Wystwood

74. Pig and a hand

"Can you stand?" Ada asked when they had broken apart.

"Ada," gasped Solen, reaching out a trembling hand as Diane helped her to her feet. "How can I ever thank you? How did you even manage to find me?"

"We can discuss it when we are all safe, love," said Diane. "There is a banquet in the Barracks, and a steep climb to reach it. Can you cope?"

"I can handle it. Though I can't remember the way," said Solen. "It feels like I've survived an age here in the darkness. They took me from the cell once, but it was only to question me, then beat me when I refused to answer them. I think I'm only alive now because they thought they could get more from me once I was at my weakest. But they were wrong. I would have died before I let them have a single part of me."

A shudder shook her entire body and Diane held her close. Blinking back tears, Ada felt for her pockets and drew out the silver dagger that Solen had once gifted her. She placed it in Solen's hand, and as the fae's fingers wrapped around the hilt, it was as though a limb had been restored to her being; silver become flesh. With the dagger in one hand and Diane's held in her other, a determined strength seemed to be burning through Solen's fatigue.

"Show me the way." Solen let Diane lead her to the door, each step steady and measured.

Ada lingered behind, wanting to walk from the terrible prison, but knowing that to do so would mean leaving a dozen other fae, all desperate and dying, behind her. Solen had been one of their number, and wouldn't they also have friends and family weeping for them in Wysthaven? Ada held the key to their freedom but had neither time nor aid to take them properly to it. There would be enough difficulty in smuggling themselves from the Barracks; a dozen dying fae would be practically impossible.

Yet, that did not eliminate Ada's choice, and as she turned towards the two women in the doorway, she knew that she would never forget the pale eyes upon her back. Nor the unspoken words—the curses—that she had been their final condemnation.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Ada's hands were shaking when she reached the door, wondering whether closing it would afford Solen more time to hide her escape from the Hounds, despite the darkness that would devour the fae still trapped inside. The darkness that had been brought upon them by a hundred Hounds, and now by Ada herself.

"Oh," Diane said faintly, looking as though she was about to pass out under the weight of Solen. Ada hurried to catch her, before she looked down the passage and felt the bile already churning in her stomach rise up her throat.

The Hound General swayed in the stairwell's opening, twice as broad and too tall for the low ceiling. His eyes were fixed on the women, and though he didn't move, the chains around his neck clinked and clattered. Even stood in the shadows, the General was close enough for Ada to see his grotesque face. What must have once been a pure iron mask had not only branded his face, but burnt it deeply enough that it was half-embedded into his skin. Scabs were crusted down his neck, large and leaking, and one of his eyes had swollen into little more than a watery, red slit.

"Diane," he said, his voice rough. "You stole my keys?"

Diane quivered. "Yes."

A purple vein bulged in his forehead. "Come here."

"No," said Diane quietly, as if uncertain, her entire face growing red.

"Come here!"

"I won't!" Tears brimmed and fell from Diane's eyes, though she didn't move from Solen's side.

"I should kill you for this," the General said, finally taking a step towards them. The women moved back, but the prison quickly blocked them. "Maybe I will. But I'll kill those two with you first. You can watch. I would like to hear your begging again."