, and scurried into the closest nook. There were no curtains, and the space was tiny, but a decorative statue provided the best cover within a quick, silent sprint. Shy squeezed into the area with her. With no room to spare, Tayel became instantly aware of her own breathing.
Shy placed her hand on the wall beside Tayel’s head. Her arm was taut with tension, muscles perfectly still under her smooth skin. Tayel held her breath to stop her chest from rising and falling against Shy’s, but strapped for air and tense as hell, it didn’t last long. Heat rose to her face at Shy’s slight movement against her.
Clanking footsteps rose out of the staircase and into the hall.
“Stop resisting,” a guardswoman growled.
“Please, I don’t know anything. Just let me go.”
Jace! Despite the situation, Tayel beamed. He was alive. He was mostly okay. She could save him.
She ducked under Shy’s arm. Jace trudged between the two guards in the hall, both talons restrained behind his back. The guardswoman shoved him along.
“I told you! What I saw was a — an accident. I don’t even know what it means,” Jace pleaded.
The second guard smacked him. Fire burned inside Tayel as he collapsed. Shy caught her head in the crook of her elbow and pulled her swiftly back into the nook. Her hardened eyes and tightened jaw said enough — don’t leave cover. Tayel breathed a little faster, anger making her jittery. Jace was okay. He was still okay. Hurt, but alive.
“What was that for?” the guardswoman asked. “You knocked him unconscious!”
“Why should Adonna have all the fun?”
“You’re depraved. He’s just a kid.”
Tayel peered into the hall once again.
The man hoisted Jace over his shoulder and continued walking. “Keep your morals to yourself. If it weren’t for these damned Igadorians…”
The guards ascended another set of stairs at the far end of the corridor, their conversation lost in the echo of their boots.
Tayel wiggled out of the nook. “Hurry. We have to follow them.”
“I can’t believe that kid’s still alive,” Shy muttered.
“Well he is. So let’s go.”
“Hey, keep your voice down. I know you’re amped up right now, but if we rush and get reckless, we’re going to get caught, and neither of us are going to get what we want.”
“I—.” Tayel squeezed her head with both hands, willing herself to calm down. “I know. I know.”
“Okay, so keep quiet, and come on.”
Tayel followed Shy up the same steps the guards had taken Jace, contented to have some guidance — someone to hold her back from doing something stupid. Or reckless, as Shy put it. The princess was a real banshee sometimes, but she knew how to keep her cool.
They tailed the guards through hallways, hiding and losing some progress when processions of other guards ran past — looking for them. Every movement was a close call. No switch from cover to cover went without the risk of being seen.
As they climbed higher in the castle, the décor changed. Parchment-colored wallpaper covered the walls, and Tayel’s footsteps sunk into the ground a little more, the royal blue carpet more plush than the red ones many floors below. Every staircase they took upward ate at her nerves. Maybe the guards would never stop toting Jace around, leaving Tayel and Shy more and more vulnerable to capture as they grew tired and anxious.
The guards dragged Jace up another staircase. By the view out the window, they couldn’t go much further. They had to be near the top of the castle. Tayel and Shy snuck into the stairwell behind them, and as they climbed, chatter echoed from the top. Shy slowed her pace, and they inched their faces into the hall at the top of the steps.
It was the final floor. The ceiling came to its apex in a tall, spire-like point. There was only one hall — straight ahead — and dozens of people filled it. Tayel recognized the recruits from the Aishan camp. There were no nooks or crannies to hide in, and if anyone else came up the steps, Tayel and Shy were completely exposed.
The guards escorting Jace came to a stop behind the procession of refugees as it continued to file in under an archway at the far end of the hall. They passed into the next room while Jace’s escorts guided him, now awake and wide-eyed, up another set of steps to the right of the room’s entrance.
Tayel chewed her tongue. “Do you think we can slip up those stairs unseen?”
Shy nodded. “If we go now.”
Tayel shadowed her, sidling along the wall toward the stairs. The murmur of refugees grew as they inched closer, and Tayel caught a glimpse of shuffling feet in the dimly lit room beyond the archway. She pained for them, for how little they knew about the war they volunteered to fight.