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“Remember there are limits. Only the corridors, not the cells, unless you’re healing someone. If this goes wrong, do not wait for me. You run, do you hear me?”
I flinched at his order but I didn’t agree.
I had no intention of running.
I meant to burn this city to the fucking ground starting with that prison.
But I’d do it out of love, I reminded myself.
* * *
Tavion shovedme through the doors into the prison, past the leering guards, into the suffocating stench of blood and death and fear.
For a moment I froze in terror, memories clawing their way out—Solok’s whipping, his creeping hands, those days in the freezing cold spent on the stone floor, desperately trying to stay awake so rats didn’t chew off my fingers—before fear becomes steel resolve.
I survived that cell. I survived the king.
I would survive this, too.
“You know there’s a war going on?” One of the guards bared pointed, black teeth, so like the Oracle’s I gagged. “We have bigger problems than a slave girl.”
“She was caught stealing from the royal apartments. From the king himself.” Tavion’s cold voice thrummed with power, and I wondered if he even knew how he sounded. Or if he was so used to command, arrogance was just ingrained into him. The guards straightened, staring at me with renewed interest.
“Cheeky little bitch.”
“Indeed. Now let us through.”
They stepped aside, as did the guards a level below. And the ones after that.
Every level we descended brought fresh horrors, the guards growing ever more monstrous, the smell fouler, the prisoners thinner and more hopeless. Seven levels in all, until I didn’t have to fake my shaking or my tears, which dripped off my chin as I saw the horrors of this abominable place.
Only Tavion’s warm, steady grip on my arm kept me upright, and I’d abandoned all pretense of courage when we stopped in front of the final door.
Tavion pushed it open, the hinges groaning as if they were seldom used. The corridor was lit by torches, the ceiling black from soot, and a slovenly guard rose slowly to his feet, his one good eye raking over me, leaving me feeling in need of a bath.
“You’re in the wrong place, Captain, not that I’m complaining. Females go on the fourth level.”
“Not if they’re thieves.” Tavion’s clipped, refined tone had the loathsome guard hesitating. Tavion jerked his head to the far end of the hall from where we’d come. “Now let me have my fun.”
“I’m not supposed to…” His breathing turned choppier the longer he looked me over, and Tavion’s hand squeezed tight enough on my arm that I yelped.
“Do you really want to argue with me right now?” Tavion crooned, and I froze at that tone. Once, I’d believed that coldness, that utter contempt to be the real Tavion Montgomery.
Now I understood that was only an act.
I wasn’t sure when things had changed. Only that they had.
“Yes sir.” The guard dipped his head, but his eye was black with lust. “You going to leave her down here after you’re done?” he asked casually, nodding to a cell at the very end. “We do the cutting in there; I’ve got the brazier going for cauterizing so she doesn’t bleed out.”
“Very good. And no, the king wants her brought before him so he knows the job was done right.” Tavion’s teeth flashed, even sharper than before. “You understand.”
The male’s lips twisted in disappointment. “Pity. It’s been a while since we’ve had any new meat down here.”
He squeezed past us in the hall, and I gagged when he brushed up against me, though Tavion blocked me as best he could. Both of us relaxed when the door finally clicked shut. I held myself back from sagging against him in relief.
He ripped the bindings off my wrists and pointed me to the end of the hall. “Start checking the cells, I’ll go to the other end.”
I’d been in some dark places in my life, endured some awful, dark things, but this…This place was evil beyond all imaginings. This place was filled with a doomlike hopelessness that wrapped you up and squeezed the life from you as efficiently as a disease that would eat you from the inside out until there was nothing left.
