Chapter 14 - Calliope

The castle is restless that night.

A shiver runs through me as I slip through the darkened corridors, the chill of the stone seeping into my bones. Shadows dance beyond the ever-flickering magical torchlight, and I linger close to the walls, every one of my senses on high alert. Each footstep is a gamble, each creak of the floorboards a possible betrayal of my continued disobedience. But the servants’ wing is quiet, save for the distant hum of wind beyond the windows.

No guards. No watchers.

Perfect.

Holding my breath, I turn a corner and press against the wall, waiting. The library looms at the end of the hall, a towering expanse of double doors cast in iron. I wait for a count of five heartbeats, listening, searching for any sign of movement.

Nothing.

One deep breath, then I move quickly, unlatching the door with practiced ease. It swings open, and I slip inside, letting it click shut behind me.

The library is just as staggeringly vast and beautiful as it was before, its walls lined with tomes that seem to hold the weight of their centuries of history. A thick silence blankets the room, broken only by the rustle of my cloak and the muffled howl of the perpetual wind outside.

The dim glow of the sconces casts long, jagged shadows over the rows of books, their hard-edged shadows sharp as knives. This room—this place, this refuge—is where I can pretend, if only for a moment, that I am not Arvoren’s prisoner.

“Calliope.”

The voice, soft and familiar, pulls me from my thoughts. I glance around, but I don’t see him. No footsteps, no rustle of clothing. Yet he’s here, I know it.

“Linus,” I whisper back, keeping my voice low. “Where are you?”

A faint laugh echoes in the silence, and then a shadow shifts near one of the alcoves. He steps forward, his lean form emerging from the darkness as if conjured from the very shadows themselves. Linus has the appearance of a man who has always been able to blend into the background like that—a skill that’s kept him alive, no doubt, in a place like this city.

I wonder whether he is the youngest son of the Caddell family. I wonder what upbringing raised a man such as he is, so cold and perfectly controlled.

I wonder whether, if I was to find out, I’d even want to know.

He’s dressed plainly, in the dark, unassuming garb of a scholar or scribe. His narrow, somewhat underfed face is sharp, all angles and edges, but his eyes … his eyes burn with a strange, almost manic light.

“I almost thought you wouldn’t come,” he murmurs, relief in his voice. He moves closer, glancing over his shoulder as if expecting someone to burst through the door right after me at any moment. “Things have become … complicated.”

“Complicated?” I let out a soft, derisive laugh. “How so? Even more than they were? Intruders in the castle, the king’s violent rage, talk of rebellion in court—trust me, Linus, I know the noose is tightening around him, and if they kill him, he’ll stop at nothing to take me with him. You don’t have to tell me about ‘complicated.’”

Linus makes an odd noise. I cannot tell for the life of me whether it’s amusement or sympathy. Perhaps both.

“Come,” he tells me. “Let’s make sure we aren’t overheard.”

He leads me deep into the library, through the twisted tunnels of books upon books, up an obscured spiraling staircase leading high into the rafters. At the top, an overhanging nook is crammed with what I can best tell are draconic fiction books. Children’s books. Who read these? Were these the tales of Arvoren’s childhood? I yearn to know, to understand.

Linus settles on the floor in the tiny, cramped space in the dust. He has an odd familiarity here, as if he frequents this odd hideaway. Hesitantly, I sit opposite him, our knees almost touching. We’re like children here ourselves, hiding from our betters, sneaking around in the night.

“My people in the city,” Linus starts without wasting time, “are planning on killing the king.”

I suspected as much—still, hearing him come out and say it so directly catches me off guard.

“Oh,” I find myself saying, for lack of anything else appropriate. “I see.”

He nods contemplatively, as if I’ve said something of note on the subject. “The military are now hunting us. As I’m sure you can imagine, keeping my part in the plot a secret so I may continue to affiliate with the nobility of Millrath hasn’t been easy.”

I can’t hold in my question: “Why all this? Your house is an enemy of his, I understand that. But the other houses surely wish him dead, too, and stand to lose far less than you in this. If you’re discovered, he’ll burn Fort Caddell to the ground. He’ll wipe you and your people out of existence.”

It’s true, and we both know it. House Caddell has always been the weakest of the seven High Houses of Kaldoria; the poorest, smallest, and most militarily disadvantaged, to say nothing of their lack of draconic warriors and workers.

