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Again, Dom tested the collar, and the chains. Again, he felt like he was drowning.
The chain clinked against Sigil’s shackle as she walked, pacing the cramped space. “Certainly they would not save her from Gidastern just to let her die down here in the dark?”
To let her die in front of me, Dom thought. It was torture, plain and simple. And not for Sorasa.This is what Taristan wants, to take every Companion from me, as he took Cortael.
“Who knows what the red wizard did to her,” Sigil muttered, spitting in the dirt.
Dom tried not to think of it, but he heard it anyway. The creak of a wooden rack, the hiss of hot iron. Knives on whetstones. And worse magic than even he could fathom, born of blood and broken realms.
“She would hold up to questioning better than most. Even the iron bones,” she offered. She thumped her chest with her bound hands, albeit half-heartedly. “What could she tell the beasts that they don’t already know?”
He eyed Sorasa again, refusing to blink, trying to catch any quiver of movement. Her chest rose and fell so slowly, barely visible even to his eye. That had not changed in two days. Nothing more, nothing less.
“We’ll find out what they want when they come for us next,” he growled.
“Good luck to them.” Sigil tested her chain again, kicking at the ring on the wall. “They’ll have to kill me first, and spark war with the Temurijon. The iron bones of the Countless will never be broken.”
“You have a high opinion of yourself, Sigil.”
“Bounty hunters can be princesses too, Elder,” she shot back. “The Emperor is my cousin, and to spill my blood is to spill his own.”
Dom could barely shrug, his body too restrained. “What if that blood spills in darkness, with none to see?”
In her cell, Sigil paused, thoughtful.
“You’re a prince,” she finally said. “Won’t your people rise to avenge you?”
Growling, Dom shook his head.
If Ridha’s death cannot bring Isibel to fight, nothing can, he knew.
“They rise for little. Least of all me.”
“Can Elders die of starvation?” Sigil asked suddenly, returning to her exercises.
Dom thought of his stomach again, and his last meal. It was too many days ago to count, his memory hazy.
“We might find out,” he sighed.
Sigil bent into a sit-up, bound hands crossed over her chest.
“And you still can’t move at all?”
Despite the circumstances, Dom wanted to laugh, his lips twitching. “No, I choose to remain like this.”
“Strange time to finally grow a sense of humor, Dom,” she replied.
He tipped back to look at the ceiling, tracing the cracks between the stones and wooden beams. Looking anywhere but the unmoving body a few cells away, her face still obscured. Her heart still beating.
“It was bound to happen eventually,” he sighed.
They lapsed into easy silence, a common pastime in the dungeons. Dom’s vision hazed, his aches fading a little as he dozed, suspended between full awareness and sleep.
“What can we do, Dom?” Sigil whispered at last.
He blew out a long breath. He wished for his sword, for an inch of slack in the chain. For Taristan and a plunging dagger to end all this. Anything felt better than this purgatory, hanging over a cliff edge.
“We can hope, Sigil,” he said. “That is all.”
