Excerpt
A Dance of Lies
Chapter OneVoices speak to me in the endless dark.
Sometimes, it’s my own voice. An incessant humming.
Then it warps. Fragments.
Becomes ten, twenty. A choir. People I used to know, calling my name. Vasalie. Vah-sah-leee. They sing to me. They recount my failures. They tell me all is hopeless, that I am lost to this prison.
Only today, they are silenced by a long, winding screech.
Blades of torchlight cut into my cell, falling across my skin in stripes.
I shift from the onslaught of light, but clamps of steel dig into the raw skin of my wrists, fettering me in place. I narrow my gaze toward the window inset into the cell door. It never opens—never ever—save the rare occasions when the warden opts to ensure I’m still breathing. Which he did yesterday.
I think.
Still, I await the passing of a profile. The closing squeal of those shutters.
For the dark to swarm in once more.
My eyes have long since adjusted to it, after all. There is only ever the soft, taunting flicker from underneath the door.
Too exposed.
Far too bright.
I turn my gaze from the legs poking out from beneath my scratchy linen shift, unable to look at them for long. I count the rats instead. So many of them, huddling in the corners, gnawing on whatever they can find. Their razor-edged teeth are as familiar to me as the dirt and grime that coats my skin.
I am little more than a husk. A corpse. A set of bones, waiting to be buried.
I’m not sure my heart beats anymore.
I’m not sure I want it to.
Still, the window does not shut.
Then the groan of metal shakes the very foundation of this place—the outer door to the prison. Footfalls echo, echo, echo, a thundering pulse.
I lift my head.
Moments later, silhouettes crowd around my window, blotting out the light. The sound of keys rustle from just outside.
“Morta’s teeth. That smell,” someone says.
“If you take her out, I’ll polish your armor for a week.”
A weak pulse flutters within my chest.
“A week? You can’t be serious. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot lance.”
Have they come to carry out my execution? Metal bites into my forearms as I lean forward. I would beg for it, for that sweet moment of release. For a chance to stand on my own two legs and fill my lungs with the warm western breeze, if only for a moment before a blade strikes me down.
“I can’t believe King Illian wants to see her like this. Can’t imagine any amount of scrubbing would do any good.”
King Illian.
Like the swing of an axe, his face cleaves into my mind.
The sharp, marble cut of his jaw.
The sleek sheen of dark curls.
The endless black of his eyes, and the way they always glittered when they beheld me, save for that last time.
That last time.
Illian.
His name is like the stab of a nail, straight into the cavity of my chest. I pull in a breath, feeling the ghost of a puncture in my lungs.
Part of me has begun to wonder if he was a dream. A wonderful one, then a terrible one. A phantom I cannot shake.
He’s sent for me. Why?
I remember . . .
What do I remember?
That I was to live out my days in isolation, half mad, until I finally succumbed to the horrors of this fates-forsaken place. But . . . perhaps they need the cell? Perhaps I am too expensive a prisoner?
No. If the king wants me, it isn’t to spare a cell.
“The hair will smell the worst. Throw this over her head,” one of them says. “At least until she’s back within the palace walls.”
The cell door jerks open, smearing a fan of dirt across the flagstones. Armored boots come into view between my snarled, honey-brown strands.
One guard blocks the doorway as if I could run, while the other reaches for my arm with a gauntleted hand. A click, and my shackles separate from the main chain. A frisson of fear sets my limbs to trembling. I press my back against the jagged wall, but he wrenches me up with merciless intent.
Sudden dizziness tilts my equilibrium. But I’m held upright, a sack shoved over my head.
Daggers of pain embed themselves into my joints. My knees give way as I’m forced forward. My palms meet stone, my brittle bones quivering as though they might fracture. A cry hisses from between my teeth, my voice scraped raw.
“Let’s go,” says one of the men, hauling me up again. With a sigh, he gives me a moment to stabilize, to figure out how to balance once more.
