Chapter 68 - Below The Castle

Chapter 68: 68 - Below The Castle

- Aurelian’s POV -

Far beneath the royal castle of Valebrand, there were rooms that never saw daylight.

One of them held Gaspard Arquenay.

A single candle burned inside an iron bracket on the wall, its weak flame barely enough to illuminate the rough stone surrounding him. Water covered parts of the floor in shallow pools, dripping steadily from somewhere beyond the ceiling.

It wasn’t the only liquid there.

Thin trails of blood had mixed with the water beneath Gaspard’s bare feet, turning parts of it dark before disappearing into the cracks between the stones.

His wrists were locked inside heavy iron restraints attached to the wall behind him. Another chain ran between his ankles, short enough that standing comfortably was impossible and sitting only slightly better.

Someone had removed the gag some time ago.

Gaspard didn’t know how long he’d been there.

Hours.

Maybe a day.

Time had become difficult to measure when the only things separating one moment from another were questions, footsteps and pain.

He had been alone for long enough now that his own thoughts had become worse company than the guards.

There were still possibilities his mind tried to offer him. Trial. Exile. Permanent imprisonment. Some arrangement where the Arquenay name survived through another branch of the family.

His remaining reason kept giving him the same answer.

’I’m going to die.’

Gaspard lowered his head against the stone behind him.

He knew it now.

House Arquenay was finished, the Crown had seized his territory, and there were enough documents inside his estates to make any public trial little more than ceremony.

The only question left was how long they intended to keep him alive first.

Metal scraped against stone.

Gaspard’s one usable eye opened immediately.

The other had swollen almost completely shut, purple and black stretching from his eyebrow to the side of his cheek. He managed to lift his head as the heavy door opened and brighter light briefly spilled through the entrance.

A Royal Guard stepped inside.

"Here is the prisoner, Your Highness."

Aurelian Valleroy entered behind him.

He wore none of the armour from Greymoor. Dark trousers, boots and a simple black coat made him look more like a noble arriving for a late meeting than someone descending into a dungeon to visit a condemned man.

Aurelian’s gaze travelled over Gaspard before he nodded toward the guard.

"You can leave us. I’ll call if I need anything."

The soldier bowed and stepped outside. The door closed again, taking most of the light with it.

Aurelian remained standing for a moment.

"Gaspard, Gaspard." He looked over the bruises covering the former duke’s face. "It seems my people gave you a particularly warm welcome. How are you feeling?"

Gaspard swallowed.

His throat felt as though he’d been breathing dust for hours.

"Water." The word barely came out. He tried again, forcing more air through his throat. "Water... please."

Aurelian glanced toward a small table near the door. A glass bottle sat there alongside several instruments Gaspard had been doing his best not to look at.

"Of course."

He picked up the bottle and crouched in front of him.

Gaspard tried to reach for it before remembering his hands were chained behind him. Aurelian placed the mouth of the bottle against his lips instead and slowly tilted it.

Water touched Gaspard’s tongue.

He drank desperately.

Two mouthfuls went down before something changed.

His throat suddenly burned.

Gaspard jerked his head away and immediately started coughing, water spraying across his chest and the floor as his stomach twisted violently.

"Kh—Khh! Hrk!"

Aurelian pulled the bottle back before any spilled on his clothes.

Gaspard coughed until his chest hurt, then stared at him through his one open eye.

"What... what was in that?"

Aurelian looked at the bottle as though Gaspard had genuinely confused him.

"In this?" He turned it slightly in his hand. "Nothing. It’s ordinary water."

"You’re lying."

"Am I?"

Aurelian took a small drink himself.

Nothing happened.

He swallowed, replaced the cap and set the bottle back on the table.

"Perhaps your throat is simply in worse condition than you thought."

Gaspard stared at him.

Aurelian smiled faintly.

"Anyway. We have more important things to discuss."

He pulled a wooden chair away from the wall, positioned it several paces in front of Gaspard and sat down comfortably.

"You’ve done several things you really shouldn’t have done, Gaspard. I understand my father loosened the leash somewhat over the years. Perhaps too much. The Great Houses were allowed their little freedoms, their private arrangements, their questionable accounting."

Aurelian rested one ankle over his opposite knee.

"But there’s a difference between being allowed to wander and deciding you no longer recognize the hand holding the leash." His expression remained almost conversational. "You were fed by the Crown. Protected by it. Your family’s position existed because this kingdom allowed it to exist."

His eyes moved briefly around the cell.

"And somehow you decided that wasn’t enough."

Gaspard breathed carefully through his nose before asking the question he’d been avoiding since his arrest.

"What happens to me?"

Aurelian stared at him for a moment.

"You genuinely don’t know the answer to the question you just asked?"

Gaspard said nothing.

Aurelian leaned back.

"You’re going to die."

The words came without anger or satisfaction.

"What you still have some control over is how." Aurelian glanced toward Gaspard’s feet. "It can be quick. It can be slow. It can be painful enough that the last few hours begin looking pleasant by comparison."

