As I sat in my misery, allowing my sadness and desperation to swallow me whole, I felt something. A small glimmer in my sternum. A warmth radiating from deep within. I clutched at my chest through my dirty shirt, my broken nails leaving bloody scrapes on the skin over my heart.
Finian.
I smiled, then, as tears continued to track down my dirt-encrusted cheeks.
“Always with you.” I heard a whisper before it faded again.
Always,I called to him, a sad thing that was laced with love and devotion. I felt a pulse in my chest before it faded. Gone, but still there, deep in my soul.
I sat like that, feeling for Finian in the recesses of what made me, me, for what felt like hours. Eventually, sleep called to me and I knew I would need to answer. Especially if I were to survive this place.
I wasn’t sure how that would happen or what it would look like, but the lingering warmth in my chest forced me to hold onto some sort of hope.
I crawled to my sleeping cave, curled up in a ball against the rock floor, and fell asleep to thoughts of Finian.
Chapter 16
Peytor
Four Months Ago
“Next,” the gruff, portly Vessel with the pockmarked face called from behind the dilapidated food-serving station. The line in front of me slowly shuffled forward, the bedraggled men and women with bones poking through thin skin and mangy, oily hair moved as one, keeping their heads bowed to their chests and eyes trained on the ground.
How pitiful.
I almost laughed at myself, but kept my lips sealed shut at the last moment.
I was one of those pitiful wretches—thrown into this pit of misery that stank of death and despair, destined to serve the Warlord here until I died of malnourishment or an accident in the mines.
Or I was thrown over the ledge.
I could always jump.
The thought was always there at the back of my mind, coaxing me to simply step off the ledge of our level, plummet thousands of feet down the black hole, and join Finian in blissful eternal sleep.
I’d been able to curb the thoughts more lately than when I first arrived. But it was only due to the anger that latched itself permanently to my soul.
Anger at my sister for not listening to me and for killing the man I loved.
Anger at the Warlord for twisting her mind.
Anger at the rebellion for not reaching us in time.
So much anger that it eclipsed the sadness that permeated my very soul when I first arrived in the mines. I clung to my rage, desperate for a way to escape and exact revenge on those who wronged me and murdered Finian. Finian told me to find a way; this was my way.
“Next!” The line shuffled again at the cook’s bark, and I held my cracked wooden plate out expectantly, waiting for the spoonful of feces-smelling slop that landed on my plate, the force of it sending splatters on my threadbare and dust-covered shirt.
“Thank you, sir,” I mumbled, my lips barely able to form the words without splitting and bleeding. I kept my eyes trained on my dirt-encrusted feet as I followed the woman in front of me to receive our daily ration of water. I inadvertently sniffed the “food” we were given and almost gagged. I tried not to look at what we were fed—unsure how food was even delivered to the mines—but today I couldn’t help it.
The slop on my plate was dark and mushy, which was not abnormal. But there was a lingering odor that reminded me vaguely of shit.
Could it be?
I internally shuddered in revulsion.
No. There’s no way they’d feed us actual shit.
Right?
