Chapter 54

The tunnels were empty, and we made good time in reaching the lower levels of the castle, but once we were there, I realized there was another flaw to our plan. I had no idea where they kept the seelie prisoners. Tiernan saw me hesitate as I stepped out of the tunnels, and he stepped past me to look around.

"Prisoners are commonly kept in cells." Tiernan glanced back at me. "True for humans and fairies."

"Excellent," I said and looked around the large room. "You think those cells are down here?"

We were in the bowels of the castle and the room we stood in was carved out of the mountain itself. The stone was roughhewn, with obvious tool marks marring its damp surface. The floor was smoother than the walls, laid with tiles of some kind of gray stone. Directly in front of us was a set of stairs and although it was too dark to see how far up they went, I knew from my last journey down them that they went quite far. At the base of the stairs, a hook was set into the wall and a lantern hu