Free Web NovelChapter 443: Chapter 443
The dungeons were nothing like Circe had imagined them to be. But now that she was here, her slippered feet carried her across cold stone floors without pausing.
Ragnar would not have approved. She knew that. She had known it even before she had made up her mind to come here, had felt the phantom weight of his disapproval pressing down on her shoulders from the moment the thought had first taken root in her mind. He had only just left for the capital that morning.
She had stood at the window and watched him go and told herself she would wait. That she would be patient. That she would do the sensible thing and remain in her chambers and rest the way everyone seemed to insist she needed to.
She had lasted all of an hour before the questions had begun to gnaw at her again, the way they had every single day since she had learned what Mirelle had done. freeweɓnovel.cøm
She couldn’t wait any longer.
Three guards came into view ahead of her and they paused the moment they saw her, all three of them going visibly rigid with shock they made absolutely no effort to conceal. She could read them plainly as they silently debated amongst themselves what the appropriate response to her presence here was supposed to be.
Every guard in the manor knew exactly what kind of man their prince was, and they all knew well enough that he would not be pleased to learn that his wife had descended into the dungeons alone in the fragile state she was still in.
She could see the questions forming on their lips..
She spoke first.
"Take me to Mirelle’s cell." Her voice came out steady and clear, carrying the kind of authority that left very little room for argument. She held herself upright despite the lingering fatigue that still pulled at her bones, and she looked at each of them in turn so that none of them could mistake her request for something they could disregard.
The guards still hesitated. They didn’t want to take her. Whether it was because they were wary of how Ragnar might react if he were to find out or something else entirely she couldn’t be sure, but what she could be sure of was that none of them were willing to refuse her outright either. She was still their princess. She still outranked every single one of them and they all knew it just as well as she did.
She asked again.
Except this time it wasn’t a request at all.
The three of them exchanged a look, something passing silently between them. One of them moved to lead the way and the other two fell into step as they brought her deeper into the belly of the dungeons.
She followed without a word. The walk felt long, the silence stretching around them with nothing to fill it. And then finally they slowed, coming to a stop in front of a heavy cell door. One of the guards reached for the key at his belt. The lock gave with a dull, grinding click and the door swung open wide enough to expose the small, dim interior beyond.
Circe stepped inside first.
Her gaze went immediately to the woman chained in the middle of the cell floor.
The sound of the door and the footsteps must have reached Mirelle because she stirred, slowly pushing herself to her knees but that was all she could manage.
The chains were fixed in a way that made standing fully upright entirely impossible and so she remained there, anchored down to the floor.
One of the guards followed Circe inside and pulled the door shut behind him, positioning himself near it with the unmovable resolve of a man who had already decided he wasn’t going anywhere. Given what Mirelle had done before, Circe supposed she couldn’t blame him for that.
Her attention had already narrowed completely to Mirelle, who had yet to lift her face. Her hair hung forward like a curtain, falling over her features and shielding most of them from view, but what little Circe could see was enough to make her pause. Ugly purple bruises marred the visible portion of Mirelle’s face.
For the longest time, Circe merely stood there staring at her, not uttering a single word.
"Why?" She finally asked. "I want to know why you did it."
Mirelle didn’t answer straight away. When she finally did, her voice came out almost bored, edged with something flippant that made the hairs on Circe’s arms rise. "Does it even matter? Either way I am going to be stuck in this cell until the prince grows bored of having me."
"You committed a grave offense against me." Circe said. "You tried to kill me and rotting here in this cell is the least of what you deserve for your crimes."
Mirelle lifted her head slowly, and in doing so the curtain of her hair fell back and the full ruin of her face came into view, bruise after bruise layered across her skin in ugly, mottled shades. Her eyes found Circe’s without flinching.
"I never wanted to kill you, your highness." She said. "Just your unborn child."
The words landed like a blow. Circe’s breath caught somewhere in the middle of her chest and stayed there.
Her emotions must have shown plainly on her face because Mirelle’s lips began to stretch into a slow, thin smile, and there was nothing kind in it.
"My job was to care for you always, your highness." She said. "Did you think I would allow that monstrous beast to sully your womb with his filthy child? I could not. I would not. The thought alone of you one day bearing that bloodsucking leech’s child was so inconceivable, it was repulsive. He would ruin you, after all the things he already took from you, and from our people. When I came here, I made it my mission to make sure it never happened."
Circe felt sick.
Repulsion rose up in her like a tide, pressing up against the inside of her ribs and demanding to be let out.
"How dare you." Her voice came out low. Dangerous. "How dare you! You had no right to do that, I am your princess." The last part came louder but Mirelle didn’t so much as blink.
"Yes, you are a princess." She agreed, with a maddening kind of calm. "You are a princess of Westeria, yet look at how easily you offered yourself to the enemy. His soldiers killed your father and he took you hostage, made you his wife by force and despite all that you still lay with him. There are more people like me in this kingdom, people that left Westeria for one reason or the other. We prayed for you when you were taken from home, we prayed for your safety but now I see that you never deserved our concern. You never deserved our loyalty, not when you were so ready to spread your legs like a whore for the bastard prince and bear his monstrous spawn."
