One Day More - a Sartorias-deles fanfic

Chapter 29

The next time her bars rattled, it was for a guard to take Mecco away. Time meant nothing more to Iris; it was just a reminder of what she had done. A small voice inside her mind tried to console her, but her misery deafened it. How could she fall so quickly from hope into a pit of despair?

Because her reality hurt; it did not just hurt, it killed her spirit and all of her desire to fight or to dream. Eliev never found herself in a prison cell, sentenced to a fate unknown due to crimes that she had committed. No book Iris had ever read resembled her current situation, so she had nothing to consult. No character, fictional or otherwise, to offer her advice. Just the knowledge inside her that she was going to be punished for her actions, and she would deserve every portion of it, whether it was prolonged or cut short.

And then maybe Raec would move on. He needed someone far better than she ever would be, and Iris had come to accept that. He would, too. Vidanric would ensure that. He would find Alaraec a perfect queen to stand at his side, as Meliara was for him. Though the idea of Alaraec being close to anyone else in such a manner made Iris's heart twist, she would not have to face the pain for forever. If she were found guilty, the punishment would be execution. Hopefully Raec's obvious affection for her would not taint anyone's opinion of his intuition or leadership abilities. He was a good, trusting man, with a kind and gentle heart for his people—from the highest to the lowest under his rule. He would be a good king, and her role in her life demonstrated no lack of judgment on Raec's part. It only proved how she was a good liar.

A key clicked in her lock, and Iris raised her head to look at who entered, but she could not recognize the form in the lack of light. Clothed in a helmet and breastplate, though, Iris suspected he was a guard, come to take her to the throne room to stand before Vidanric and Meliara to hear her fate. Did that mean they had found her parents, or had they decided not to delay her trial any longer? No one told her anything here in her abyss under the ground.

The man's hand wrapped around her ankle and squeezed, far firmer than Raec's grip however many days ago it was. "Iris, we have to go. Now."

"Bren?" Iris blinked a few times, finally seeing Bren for who he was. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting you out." He grabbed her hand and tugged her up to her feet from her previous position on her cot. "Let's go."

"You can't!" Iris protested, ripping her hand from him and pressing up against the one stone wall. "You can't help me. You'd be just as guilty—if not more so—than I am! No. Absolutely not."

"Will you trust me?" He crossed his arms across his chest and shifted his weight to one foot. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. If I were you, I would pick the easy way."

"What would be the hard way?"

"Picking you up and carrying you over my shoulder." She could hear his smile, despite the seriousness of his tone.

"You lead, I follow." Arguing further would result only in Bren lugging her out like a sack of vegetables. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because Enda asked." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Be quiet now. This is where it gets tricky."

"Enda's involved, too?!"

"Shhh, quiet!"

Bren led her through a tunnel she had not notice previously, which made her think it was another servants' passage. This one, though, was dark and muggy—what she expected of the prison originally—with no torches whatsoever. Bren held on to one of her wrists and kept his other hand on the wall, though Iris had no idea how he could know where he traveled. It made no sense for him to have come to the dungeons before, but then again, he was a servant, in a way. So he could know the tunnels better than anyone, and he probably had explored them at one point in his service to the royal family. It was that or someone told him about the tunnels and where to go, and she found that unlikely. Bren and Enda were her friends; them wanting to assist her, Iris understood. But anyone else beyond them and Alaraec seemed farfetched.