She pauses, and I raise my eyes to hers. “Do I what?”
“Have much memory of the time before?” The words thunk into my chest like stones, and she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, that was rude. You don’t have to answer that.”
I drop my stare back to the stew, stirring, lifting a small strip of meat and blowing on it. “Not as much as I would like,” I say, pushing away images that have never rubbed out.
Women running, then thudding to the ground—shot with whistling arrows that ripped through their chests. Men howling for their mates and children, their hoarse cries cuffed as pronged shackles clamped around their necks and wrists.
I toss the meat back in the pot without testing it. “I was only five when my family was rounded up and checked over for any marks or strange scars … the females slain and hacked to bits.”
“Oh, Baze …”
Another stir, and I scrape the spoon across the bottom to make sure nothing’s getting the chance to burn. “I was torn from the cold clutches of my dead mother by the man who became my …captor,for lack of a better word,” I say with a careless half smile that’s a lie in every way, shape, and form. “He became all I knew until Rhordyn came along.”
A long silence slips by while I continue to stir the stew, though my appetite has gone. If anything, the thought of eating makes me want to heave.
“I never heard the full details ...”
“It’s not something I ever talk about,” I mutter, dropping my spoon in my empty bowl and lumping another log on the fire, making the flames dance.
“How long?”
The question is choked.
I glance up into Zali’s russet eyes flecked with gold, her bottom lids heavy with unshed tears. “How long what?”
“Were you kept for?”
“Long enough that I forgot the feel of soil beneath my feet. The taste of fruit. He fed us with a single beam of sun and not much else. Liked us limp when he feasted.”
She sucks a sharp breath.
I lean back, crossing my arms as I watch the flames whip at the base of the pot as though they’re desperate to crack through its hard outer shell. “I hated Rhordyn for killing him,” I admit, remembering the times I clawed at him like some broken animal, begging him to take away the pain.
Remembering the way I fought him and wished it washewho’d died. Or that he’d struck me out at the same time he’d struck him.
“Then Rhordyn put a sword in my hand and told me to break something else so I’d stop breaking myself. So my insides could have a chance to heal.”
“Did you, though?” she whispers, her voice too soft. “Heal?”
I clear my throat, kicking a throbbing ember back amongst the pit from where it had been spat out onto the grass, thinking back to the spike of pleasure I would feel when my skin was punched through with the unrelenting pierce of those drugging canines …
My captor. My torturer.
Myrapture.
He was—in some fucked-up way—my family.
But he was also a monster.
I watched my friends wither beneath the crunch of his teeth. Told myself he’d never do that to me, even though a part of me knew one day he would. One of hisfriendswould. He’d lose control. Lose interest. I was nothing more than a pet who served a purpose until my blood was no longer bright enough for him to enjoy.
I pat my pocket, searching for my flask, then dash my hand through my hair when I realize it isn’t there.
Did you, though? Heal?
I offer Zali a wry grin, brows raised. “Apparently not.”
She gives me a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes, and we fall into a stretch of silence, the sparks from the fire a crackling distraction to my staggered thoughts.
