Dividing Eden (Dividing Eden #1)(20)
As if that would ever be possible.
“Very well.” She didn’t wait for the guards before walking through the crowd of court members who continued to watch the drama. A few smirked as she passed. Some whispered to each other, no doubt about other times she’d walked this path and had screamed for her mother to come to her aid. After all, Carys had been doing what her mother instructed. She’d been helping her brother.
Distraction was always a good solution. The first few times when she’d dumped soup on Lord Nigel’s lap, or when she’d tripped Micah’s best friend Garret and he’d plunged headfirst into a fountain, people had laughed and blamed her youth. When she was twelve, her father said he couldn’t expect the Lords of Eden or any of the subjects to adhere to the virtues of the kingdom if his own daughter couldn’t.
“Clearly you need a lesson to serve as a reminder of what happens when you turn from the light. This is done not out of malice but out of love.”
Love.
Was it love to insist your daughter be flogged while two members of the King’s Guard held her down?
Yes. In a strange way it was. The world was safer when people believed justice was the same for the powerless and those in power. It was a lesson her father wanted her to learn. He’d hoped after the first instance she’d never be flogged again.
“Sorry, Father,” she whispered as they reached the entrance of the North Tower. The slighter of the two guards fumbled with the door then stepped to the side to allow her to enter first.
Torches lit the inside of the tower. The kingdom did not waste the power needed for the safety of the walls on those who had turned from the light. The first floor was used for questioning and was where the Council of Elders held trials for common thieves, poachers, and those who had defaulted on their taxes. Carys sat in one of the chairs used by the Council and watched the shadows cast by the torches shift on the stone walls. Her two guards stood at the door, neither willing to look at her.
She clasped and unclasped her hands. Then Carys rubbed them on her lap as her stomach clenched. The seconds crawled as she watched the door, waiting for Captain Monteros to arrive and mete out the punishment
Everything inside her jittered and she thought about the bottle of the Tears of Midnight she’d left in her room. She hadn’t thought her visit to the city would take long so she hadn’t brought it with her. But it had been hours since she’d taken the much-needed sip of the drink her mother had given to her after the first time she’d been brought to this terrifyingly stark room. If only this tower had been the one swept up into the wind tunnel that struck years ago instead of the tower to the south.
But unlike the men in the cells upstairs, she’d made the choice to come here by standing for Andreus. And she’d leave once the punishment had been given.
The muscles in her legs twitched and her stomach cramped. Nerves? Need? Both?
She stood and looked around the room, feeling as if she was going to jump out of her skin. The walls seemed as if they were closing in. She needed to move.
Spotting the stairs, she said, “I’m going to go upstairs and talk to my father’s men. Let me know when Captain Monteros arrives.” The two guards glanced at each other and Carys started up the steps before they could debate whether she was supposed to remain on the first floor.
The first floor smelled of musty fabric and dirt and mold. That was bad. The floor above it was worse. Sweat. Urine. Rotting hay.
“Where are my father’s men?” she asked the guardsmen flanking the steps.
“They are in the cells on the next floor, Your Highness,” a gray-haired guard informed her. “The rest of the prisoners on that floor were moved to keep them isolated.”
Ignoring the way her fingers shook as she gathered her skirts, Carys turned and climbed the stairs. The rotting smell grew stronger the higher she climbed and even worse when she took a lit torch from the staircase and started down the hallway next to the cells. Each cell had a thick wooden door with a window made of iron bars. The first two cells were empty, but a face looked back at her when she peered into the third.
“Your Highness,” the man said as he stood and walked toward the door. In the light of the torch, Carys saw the man who spoke for the other men at the castle’s entrance looking back. “Your father would not want you to be here.”
“There is much my father didn’t want that has happened today,” she answered. “I wish to know why.”
“I told you why.”
Not all of it. Because she’d seen her father up close, and when the initial shock faded, she had seen clearly what had killed the King.
“We both know you lied,” she whispered.
“I did not lie, Your Highness.” The King’s Guardsman pressed his face close to the bars. “There was an ambush.”
“The King and Crown Prince always travel in the center of the King’s Guard.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“And that’s where they were when the ambush came?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“If my father was surrounded by his Guard, how is it that he never had a chance to grab his sword and was run through from behind?”
The first was a guess. The second was less of one. The damage to the leather tunic and the bloodstained tear in the back of his cloak were evidence enough of her theory. But it took the man flinching behind the bars of his cell to confirm fully that it was true.