Chapter 143 Plan Fails
"You shouldn't be down here," Klaus whispered.
His voice was a broken, gravelly scrape, completely stripped of its usual deep resonance. I could feel the vocal cords grinding against the hot iron of the suppressor collar.
I pulled my head back, looking up into his face. In the dim, jaundiced light of the sputtering torch outside the cell, he looked like a ghost. His silver hair was matted with sweat and dark ichor. His lips were split, his pale skin pulled tight over his cheekbones from the days of forced starvation. The dark, necrotic veins of the curse pulsed over his ribs with an angry, toxic rhythm.
"I broke the chain," I told him, holding up my hands. The heavy iron cuffs still circled my wrists, but the connecting links were gone. My palms were a mess of torn scabs and fresh, bright crimson blood. "I killed Silas. He can't touch you anymore."
Klaus looked at my bleeding hands, and then his clouded sapphire eyes drifted toward the dark water behind me, where Commander Silas floated face-up, entirely still.
A profound, agonizing sorrow washed over Klaus’s face. He didn't feel relief that his torturer was dead. He felt absolute, crushing horror that I had been the one to do it.
"You used the magic," he rasped, his eyes locking onto the smears of blood beneath my nose and across my chin. "Nerissa... your heart."
"It is beating," I said fiercely, my jaw locking. "And so is yours."
I stepped away from him, turning toward Silas’s body. The freezing water sloshed around my knees, making my movements slow and heavy. I waded over to the dead Commander. My stomach violently churned at the sight of his blank, staring red eyes and the dark blood leaking from his ears, but I forced the nausea down.
I dropped to my knees in the freezing brine.
I patted down his sleek black and gold armor, my numb, shaking fingers fumbling blindly over the cold metal and wet leather. I found a heavy leather pouch strapped to his waist. I ripped it open and pulled out a thick iron ring holding three large, rusted keys.
I stood up, gripping the keys so tightly the metal bit into my ruined palms.
I waded back to the weeping stone wall where Klaus was suspended. The massive iron chains bolted high above his head kept his arms pulled agonizingly taut, carrying the entire weight of his heavy, muscled body.
"I need you to brace your legs," I told him, my teeth chattering uncontrollably from the freezing air and the sheer, brutal exhaustion setting into my bones. "When I unlock the wrists, you are going to fall."
Klaus didn't argue. He shifted his bare feet on the slick, submerged rock, finding a precarious purchase in the black water. His leg muscles visibly trembled under the strain.
I reached up. Even standing on my toes, it was a struggle to reach the heavy iron padlocks securing his wrists to the wall chains. The stiff, structured boning of my corset dug painfully into my ribs, restricting my breathing.
I shoved the first key into the padlock holding his right arm. It wouldn't turn. I yanked it out and jammed the second key into the rusted slot.
It clicked.
The heavy iron shackle popped open. The thick chain dropped away, splashing into the water. Klaus’s right arm fell lifelessly to his side. He let out a sharp, muffled grunt, his massive body lurching sideways, hanging entirely by his left wrist. The sudden shift in weight tore at the open, flayed wounds on his back.
"Hold on," I gasped, stepping to his left side.
I shoved the key into the second padlock and twisted hard.
The lock gave way.
Klaus collapsed. The sheer, dead weight of his massive frame folded instantly. I tried to catch him, throwing my arms around his bare chest, but he was simply too heavy. We both went down, crashing into the freezing black water with a loud, chaotic splash.
The icy brine rushed over my head, stinging the burst blood vessels in my eyes. I scrambled wildly, my hands finding his broad shoulders, and hauled my upper body out of the water.
I dragged Klaus’s head and shoulders onto my lap, keeping his face above the surface.
He was shivering violently, his teeth clicking together. I looked down at his chest. The iron suppressor collar was still locked tightly around his throat. Without his arms suspended, his head fell back, exposing the angry, weeping ring of blisters the hot metal had burned into his pale skin.
I fumbled with the iron ring of keys in the dark water. I found the smallest, most intricate key.
My hands shook so badly I missed the tiny keyhole on the collar twice. Klaus’s breathing was growing shallower, a wet, rattling sound that terrified me. I forced myself to stop, drew a slow, shuddering breath, and guided the key into the slot with both hands.
I turned it.
The heavy iron collar popped open with a sharp, metallic snap. I grabbed the thick metal and tore it off his neck, throwing it as far away as I could. It hit the black water a few feet away, sizzling violently as the heat of the suppressing runes was extinguished.
The moment the iron left his skin, the air in the cell shifted.
A heavy, crushing pressure flooded the small, damp space. The suffocating void the collar had created vanished, instantly replaced by the terrifying, expansive aura of the Grand Admiral. I felt the massive, ancient well of his immortal magic rush back into the tether, a dark, oceanic force that made my own human heart stutter.
But the magic didn't heal him.
Klaus let out a long, ragged groan, his eyes squeezing shut. He didn't surge upward. He remained slumped in my lap, his body wracked by violent, uncontrollable tremors.
"Klaus," I whispered, brushing the wet silver hair away from his forehead. His skin was freezing cold, completely devoid of the usual, comforting heat of his immortal blood.