Chapter 164: An Attempt
>>Aelin
The dungeon was colder than I remembered.
Even with the sunlight pouring in from the largest cell—beams cutting through the dark like god-spears—it couldn’t chase away the damp. The air still smelled like stone, iron, and old blood. But that light... it was bright enough to touch every corner now. Even the shadows had nowhere left to hide.
I walked slowly through the corridor, my boots echoing against the floor. The guards straightened at my approach, one of them stepping forward with a questioning glance.
"Open one of the smaller containment cells," I said, voice firm. "Bring out one of them. Gently."
The hesitation was brief. He bowed once and obeyed, disappearing through a gate of rusted iron.
I waited in the silence, hands clenched loosely at my sides. The sunlight from the colosseum-sized cell stretched long down the hallway like golden veins across the floor, glowing with a warmth that didn’t quite reach my skin. It illuminated everything now. Even the broken things.
I heard the dragging first.
Shuffling feet. The slow scrape of limbs against stone.
When the guard returned, he was guiding one of the lost causes. A woman, I thought—though the features had wasted into something vague. Her hair hung in greasy ropes, her eyes wide and unblinking. Her mouth was parted slightly, but no sound came from her. She moved forward because her body remembered how. Not her mind.
It pained me to look at her like that
I swallowed down the tightness in my throat.