Queen of Hearts: The Crown (Queen of Hearts Saga #1)(34)
Cray pulled a huge ring of keys from the wall. “She’s just up in here. I just gotta pull her off the tree.”
Unlike the lower cells, this particular cell had a thick iron door, interwoven with oily black roots. Pressing out from the other side, a handprint was etched into the iron. Someone had pressed so hard and long that the image lingered on. Dinah’s stomach gave a violent lurch and the chains binding her shook and leapt. Cray stared for a moment at her hands and then turned back to the door.
“Stand just inside the door. It takes a few seconds to free her from the root.”
Chapter Ten
It was hard to make out exactly what they were seeing in the shadowy light. Faina’s cell was dark, but once Dinah’s eyes adjusted, she could make out a stone slab for sleeping, a chamber pot, and a threadbare rug on the floor. From there, Dinah’s eyes traveled up the wall to Faina Baker’s face, all while fighting the horror rising up inside of her.
Faina was pressed against the wall, held tight by leather bonds that looped over her abdomen and chest. She writhed against them, her feet slipping in the black fluid that dripped down from above. Thin tendrils of black roots snaked out of the wall and into Faina Baker’s open mouth, nose, and ears. All down her body, the black roots circled and twisted, moving slowly, leaving a thin black film as they slithered inch by inch. Dinah gripped Wardley’s arm as a tendril crawled its way up Faina’s face.
Faina’s eyes were open, frozen in panic; a low moan came out of her mouth filled with black roots. Cray sauntered up to her and unhooked the leather straps from her torso, narrowly avoiding the roots that reached ever so slightly for his hand.
Wardley’s mouth twisted with anger. “What are doing to her? How can you allow this? What is . . . ?” He stepped forward, forgetting himself. Dinah could see he was unhinged, his hand on his sword hilt. Forgetting chivalry and honor was not an easy thing. Dinah yanked backwards on her chain and he remembered where he was. Cray untethered Faina and she slouched forward. The roots slithered back from her body, retreating from her nose, mouth, and ears with a revolting sucking sound. Finally, the roots released, and Faina Baker crumpled like a rag doll onto the dirty floor.
“You strap her to the tower!? That’s the torture for high treason?”
Cray gave a filthy, toothless grin. “Aye. What could be worse than being strapped to the very source of the poison that corrupts the towers? The roots take to the skin, and as you can tell, they love an opening. Eventually the poison seeps directly into the brain. It gives hallucinations and fevers, and some say the ability to see beyond the towers. The future and the past, and everything in between. The roots make you forget who you are, make you forget that you are human. What else could we do to these criminals that is worse than losing who they are?”
He laughed and Dinah imagined silencing him with the flat of her palm. There was a faint outline left on the wall where Faina had been strapped, a root twisting itself back into place. An oily mist condensed in the head area.
“Make it quick,” snapped Cray.
Dinah stepped forward. Faina Baker was a shred of a woman. Her arms were as thin as sticks, and thick gray veins ran the length of them. The roots left black dirt behind where they had been clinging to her face and torso, as if she had been burned. What once had been lovely blue eyes were now sunken into two dark holes that stared out of a gaunt face.
“My gods,” muttered Wardley to Cray. “How can you live with yourself?”
Faina Baker was a walking skeleton. Her once-honeyed yellow hair was streaked with white, her lips dark with blood and bite marks. Faina Baker looked up at Dinah from the ground, a string of drool sneaking out of her mouth and pooling on the ground. She began singing in an eerily beautiful voice—high and lovely, her tears mingling with her warbling vibrato.
“You have a few minutes, that’s all.” Cray walked to the cell door.
Wardley gave Dinah a nudge forward as Cray slammed the cell door shut behind them. I could be stuck in here forever, thought Dinah, with a rush of panic. I should never have come. She knelt before Faina in the muck. The woman lay still on the ground, her fingernails tracing broken hearts in the mud.
“Hello Faina, my name is Dinah. I don’t believe we’ve met before, but somehow I think you have information for me.”
Faina reached out and grazed her blackened fingers down Dinah’s face, leaving foul trails. Her vacant eyes looked through Dinah. “I know you,” she whispered. “The Queen, the Queen. You aren’t the Queen, not yet. Keep your head.”
“I am. I received a note, to come here, to find YOU, to talk to you. Who are you?”
Faina blinked a few times and looked directly at Dinah. A moment of clarity lit up her eyes as the black marks left by the roots faded into her skin. Her arm reached out and clutched Dinah’s fingers roughly. “She’s not who you think she is, she is a good girl, be merciful, please . . . the one you call the Duchess. . . .”
Vittiore? Dinah’s heart skipped a beat. This was about Vittiore?
“Are you talking about Vittiore?”
“He came in the night. With the devil steed, and many men. He was looking for something, looking for the yellow and the blue, looking for something he would never have again, something he only had once.” Her voice lifted in a song. “Blond, blond like the sun on the shore she was. . . .” Her eyes widened. “The wrong crown waits for her. The strings will tighten around her arms, and she will dance, oh she will dance for her head, strings around her wrists like roots. Curls in blood, curls in blood. . . .”