“Oh, we will. She must be punished for her crimes. My people would not tolerate a weak hand. But not yet. We’ll let her simmer in her fear. After a week or so, you’ll emerge and protect her. Or so she’ll believe. You were able to persuade her to respond to you physically. Perhaps you could be persuasive in other ways.”
I watch the Dróttning, weighing my options. It feels like she’s telling the truth. She’s lied to me before, but I don’t think she is now. And if I agree to this, they won’t kill Sifa. They won’t even torture her. I’ll get access to her and an excuse to save her from their hands. It’ll be the best opportunity I’ll have. Even if it means I have to stay away for a week. Let her suffer in her cell while I roam through these caves, free and unharmed, pretending not to care. I couldn’t risk exposing myself and squandering this opportunity.
Or maybe I could use the time in a different way. It could be exactly the opportunity I need.
“You want me to romance her?” I ask with a tilt of my lips that I hope comes across as blasé.
“I want you to do anything you must to get answers from her. Anything.”
I pause, careful not to appear eager. “As you wish,” I agree at last. I can’t hold back the smile this time but I don’t try, shifting it a bit to appear devious. Let her see my approval of her plans. She’s given me a better gift than I ever could have requested.
Now I have to figure out how to save Sifa, hopefully without exposing Tindera to the Dróttning’s wrath.
Chapter twenty-four
Sifa
And I Wait
I’vemadesometerribledecisions in my long life. The series of choices that landed me back in the gods-damned Nest might be the worst yet.
But I can’t bring myself to regret them.
I will. I know I will. My time here before nearly broke me. This will be worse. And I probably won’t be able to escape. This thing around my neck is designed to keep me in. But even without it, the Dróttning won’t allow the same weaknesses as last time. My guards will have strong minds and be changed regularly enough to defeat any manipulation. She won’t make the same mistakes.
Today, though, as I sit waiting for the torture to begin, I’m grateful to have bonded with Astarot. I’ve received the most precious gift any elf could get. My connection with my dragon completes me in a way I never knew I needed. I found our thread—a thin link, different from the pain I clung to as the guard carried me away—and I can feel his presence again. It gives me strength. But even if he dies, a thought that guts me, I wouldn’t regret saving him.
And as much as I really, truly hate admitting it to myself, I’m grateful to have known Fhord. Despite his betrayal, I can’t deny that our connection brought a part of me to life that I thought had died. I haven’t felt lust—because that’s all it was, I remind myself—since I left Midgard.
But I don’t want to think about Fhord. It hurts. A fog billows through me, deadening all my senses, whenever I let myself remember him. How he made me feel. The lies he fed me. My chest grows heavy, an anchor weighing down my heart, when my mind dredges up his face as he turned me over to the guards.
Soon, the pain will outweigh any gratitude I feel for having known him. And then I can push him out of my thoughts entirely.
Shaking my head, I stand to wander around the small cell. I still have enough strength to exercise, so I do. Dropping to the floor, I do push-ups until my arms feel like they can’t hold me up any longer. And then I do ten more. Lunges and squats follow before I finish by running in place. Perhaps ninety minutes after I started, I collapse on the floor, gulping in air while my gaze searches the ceiling above me.
“I did that too when they threw me in this hole.” The male voice that floats toward me is weak, like all the life has been wrung from it. A bitter laugh follows. “For a while.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Seven hundred and eighty-four days.”
A wave of pity for this faceless comrade ripples through me. I don’t think I’d be able to endure that much torture, and can tell from his voice he may be nearing his end. “How have you survived more than two years of this?”
“I am ridiculously difficult to kill.” This laugh is more genuine, as if he’s pondered his mortality long enough to find it amusing they still haven’t succeeded in taking his life.
“A blessing and a curse.”
“More of a curse at the moment, although it’s been a blessing in the past.” He sighs, a bone-weary exhale filling the space between us. “I’m ready to die. I just can’t find a way to do it.”
“What would it take?”
“When my head is separated from my body, I will rest.”
“Nothing else will end your life?”
“Nothing. I’ll grow weak, but I won’t die. After my first year here, I stopped eating for seventy-two days. The pain of starvation turned into a numb nothingness. I thought perhaps it would kill me, but it didn’t. Eventually I gave up. It’s been several months since I resigned myself to this existence.”
“Will they hold you here forever?”
