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“Drink.” He pressed his wrist to his mouth and mimed biting.
That was a thought. She had the dagger. She could easily nick her wrist and feed him.
“I can’t reach him, and he’s unconscious. He can’t come to me,” she said. “Yes, the solution was obvious once I said it. If he can’t come to me, I will go to him.”
Hal grunted.
She moved to the cell door and inspected the hinges. “In The Seventh Evil, the heroine finds herself in a similar predicament, but the cell was poorly designed with the hinges on the inside,” Charlotte explained. “With determination, she removes the hinges, and the door falls open. I’m not sure how to remove the hinges, but it can’t be too difficult. Maybe fortune favors us. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant change?”
No such luck. The cell door was flush with the frame.
“Quality craftsmanship. How vexing.” If she stuck her arm through the bar and twisted, she could reach the keypad. “You don’t happen to know the code to unlock this, do you?”
Another grunt.
“Our options are rather limited. I’d hate to destroy a functioning relic.” She felt around the edge of the keypad and found a groove where the front of the pad joined the body. She worked her dagger into the groove, wedging it in until the faceplate popped off. It clattered to the ground.
She jammed the dagger into the exposed keypad. Sparks erupted, flying up to burn her hand, and cascading down in a luminous shower.
She jumped back, cradling her hand. Hal made a concerned noise.
“I’m fine,” she said. The locks disengaged and the door swung open. She thanked the heavens for the one reliable fact about electronics on her planet and how easy they were to break. Bunching up the fabric of her skirt in one hand to grab the dagger, the metal warm in her hand, she hurried out. Hal bellowed and pounded on the bars of his cage.
Charlotte kneeled at Draven’s side, ignoring the orc. His breaths were slow and shallow. “Oh, love. What did they do to you?”
She didn’t know where to start. It was too much.
Drink.
Yes. Replenish him and hopefully, he’d have the strength to heal.
Charlotte held her arm over his mouth and pressed the dagger to her wrist. Her hand trembled, absolutely not wanting to cut herself. She hated pain, but she hated the thought of losing him. She couldn’t.
“You’re not allowed to die,” she said.
The door to the dungeon opened again. Charlotte tensed, but no one entered. Voices filtered in.
“Open,” Hal said, his voice pitched lower but still loud. “Can’t stay here. Go.”
That much was obvious. Charlotte looked from the orc to the vampire and back again. Fleeing seemed like a very good idea, but she couldn’t carry an unconscious Draven. “I won’t leave him.”
“I will carry,” Hal said. “Open. I will carry.”
She had no reason to trust him. He tore the chains from the wall. She had no doubt that he could smash her skull as easily as she could a pea. Letting him loose was incredibly risky.
Then the kinder part of her soul added that she had no reason not to trust him. He was as much of a prisoner as her.
“If I let you out, you’ll carry Draven out of here?” she asked.
“Yes. Open. I’ll carry.” He gripped the bars of the cage with his massive hands and nodded eagerly.
She pressed a kiss to Draven’s cold lips before leaving. The fanciful part of her imagined he sighed in response. Pure fancy.
“I’ll be very cross if this is a trick,” she warned, standing before the orc’s cage with her dagger.
“No trick. Leave this place. Smash heads.” He grinned, exposing a row of very sharp teeth.
That was hardly comforting at all. Still, she managed not to recoil in horror. Offending Hal at this stage seemed to go against her best interests. Elder vampire or not, Draven was in rough shape, and she did not want to know what Stringer had planned when he returned. Nothing good. His kind never resurfaced with a pleasant surprise like tea and cakes.
