Crown of Mist by Kimberly Cates

Author:Kimberly Cates [Cates, Kimberly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gnarly Wool Publishing
Published: 2020-04-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

A score of torches blazed in iron sconces, lining the walls like spectators at some grisly pagan rite. Brianna stared at the writhing flames reflected upon sharp pincers, thick ropes and bands of iron designed to crush bones and spirits. Each tongue of fire seemed to claw at the sweat-dulled metal and pitted stone as though lost in its own private torment. A torment she soon would share.

She turned her gaze to Creigh, battling, still, against the men that held him, as they yanked his shackled arms high, securing the chains to a hook set high in the stone wall. Three times as they had made their way down into the dread White Tower, the guards had slammed Creigh with their pikestaffs, trying to beat him into submission. And twice he had broken from their grasp, intending not to gain her freedom, Bree sensed, but rather seize one of their weapons just long enough to pierce her heart.

I’ll drive my own dagger into Lindley’s chest before I allow him to endure that hell, she remembered Creigh saying back in Ireland. And now, as the White Tower’s dread chamber swallowed them, Brianna could see the same desperation wrack his face.

She looked away, unwilling to torment him further by allowing him to see her fear. But no matter where her eyes darted in the torch-lit room, terror tightened its grip, for even the walls dripped with the sinews of torture.

She heard Ogden’s boot heels upon the stone as he strode over to where Creigh hung, chained. The Roundhead grasped the iron links above Creigh’s wrists, yanking them to test their strength. A satisfied chuckle rumbled in his thick chest as he picked up a gruesome pair of tongs, fingering their sharp points.

“There is an art to being a torture master and Master Sayer Wells is one of the finest in the trade, Blagden has assured me. I bow to his expertise since I had a difficult time deciding which of these delights your sins warranted.”

Ogden grinned at a huge sweat-grimed man with arms twice the size of any others in the room, and a face blank as an image carved in stone.

The man, Wells, scrubbed his palms on his stained leather apron then turned to stoke a fire that blazed in a stone pit in the room’s center. “I ply my trade, as my father did before me, and my gaffer afore that. But me daughter, she be celebrating her birthday this eve, so it would please me to get on with the questioning, if your colonelship pleases.”

Brianna wanted to scream at the irony that in a few hours, she would lay broken, or dead, and this monster would hang an apron stained with her blood upon a wooden peg then saunter off to a revel.

Her gaze darted to Ogden as the Roundhead unfastened the flowing black mantle about his shoulders, looping its cord about an iron spike. He gave the master torturer a conspiratorial grin. “I doubt this will take a great deal of your time,” he said.

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