Linus hums in the back of his throat. He peers at me in the gloom, and I feel peeled apart, as if he is dissecting me, pulling truths from me without my acquiescence.

“I have my own reasons for wanting the Dragon King dead,” he says eventually. “You know as well as I do the terror and violence one endures as a human in this land.”

I narrow my eyes. It isn’t an answer to my question, and Linus knows it.

Especially after my experiences in this castle, I no longer appreciate being lied to.

“You,” I persist. “What do you want. I won’t tolerate being manipulated.”

Linus’s eyes flash with something too brief and intense to describe or name. He hesitates for a long time. Here, hidden among the towering piles of tombs, I feel simultaneously trapped by him and trapped alongside him. This cage is his as much as it is mine.

“I believe this land will never be free,” he says eventually, “So long as the dragons continue to rule it. I believe all six of the Draconic Houses must fall.”

I scoff, sitting back, folding my arms across my delicately laced nightgown. “A pipe dream. You’re a madman.”

“Perhaps. But I will pursue my ends in this land if it means my people have a sliver of a chance at freedom.” Linus quirks a tiny, sly smile, a fiercely discomfiting thing. “You’d be a traitor to shy from the fight for the freedom of the humans of this place. Deep inside, you already know it. Look what he has done to you.”

He gestures to the whole of me, as if I’ve been consumed entirely. I burn with hatred at his suggestion, but looking down at myself, I understand what he means. In my thin, rich nightclothes, the only garments I am permitted to wear outside of formal settings, with my ankles perpetually chained and my feet bare, and my hair soft with extensive washing but unkempt nonetheless, I look like some strange, pale spirit, a shade of this place’s violent past. I haunt its hallways like a ghost. I feel like I’m losing my mind most days, less a tower-bound princess and more an attic-bound madwoman.

Even a month ago, I was not recognisably the same person I am now. The thought terrifies and repulses me.

Still, I cannot stand the insult, regardless of its truth.

“Don’t act like you aren’t walking a thin line as much as I am,” I grind out through gritted teeth. “We’re both playing a dangerous game. Are you even permitted to be in this castle right now? Unlike you, I know where my limits lie. I’m keeping myself alive. The people of my village weren’t so lucky as to be able to even try.”

Linus doesn’t recoil at my tone. If anything, his small, knowing smile grows.

When he leans nearer to me, I see in his teeth a sharpness even Arvoren doesn’t possess, a carnivorous thirst I cannot understand nor describe.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, “you could be limitless, if you only believed it so.”

The words send a chill through me. Unsettled, I scoot back until I’m pressed to a stack of children’s novels with red spines, hardly visible in the faint light glowing up from the lower levels below us.

Something clarifying settles within me then. As if instantaneously, I know precisely what to say next.

“I know you want help from me,” I say. “I’m willing to keep meeting with you … if you help me, too.”

Linus's smile breaks into a grin. As if we’re friends. As if we trust each other. We never will—I know this innately. I will never trust this hungry thing, this battered dog, the most dangerous type of beast. And he will never trust me.

“Certainly,” he says. “Anything.”

I reel off my list of demands like a hostage-taker. “I know Lyra is with your people. Protect her, or I’ll rat you out to him in a heartbeat. Keep her alive above all else. Are we clear?”

Linus nods, looking unbothered. “She’s not stupid. She won’t be difficult to keep out of danger.”

Clearing my throat of its thick, anxious lump, I continue: “And if I’m going to feed you information, you need to find a way to break me out before he can—before he—” I can’t even say it. Before he marries me. Before he sires children with me. Before I, like his sad-eyed mother, become resigned to life in this place. “You need to get me out. I don’t care how.” It is my principle and most important demand.

I hope my third and final point is made silently clear by the look in my eyes. Betray me, and I’ll find some way to kill you. I swear it.

Linus sticks out his hand between us. “You have a deal, Calliope Windward.”

My full name. The wistful sound of it—I had almost forgotten the way it rang in the air. It hasn’t been so long since I got here, and already, I am forgetting myself. Forgetting my grandmother, my home, my very spirit.

If I don’t get out of here, I’ll lose it all.

I take his hand and shake it. His skin is cold as the dead, icy all the way through.