But when the dungeon door swings open, it’s not demons who enter.
Silver slinks down the steps, Güthric lumbering close behind her. She stares at Dimitri; he stares back.
“I assume you’re here for the same reason we are,” she says smoothly.
“And what reason is that?” he asks, planting his non-sword-hand on his hip.
Güthric claps his hands together, as if to remove the blood of a fight from them, and moves past Silver. He shoves Dimitri back and says in his gruff voice, “Break out.”
Dimitri flushes bright red. “We—you can’t. The Magistrate…he’ll arrest you.”
“I’d rather be arrested than be an accomplice to the abandonment of our people,” Silver says.
Güthric nods his agreement.
“He’ll only arrest you if you’re caught,” Kalli says from the cell next door. I can just barely make out her arms where she’s rested them on the bars. “If you can free us, then you must. They won’t just hang us for being accused of wielding magic. They’ll use us to lure out the other mages. Or worse, to lure the demons.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, but it’s obvious that she has some intel as to what Esmond is planning. Now’s not the time for a discussion. Alphonse said the Shadow Crusade will leave midday, which can only be a few hours away from now. If we’re breaking out, we need to do it, and fast, if we have any hope of putting some distance between us.
For a solid hour, Güthric hammers at the bars. He uses his mace to bang and whack at the hinges, but to no avail. These cells were forged from something even stronger than shadowsteel.
“It’s no use, Güthric. You tried, but that’s all you can do.” My rueful glance slides over Silver to find Dimitri still slumped on the floor, his head buried in his hands. “You should leave before the Crusaders retrieve us.”
He looks up. “I’m not leaving you. I don’t…I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m staying here, with you, until Alphonse comes to retrieve you.”
Silver exchanges a look with Güthric. “She won’t be here when he arrives. If we intend to run, then we have to go now.”
Dimitri guffaws, jumping to his feet. “You’re deserting? You can’t even get the door open. How do you think—”
Silver stares him down. “This isn’t the job I enlisted for. I vowed to hunt Qaeus, not start a war with the mages.”
He crosses his arms. “So you were planning on abandoning your post before Halira was accused of anything?”
“I planned on doing what I promised I’d do when Ashenvale fell. I will not let those people die in vain.”
“Then you should go,” I say through the bars, drawing their attention away from one another. I take a shaky breath, the truth of what I’m about to say settling in like a crisp winter wind in my lungs. “If you mean to leave, you should leave now.”
“We can’t leave without you—”
“It’s no use. You’ve tried, but the bars won’t budge or break. Kalli and I…we’ve met our fates. I appreciate you trying but, I won’t let you stay here and be captured for trying to aid a mage—not that I am one, but…you know what I mean.”
Silence descends, but neither of them move.
“Go,” I say, harsher now. “You did what you could for us and I will never forget it, but there’s still time for you to leave. Please, go.”
Silver watches me with unwavering conviction. I’ve seen that look before. I recognize its stubbornness.
Realizing she’s not budging, I do the next best thing. “Fine. Don’t leave us. We can wait for the guards to return. They’ll have the keys. Once they free us, you can ambush them and we’ll go. But we can’t flee this place with no weapons and a limited supply of necro-ink.”
Güthric holds up his arm and stares at mace as if checking to make sure it’s there and not just a figment of his imagination.
“We’ll need more than the two weapons you possess. I’ll need my axe, and Kalli will need…something sharp.”
Silver’s eyes narrow on me, and for a moment, I fear she might challenge my suggestion. But after she considers the options, her expression becomes thoughtful. “We can stock-up on necro-ink at the catacombs, and I believe I know where they’ve taken your weapon. If you’re sure this will work—”
“You took out the other guards, didn’t you?”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear her cheeks tinged pink.
“Then go. You don’t have much time, and you’ll need to make it back before the Crusaders do.”
“This is absurd,” Dimitri bellows. “It’s mutiny. We’ll all be tried for treason!”
“You do not have to come,” Silver tells him, and she says nothing more. With a nod to Güthric, the two of them climb back up the stairs, leaving us for the time being. Part of me hopes they’ll return too late and we’ll already be gone. I hate the thought of them risking their necks for me. My life is already forfeit. There will be no escaping the Crusaders nor the Magistrate. Once they come for us, my death is all but written in the ashes.
I think about my mother and the secrets that died with her. I wonder what would’ve become of our lives if she had lived long enough to tell Kalli and I about ourselves. I wonder how our mage ancestors came to be in Arcathain, if they had stood against the Great Rift, or if they had been accidentally left behind. I wonder if I’ll ever learn the significance of the word Imryll.
“Did Mum ever talk to you about Imryll?” I ask my sister, my back to the stone wall between our cells, but my hand extends through the bars of mine to hold Dimitri’s.
I’m still shocked he’s remained this long. I knew how much he meant to me, but I hadn’t realized what I’d meant to him. I am his last family left. Even if he can’t bring himself to go against every honorable bone in his body to try to find a way to break me out, he will not leave my side. I am all he has.
“Imryll?” my sister repeats.
“It was the last word Mum spoke. I thought it might be a spell or something.”
Dimitri’s grip tenses in mine, the mere implication of mages making his blood boil.
“Maybe it was then,” Kalli says, a calculating note to her tone. I can hear her pacing in the cell beside me. “How did she say it?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, straightening.
“I mean, how did she speak that word? Was it said with a high pitch or low? Was it spoken from her throat or through her nose? Which part of the word was enunciated? I don’t know much about magic, but spells are precise. The inflection, the tone, the enunciation—everything has to be recited perfectly. Do you remember how she said it?”
I take myself back to that day. My mother’s death. The fear and pain she must’ve been in. She likely knew she was leaving her family behind, knew it would be the last time she saw one of her daughters and that she wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the other.
Only once my heart has thoroughly shattered do I utter the word, “Imryll.”
A gust of wind blows the door into the dungeon open and a raven glides in on the breeze. It lands on the floor in front of my cell, Dimitri scooting as far away as he can and shrieking the word magic over and over again. But I just stare at the bird. I know it’s the same one I’ve seen all along, and I get the feeling that my mother summoned it just to watch over me.