Chapter 11
*"Break the timber! Drag the northern dog out! If the prince is inside, put him in irons with the rest of the traitors!"*
The heavy oak door rattled violently as a battering pole slammed against the outside panels. The iron brackets groaned. Dust and dried mortar rained down from the doorframe into the straw.
They were six hours early. Drawn steel scraped against leather scabbards outside the threshold, sharp, metallic, and lethal.
Julian didn't run for the chapel sluice. He didn't drop to his knees in panic.
Instead, with a sudden, fluid motion, he lunged forward into the space between my boots. He didn't reach for his crossbow. He reached into the inner lining of his soaked wool cloak and produced a heavy, blackened iron key—not the skeleton key to the cell door, but the specialized, double-toothed wrench forged specifically for the master locks of the imperial oubliette.
*He had it all along.*
Before I could speak, before I could demand to know what madness had possessed him, Julian jammed the wrench into the floor ring beneath my feet. With a violent, desperate heave of his entire body, he threw his weight against the iron lever.
*SNAP.*
The internal tumbler shattered. The master pin slid free. The twelve-pound chain that anchored me to the bedrock clattered uselessly into the dirt, leaving only the wrist cuffs hanging from my arms.
I was free.
The heavy door shuddered under a second, deafening blow from the battering timber outside. Wood splintered. The iron bar buckled inward by two inches.
Julian didn't look at the door.
He lunged upward, his hands catching mine, his slender fingers curling around my knuckles with an agonizing, bruising strength. He pressed the black-folded steel of the heirloom dagger hard into my open palm, his slate-grey eyes wide, burning with an incandescent, terrifying fire that seemed to scorch right through the darkness of the cell.
His chest was heaving against mine, his breath ragged, smelling of cold iron and peppermint, his voice dropping into a fierce, breathless whisper that sliced clean through the roaring chaos of the corridor:
"I never lost to you on the border, Rowan," Julian whispered, his fingers digging into my scarred skin as the door began to give way. "Ask yourself why every gold dragon in my father’s vault was delivered to your vanguard’s camp the night before you surrendered."