Some weeks ago, or perhaps months—time has lost all meaning now—the warden reset my shackles. Until then, I was able to move around. A comfort I took for granted. I could stretch, lie down on the plank I used for a bed. I could feel around my cell, keep myself somewhat tethered to reality. Then came the warden, grumbling about the constant, annoying clank of my chains.
He tightened them after that. Removed several links, so that I could barely shift at all. Gone was the ability to stand.
Cool air stipples my skin as we slowly, painfully traverse the prison halls. Alarm ripples through me at the severity of the pain.
It’s as if my weathered body can no longer hold what little weight I have left.
My muscles have atrophied. My strength is nonexistent. Eventually, my legs go numb save for a relentless, itching tingle, the pain like the stab of a thousand pins.
I’ve lost the body I’d earned, crafted through years of dancing, and now I struggle to remain upright. It is by the guards’ strength alone that I make it up the stairs, both men heaving me upward from beneath my armpits.
Again, that grind and screech of metal, this time much closer. Then light washes over me like a warm breeze; even the sack over my head glows orange.
Warmth.
A sudden, unexpected tear tracks a line down to my chin. For so long, I’ve felt nothing but a gaping, cold hollow, both outside and in.
And I realize I cannot go back. Not ever. Whatever the king wants from me, I will not return to that cell.
Commotion whistles past as I’m dragged through cobbled squares. Every step is a negotiation, pleading with my body to obey. Even so, dizziness sends me toppling more than once. The guards wait with impatient huffs, not wanting to touch me more than necessary. All the while, sounds crowd my ears in a disorienting rush. The trot of horses, the clatter of carriage wheels. I collect gossip, an endless trail of whispers.
Fates above, who is that?
More like, what is it?
But it takes all my focus just to keep my feet moving.
I’m hefted up yet another set of steps. And though I can’t sense where I’m being led, recognition comes as my feet slip against cool marble, the ambience changing once more.
A frigid, echoing space. I have reached the palace after all, it seems. A few long corridors later and the sack is finally ripped from my head.
I blink, my eyes struggling to adjust to the light, even dim as it is. Familiar smooth beige stones make up the walls, floors, and vaulted ceilings. Sconces are set at intervals, light spangling across a pool for bathing on the far end. Rich incense laced with myrrh clouds my lungs, so different from the ever-present miasma of urine and sweat in the prison.
I clutch my abdomen, swaying with a wave of nausea.
A trio of women enter, encircling me as the guards step back, and all at once I’m being stripped, my shackles removed, and led into the pool—
Rags and sponges scrub soap across every inch of my bared flesh. Water is dumped over my head, over and over and over.
I feel as if I’m drowning. Or jerking awake from a long, terrible dream.
Flint razors and stones graze up and down my legs and under my arms, leaving my flesh smooth but red. When I’m led from the bath, perfumed oils are rubbed into my skin. Combs attack my hair, ripping their way through the tangles. And all I can think now is—
The king.
The king.
The king.
I have been here before, in this very chamber.
I have worn these perfumes before.
I have been prepared before.
Before . . .
Before the day my life was upended. Fragmented as my memories may be, that night is the one recollection time has not stretched thin. Here and now, it comes into even sharper relief—the jab of fingers into the tender flesh of my upper arms as I was dragged sleepily from my room in the dead of night; the way the king watched me from the shadows, even as his diadem betrayed him, snagging a glimmer of torchlight.
The way he took his time stepping forward, even as I was thrown before him.
The prod of rough hands as his men searched for weapons—as if I could hide one in my whisper-thin negligée.
My arms bound tightly in ropes like they were chaining some untamed beast.
A body I hadn’t even known was there, pulled from my room.
The shouts. The accusations. The interrogations—
The slam of the guard’s fists when I tried to run.
A small cry slips through my teeth as the memory crowds in—a horror I’ve yet to understand no matter how many times I turn it over in my mind. He knew I couldn’t have murdered his adviser. I had been in his company the very hour the man supposedly died.
He knew I was innocent, yet he did nothing.
