74. Pig and a hand

"Can you stand?" Ada asked when they had broken apart.

"Ada," gasped Solen, reaching out a trembling hand as Diane helped her to her feet. "How can I ever thank you? How did you even manage to find me?"

"We can discuss it when we are all safe, love," said Diane. "There is a banquet in the Barracks, and a steep climb to reach it. Can you cope?"

"I can handle it. Though I can't remember the way," said Solen. "It feels like I've survived an age here in the darkness. They took me from the cell once, but it was only to question me, then beat me when I refused to answer them. I think I'm only alive now because they thought they could get more from me once I was at my weakest. But they were wrong. I would have died before I let them have a single part of me."

A shudder shook her entire body and Diane held her close. Blinking back tears, Ada felt for her pockets and drew out the silver dagger that Solen had once gifted her. She placed it in Solen's hand, and as the fae's fingers wrapped around the hilt, it was as though a limb had been restored to her being; silver become flesh. With the dagger in one hand and Diane's held in her other, a determined strength seemed to be burning through Solen's fatigue.

"Show me the way." Solen let Diane lead her to the door, each step steady and measured.

Ada lingered behind, wanting to walk from the terrible prison, but knowing that to do so would mean leaving a dozen other fae, all desperate and dying, behind her. Solen had been one of their number, and wouldn't they also have friends and family weeping for them in Wysthaven? Ada held the key to their freedom but had neither time nor aid to take them properly to it. There would be enough difficulty in smuggling themselves from the Barracks; a dozen dying fae would be practically impossible.

Yet, that did not eliminate Ada's choice, and as she turned towards the two women in the doorway, she knew that she would never forget the pale eyes upon her back. Nor the unspoken words—the curses—that she had been their final condemnation.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Ada's hands were shaking when she reached the door, wondering whether closing it would afford Solen more time to hide her escape from the Hounds, despite the darkness that would devour the fae still trapped inside. The darkness that had been brought upon them by a hundred Hounds, and now by Ada herself.

"Oh," Diane said faintly, looking as though she was about to pass out under the weight of Solen. Ada hurried to catch her, before she looked down the passage and felt the bile already churning in her stomach rise up her throat.

The Hound General swayed in the stairwell's opening, twice as broad and too tall for the low ceiling. His eyes were fixed on the women, and though he didn't move, the chains around his neck clinked and clattered. Even stood in the shadows, the General was close enough for Ada to see his grotesque face. What must have once been a pure iron mask had not only branded his face, but burnt it deeply enough that it was half-embedded into his skin. Scabs were crusted down his neck, large and leaking, and one of his eyes had swollen into little more than a watery, red slit.

"Diane," he said, his voice rough. "You stole my keys?"

Diane quivered. "Yes."

A purple vein bulged in his forehead. "Come here."

"No," said Diane quietly, as if uncertain, her entire face growing red.

"Come here!"

"I won't!" Tears brimmed and fell from Diane's eyes, though she didn't move from Solen's side.

"I should kill you for this," the General said, finally taking a step towards them. The women moved back, but the prison quickly blocked them. "Maybe I will. But I'll kill those two with you first. You can watch. I would like to hear your begging again."

Diane screamed at him, wrenching the iron ring from her finger and throwing it at his face. It bounced between his chains and skittered across the floor, spinning twice, then falling into the dust. There was silence. Solen gathered Diane into her arms, trying to push her behind her back.

"You harlot!" bellowed the General. He charged down the passage, chains twisting around his thick legs as he came like a beast towards them. Diane cried out while Ada stood frozen, fear making her numb as she watched the man's large fist come striking down. He hit Solen across the face, sweeping her whole body against the wall and letting her crumple to the floor.

"Solen!" Diane screamed as the General closed the same fist around Diane's neck, shredding her gown between his chains as he lifted her from the floor.

"Ada," gasped Solen, struggling to her feet. "Help us. Please."

Blood seemed to rush back into Ada's body, and without a thought, she dove down and grabbed one of the General's longer chains. She circled it around her wrist and began to pull, ignoring the pinch of the metal links as she heaved the chain against the General's throat.

His unswollen eye seemed to be protruding from its socket as he turned his attention to Ada. Diane's feet kicked frantically until her toes found the floor, her chin tilted up as high as she could manage, trying to breathe. But the General didn't release her. He tensed his fingers, confused to see the iron against Ada's bare hand, even as blisters burst beneath the chain on his neck.

"How can you stand yourself?" Ada demanded, struggling to distract him further. "The people in those cells are dying because of you! They're sick and suffering and it's your fault! You're the foulest kind of monster!"

"This world is sick," the General said abruptly, closing his free hand around the chain and wrenching it back. He could not hold it as tightly as Ada, though she still slid towards him at his tug, the torch falling from her other hand. "Those creatures you saw in there aren't any different from the ones sleeping above us. You're simply seeing things clearly, down below the city, where magic can't Veil the true suffering of faekind."

"You're insane," Ada cried as the chain bit into her wrist.

"You're the one trapped in insanity!" replied the General, ripping the chain from around Ada's wrist along with a strip of raw skin. "You're refusing to see what magic has done to us—what it continues to do—it's an addiction! We're all sick! Every one of us in Wysthaven!"

He turned back to Diane, his fingers caressing her slender throat as he lifted her once again and said, "There's only one cure."

Diane's thin dress fluttered up from the dust and, gasping for breath, she appeared more ghostly than ever before. Her hands wavered in midair, then struck up and began scrabbling at her husband's mask, tearing at stray wires of metal until her nails found the swollen skin around his eye. He screeched, rearing back even as he held her tightly.

"Diane!" cried Solen, and as Ada fumbled for the dropped torch she saw a flash of silver fly through the air.

Diane caught the dagger and plunged it into the General's heart. His screech changed into a thick gurgling, and he dropped Diane, clutching at his chest. But the dagger was stuck between his chains, all now slick with blood, and he could not prise it out. Ada looked away whilst Diane counted his every stunted breath, letting the blood pool around herself and her husband until he fell dead at her feet.

Their ascent of the stairwell was silent and solemn. They supported each other, moving slowly but surely up towards the ballroom. Ada went first, holding the torch above her head, though now it gave off more smoke than light. It seemed absurd that there could be greater horrors waiting in the Barracks than those they had faced beneath it, but when they reached the dividing curtain, Ada knew the night was far from over.

Solen looked worse in the moonlight, her body so starved it was miraculous that she was still standing. Diane teetered beside her, a dark bruise blooming around her neck like a ring of posies. The shock had not left her face, her eyes large and watering, her lips still gasping for short breaths of air.

Ada knew she was the most presentable of the three, though that was saying very little. The band of torn skin around her wrist was an angry shade of scarlet, and her navy dress was damp with patches of blood. She did her best to smooth her hair and pointed at the grand staircase.

"Sit there with Solen," she whispered to Diane. "Rest as well as you can, but be ready to move as soon as I come back with Lark."

Diane nodded, too tired to protest as Ada slipped alone back into the ballroom. Thankfully there were no fae nearby, though Ada's heart faltered when she saw that they were all now pressed around the banquet table. Even the violinists had stopped playing,  the only sounds belonging to Lark and Renard, their argument having grown obscene.

Platters of rich foods had been knocked from the table and crushed beneath their boots, whilst the carving pig had rolled across the linen towards them, its meat as pink as their faces. More crystal goblets were shattered around Lark, as though the crowd had thrown them at him, and he now bore a scarlet slap across one cheek.

He braced himself upon the table, spent and shaken, but the golden fox still glittered on his lapel and he countered his father's every insult. Ada wove her way through the crowd, uncertain how she might steal away with Lark, and all the time searching for Raeph. Even if she couldn't admit it, she knew that he would be her only hope to break up the dispute and escape with all the bandits.

Ada caught a glimpse of black silk at the front of the crowd and pressed onwards, ignoring the mutters cast in her direction and uncaring that the fae may look down at her face. She had almost reached Raeph—could almost feel his cool hand within her own—when she saw again that cruel flash of silver.

Renard had ripped the carving knife from the pig's skull and was slicing it down again towards the table. A gasp rippled through the crowd, grotesque delight, and red was spreading across the crisp white linen. A high scream hushed the ballroom as Lark lifted his arm. His hand had been cut cleanly away.