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Shock and horror thrill through my stomach, but I lift my chin defiantly. “I don’t know his true name. He helped me because I was desperate, trapped in the hands of a murderous monster, with no way of escape, prey to a lie my brother told. And you—” I fix the King with a glare, even though I’m shaking, even though terror knots my gut— “you are a cruel, wretched, dreadful man who does not deserve his throne or his title. We all hate you—at least everyone who knows what you really are, what you’ve done.”
“Is that so?” The King strides toward me, raises his hand, and cuffs me across the mouth so hard that blood spurts immediately from my lip. “Take her to the torture room. Cut off her fingers, her toes, her genitals, her nose, her ears, and her tongue.”
“If I may, my Lord,” says Lady Kessalif quietly. “There appears to be a bond between these two. We can use her for leverage to get his name. Perhaps we should postpone the mutilation, and use the threat of it to persuade the Half-Elf to cooperate.”
The King hesitates, considering, then says grudgingly, “Very well. For now, the liar shall be imprisoned, but not mutilated. Take her away.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” reply the guards.
I thought Lady Kessalif was fascinating at first—I was rather in awe of her. But now I despise her for submitting to this horrendous man, and I hate her for what she has done to Rupert, even if she did postpone my terrible fate.
The guards drag me roughly down a couple of corridors and hurl me into a cell. Apparently now that I’m disgraced, marked for mutilation and death, they have no reason to treat me decently. Although a few bruises are nothing compared to the torture that lies in store.
The door clangs shut, the padlock clicks, and the guards’ feet tromp away.
I lean against the wall of my cell, my eyes stinging with anger. When I left my village, I was afraid, yes—but I was afraid for me. Now there are other people at risk—people I care about.
Why did I have to care? Why did I make friends? And why did I have to fall in love now, of all times, and here, of all places?
I can’t see a way out. I don’t know how to fix it.
They’re going to torture me to force Rupert to reveal his name. Judging by what I know of the King, the torture is going to be cruelly intimate—and judging by what I know of Rupert, he will give in quickly to spare me from pain. However careless and coarse he may pretend to be, he has a soft heart, and he loves me—I know he does. He’ll confess the name, and the King will use it to control him for the rest of his life.
I have to keep that from happening, somehow. Desperately I climb to my feet and take stock of my surroundings.
In this tiny prison cell, there is no spinning wheel, only a bucket and a thin, stained mattress. I can see bits of yellow straw sticking out through the ripped cloth.
Straw.
Straw into gold.
I will never know what possessed my brother to make that exact claim. But those words of his, careless or calculated, changed the course of multiple lives.
Where is Prain now? If he did what I said, he’s in a faraway town, choosing not to piss away my hard-earned savings. Maybe he has contacted someone who can help him—perhaps a physician of the mind, one with expertise in treating people with compulsions like his. With some retraining of his brain and habits, he can overcome his desire for drink and games of chance.
That’s the future I want for him, the future that makes me feel as if all this was worth something. I don’t like to think about the fact that Prain is probably lying drunk in some sex worker’s bed, or wasting the last of my savings on a bet that won’t pay off.
People rarely live up to one’s expectations of them. I’ve always thought it was important to keep loving them and expecting the best of them anyway, in the hopes that they would one day live up to their potential.
But perhaps it’s just as important to know when you’ve helped someone enough. When you’ve pulled them out of harm’s way too many times. When you need to let them taste the bitter consequences of their actions instead of letting them drag you into the depths along with them.
I’m grateful for one thing, though. Without Prain’s wild claim, without his self-serving scheme, I would never have met Rupert. And Rupert is a soul of purest gold—brash and confident on the outside, a self-proclaimed rogue, yet soft and mellow inside, deeply in need of reassurance and someone to bring out his best qualities.
Rupert is someone I can count on. He has saved me again and again.
But he’s drained now, helpless and empty, and he can’t rescue me anymore. I have to be the one who saves him, before it’s too late for either of us.
The guards return much sooner than I expected and take me to a lower level of the dungeon—a cold, dank room full of tables, serrated tools, whips, and stocks. After stripping off my clothing, they lay me out on a large wooden table, locking my wrists and ankles into shackles so that my limbs are splayed wide and I can’t move. There’s a slope to the table’s surface, leading to a groove that runs to the edge. It’s designed for collecting spilled blood and funneling it off the table to a drain in the stone floor.
I hate being naked and vulnerable in this cold, metallic room full of blades and threatening gazes. I want to scream and protest, to beg and weep. My body is trembling all over, not just because of the chill of the cell but at the indignity of being stripped before strangers. I endured the enforced nudity when I was bathed along with the other girls at the House of Bounty, but this feels different—even more invasive, more frightening. Still, I struggle to stay quiet and suppress my trembling. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of knowing how much this upsets me.
There’s a lofted area in the torture room, a platform with large cushioned chairs where people can sit and observe what’s taking place. Shortly after I’m bound to the table, the King sweeps in, accompanied by Lady Kessalif. Rupert is dragged in after them. He’s half-naked, and I hate that I’m seeing him shirtless for the first time under these circumstances. There are tattoos on his body—stripes around his biceps, a sun and a snake on his torso. His head hangs forward, his left eye bruised purple, his lips puffy and seamed with blood. They’ve beaten him while he was helpless.
His skin is slicked with sweat, and even from this distance I can tell he’s shaking, probably sick from the loss of energy, the physical injuries, and whatever they gave him to restore him to consciousness.
The guards fling him into a chair, where he slumps with his head bowed. The King steps over to him, grabs Rupert’s hair, and jerks up his face—that beautiful, brutalized, pain-wracked face.
“None of that, pet,” says the King. “I need you alert to watch the fun.” He pats Rupert’s cheek with a rough familiarity, almost a fondness, that makes me feel sick. “Look what we have for you.”
