Chapter 358

Chapter 358
Zayn

I stared at him through the bars, completely thrown by the fact that Kael was sitting in the cage directly opposite mine. Out of every possible person who could have ended up down here, after months of being trapped in this place and becoming convinced that nobody would ever find me, it had to be him.

How the hell had he ended up here?

I kept staring at him, almost expecting him to disappear if I looked away for too long.

Seeing him sitting there made absolutely no sense when I knew how heavily this kingdom was guarded and how difficult it had been for me to even imagine someone getting close enough to the castle to break in.

Then again, it was Kael.

That motherfucker somehow managed to get himself into everything, and apparently breaking into a heavily guarded kingdom and getting thrown into a dungeon was simply the latest disaster he had managed to create for himself.

Under different circumstances, I probably would have laughed.

I probably would have made some smart comment about how he had finally managed to get himself into something he couldn’t talk his way out of, and he probably would have told me to go fuck myself before we spent the next ten minutes arguing through the bars.

But none of that mattered now.

There was only one thing I needed to know.

Aurora.

I pushed myself away from the wall, ignoring the soreness that immediately spread through my body as I shifted into a more upright position, and kept my eyes fixed on Kael.

“Is Aurora safe?”

Something changed in his expression.

It was small, almost impossible to notice, but I saw it anyway, and the fact that he didn’t answer immediately made my stomach tighten.

“You don’t know?”

I frowned.

“Know what?”

Kael looked away for a moment, dragging one hand through his hair before finally meeting my eyes again, and there was something in his face that made me wish he would stop hesitating and simply tell me whatever the hell he was trying to say.

“Aurora was taken.”

I froze.

“What?”

“She was taken six months ago.”

For several seconds, I simply stared at him, unable to make the words fit together with anything I knew.

Taken.

Six months ago.

My mind repeated the sentence over and over, but none of it seemed real.

Aurora had been taken.

Six months ago.

All this time, while I had been trapped here, I had been wondering what she was doing, whether she was angry with me, whether she had tried to contact me, whether she had somehow found a way to move on while I remained trapped inside this place.

And she had been gone too.

I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the wall as a shaky breath escaped me, trying to force myself to breathe normally while the realization settled deeper into my chest.

“That’s great,” I muttered bitterly.

Kael frowned.

I opened my eyes and looked directly at him.

“Absolutely fucking great.”

My voice came out sharper than I intended, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“And instead of finding her, you somehow ended up in here with me.”

A humorless laugh escaped me as I shook my head.

“Fucking great job, Draven.”

His eyes narrowed immediately.

“Oh, shut up.”

He leaned his head against the bars behind him, looking exhausted and irritated enough that, under any other circumstances, I probably would have found some satisfaction in seeing him in such a miserable state.

“I wasn’t the one who got kidnapped by my own father.”

My expression hardened.

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t fucking start.”

“I wasn’t starting anything.”

“You literally just—”

I stopped myself before the argument could go any further when another thought suddenly occurred to me, and the irritation in my chest was replaced by something colder.

“Where’s Cecilia?”

Kael went completely still.

I watched his face carefully, waiting for him to answer, but he didn’t say anything.

“Is she safe?”

Still nothing.

My stomach tightened.

“Kael?”

His gaze dropped toward the floor, and the silence suddenly became unbearable.

“Maybe she can help us,” I said, my voice becoming more urgent as I watched him. “Maybe she can get someone here, or maybe she can—”

“She’s dead.”

Everything inside me stopped.

I stared at him.

“What?”

The word barely left my mouth, and for several seconds I simply looked at him, waiting for him to tell me I had heard him wrong.

He didn’t.

Kael’s expression remained grim as he looked back at me.

“She was killed by one of your father’s men.”

I couldn’t move.

The dungeon seemed to become completely silent around me, even though I knew there had to be sounds somewhere beyond the walls, because all I could hear was the pounding of my own heartbeat and the words that kept repeating inside my head.

Cecilia was dead.

I stared at Kael, waiting for something in his expression to change, waiting for him to say that she was injured, that he had misunderstood, that she was somewhere else, anything that would make those words less final.

Nothing came.

“When?”

“Not even ten minutes ago.”

My stomach dropped.

“No.”

I shook my head slowly.

“No, she can’t be.”

“She is.”

“No.”

I pushed myself to my feet so quickly that the room tilted around me, forcing me to catch the bars before I fell.

“That’s not possible.”

Kael’s jaw tightened.

“I saw it happen.”

I stared at him, my fingers tightening around the cold metal as I tried to process what he was telling me.

“Who?”

“One of the guards.”

“My father?”

“His man.”

I swallowed hard.

Cecilia was dead.

The reality of it became heavier the longer I stood there, and I looked down at the floor as though there might somehow be an explanation waiting beneath my feet.

There wasn’t.

She was dead.

My mind kept circling back to those two words, unable to move past them.

“Aurora doesn’t know.”

Kael didn’t answer.

“She doesn’t know what happened.”

My voice cracked slightly, and I looked away.

I didn’t even know where Aurora was.

I didn’t know whether she was alive.

I didn’t know whether she was hurt.

I didn’t know whether she was somewhere close enough for us to reach or so far away that we would never find her.

And now Cecilia was dead too.

I looked back at Kael.

“What happened to you?”

His jaw tightened.

“I came here looking for you.”

“And Cecilia?”

“She came with me.”

I swallowed.

“And you found me.”

“Yeah.”

His gaze dropped toward the floor.

“But not her.”

The silence that followed was unbearable.

I slowly lowered myself back against the wall, allowing my legs to fold beneath me as I pulled my knees toward my chest, while Kael remained on the other side of the corridor and neither of us seemed to know what we were supposed to say after that.

Aurora was missing.

Cecilia was dead.

Kael was trapped here with me.

For months, I had learned to live with the idea that nobody was coming.

It had been easier to think that way.

If I stopped expecting someone to appear at the door, stopped listening for footsteps that never came, stopped imagining what it would feel like to finally walk outside, then every day became slightly easier to survive.

I had learned how to make myself numb.

I had learned how to stop hoping.

But seeing Kael sitting across from me changed something.

Maybe it was the fact that someone had actually made it inside.

Maybe it was knowing that there was someone outside these walls who had continued searching.

Or maybe it was simply the realization that the situation wasn’t as impossible as I had convinced myself it was.

Kael had found me.

He had made it through the kingdom.

My gaze slowly lifted toward him.

“We’re getting out.”

His eyes met mine.

“I know.”

I shook my head.

“No.”

He frowned slightly.

“You don’t understand.”

My voice was quieter now, but there was nothing uncertain about it as I stared through the bars and tried to imagine the castle above us, the guards standing between us and the outside, and everything that would have to happen before we could finally walk away from this place.

“I don’t care what it takes anymore.”

Kael remained silent.

“I don’t care how many guards are waiting upstairs, how heavily this place is protected, or what the fuck happens if they catch us trying to leave.”

My fingers tightened around my knees.

“I don’t care if we have to fight our way through every corridor in this entire fucking castle.”

I looked directly at him.

“I’ve spent enough time in this place.”

My jaw tightened as I stared toward the dungeon entrance.

“We’re getting out of here.”

Kael held my gaze for several seconds, and something in his expression changed as he slowly nodded.

Neither of us needed to say anything else.

There was no point sitting here and waiting for someone to decide what happened to us.

Whatever waited upstairs, whatever stood between these cages and the outside world, we were going to face it.

And if getting out meant tearing this entire fucking kingdom apart on our way through it, then so be it.