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Rowan stretches lazily, like a cat in the sun. “Oh yeah,” he answers. “The two of them have big-ass plans.”
“Big-ass plans that involve you?” I ask.
Rowan lifts his hand to scratch his nose. The chains around his wrist click when he moves.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s the part of their plan that isn’t going so hot.”
He grins at me, all cocky arrogance, and it would almost be endearing if it weren’t for the mess of dried blood on his face and the gaping hole where his left eye should be. I look away, letting my gaze slide over the shadowy curves of Alindra’s body, as if I’m reassuring myself she’s still there, before I bring it back to my brother. The chains around his wrists gleam in a strange way. They’re so dark they look like twin holes in the universe.
I’ve seen chains like that before, I realize with a nasty start. I saw them in the Towers of the Silver City, only then the strange, dark metal had been holding an old god. A shiver traces a path up the back of my neck. It’s not that I’m afraid of my little brother, exactly. It’s just that I could do without the comparison.
“What are those?” I ask, tilting my head toward the chains as they coil in Rowan’s lap.
“Oh, you like them?” Rowan asks, raising a hand and then twisting his wrist as if he were showing something off. “They’re another gift from our dear father.”
He’s still smiling, but there’s something almost painful about the way his lips pull back from his teeth. I reach forward and let my hand rest on his knee.
“What happened?” I ask.
Rowan shrugs, then twists his head to stare at the sun illusion. Water drips in the distance, followed by a scraping, scurrying sound I really don’t care for. Rowan is silent for so long that I let my eyes close and my head fall back against the stone wall of the cell.
“He was real friendly, at first,” Rowan finally says.
I open my eyes, dragging myself back from that soft gray place between sleep and waking. Rowan’s looking at the chains around his wrists. Without his cocky grin, he seems smaller somehow.
“Dad, I mean,” Rowan continues, flipping his hair back as he meets my gaze with his one remaining eye. “The dragon was pretty much always an asshole, and I kinda figured it was all part of an act. Like, one of them’s all threats and violence, and then the other’s all sweet and shit.”
The ragged blanket around Rowan’s shoulders shivers.
“What did he want?” I ask, as gently as I can.
Rowan’s face wrinkles. “It wasn’t clear,” he replies. “Not at first, anyway. They both wanted to see me do my magic. I told them both to get fucked.”
His shoulders roll. Rowan says this with the kind of easy nonchalance most people use when talking about the weather, and once again I realize I’m smiling. I’m in a dungeon with no hope of escape, waiting for the man I’ve feared more than anything else in my life to come and torture us, and my brother’s unfailingly foul language somehow managed to make me smile.
“But, the man. Dad, I mean,” Rowan continues, staring at the darkness in the far corner of the cell. “We made a bet. And then he, uh. He beat me in chess.”
I pull back, and my head hits the wall of the cell with a low thud. “Really?”
Rowan nods, then looks away, like he’s ashamed of himself.
“Did he cheat?” I ask.
Rowan huffs through his nose. “Probably,” he replies. “Anyway. After that, I showed him my tricks, and he— He taught me how to do more. A lot more.”
Rowan runs his hand through his hair, then rubs the mangled ends of his frostbitten ears. His chains click together, like the rattle of dry bones.
“I was a good student, too,” Rowan continues. “Real attentive. I worked hard. I managed to do everything he threw at me. He seemed to, you know, actually care about me—”
He waves his hand in the air between us as though he’s fanning away whatever words he’s about to say.
“Anyway,” Rowan says, after his chains settle back in his lap. “I waited until dear old Dad let his guard down. Or at least I thought he let his guard down. And then I tried to escape.”
He sighs and then raises both hands and shakes the chains. The clang of rattling metal bounces off stone, sharp and unforgiving.
“These block magic,” he says. “I can’t do a damned thing with the chains on. I can’t even feel the void anymore. It’s—”
His face twists into a snarl, then falls back with a sigh.
