Rune Mage [Fantasy/Adventure | Book 1 +2 | Complete]

Chapter 78: Punishment for Treason

Seiren woke up, cold and alone. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. The night stretched into an eternal blackness. Little red eyes glowed in the dark, accompanied by scurrying feet and squeaks. Draughts snaked in from all directions, caressing her skin until goosebumps rose, and slithered away. The air froze the inside of her throat, making breathing tough. Saliva congealed just on the roof of her soft palate and she coughed, almost inhaling it.

The drip of water echoed eerily around.

Everything came flooding back. Their capture at the Benover port. The king's mages had preempted their return from Acrise. The pointed runed guns. The cold but triumphant look from Karis Bonneville, one of the king's mages.

And their eventual incarceration in the dungeons beneath the Council of Mages.

"So the good news is," came Rowan's voice from somewhere to her right, "we're both still alive."

"Great." Seiren groaned. Had it only been a few hours since their capture? It felt like days already. "So what's the bad news?"

There was a jingle of metal. Seiren squinted through the darkness. Rowan raised his shackles.

"Ah."

She sat up, her own shackles clanking and digging into her skin. She groaned; her joints ached with the chill in the dungeon. The stone beneath her was icy. She patted her pockets -- of course there was nothing left. Someone must have put in a sedating rune on her back. She couldn't even remember losing consciousness. She felt naked with the paper-thin rag she now had on. With a shudder, she could only imagine who must have stripped her down and robbed her of her runes and Ashworth's knives.

Ashworth's knives. Nothing spelt her as a traitor more than her being in possession of a rebel mage's weapons.

Well, this hole just gets deeper and deep--

Seiren paused, eyes going wide. Her heart skipped a beat. Her hands flew to her neck. The chains followed, swinging with vigour into her ribs.

Madeleine was gone.

No, no, no!

Seiren scrabbled across the ground, her nails scraping across the floor. Her fingers picked desperately at each pebble. Gone. It was gone.

"What's wrong?"

"Madeleine," Seiren choked out. "She's gone."

There was a brief pause.

"We'll get her back."

"How can you be certain?" Her voice rose. "She's--"

"Hush. They're listening."

Her heart drummed in her ears. The isolation came back with a chill, wrapping its arms around her insecurity. It was like back in Bicknor again when she'd hurled Madeleine away, except it was not through her own sheer stupidity this time. Stripped of their power, stowed away where nobody would find them, they were doomed.

Through her whirlwind of panic and desperation, Loren's grey eyes shone through, smiling at her in her familiar, confident manner. Seiren sat back, curling her hands together and clutching them to her chest, mimicking the heavy sensation of the red crystal against her ribs. She eased her breathing in and out.

Don't panic. Don't panic. She imagined Madeleine speaking to her.

When the drumming in her ears and thumping against her eyelids lessened, she opened her eyes again. The dungeon came back clearer once she'd adjusted to the darkness. It was a tiny, windowless cell. Metal bars clustered together, too narrow to squeeze through. She picked up a stone and sketched a red rune in the ground. Any medium would do; she didn't care for the unpredictability of non-chalk drawings. She held her breath before snapping her fingers.