Gleam (The Plated Prisoner 3)

How did I lose control so fast?

A horrible booming noise shakes the walls, making the chandeliers sway as if dozens of people are out there heaving a beam to force entry.

“Will the doors hold?” I ask. They’re gilded, not solid, but even so, it should mean that they’ll be harder to break.

“The last of the guards who didn’t abandon their posts are on the other side,” the man covering my left tells me. “They’ll hold it as long as they can.”

Jeo makes me go faster until we’re full on running. We head for the doorway that leads to the bell tower, except instead of going through it, we take a sharp right into a corridor that appears to dead end. My guards shove aside a hanging tapestry to reveal a hidden doorway latched into the wall, obscured by wainscoting.

As soon as they muscle-open the secret door, I look down into the yawning darkness of a forgotten passageway. One that hasn’t had to be used by any royal for generations. Now, I’m forced to flee down it.

The way is so dark that all I can see are the first few steps of a narrow set of stairs before the darkness surrounds them. No gold down there. It’s nothing but raw cut stone, drab and gray, soiled with stale air.

“Torches. We need torches!” one of the guards demands, making another sprint out of the room to go get something to light our way.

I watch the doorway he just left through, mind churning with the horrible question of whether or not he’ll actually come back. I nearly jump out of my skin when a tear-stained servant walks past, hair in disarray, panic in her wild eyes.

“Go!” Jeo shouts at her, making her flinch. “You need to run. Hide. Don’t be caught serving in here when they break in.”

The girl doesn’t have to be told twice. She turns and flees, steps drowned out by the ongoing attack outside, wrathful voices echoing through the mountains.

“This can’t be happening...”

No one hears my whisper, but to me, it’s as loud as a shriek.

The seconds feel like hours while we wait, the entire castle shuddering with hammers and scraping with blades as the people pillage whatever gold they can pry away.

All his fault. This is all Tyndall’s fault.

Running footsteps pound down the floor, and my heart leaps into my throat before bursting with relief when the guard returns. He’s carrying three sconces he must’ve ripped right off the walls, and one crudely made torch with torn curtains wrapped around the top of what looks to be a broken broomstick handle.

He immediately passes the sconces to the others, but the end of his makeshift one refuses to light. The gilded curtain is resistant to the puckering flames, no matter how long they hold the lit sconces to it. “It won’t fucking light!” he spits, shaking the useless torch in his hand.

“Just leave it. Three is enough,” another argues.

“Do you know how far down those take us? It’s pitch-black down there! We need all the light we can get or this will be meaningless because we’ll all fall and break our damn necks.”

“Fancy another light-holder?”

Everyone whirls around at the voice, but instead of a servant, it’s Pruinn who walks in, carrying a candelabra, three candles already lit.

“What are you doing here?” Jeo snaps, his arm tightening around me.

Pruinn comes up to us and shrugs. “By the time I made it to the gate, the guards had already abandoned their post. I didn’t fancy being slain in the angry horde, so I came back.”

“Yeah? Well, shove off. You can’t come with us,” Jeo snipes.

Pruinn grins handsomely, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. No, those silver pools are hard and austere, a serrated blade ready to cut.

Jeo doesn’t like him, hasn’t since my first encounter and every impromptu visit thereafter, but now isn’t the time for male dominance plays.

“We don’t have time for this. You want to come? Then you can go first, Sir Pruinn,” I declare.

Jeo tenses and lets me go, but my words are a challenge all their own, and Pruinn knows it. He gazes down into the shadowed depths with an unenthused expression. He covers it up a second later when he gives me a reverent nod. “It would be my honor to lead you, Your Majesty.”

Jeo makes a rude noise beside me that the merchant ignores completely.

My guards move out of the way, but just as Pruinn takes the first step down, a deafening crash comes from the direction of the kitchens.