She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 5 of 32
Chapter 5: The First Dark Moon
For three days Aurek didn't let me out of his sight, and he didn't say more than ten words to me.
On the third evening he came to my door at sunset.
He'd taken off the gold pauldron. Without it he looked younger, and tired.
"Corwen has an escort ready," he said. "Two of the brothers. They'll swim you to the edge of the reef tonight. You'll be home by morning."
"I am home."
"Nerys." It was the first time he'd said my name. "You don't understand what happens."
"Then show me."
"No."
"Then I'll find the chain room myself. I found the door, didn't I?"
He shut his eyes.
"You'll scream," he said. "They all scream. And then you'll run, and you'll tell the Court what you saw, and they'll laugh about it for a year. I'd rather you just left now."
"I won't scream."
"Everyone screams."
"I didn't scream at the Choosing," I said. "When I swam down that hall alone with the whole court laughing at me. Did I?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he turned and walked away down the corridor.
He didn't tell me not to follow.
The chain room was under the hull, in the old dry dock the dragon kings had cut into the rock.
It was flooded, black water, cold as winter.
When my legs met the water they closed back into my tail, and I swam down after him into the dark.
The room was huge. Big enough to hold a whale.
Across the middle ran a wall of bars, each one as thick as my waist, sunk into the rock floor and the ceiling.
Behind the bars, anchor chains hung from iron rings in the walls.
Every link was scratched white with old claw marks.
Aurek swam through the gate in the bars and pulled it shut behind him.
He locked it from the inside. Then he threw the key through the bars to me.
It bumped against my tail and I caught it.
"If the bars hold," he said, "open it at dawn. If they don't hold, swim for the gate and don't stop."
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