A Whisper of Night

2.2 || ZALYNE 🔥

Luka is going to die. 

Am I the last person he'll hold a conversation with?

The thought was like a blow to her stomach.

"No," Zalyne snapped, trying to keep her face expressionless. "I can't escape. There'll be guards, and they won't take me out of the chains." She studied Luka's face, suddenly suspicious. What if he's just in here to test me? To determine my guilt? I've already said too much.

"They will," he said. "They executed someone else a few weeks ago - d'you remember? They took off the chains from the prisoners. The stables are close to the stables, and everyone knows nobody cares about the stables. So...what would you do if you could escape? Kill the princess?"

Zalyne hesitated. Kill the princess...the idea had seemed all too enticing when she'd first spoken, but Brennia was young, barely fifteen. No matter how cruelly she'd treated Zalyne, she was still another life, another human.

"Well?" he said. "What would you do?"

She was silent. Help your people, she could've said. Kill the princess, she could've said.

"Leave," was what came from her lips instead. "I'd leave. I'm sick of this. I'd go North, probably, to the Nightfire Isles. I'd seek shelter there."

He raised his eyebrows. "You wouldn't do anything for your people?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I don't have a people," she said. "Besides, I'm not a - what do you call people like you? - revolutionaries? I'm not one of those." She stretched out her arms, popping her knuckles. Stop talking about all this. You aren't gonna escape. "Why didn't you escape, then, the last time there was an execution?"

"I was scared," he said simply. "Besides...I didn't know what I wanted to do if I managed to get out."

"Do you know now?"

He nodded. "I'd go to Svanvald," he said. "My cousin found refuge there, when the Lion Queen's men started looking for me."

"The Ice Kingdom? That's so far away."

He smiled. "And hard to invade. They're sympathetic to the Pebble Isles too, or so I've been told."

"But they never take sides - "

"Times are changing, Zalyne," he said. She flinched at the sound of her name - it sounded so different, so melodic, with his accent. "The princess' disappearance is only the most recent sign. Did you hear about the unrest in Valchtnallan? The Lion Queen will soon have much more on her hands than a singer and a serving girl. She put a blade to her own throat by taking Old Skeynvald."

She didn't respond. Unrest in Valchtnallan.... she'd heard something along those lines a few days ago. The young Lady of Valchtnallan was trying to marshall her troops, to retake her homeland. She'll need all the luck she can find for that, Zalyne thought.

"But I wouldn't want a life as a fugitive," he said. "Anyhow, I won't be able to escape."

A sound came from the hall. Luka glanced at the door. "Here they come," he said. His chains jangled as he shifted slightly.

The door banged open, nearly catching her in the face.

A guard stood outside, carrying a torch in one hand. Behind him loomed a slope-shouldered woman.

"With her," the guard growled to Zalyne. He stalked into the prison and bent down, breathing heavily as he fiddled with the chains binding Luka to the wall.

The woman grabbed Zalyne by her shackles and led her from the cell. Zalyne glanced back, wanting to say something – anything – to Luka, but the woman dragged her around a corner before she could speak. Behind her, chains clanked and feet shuffled as the dungeons came alive with movement.