Page 113 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

By the time I could open my eyes again, my lips peeling painfully apart, I was in the dark musk of a dungeon—not the white walls I’d come to expect.

Years? How long had this hell stretched on?

Blinking, my eyes adjusted to the gloom just as raised voices drew my attention through the iron bars of the enclosures.

So. That’s what roused me.

It was then that I realized I couldn’t move. Couldn’t so much as lift my head from the damp stone floor beneath me. Couldn’t lift a hand to brush the sticky, matted hair from my face. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was.

Hell, I wasn’t entirely sure who I was. Just that I was meant to be punished. That I had somehow earned this agony.

Flashes of eyes—green stones, icy blue, a spark of amber and quicksilver—strobed against my lids.

I didn’t understand their significance. But I knew I should. Knew there was meaning there.

Those raised voices grew closer as three men hauled a thrashing figure through the hallway between the stone wall and iron bars.

“Demon bastards!” he bellowed as he was thrown into the cell beside mine. I closed my eyes on instinct. Perhaps to shield myself from whatever they had in store for him.

Perhaps under the false hope they’d leave me be.

“I will fucking kill you!” the man bellowed. The gate creaked closed, only for a deafening clatter to ring against the walls with so much violence I nearly opened my eyes to see.

“I give him a week,” one of them muttered, the scrape of boots over stone telling me they were retreating.

My body began shaking, giving me away. “What about the bitch?” one barked.

“She stays today. The king will be watching the fighting ring.”

The fighting ring?

A booming laugh, warmth in my chest.

Dank, moldering walls. I blinked into reality. Into the hopeless darkness. Metal scraped over stone. Tin clattered. The men laughed, their boots moving away from me. Relief coursed through my chest until something wet seeped into my bare skin.

When their footfalls vanished, I opened my eyes, letting them trace across the stone to the water spreading over the floor—they’d knocked over my lone tin cup. Something inside me knew no more would be delivered.

I blinked.

Breathed.

Rolled my aching wrists.

“Pssst.”

I ignored the man damned to die in the cell beside me.

“Hey,” he hissed. “Hey—girl.”

Summoning every ounce of strength I could, I lifted my head from the stones, raw palms scraping through the filth as I struggled to support my weight.

I couldn’t see him—the man. Just his outline against the faint light from the stairwell.

But he was waving something through the bars.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I thought I had it bad, but Jesus Christ.”

I blinked, assessing the shadow in the darkness.