Page 78 of Death of a Mortal

The king’s footsteps followed behind us, marching me to my doom—to my mom’s final resting place where I would likely soon rest beside her.

The banshee had said she was here. I hated so much that it hadn’t been a lie, that I hadn’t seen it for what it was. She was here, but she was dead. The banshee put me on a path to find nothing but bones.

And I was stupid and naïve enough to follow that path. I’d done this to myself. To Nella.

Neither the queen nor the prince had followed as we marched through the corridors to the cold, dark hallway I knew ended in a black door that would no longer be locked.

Poetic.

My head hung low as the guards pushed me forward, past cell after cell. Whether there was anyone in each, I either couldn’t see to my left or didn’t care to my right.

They pushed me into the last cell at the end of the dungeon and slammed the door of iron bars closed. I was only half aware of how cold and wet it was down here.

I collapsed in a heap right where the guards left me.

And then I cried.

And cried.

And didn’t stop for very long.

It was only when I felt I had no more tears left to cry that I looked up to find I was in a small alcove cut directly into the rough black stone, the entire front opening sealed top to bottom and left to right with metal bars. It had no bed, no chamber pot. Nothing.

A place not intended to keep a prisoner alive to serve their sentence, but a place where they left people to die. I’d been a fool for hoping my mother could be alive down here.

Across from me, I could see into the cell facing mine.

The single torch at the back of the dungeon gave off just enough light to see the skeleton propped up against the back wall.

A headless skeleton.

My mother.

The king hadn’t been lying.

This time, I really did lose the contents of my stomach. My head was spinning so fast I thought I might faint. The devastation threatened to devour me completely.

“Naci! Naci! I tried to stop it, but they got Nella. I tried, but I’m just a bird, there’s nothing I coulddo!”

“What? What do you mean they got Nella? Who?”

“The guards. They got to her at dinner before I could get there. I saw them drag her into that room to the tunnels, and I couldn’t follow.”

The rest of my world crashed around me. It didn’t make sense that the walls weren’t crumbling or that the floor wasn’t shaking. The utter destruction was confined only to my heart and mind, yet it felt world-consuming, world-ending.

“Naci, I’m sorry…”

They had Nella. They were bringing her here, to the dungeon. I couldn’t find it in me anywhere to be relieved that I would see her.

Because seeing her here meant I had failed as her protector. And she was likely to meet the same end I would.

I heard guards coming up the hallway toward the cells, and the unmistakable yells of fury and pain from Nella.

If I thought the sound of her struggle was enough to break me, seeing her being dragged into the cell next to my mother’s was the nail in the coffin for my heart.

They tossed her to the floor and slammed the door shut, locking it with a key, sealing her into the same tomb I was trapped in.

“Nella! Nella, look at me. Are you okay?”