"Gabrielle!"
She beamed and broke into a run. Past three cells, past a right turn in the passageway, deep in the dark, there he was, shuddering in the cold but unhurt. She dropped the torch on the floor and lunged at him, hugging tight through the bars. He grabbed her by the cheeks and kissed her straight on the mouth; but at once he broke off.
"Gabrielle, has Clement talked to you? He knows about us!"
"He's talked to me." She ran her fingers through his hair, frantically. "Listen, that's not that important now. The war's over, Oren's here. Paula will execute you tomorrow. You need to get out now!"
He stood silent for a second, processing all of that. "But what about you? They'll know..."
"I know how to fix this for myself! Listen, if you get out now and get a head start... fuck! I didn't take the cell keys from Dodo!"
She turned to leave, but he held her to him.
"They will know it was you! Clement knows!"
"Clement is not a problem. I'm telling you that I can..."
She broke off and froze. She stared at him, wide-eyed. He'd heard it too.
Someone opened the inner door and was now walking downstairs.
Her lower lip trembled, and her hand clenched around his arm. He looked up, and saw torchlight approaching behind the bend. She turned her head. Please be Dodo. Please, please be Dodo.
The footsteps were just around the corner, and now they were joined by a new sound. A tinkling of many keys.
Bearing a torch and a truncheon, along came Clement.
He saw that the cell was still locked. He lowered his truncheon and straightened up. His face bore no expression.
"Step back from the bars, Gabrielle."
She tried to say something, but only a groan came out.
"I said, step back from the bars."
She let go of Aerin. The boy let her slip away. He watched them from behind the bars, powerless, helpless.
"Clement," she said, shakily. "Listen to me. I'll do everything you ask me to. You can't..."
"I can do whatever I want! As for you, what an idiotic thing to do! I can't cover this up, with whatever it is you've done to the guards. Keeping your contact with this boy secret has now slipped beyond my power. Our deal is off, we're going straight to Paula."
He took several steps forward, but then hesitated. Gabrielle was still by the bars, and he was wary not to get close enough to them for Aerin to reach and grab him. The torch that Gabrielle had dropped was now two steps to his right. Just for a fraction of a second, Gabrielle glanced towards it.
"Okay, you're right!" she said. "You're right. It's all over, you got to tell Paula. But you don't need to tell her tonight."
He squinted at her, not following. She summoned all the self-control she had. This was the last chance, the last possible hope. She reached to the lacing below her collar.
"I have a proposition for you. Tomorrow, I will be lost. But tonight, I will be yours." She undid the fastening, and loosened the strap that was holding her dress together. At the same time, she took a step away from the grating. "Just let me free the boy." She let her dress open up, revealing her cleavage. Clement's eyes turned to it.
She succeeded at catching his attention, but that sudden conflict between his dick and his brain couldn't last long. She only had a few seconds, yet she had to proceed very cautiously. She took another step. She was keeping her distance from him constant, circling him.
"Let him go, and tomorrow I will confess that it was me. I'll never mention you. And tonight, you'll have me." Another step. She bared her shoulder, and the fabric parted further, revealing more naked skin between her breasts, even down to her stomach. Clement was still staring, but she ran out of things to say. He could snap out of her spell at any second. Yet another step. She was getting close to the torch now, and it threw more golden light on her, and gradually deepened the shadows: in the pit of her neck, in the vulnerable dimples under her collarbones, on both sides of her sternum, where her breasts gently rose and softly moved with her every motion.
At this moment, Aerin understood what she was doing. Silently, he sidestepped to a spot such that he, Clement and the torch were in one line, and braced himself. Gabrielle saw this out of the corner of her eye, and fought down a smile. Yes! Yes, exactly, my clever boy!
She pressed at her breast with her fingers; Clement watched her soft flesh yield under her touch in the half light. Step. She brushed her hair away to her back, strands falling in line with smooth, wavy flow. Step. She let the dress dangle lightly from her other shoulder, its material just barely holding onto the curve of her frame, hanging in delicate balance, boding to fall off at a tiniest instigation and unveil her, reveal her beauty. Step. She was right beside the torch. Clement was two steps away from her. Aerin was exactly behind his back.
She modestly lowered her eyes and smiled. Clement inhaled and started to say something. Gabrielle kicked the torch at his face.
Now humans, like all animals, come with a certain set of pre-programmed instinctive responses to external inputs. One fine example of those is to urgently swat away at anything that approaches your face at high speed; and to do it double-urgently if said thing is on fire.
