Poison's Kiss (Poison's Kiss #1)(58)
One of the guards plucks a torch from a sconce on the wall. “Follow me,” he says. We move down the stairs in a single line with one guard in front of me and one behind. I wish I could trail my fingers along the stone wall; I feel unsteady with my hands bound in front of me. Defenseless.
Every step downward feels like a death sentence for Mani. My mind is racing for a way to escape. I could push the guard in front of me with my shoulder and hope he’s incapacitated as he falls, but that doesn’t help with the guard behind me. I might be able to turn quickly and kiss the man behind me before he could retreat, but my poison doesn’t work fast enough. It’s a bitter irony that my whole life I’ve felt like I’m too deadly to find happiness. But now, when it really counts, I’m not nearly deadly enough.
We reach the bottom of the staircase and my breath feels trapped in my chest. Rows of cells separated only by iron bars line either side of a narrow walkway. It’s chilly and damp, and an unpleasant musty smell fills the air. The flickering light from the torch doesn’t allow me to see much, only huddled shapes behind the bars. But I can hear them. A man muttering to himself. A woman humming an off-key tune. A child crying. I shiver. What kind of person imprisons a child? It gives me even less hope that the Raja will help Mani.
The guard behind me takes my elbow and leads me to an empty cell at the back of the dungeon. The other guard holds the torch so that his comrade can see to unlock the huge metal padlock. And then they both escort me inside. The cell is small, with a stone floor and a single blanket folded in the corner. Water drips from the ceiling, forming a puddle in the center of the room. I’ll have to sleep pressed against the wall to avoid getting wet.
“We’re going to take these off now,” one of the men tells me, pointing to my wrists. “Don’t do anything foolish.” I hold out my hands, but before he touches me, the other guard steps forward and holds the torch off to one side, careful to keep it between my face and both of theirs. They obviously overheard my confession in the Blue Room and know exactly what a visha kanya can do. My heart sinks. For the first time I see the appeal in being as deadly as Kadru. If I were two hundred years older, both of the guards would be dead already and I wouldn’t be powerless to save Mani.
Once the manacles are removed, the guards back slowly out of the cell, as if I might charge forward at any moment. They secure the padlock and then retreat back down the path without a word. The torchlight disappears and I am plunged into darkness.
“A flicker and gone!” one of the prisoners yells. “A flicker and gone.” He sounds like he’s in a cell across from me, but I can’t tell for sure.
“Hush,” says another voice, a woman’s. “Go to sleep.”
“A flicker and gone!” the man shouts again. The woman yells back and the two start trading insults—hers make sense and his don’t.
I press my back against the wall and sit with my knees drawn up to my chest. My wrists are tender from where the manacles dug into my flesh, but it’s nothing compared with the pain I feel at failing Mani. Why did Deven bring me here? Did he know his father would imprison me? Was that the plan all along? I feel sick at the thought that I walked into the palace and confessed. That I allowed myself to be taken.
Gopal always worried about me being captured. He taught me never to trust anyone, never to say more than what was absolutely necessary, never to ask him questions and above all never to answer questions from anyone else. Not with the truth, anyway.
It’s basic tradecraft that the person with the most information has the most power. How foolish of me to trust the Raja enough to tell him the truth. I should have been more careful. I should have traded information for Mani’s safety and not given anything away until they led me to the Snake Temple, until Mani was back in my arms. I rest my forehead on my knees and let the tears soak through the thin fabric of my pants.
The other prisoners finally fall silent, and the only noises are the constant drip, drip from the ceiling and the sound of my own breathing. And I have nothing left to focus on but despair.
I wake up to the creak of a door. I’m slumped over in an awkward position and my neck is so kinked that it screams in pain when I try to straighten it. It takes a moment to sort out where I am, for my mind to arrange all the unfamiliar smells and sounds into a memory of the previous day. But then it all comes rushing back—the Raja, the Snake Temple, the dungeon—and I wish I hadn’t woken up at all.
Flickering light dances at the far end of the walkway, and I hear footfalls and the low hum of whispered conversation. And then a loud voice ricochets through the dungeon. “Wake up!” It’s a man’s voice, probably one of the guards. He takes something metal and scrapes it along the bars of the cells as he walks back and forth. It makes a horrible screeching noise, and suddenly the dungeon is filled with groans. He laughs. “Breakfast time.”
Another guard lights torches all along the passageway. It barely illuminates the space, but compared with the blackness of last night it feels like stepping out into full sun. The guards are sliding metal trays to each prisoner through a small slot near the floor. I scramble forward to examine the opening, but it’s too small for even my head, let alone my whole body. When the guard approaches my cell, I recognize him from the Blue Room. He slides the tray forward and water sloshes over the side of the cup, soaking the small loaf of bread.