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“Let me make it worth the expense.”
Slap.
Pain scalded my wet rear on impact, sending an echoing smack into the room. Gods fetch this miserable bastard; he wouldn’t even do me the courtesy of rutting me like a beast?
I hissed and spun around. “What of the betrothal!?”
Malyr took off his shirt, letting numbness spread across my fingertips as he tossed it to Sebian. Dozens of deep welts marred his chest, his shoulders, his stomach, painting a savage picture I’d seen once or twice before on the unruliest of Tidestone prisoners.
Somehow, the gruesome sight made the sting more bearable as Sebian dried my inflamed skin with Malyr’s shirt, then slathered it in salve.
“They flogged you.” Perhaps as many times in the same spot as Malyr had spanked me earlier… “Now I understand what you meant when you said my father carved himself under your skin.”
“I wasn’t referring to these scars.” Malyr rose with a scoff and walked toward one of the flight holes, looking back at Sebian. “Help her move into the chambers across from mine. It allows for more… discretion. I want you to keep an eye on her at all times, or in short, I’m charging you with the protection of mybetrothed.”
ChapterTwenty-Four
Malyr
Past, Tidestone Dungeons
Time crept through the darkness of the dungeons, each day marked with beatings from the cane, the whip, and occasionally, the jailor’s fist. Twice, some human captain had transported me to the outskirts of Vhaerya, locked in a cage and poisoned to near-unconsciousness with gray devil bark, demanding I removed my kingdom’s shadowy veil.
I’d refused.
Or at least, that was what I’d told myself each time the shadows hadn’t listened, feigning pride where I knew I only deserved shame.
My gaze wandered to Harlen’s corpse, where he’d been rotting away for who knew how long now, but I stopped myself. Not for the pale-greenish tint I knew his face carried, or the maggots falling from the corner of his mouth, or even the way his flesh had begun to sink in.
No, it was those empty eye sockets I couldn’t stomach, pecked a little bit cleaner to the bone each time I woke against a wall I couldn’t recall having fallen to sleep against.
I swallowed past a wave of sour bile and nausea, lest my stomach would rid itself of the moss I’d tediously scraped off the musty corners and eaten to avoid more unconscious shifts. My unkindness was starved, frantic.
“Lorn?” I wrinkled my nose, disgusted by the stench of my breath, and placed my fingers into the gap at the bottom of the wall in search of hers. “Did you wake?”
Her trembling fingertips touched mine. “Would I be so lucky and just not wake?”
I leaned my head against the stone, my core sinking at the defeat in her voice, all that fight she’d once carried extinguished. “Once Asker comes to free me, I’ll take you with me far away from this place. Maybe across the ocean, where we—”
“Please stop…” Her voice was a little above a whisper, yet it hung so heavily between us, it burdened my shoulders. “The only Ravens coming in here are deathweavers and voids. This won’t stop until they have Valtaris, and even then, it will end in death for us. Unless you finally use your shadows.”
My jaws clenched. “They’re not mine to yield, which is why they don’t listen. It’s that curse running through my bloodline. The way for our goddess to make me pay for what my ancestor had stolen.”
“It’s just a tale, Malyr.”
“A tale?” I scoffed. “I told you what they’ve done to my parents, have I not? To our homelands?”
“Because they’re angry,” she ground out. “We are deathweavers, Malyr. If we don’t feed death to our shadows, they will feed on whatever is in reach. Stop. Fearing. Them.”
My head sunk, giving me a good whiff of my body odor, the tatters of my tunic stiff with dirt, my skin sticky with old sweat. How could I not fear them? They had killed my hound, my parents… Not to mention the many times they had tried to killmewhen I was a child.
Oh, the little prince will grow into them,everyone had said. Except, my shadows had continued to growwithme. Only Mother had ever understood, for she had allowed me to syphon some of my shadows into her void under trembles and tears. That I had once shoved myanoainto a flour sack and tried to drown him in a river hadn’t exactly helped my relationship with that bird…
Bright and playful, a sudden burst of energy fluttered through my core, fading the pain, the agony, the hunger. What was this?
Pressing one hand to my chest, I gripped the wall with the other and struggled to my feet, stumbling along it guided by… I wasn’t sure. On instinct, I stopped several steps from the next corner. I stared up at the damp ceiling. Stared and soaked up this sense of serenity.
Until it disappeared, leaving nothing behind but hunger pains, sore muscles, and a twinge between my ribs, its loss… harrowing. Where did it go? I wanted to feel it again. Wanted to—