Gaspard’s breathing changed.

Aurelian continued before he could answer.

"And, of course, your family remains under Crown custody while our investigation continues."

Something came back into Gaspard immediately.

He pulled against the chains hard enough to make the metal strike the wall.

"Don’t touch them." His voice cracked. "They knew nothing about this. My wife knew nothing. My daughter knew nothing."

Aurelian watched the sudden strength with mild interest.

"Then this should be easy."

"They had nothing to do with it."

"That depends entirely on you, Gaspard." Aurelian’s gaze dropped again. "Although I can see you’ve already suffered enough to understand the situation. Several toenails missing. Lash marks across the back. Bruising around the ribs."

He looked toward Gaspard’s hands.

"Interesting. They left the fingernails alone."

Gaspard instinctively curled his fingers.

Aurelian noticed.

"Don’t worry. If you’re cooperative, there’s no reason your condition needs to become worse. More importantly, there’s no reason anyone in your family needs to experience any of it."

Gaspard lowered his head.

"I don’t know anything."

Silence followed.

Aurelian sighed.

"Bad answer."

He stood.

Gaspard immediately watched his hands.

Aurelian didn’t reach for any of the instruments on the table. Instead, he walked behind the chair and picked up the candle.

Then he approached.

Gaspard pressed himself further against the wall despite having nowhere to go.

Aurelian crouched and held the flame several inches beneath Gaspard’s left hand.

Heat climbed slowly toward his fingers.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving you time to reconsider."

Aurelian moved the candle closer.

The flame licked just beneath Gaspard’s smallest finger.

His skin reddened almost immediately.

Gaspard clenched his jaw.

Aurelian lowered it another fraction.

The pain became sharp.

Then unbearable.

"MMNNGH—!"

Gaspard’s scream came through clenched teeth as he twisted against the restraints, chains rattling violently against stone.

Aurelian watched for several seconds before moving the flame away.

Gaspard sagged against the wall, breathing hard.

Aurelian returned the candle to its bracket.

"Still nothing?"

Gaspard’s whole hand shook.

"I... don’t know..."

Aurelian studied him, then exhaled as though disappointed.

"You’re making me use resources I was hoping to avoid."

He walked toward the door.

Gaspard lifted his head.

"What does that mean?"

Aurelian didn’t answer.

The door opened, and he disappeared through it.

For several seconds, Gaspard heard nothing except his own breathing.

Then footsteps returned.

More than one set.

Aurelian entered first.

His wife came in behind him.

Nobody had touched her. That was the first thing Gaspard understood, and somehow it made everything worse. Her dress was creased and days old, her hair had been pinned back by somebody in a hurry, and there was not a mark anywhere on her.

She looked at the man chained against the wall.

Gaspard saw the moment she recognised him and wished he hadn’t.

"Gods."

"Look at me." Gaspard pulled against the restraints. "Are you hurt? Did they touch you? Where is she? Where’s my daughter?"

His wife did not move from the doorway.

"I don’t know."

Everything in the room went out from under him.

"What do you mean you don’t know?"

"They took us out of the house together." Her voice had gone flat in a way Gaspard had never heard from her. "She was holding her mothers hand in the courtyard. They put us in separate carriages and told me it was procedure. I have asked every man who has opened a door in front of me since, and not one of them will tell me where she is."

"She’s six years old."

"I know exactly how old she is."

Gaspard turned toward Aurelian with everything left in him.

"Where is my daughter?"

Aurelian did not answer that either.

He stepped aside instead, and let the two of them look at each other across a room with one candle in it.

"Say something," Gaspard said. "Please. Say something to me."

His wife took two steps forward and stopped.

"Our son is dead."

Gaspard closed his one eye.

"He went out of that house without telling anybody, and he died in another man’s territory, and they brought him home in a—." She was not crying. That was the part that broke him. "And he did that because you spent eleven years teaching him that being an Arquenay was worth more than being careful, and then you hit him in front of the household."

"That is not..."

"Every single thing that has happened to this family happened because of you." Her hands were closed at her sides. "Not the Clairmonts. Not the Crown. You. You knew what was on that mountain, you knew what those men were doing up there, and you kept paying them because the money was good and you thought nobody would come this far north to look."

Gaspard had nothing to put in front of that.

"So now our son is in the ground and your daughter is somewhere we are not allowed to know about, and I am standing in a cell looking at what is left of my husband." Her voice cracked once and she carried on through it. "If you don’t want the three of us buried beside him, then whatever it is you’re holding onto, say it."

The room went very quiet.

Aurelian let it sit for a while before he moved, and when he did, he put one hand lightly against the door frame.

"I’m giving you an opportunity, Gaspard." His voice remained calm, almost gentle. "One opportunity."

He looked directly into Gaspard’s remaining eye.

"Stop pretending you know nothing."

Gaspard’s wife stood beside the Crown Prince and did not look away from her husband.

Aurelian waited.

"Start talking."