Thus Clement's brain stem now took control over his body, and in first order of business undertook to decide which of his hands should do the swatting; and, to its terrible consternation, found them both occupied, the right with a truncheon, the left with a torch (of all things!), neither item a safe object to bring up to the face at high speed; and unable to cope with this complex problem, sent it up to the upper brain to solve, as precious time ran on and the offending flare kept approaching at an alarming speed.
Whenever your nerves rush to consult your brain on an affair requiring immediate attention, it's always really helpful if they find it alert, and not distracted; and especially not heavily distracted by something deeply engrossing, such as, to give a completely random example, a pretty girl sensuously taking off her clothes.
So it must have been a solid tenth of a second after Gabrielle's kick, the torch having already travelled more than half the distance, sending out sparks and pirouetting gracefully, that Clement finally settled for a course of action. With so little time left, the only course available to him was rather mediocre.
He closed his eyes, turned his face away and raised both hands in front of him. This allowed him to parry the torch with the truncheon. His brain stem congratulated him on this good work. The immediate danger was successfully mitigated, at the small price of getting himself completely off balance, his body weight shifting upwards on an uncontrolled trajectory which the cerebellum was now scurrying off to calculate. Well, there was also the small issue that his eyes were now closed and his face turned away. Which meant that he didn't see Gabrielle lunge.
Aerin watched them tangle and Clement fall to his back with Gabrielle on top of him. A moment before impact, Clement let go of his torch and instinctively outstretched his left hand to break the fall. Crashing into the bars, Aerin reached out and caught it; then put his feet on the grating and pulled, with all the power in his legs, dragging Clement's whole arm, up to the shoulder, into the cell, where he twisted it almost to its breaking point.
Clement screamed. Aerin wrapped his knee around his throat. Gabrielle grabbed his other hand with both of hers and wrestled the truncheon away, fell off, hit the floor with her cheek, rolled over, and went to her knees, looking on, bewildered. Clement was kicking out and trying to make a grab at Aerin with his free hand, but it was clear he could do nothing; his prisoner had him completely pinned down.
Aerin shouted out at her. "Key and manacles, quick!"
She got up to her feet and ran, refastening her dress on the way. She sprinted into the guard room and snatched the ring with the cell keys, along with a pair of heavy manacles.
"S'alright, guys?" she asked breathlessly.
"S'alright," the guards agreed. They continued watching the wall with unwavering fascination.
Back at the cell, they clasped the fetters over both Clement's wrists and the bars, bundling them together and making him completely unable to move his hands. When Aerin let go of his throat, he started screaming again; only when silenced with a gag made of his own torn sleeve he acknowledged his defeat and slackened, glaring furiously.
Aerin leaned his hands on the bars, breathing heavily. Gabrielle got up, unsteady, from Clement's side and looked at the cell keys. Trying them at random, she eventually got the right one. With a loud clang that echoed all over the corridor, the lock opened.
Aerin didn't move at first. Only after some seconds of hesitation he walked over to the door and gave it a push. It opened obediently before him. He took a deep breath and stepped outside.
She swelled up. He would now be chased and hunted, but he had his fighting chance back. Right now, right at this moment, he was free.
He looked at her and grinned. She threw her chin up.
"Hi," she said. This was the first time they were ever together without any bars, chains, or restraints.
"Hi," he replied. He blinked and took a good look at her. "You've torn your dress."
She patted a small tear on her sleeve. "It's okay. I'm okay."
"Your face is a mess."
She brushed off her hair and wiped the dirt off her cheek. "It's okay. Everything's fine. Other than Clement, nobody suspects anything about us!"
"How could they know?"
She paused. He looked like he was about to add something, but didn't. Instead he took her in his arms and kissed her, and put his hand on her head and ran it down her neck, her back, back up, back down. Finally, if just for once, he got to hold her whole.
But this was not the place, and not the time. On the floor beside them, the restrained majordomo kept glaring.
"Well, he knows everything now," Aerin said.
Gabrielle hesitated. "What are we going to do?" she asked, although she knew they only had one option.
Aerin stepped over Clement's legs and picked up the truncheon. He tapped it against the wall. It made a dry harsh clack, and carried vibrations stiffly to his hand. It was very hard, very solid wood.
"If they catch me, they can't kill me any harder for one extra murder," he said. Gabrielle clenched her fists nervously, and said nothing. You shouldn't have snooped around so hard, Clement. Now it's you or me.
Aerin was now standing over Clement. The majordomo fixed his stare on him, unflinching, stone cold, though all blood flowed away from his face. Aerin gripped the truncheon harder. He tried to work up the exact logistics of a killing blow. From up down, or from back to front? Would his skull crack open like an egg, splashing brains all over the place? What if he got it wrong, and had to do repeated blows? How many would it take? How do you know for sure someone's dead?
Clement was still looking at him, and his breathing was faster and faster.
