Page 14 of Immortal Rose

“High in the instep, ain’t he?” Branson said scathingly. “A right swell o’ the first stare. What’s he care about a whore like you?”

I set my jaw.

“I’ll make sure he won’t be bothering ye,” Branson said, his voice slithering through the shadows around him. “Not after I’m finished with ye.”

My hand slid across the filth coating the floor, dipping beneath the straw. My breath grew ragged as I closed my hand around Sweetie.

“I’ll break ye like all the others,” he snarled. “Mark me, I will.”

He strode away then, huffing and barking at the other prisoners who screeched and pleaded with him for food, for blankets, for a drop of clean water.

But I stayed exactly where I was, grasping the only weapon I had left.

Waiting.

That night, I knew better than to close my eyes, even for a moment. Whenever I felt myself begin to slip into slumber, I staggered onto my feet, pacing the four steps across the cell my irons would allow and the four steps back. Again. Again.

My mind tormented me by circling back to Oliver’s devastated look. To the soldier’s silver eyes burning with triumph, having caught himself a prize. To the guards stealing the silver coins from my pocket, laughing as they threw me to the ground. To the sound of the cell door slamming shut and locking.

I wouldn’t let myself think of Mama. Not down here. I couldn’t taint her memory the way I’d tainted her perfumes by bringing them to the Midnight Market.

God, why hadn’t I just listened to Oliver about the market in the first place? I could have made extra coins having him sell a few of my perfumes at one of his father’s apothecaries—but then what if they had asked for more and I couldn’t produce enough of it? What if it had drawn the sort of attention I’d spent the better part of my life avoiding?

And damn it all, why couldn’t I just seize the hand Oliver was holding out to me now, begging me to save myself?

Instead, I clutched Sweetie until my fingers cramped, and I was forced to let go for a few moments to find some relief.

In the face of all those tormenting questions, I knew only this: I would not let Branson touch me.

The hours passed. The torches on the walls burned until they finally devoured themselves, casting me into a deeper darkness. Here and there, I heard women stirring, whispers passed between cells. Warnings. And in that silence, we waited for the lone candle to appear at the end of the hall.

But tonight, I knew, the others were safe.

I watched for the candle flame, waited for it to drift toward me. To damn me. My terror and exhilaration were indistinguishable from each other as the door at the end of the hall scraped open. My heart kicked ferociously in my chest.

He would not touch me.

I moved then, rising to my feet and edging toward the back of the cell, where I would make my final stand.

Branson’s disgusting essence polluted the air like coal smoke, as diseased as his soul. But— I straightened, my fingers tightening around Sweetie. I breathed in, searching through the rancid odors emanating from the other cells. It wasn’t only his essence. There were others—two.

Another guard named Samuelson, who reeked of fish, ale, and tobacco. And . . .

The prison governor.

Lantern light flooded the crude hallway, licking at the bars of the cell. I slid Sweetie into a tear between my bodice and skirt just as the light flared and the men stopped in front of me. I blinked against the onslaught, trying to make out Mr. Pembrooke’s form through the glare. He came into focus slowly: his long, narrow face bookended by teeth too large for his mouth and a ring of gray hair around his otherwise bald pate.

In the rare moments I saw the governor passing through the hall, he was elegantly dressed, almost as if to prove to his prisoners that their filth couldn’t touch him. Tonight, however, he seemed mussed. His expression was as disordered as his clothing, as if he had been made to dress in haste.

His usual essence was there: mineral greed, of course, and the parchment of endless stacks of records, and the hot, sour wine stink of the hatred he bore toward his prisoners, and they to him. But there was something else, too. Wet fur.

Fear.

“Unchain her,” came Mr. Pembrooke’s reedy voice.

Branson, of course, was the one to do it. I swallowed the fresh bile that rose as he knelt and lifted my skirt, revealing my torn stockings and chained ankle. His touch felt like the scales of a serpent slithering up my calf. Spite boiled out of him; he was nearly spitting with it as he rose and shoved me toward the open cell door.

I staggered, barely catching myself with a gasp. The weight of the chain being lifted, the relief the metal was no longer rubbing against my raw skin, made my legs as unbalanced as a colt’s.