Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 34

My hands tremble as I peer out into the chamber where Gyddeon interrogated me.

Not a soul awaits on the other side, and I wonder how long my door stood cracked like that.

I don’t trust it.

Heart pounding, I peer in each direction.

Nothing but cell doors and empty stone.

I crawl out on hands and knees, leaving the door open behind me should I need to dart back in and pretend it’s locked.

My every joint and muscle shriek as I stand.

Unbreathing, I tiptoe down the hall, listening for any sign of movement in the connecting halls.

Fionn is in one of these cells. One of these windowless cells that I don’t have keys to.

Despair washes over me as I am faced with possibly giving myself away to try to find him, possibly damning us both and ruining any chance of escape. Or leaving him, hoping I’m able to come back with help to get him out .

“Fionn,” I whisper into the silence. I run my hands over every door, whispering his name, a prayer. “Fionn, Fionn, Fionn,” the name trembles in my mouth.

Nothing.

How can I leave him here?

Do I have a choice?

I reach the end of the hallway where it turns right and left. More doors line each way on the inside. I keep searching, his name a mantra on my lips.

“Please don’t tell me you were planning on pacing the halls until you find him,” a cold voice shatters my insides. “That’s just pathetic.”

I turn and look at the king where he waits at the end of the hall, just inside an antechamber presumably leading out of the cells. A circular manhole is open beside him.

He tires of my frozen state, stalking up to me and yanking me back into the antechamber with him. I would scream but some part of me lives in the space where I’m still trying not to draw attention to myself.

He gestures to the hole in the floor. I cannot see what is within it, but the smell is horrid. “Go,” he states calmly.

I look at him with wide eyes.

What new game is this? First he wants me to join him, now he’s freeing me?

Ire flashes in his icy blue eyes as he grits out, “Go. Before I change my mind.” He tries to shove me into the hole. I fall to one knee beside it, hands on either side of the opening.

“Fionn. Let me get him first!” I whisper, pleading with my eyes. “Whatever you want. I’ll do anything, let me just have Fionn. Please.”

I’ve never seen a gaze colder as he states, “You would have to pry him from my cold, dead, hands. Now go. ”

I reach for the dagger at his waist, intending to do just that, but he’s much quicker. He grips my wrist with bruising force and twists my arm behind my back. I bite back my cry of pain. He all but spits at me, “Listen here, little brat. I have an agenda, and you are not privy to it. If you want to have a single chance in this world, you will do as I say and get the fuck out of here. Do not stop. Do not play the hero. Get out. And do it before I decide you deserve the fate that you escaped.”

He enunciates every word, yanking my arm farther back with every point. I can feel my shoulder about to tear from its socket as my legs dangle over the manhole

I look back up at him, wondering what his angle is, hoping to plead my case once more.

Plead that I have no connections, no knowledge of where to go without him.

But as I look up into the eyes of the king, I see determination that I could never combat. I see wrath and resentment. I see more emotion than that heartless man in the throne room could ever muster.

It’s the last thing I see before he shoves me the rest of the way down, stomping on my fingers as I try to grasp onto the ledge to prevent myself from falling.

The fall is brief, but I’ll forever remember the sight of that lid shutting out the light. Forcing me to abandon the one person I swore to myself I never would.