He Freed the Kings He Once Chained, They Chose to Bind Him novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Cold Room

"Tell the marshal the envoys are welcome," Ren said to the captain. "Tell him Ken Park's cuff was cut at my order, and if the East's army so much as saddles a horse, I answer for it with my own head."

The captain bowed so low that his scroll almost touched the floor.

He went out walking backward.

Ken, still naked under a blanket, watched him go.

"That's the first time anyone in this palace has bowed to me by accident," he said.

"He didn't bow to you."

"He bowed to where I was standing. It counts."

Su Ming, dressing at the wardrobe with his back to everyone, made a small dry sound.

It might have been a laugh.

Ren pulled on a clean shirt, and when he looked up Ryu was standing by the bed with one hand on the bedpost.

He had not moved from that spot since the captain came in.

"There is a stair behind the wardrobe," Ryu said.

It was the longest sentence Ren had heard from him.

"I know."

"You don't. You've never gone down it in daylight."

Ryu walked to the wardrobe and pushed it aside along a track set in the floor.

A narrow door stood behind it, black with age.

Su Ming stopped dressing.

Ken sat very still.

"Show me," Ren said.

They went down in a line, Ryu first with a lamp, then Ren, then Ken in his blanket, with Su Ming bringing up the rear.

The stair was cold and smelled of damp stone.

At the bottom was a vaulted room with a drain in its floor.

Iron rings hung from the walls at the height of a man's wrists.

A post stood in the middle with a worn groove at its foot, and along the far wall, on neat wooden pegs, hung every instrument the old prince had owned.

There were riding crops and a braided lash, a leather paddle, a rack of silver cuffs, and a row of iron collars.

Nobody spoke.

Ren made himself look at all of it, one piece at a time.

He had worked nights in a trauma ward, and he had seen what people could do to each other.

It had never been this orderly.

"How long?" he said.

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