Aliana. The Dungeons at Tyron's Keep The air became colder with each step closer to the dungeon. Aliana had been to the dungeons at Castle Randal only once, and she rarely dared remember it. She'd been ten years old when Ansell had brought his three children to the depths of the palace complex. He wanted them to see what happened to traitors, and so they had; a man panting between screams on the rack, intermittent splashes and shrieks from men being dunked and brought to surface without warning until they would talk. Derrick had held her hand until their father caught sight of it. There was nobody to hold her hand now. There was only the jailer's back a few paces ahead of her, the jangle of his keys, the soft sounds of water seeping through cracks in the passage and dripping onto the stone floor. The dungeons at Tyron's Keep were danker than those she remembered at Castle Randal. There had been an earthiness to the latter, either from more blood or better upkeep of the walls, but the passage she walked through now had a wetness to the air that clung to her skin, a mustiness from poor ventilation and even poorer maintenance. This was where they'd been keeping William? Aliana could hardly stomach the possibility of the wretched state he might be in. And she had allowed this to go on when she could have ended his term sooner? "You have ten minutes, milady," said the jailer, Aliana nearly running into him distractedly until she managed to stop herself just short, her heavy dress swishing against the floor, kicking up the mildew. They had stopped a few paces from one of the cells, an ominous black door sunk into the stone wall with iron bars making a window at its center. Aliana heard stirring from the cell behind the nearby door, surprised at how the sound carried. "His highness said we might be allowed some privacy," she told the jailer, strengthening her resolve. "At the very least let us think we have some privacy," Aliana added, and the jailer seemed satisfied, slinking back a few more paces around a corner. She expected he was lingering just there, but at least she could not feel him watching. She approached the cell door, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold. "William?" she spoke into the semidarkness beyond the iron bars, barely able to make out the shifting figure at the back of the small cell. There was a rapid shuffling of feet, and then he emerged from the grayness, looking rather gray himself. Aliana's stomach turned at the sight of him, all unkempt hair and limp clothes and a week's stubble. "You're alive," William said almost forcefully as he approached the cell door, going even closer than Aliana had dared on her own side, hands grasping the iron bars. "For all I knew you were dead days ago. Are you alright? They haven't harmed you?" Aliana took a step closer, still a forearm's length away from the door. She wanted him to believe whatever she said, but could not imagine the state of her matching her testimonial. "Yes, they've been -- they've been very good to me," she answered him, looking at the floor and hearing the reactionary noise William made. "They can't have been, you won't even look at me to be honest with me," William responded, the agitation apparent in his voice. Aliana imagined he hadn't been out of the small cell since they'd arrived over a week earlier, and she could not begrudge him the restlessness. "You can be honest with me, you know." She looked up, shuffling a bit closer and training her eyes on William despite what she was sure was blood mixed with the dirt on his fingers. "Have they hurt you?" Aliana asked quietly, shifting her gaze to look over what of William she could see. William scoffed at her, and deservedly so, after she passed his insufficiently answered question back at him. "Not since we arrived," he said, flexing his knuckles from where they were already clenched around the bars. He met Aliana's eyes, and a look of recognition dawned on him. "How -- how did you get them to let you down here?" "It's not important," Aliana countered immediately, looking away again. "They're going to let you go tomorrow." The confusion on William's face deepened. "Letting me go? How could they possibly, they..." The look of recognition passed over his face. "What about you?" he said. His tone was serious, solemn, almost as if he were testing her for the right answer, an answer which she could not give. "I made a deal with them," Aliana admitted, but William had already tightened his grip on the bars, moving as if to shake the unshakeable iron with anger. "What did you do?" William practically shouted at her, and Aliana resisted the impulse to step back from the door, valuing the ability to speak in near privacy much more. William's face was a breath away from pressing against the bars between them, and even in the shadowy dungeon his blue eyes flashed. Aliana tightened her arms around her. She had anticipated this. She then stepped closer, elbows and forearms touching the iron bars, near enough to feel William's hot angry breath against her forehead. "They were quite willing to let you go. They do not know how close you are to my brother," Aliana explained in a hush, hoping the jailer around the corner could no longer hear them. "So long as they think you are nothing to him, they will be willing to release you." "That is not what I asked," William countered, bowing his head so they spoke more directly despite his greater height. "What did you promise them? What did they demand of you? Are they insisting you--" "I agreed to marry him. The duke," she admitted. Aliana continued to look squarely past William's hands to a spot on his chest, staring absently. She heard his breath quicken then slow again, his fingers flex and release almost rhythmically around the bars, could almost feel his pulse race. Finally he breathed, "Why?" Aliana looked up, meeting his searching look. She was surprised to find an alarming amount of concern there. "Because I am a woman," she said plainly. "This is the only thing I have to play, and I believe I am playing it wisely. You're the strategist. You of all people should know that." "You don't have to marry him so I can go free," William insisted, voice still little more than a whisper as he bent down so they were practically eye to eye through the bars. "I will find another way." "Don't you understand? You will go free -- you, who the duke thinks is nothing to my brother. I marry him, and he will not attack us. I am his prize and he will think there can be no war whilst I am his wife. So you will go to Derrick and start the war yourselves," Aliana implored him. Her arms shook at voicing her plan aloud for the first time. William hung his head, shaking it in disapproval. "You are mad, Aliana," he told her. "I swore to your brother I would protect you, and I cannot, will not, let you do this. Not for him, and certainly not for me." "It is for all of us, you must realize," Aliana told him, letting her arms go lax, fingertips resting along the bottom ledge of the barred window into William's cell. "They will let you go tomorrow, during the ceremony." She lifted her hands, placing them over William's fingers, smeared with dirt and streaks of dried blood, and taking a firm hold. "Derrick trusts you with his life, and I trust you with mine. Please, do not let me down." William lifted his head to meet her gaze. Finally, he stood again to his full height. Aliana tilted her head to accommodate. He pulled one hand from beneath the grasp of hers, and quickly caught Aliana's fingers beneath his, her palm catching the iron bar as his hand forced her fingers around it as his own had just been. The iron and his skin were both cold. "Be safe, do you understand me?" he stated, a forceful whisper so they remained out of the jailer's hearing. "I cannot say I agree with your choice -- but I suppose I understand it." William lowered his head to be face to face with Aliana once more through the bars. "I do not know how long it will take for us to return here, and neither you nor I know what he will do with you when we do." "I understand," Aliana affirmed. Breath seemed to come much harder, now that they were at an understanding of what was going to happen, for tomorrow at least. Even with William in the dungeon, there had been one ally for her in Tyron's Keep. Tomorrow, there would be none. Only a castle of her enemies, and a husband who a week ago had wanted her dead. "Just please find Derrick, and take care of him." William squeezed her hand. "I will," he said in a tone fiercer than she'd yet heard. And then, "I'm sorry, Aliana." "Oh, William," she sighed immediately, echoing his affirming squeeze with one of her own across his opposite hand, "this is not your fault, and it is not mine. We just have to make it right." He nodded at her through the bars, and she felt his breath tickle her face again. The heat of it was startling in the cold dampness of the dungeon. "I meant it. Be safe," William repeated, his gaze wandering; Aliana heard the jailer's heavy footsteps at the same moment William had likely seen him. "You too," Aliana whispered. They both dropped their hands at the jailer's approach. Aliana turned to him, acknowledging his presence and nodding. She followed him back down the passages in silence.