“Will you come quietly, kelari?” he asks.
I consider my options, but they aren’t many. Better to allow him to cut my ankles free and follow quietly, watching for an opportunity to escape, than refuse that chance altogether. I dip my head.
“Very good.”
Once I’m on my feet again, he sets a hand on my arm and lifts the luminae lamp. I let him guide me to the doorway, stepping into a narrow stone hallway.
“A moment,” he says, turning back to the door. I lean against the wall beside me, resting my foot. My throat aches, and my wounded arm throbs. I wriggle my wrists in their bindings, but they are too tight to work a hand free.
Garrin swings the door shut, then pulls a lever that seems to retract the door until it lines up perfectly with the wall. Alyrra once mentioned that the palace contained secret passages, and so did Melly. I would have much preferred never to see them at all.
Garrin looks at me, shakes his head. “You’re so predictable,” he says, almost as an apology. “I knew if I put a wounded child in front of you, I’d have you. There’s not a noble lady in the palace who would have seen to the boy herself. But you? Of course you would.”
I grumble a curse at him through the gag. He must have set the page to waylay me after our report to Alyrra and Kestrin. It was only the worst coincidence of timing that he caught me on the way back from the portrait gallery.
“I should have preferred it, really, if you were a bit more selfish,” Garrin says, and taking my arm, guides me along.
What? Does he actually feel bad for what he’s doing? Not bad enough, or I wouldn’t be here, shuffling through dark stone passages. I keep an eye out for doors, for any sign of life. If I can just alert someone to my passing, perhaps I can be rescued.
But there’s no chance of that, for Garrin keeps me pressed against the opposite wall of the two doors we pass, and the third is the one he wants. We step out into another storage room, this one stacked with crates.
“In you go,” he says, nodding to the nearest crate, its lid beside it.
I pull back, horror getting the better of me.
Garrin very carefully sets down the lamp and meets my gaze. “You may get in on your own,” he says, “or I will force you in. Either way, you will go. Again, you will not be harmed. What do you choose?”
I hold still, listening, but there’s no sound from beyond this room, no indication that anyone is out there and might take note of a disturbance. With a terrible sort of resignation, I dip my head and move to the crate. With my hands bound behind me, it is almost impossible to climb in without tipping over—until Garrin catches my arm and steadies me, helping me in. The gentleness of it rankles, as if his manners could offset the evil he is committing.
I only just fit in the crate, my knees bent to my chin, and my back curled forward to fit my arms behind me. Garrin lifts the lid and sets it down, shoving my head between my knees. I cry out, but it’s a faint, muffled sound, easily lost beneath the pounding of nails into the lid of the crate.
By the time he is done, I can barely breathe, even though there are air holes drilled into the sides. I feel like the gag is choking me, and I’m trembling now, the sides of the box closing in on me. It’s dark without even the faint glow of the luminae lamp through the air holes. I’m alone, my senses reeling. I feel I might be sick all over myself—only I can’t, because then I will choke on my own vomit, and I can’t die like that. And there’s no getting out of here, no escape, no one who cares.
Not true. I inhale hard through my nose and hold that breath, then slowly let it out and inhale again. I’m going to get out, I tell myself on the next inhale. There are people who care. With each breath I remind myself of who: Mama and Baba. Niya, whom I promised I’d grow old with. Bean. Melly. Filadon. Alyrra. I will get out—of this crate, of this future Garrin has consigned me to—and once I do, I will not rest until I’ve brought his actions into the light.
Eventually, a pair of workers enter the room, lift the crate, and carry it out. I scratch my fingers against the wood at my back, try calling to them through my gag. If they hear me at all, they ignore me. The crate is set down, then shoved back, the side air holes blocked by things on either side of me—other crates?
I catch my breath speeding up again and it is all I can do to slow it, focus on the fact that they will not keep me in this crate forever, whoever they are. Whoever Garrin is sending me to.
Eventually the crate rattles forward, and I deduce I’m riding in a wagon. The air is slowly growing more and more stale, but there’s a faint fall of light from a single air hole somewhere above my head. There’s air. It will have to be enough.
The ride does not last long. I’m unloaded and transported some distance and then taken down a set of stairs. As before, whoever carries me seems not to care about the faint sounds emanating from my crate. Of course they don’t. These are Garrin’s men, or the snatchers themselves.
“We supposed to let her out?” a man’s voice asks
