His Royal Whiskers by Sam Gayton

Author:Sam Gayton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

3

In the Gloom Room

At first, the Gloom Room did not seem as bad as the other cells in the Czar’s dungeon. It was not freezing cold, nor pitch-dark, nor was it full of things that shuffled over the floor and nibbled at your toes. It had no bars and no chains. Parts of it were almost comfortable. There was a fireplace, a rug. Even armchairs.

And yet the Gloom Room was, without a doubt, the most horrible and inescapable prison in all of Petrossia.

What was horrible about the Gloom Room was the smell.

It was a heavy, stifling stench that covered your face like a damp towel. A smell that sank your spirits and lowered your head and sent the tears spilling from your eyes.

It was the smell, believe it or not, of defeat.20

Defeat was in the gray carpet and the faded armchairs. It was in the beige wallpaper and the rust of the window bars and the way the fireplace did nothing but smolder and wheeze. It had wriggled into everywhere and everything, and if you were down in the Gloom Room, it was only a matter of time before it wriggled into you too.

Breathing it in, defeat would settle deep down in your chest, gnawing and nibbling away at the fighting part of you, until eventually you lay down and surrendered. You gave up your escape plans, handed over all hope, and you never thought of your freedom again.

No one had ever escaped from the Gloom Room.

Pieter and Amna had been prisoners in there, all through Welkin and Worsen.

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