“And I’m the Queen. Don’t care who you are except that I get my twenty guineas.” He grabbed my arm in a bruising grip and then, with a good deal of cursing, he tied my arms to my side with ropes that smelt of sewage. I struggled, by the Goddess. I struggled and screamed.
“Let me go!”
“Cosh ’er,” his fellow yelled.
“No! I’ll be quiet.” For though calling for help was at the forefront of my mind, if they struck me unconscious who could say what would happen. Awake, alive to my situation, was preferable.
They hauled me out through the window, heedless of the way the glass cut my arms, shredding my skirts.
Jude lay there on the side of the road, his temple bleeding and no proof that he was still alive.
Then I tried to scream. I tried, Oh Goddess, I tried to scream, but no matter how hard I couldn’t make a sound.
“Dammit… Don’t care. Knock her out. Can’t get her there if she is putting up a fight.”
I felt the dull pain as I pitched forward, but not the sensation of my head hitting the pavement.
I woke feeling sick to my stomach, my head pounding at the back. When I touched where the pain was most acute, my fingers came away bloody. My body ached, made worse that I lay on the hard wooden floor. The room itself was cramped and dark. I sniffed the air, hoping to learn something more than the obvious—that I was a prisoner. The scent was familiar and unpleasant—Stimpson. I began shaking. It couldn’t be. Impossible. It was meant to be safe. How had Stimpson known? Had someone sold the information? Had Jude? He was the one who knew the carriage and the route.
“Oh Goddess,” I whimpered. “What now?”
It was impossible to tell how time passed while I balled myself into the corner of what I had been calling a cell. I’d begun to regain some of my composure when there was a sound.
The woman who walked into the room carried a tray with a candle, a pewter jug, and tankard. Once inside, the door clanged shut, and I was now face to face with my gaoler. She was a pretty beta who I felt I ought to recognise. I watched her place her burden on the narrow chest by the door and then, instead of leaving, she sat on the little stool across from me.
“We are good here.”
Whoever was on the other side grunted and with undeniable dread, the bolt could be heard sliding into place. Seeing her in profile, I remembered where I’d seen her.
“You traitor… I know you. I saw you at my sister’s. You were that one beta permitted to come to the omega house.”
“Be quiet,” she hissed. “They think I am here to guard you. They… I told them I was monosexual and being a beta, they don’t think you can seduce me…”
My eyes grew large in my head. I knew some people could only be attracted to only one sex, but I’d never met someone who had confessed to it. “Is that true? Monosexual? No, never mind. How can I trust you?”
“Sarah. My name is Sarah. I am wholly loyal to Hippolyta Hartwell, the queen of the High Toby. The Apex omega.” She smiled and her delicate beta scent reached me. “At times, oh, this sounds so much more complicated than it needs to be. I work for Drexler. But I am Polly’s eyes and ears. Nearly certain he knows I do. Probably feeds me false information. But at the end of the day, I’m here to protect you.”
“And what protection can a skinny beta female give?”
“None. But there is this.” She pulled out a pistol—one I recognised, for it was the one I’d used to shoot Stimpson—and rested it on her knee. She handed me the pistol. “There is only one shot.”
“How—”
“Stimpson kept it as a trophy. Bragged to me about it. I lifted it, and, now for the most poetic justice, you can shoot him dead with it.”
“This seems like a drama fit for the stage.”
“And why shouldn’t you take him out with some flare? Besides Polly and Drexler prefer a flourish.”
The uncomfortable truth was that I could imagine Polly choreographing it, that I might shoot Stimpson with the gun he’d used to shoot me. No, that I’d shoot him with my gun. “Did she do this? And now?”
“What? No. Polly had no idea. I know she will be furious with me, but someone had to stay with you.” She leant back against the wall, looking far more at ease than she ought. “I can’t free you exactly, but… There is a plan. I don’t know the details, but I trust them. Puck and Drexler. Puck would never let something happen to me.”
We stayed quiet. I couldn’t understand how she could be so… calm when she’d been an active part in freeing Stimpson and my own capture. Her unnatural calm.
“I should tell you that I know your mates… Biblically.”
I choked out a laugh. “I—”