Crown of Hidden Scales novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Dawn Is Far Away

In the Pit cell the crown will not leave her hands, the Dowager arrives with a blade, and the Warden stands in the door.

The Pit was colder than I had pictured, and much quieter.

The Warden took me down a spiral stair with the crown still in my hands.

Four guards followed us, and none of them came within ten steps of my skirts.

Rhain did not touch me.

He walked a pace ahead with his back straight and his gloved hands loose at his sides.

At the bottom, an iron door opened onto a round stone hall with a drain in the floor.

It was the place where the kingdom killed people.

Cells ringed the walls, and every one of them was empty.

"Third on the left," he said.

It was the first thing he had said to me.

His voice was low and level.

I walked into the cell by myself.

The door shut behind me, and the key turned, and the four guards went up the stair with their boots ringing.

Rhain stayed.

He stood outside the bars, looking at the crown, and I looked at him.

"You hang people for a living," I said.

"Yes."

"How many?"

His jaw moved once.

"Thirty-one."

"And tomorrow I'm thirty-two."

He did not answer that.

I was shaking, and I hated it, so I put my back against the wall and made myself speak the way I speak to bad tutors.

"I have a dowry," I said. "Eleven thousand crowns, and my father will not miss it. Open this door and walk me to the east gate."

"I can't do that."

"Can't, or won't?"

He looked at his glove for a moment.

Faint gold light ran under the leather, as it had in the throne hall.

"Both," he said, and the light under his glove flared bright before he closed his fist over it.

I stared at him.

"What is that?"

"Be quiet," he said, very softly. "The walls carry."

Then he took a step closer to the bars and said something else, so low I almost lost it.

"Don't throw the crown away. It will find you, and it will hurt."

"I wasn't going to throw it," I said. "I was going to hit you with it."

He made a sound that might have been a laugh in another man.

It was gone before I could be sure.

I tried the bars with my left hand anyway.

My scales were still out, silver-green to the elbow, and they were warm.

I pressed my palm to the lock, and the iron went dull red under it.

"Stop," said Rhain.

He said it sharply, and I stopped, because there were boots coming down the stair.

Not four guards.

A single pair of shoes, light and unhurried, and the whisper of silk.

Dowager Queen Hesper came into the Pit alone.

She had taken off her widow's veil.

Behind her walked a man with a leather case, and she waved him back against the wall.

"Leave us, Warden," she said.

Rhain did not move.

"The prisoner is mine till dawn, Majesty."

"Then she is in your keeping, and you are in mine," said Hesper, pleasantly.

She stopped at my bars and looked me over.

"You've your mother's hands," she said. "I thought so at the betrothal."

"You knew her?"

"Everyone knew Lady Orrel. She was lovely, and she took ill so young."

Something cold went down my back.

Hesper took a knife from her sleeve.

It was small and thin, the kind used to open letters.

"The physician says the plates come away cleanly if you're quick," she said. "Your father will want proof that his daughter was a changeling. A scale or two will do."

"Majesty," said Rhain.

"Open the door, boy."

He did not.

She waited, still smiling, and then she held the knife through the bars toward my wrist.

I lifted the crown.

I did not decide to do it.

The iron teeth along its brow went white, the cell lit up, and the little blade in Hesper's hand ran down over her fingers in a bead of molten silver.

She dropped it, and the hiss was loud in the stone hall.

For the first time that day, her face moved.

It was not fear.

It was the look of someone who has been handed a bill she expected.

"So it is true," she whispered. "It woke."

She wiped her hand on her skirt and turned to the man with the case, and the smile came back.

"We shall use fire instead," she said. "It's the law anyway."

She went to the stair.

At the foot of it she stopped, without turning around, and spoke to Rhain in a voice I could barely hear.

"Burn her at dawn, boy," said the Dowager Queen. "Or I tell her what you are."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend