I think about his words, chew on them. What would I have done? I honestly don’t know. I can’t imagine spending one extra day imprisoned if there was even a chance of getting out—but then I haven’t spent seventeen years in here. Yet. I might just want a sure thing myself by then.

“But you think there’s a way out for us?” Flint asks.

Remy nods. “Like I said, it’s going to take a whole lot of luck and even more money…and that’s only if we survive the trip. But there’s a chance. It’s happened before.”

That last comment perks up all our ears. We only knew about the dragon who got out—and he’d made a deal with the Crone for a flower. There was another way that didn’t require me signing a devil’s pact with a witch and her pizza oven? Well, super awesome that we’re only learning about it now.

“Okay, so what’s the big escape plan?” I ask.

But before they can say anything, there’s a scraping sound on the floor across the room.

“What’s that?” I ask, even as Hudson moves so that I’m once again behind him.

“Dinner,” Calder answers, and though she doesn’t sound happy at the prospect, she also doesn’t sound traumatized. Which is something, at least, especially since my stomach has decided to let me know that it is well aware that it has been many hours since I’ve eaten.

“They feed us through a hole in the floor?” Flint sounds horrified.

“That floor panel is the only access in or out of this room,” Remy explains. “There’s no door, no window, nothing. Just the tube that dropped you in and this tiny door the guards have to move us to unblock. Oh, and the fold-down staircase right below it that they have to activate.”

“Move us?” Flint asks. “What does that mean?”

“You’ll see,” Remy answers.

His matter-of-fact tone should reassure me—he’s pretty blasé about the situation, after all—but instead, it freaks me out. So far I’ve done what I think is a pretty good job of keeping my panic at bay, but the idea that there is literally no way out of this place except waiting for the guards to not only open our cell but to unblock the entrance completely… Well, let’s say it makes me want out of here right freaking now.

I mean, does this place not answer to a fire marshal?

Calder walks over to the now-open hole in the floor and pulls out a triple-stacked tray.“You came on a good day,” she tells us. “It’s chicken and mashed potatoes.”

Not going to lie. The food choice kind of blows my mind. I don’t know what I expected to eat at the most diabolical prison ever created, but it definitely wasn’t my mother’s favorite comfort meal.

As she’s handing out the covered trays to Flint and me—and a cup of what I assume is blood to Hudson—we all settle on the floor again and dig in.

After we take a few bites, Hudson puts aside his distrust of Remy long enough to ask, “Can you tell us a little more about how this place works? Our powers feel like they’re gone.”

“That’s because they’re blocked,” Calder says. “Like, really blocked.”

“By the cuffs on our wrists?” Hudson asks. “I’ve worn a cuff like this before—it’s never really cut me off from my power, though. Not like this.”

“Because it’s not just that cuff.” Remy takes a bite of a dinner roll and motions with it at the room. “Look around. The cuffs block all your magic, even shifting magic, but let’s say we break those…”

Calder shakes her head. “You’d still have no abilities. The cell itself is a cuff.”

“Oh, shit. That’s brilliant,” Flint says, and the look on his face is half respect and half horror as he glances around the room. “That’s why the cell is all metal.”

“The whole outside prison wall is a giant cuff,” Remy tells us. “Then each cell is a cuff in a long chain of cuffs that, when locked together, make another cuff. And then, of course, there’s the cuffs on your wrists.”

“Four cuffs?” Flint asks, and for once, he seems totally cowed. “There are four separate cuffs between me and my magic?” He shakes his head. “No wonder I can’t feel it at all.”

That’s why my gargoyle string has completely disappeared. It’s locked away, hidden under one layer of metal after another, until there really is nothing left. I push my food around on my plate, my appetite suddenly gone.

The cruelty seems unfathomable. I understand that this is prison. I understand that powerful beings have to be contained. But they’re using safeguards upon safeguards upon safeguards upon safeguards to ensure that people can’t access something that is as much a part of them as their heart or their blood… It’s beyond horrible. It’s an actual violation.

