Chapter 147 Gilded Cage
The heavy gold door of the cage slammed shut, the sound a brutal, ringing finality that rattled my teeth in my skull.
I didn't try to catch myself as the elite guards threw me forward. I hit the dark red velvet cushion hard, my cheek scraping against the stiff fabric, my ruined black silk dress pooling around me in a heavy, blood-soaked heap.
A new padlock, twice the size of the one I had melted, was threaded through the thick gold loops. It snapped closed.
The guards didn't linger to mock me. They turned in perfect, synchronized precision, their heavy steel boots hammering against the polished black marble as they marched out of the Throne Room. The massive obsidian doors groaned, grinding shut to seal me in the vast, jaundiced twilight.
I lay completely still on the floor of the cage.
My body was a map of absolute devastation. My wrists were raw and bleeding beneath the new, thicker iron shackles they had clamped on me. The cut on my cheek throbbed. My throat was a desert of cracked glass, and my muscles trembled with a severe, deep-bone exhaustion that made simply drawing breath feel like moving boulders.
We had failed.
The adrenaline that had carried me down into the dark, that had fueled the magic to kill Silas and break Klaus’s chains, was entirely gone. It left behind a hollow, rotting crater in my chest. We had fought through the flooded corridors, we had climbed the bloody stairs, and we had lost.
I closed my eyes, pressing my bleeding palms flat against the velvet cushion. I dreaded what I was about to do, but I couldn't stop myself. I pushed my awareness downward, diving into the center of my chest where the invisible tether of the blood-bond pulsed.
The transition hit me with the force of a physical execution.
A ragged, tearing sob ripped its way out of my dry throat. The pain wasn't just physical; it was a vast, suffocating ocean of pure, unadulterated despair.
I felt the rough, unhewn rock of the Abyssal Dungeon biting into his flayed back. They hadn't put him back in Silas’s flooded cell. They had dragged him deeper, into a lightless, freezing cavern where the sea leaked directly through the porous ceiling, raining down on him in a steady, icy drizzle.
His arms were pulled taut above his head again, the heavy iron chains bolting his wrists to the stone. The suppressor collar was back on his throat, the ancient runes hissing and burning a fresh ring of blisters into his pale flesh.
Klaus, I whispered into the dark void of the tether.
There was no immediate answer. The crush of the collar was smothering his conscious mind, dragging him back down into the feral, starving fog. But beneath the fog, I felt the sharp, stinging graze of the newly opened wounds on his back. The guards had beaten him with the wooden shafts of their halberds when they separated us, tearing open the flesh I had just pulled the silver from.
Nerissa. The thought was so weak, so fragile, it felt like a single thread of spider silk stretching across a canyon.
I am here, I pushed back, forcing every ounce of warmth and stubborn defiance I could scrape together down the bond. I curled into a tight ball on the floor of the cage, wrapping my chained arms around my knees. I am in the gold cage. I am alive.
We failed. His mental voice cracked, bleeding with a level of heartbreak that physically hurt my chest. I had you in my arms. I had you, and I let them take you back.
You didn't let them do anything, I argued fiercely, squeezing my eyes shut as hot tears spilled over my lashes, cutting tracks through the dried blood and dirt on my face. There were twenty loaded crossbows pointed at your heart. You kept me alive.
It is worse now, Klaus confessed, the raw honesty of his despair washing over me. Before, I was just starving in the dark. But feeling the surface air... feeling your hands on my face... and then being dragged back down here. It is worse.
I knew exactly what he meant. The taste of freedom, however brief, made the heavy iron chains feel ten times heavier. Hope was a brutal, unforgiving poison when it was snatched away.
Listen to me, I commanded, gripping the velvet cushion until my knuckles turned white. Do not let the dark take you. Do not let the Emperor win. We are still breathing.
Klaus didn't respond. The heavy, suffocating weight of the suppressor collar dragged him under again, his mind slipping away into a disjointed, chaotic haze of pain and starvation. I kept the bond wide open, anchoring him to my heartbeat, refusing to let the connection sever completely.
The silence of the Throne Room stretched, thick and stagnant. The overpowering stench of rotting orchids arranged in the massive vases along the walls made my stomach churn violently.
A soft, rhythmic scraping sound echoed from the far end of the hall.
I didn't sit up. I kept my head resting on my knees, my eyes tracking the movement through the thick gold bars of my cage.
The Emperor glided out from the shadows behind the ivory dais.
He wore his heavy, dark green velvet robes. He walked slowly, his blind, milky eyes staring straight ahead, his skeletal hands clasped neatly behind his back. He didn't look like a ruler who had almost lost his greatest prisoner. He looked incredibly, terrifyingly calm.
He stopped two feet away from the gilded cage.
"You smell of the sea, little fish," the Emperor murmured. His dry, papery voice drifted through the gold bars. "And of dead men."
I slowly lifted my head. I didn't bother wiping the tears or the blood from my face. I looked up at him with cold, dead turquoise eyes.