“And just think,” Remy says grimly. “We’re the lucky ones. At least without a cuff, I have access to some of my magic. I can’t imagine how the rest of you lot get by with none. It’s a plain tragedy.”

“Lucky?” I ask. “How so?”

“We’re in the East Wheel, which is the political prisoner and petty-crime side. If you go over to the West Wheel—where the real criminals are—there are even more layers of protection.”

I don’t even want to think about it. But then, I realize, I don’t have a choice. We didn’t plan for the prison layout because we didn’t know about it—it’s a tightly held secret. But that means… “Do you know where the blacksmith is?” I ask. “On the East Wheel or the West one? Because if he’s in the West Wheel…”

“We are totally screwed,” Flint finishes for me.

“And then some,” Hudson agrees.

“He’s somewhere else entirely,” Remy tells us. And maybe I would be relieved if he didn’t have such a wary look on his face.

“So where is he, then?” I ask as my stomach cramps in dread.

Remy and Calder exchange a look. “He’s in the Pit, Grace,” he answers reluctantly.

114

How A Prison Cell

Became the Room

Where It Happens

“The Pit?” I look at Hudson and Flint, but they both seem as lost as I feel. “What’s that?”

Remy lifts a brow. “Ever read Dante’s ‘Inferno’? I’m thinking he took inspiration from this place, because someone had some fun with the idea.”

“I haven’t, no.”

“I have,” Hudson says grimly, and his arm goes around my waist again. “And I would sincerely prefer not to be frozen in ice…or anything else.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I’m totally willing to agree with it.

Calder stands up and puts her tray back in the hole in the floor, and we all do the same. I look around the cell, wondering if we’re going to have to piss in a different hole next. Calder must catch my expression and guess what I’m thinking, because she smiles and says, “Bathroom’s at the other end, in the shadows hidden behind a wall.”

I mouth thank you to her and catalog that info away for later.

Remy moves over to the tube we fell down and pulls on the chain attached to the end of it. He slides it through a pulley attached to the ceiling and slowly, slowly, slowly, beds start to crank down from the walls at the twelve, two, four, six, and eight positions on a clock.

“In case you don’t want to sleep on the floor,” he says and winks at me. “That bed opposite the tube is mine. Calder sleeps in the one to the right of it.”

“Oh, thank God,” I whisper, dropping down on the bed next to Calder’s. Hudson takes the one next to me, which leaves the last one in the circle for Flint, but he perches on the end of mine for now.

“But we have to get the blacksmith,” Flint says, and I know he’s thinking about how Luca is the firstborn at Katmere and what that could mean if Cyrus has his way. “Otherwise all of this is for nothing.”

“You’re right,” I agree before turning to Remy and Calder. No way are we staying in this prison. And no way are we leaving Jaxon high and dry or Katmere vulnerable to Cyrus’s plans. “So how do we do that?”

Remy and Calder exchange a look that’s more serious than anything I’ve seen from either one of them. “We run the gauntlet and reach the Pit,” they both say in unison.

“Why exactly do they keep him in the Pit?” I ask, choosing to ignore the gauntlet comment entirely for now. “I thought he was here as a political prisoner, not because he was an actual criminal.”

“He’s not in the Pit because he’s a bad guy, cher. He’s in the Pit because that’s where the forge is.”

“The forge?” Hudson asks. “He’s still a blacksmith?”

“He’s the best blacksmith in the world,” Calder says as she starts undoing the braid she just put in earlier. “Do you think they’d leave him sitting around in a cell all day?”

“He makes the bracelets,” Remy says, nodding at our wrists. “It’s why they’re so effective.”

“And that’s why you said he’s a favorite down here,” Hudson says. “He’s useful, which means they’re not going to want to let him go.”

“Yeah, well, I say that’s their problem. Did you see that poor man’s wife and what this has done to her?” I focus on Remy and take a deep breath. “So what’s this gauntlet? And how long does it take?”

He blinks at me with those eyes of his that see way too much. “I’ve got to say, darlin’, I really like your get-shit-done attitude. It’s refreshing.”