by Nalini Singh
Page 2
Ugly, she thought, he was truly ugly.
That made her feel better. At least one being in this place might have some sympathy with her. "Please," she managed to whisper through a throat cracked and raw.
One of those ears seemed to twitch, but he didn't halt his steady, relentless pace toward the dungeons. She tried again, got the same response. He wouldn't stop, she realized, no matter what. For the monster would punish him. All too aware of the cage created by that kind of fear, she went silent, conserving her energy.
It was as well, for this Bard's long, slow strides soon brought them to a dark corridor formed of crumbling walls, the only light coming from a single flickering torch. Then she glimpsed the stairs. The descent into the menacing maw of the Black Castle was narrow and tight enough that Bard's head scraped the top more than once, his shoulders barely fitting. She felt her feet brush the stone, too, but Bard just held her in a more restrictive way, ensuring she took no injury.
She didn't make the mistake of thinking it was because of any care on his part. No, he simply didn't want to be responsible for explaining why the prisoner had been harmed in a way that had not been mandated by the Lord of the Black Castle.
The stairs seemed to spiral down interminably, until she wondered if she was being taken into the very bowels of the Abyss itself. But the dungeons they finally came to were harshly real, the passageway lit by a torch that gave just enough illumination for her to see that each cell was a black square broken up by a small window set with bars. She strained her ears but heard only silence. Either there were no other prisoners. . . or they were long dead.
Opening the door to the nearest cell, Bard stepped inside and placed her in the corner, atop a bed of straw. His eyes met hers, and she sucked in a breath. Large and dark and full of sorrow, they were the eyes of a scholar or a physician, shimmering with compassion. But he shook his head when she parted her lips.
There would be no mercy from him, not here.
As he turned to step out, he grunted and rattled something in the other corner. Then the door slammed shut, leaving her in a darkness so complete, it was stygian. But no - a scrap of light flickered in from the flames of the torch outside, enough to allow her to navigate the cell.
Gathering her strength, she crawled to where Bard had rattled what sounded like a metal bucket. Her hands touched it after what seemed like hours, and she felt her way carefully up its side until she could dip her fingers within.
Water.
Her throat suddenly felt as if it was lined with broken glass. Sheer need gave her the strength to pull herself up onto her knees and cup her hands, drink her fill. The water was cool and crisp and sweet, the droplets trailing down her wrists. It was beyond tempting to gorge, but she stopped herself after a bare few mouthfuls, aware her empty stomach would revolt if she overindulged.
Her eyes more accustomed to the shadows now, she glimpsed something else beside the pail. A steel container. Opening it, she found a small loaf of bread. Hunger a clawing beast in her stomach after days without food, she ripped off a piece and chewed. The bread wasn't moldy or stale but simply lumpy and hard - as if the baker had been given instructions to make it as unpalatable as possible.
A skittering to her left, the sound of tiny paws on stone.
She turned her head, found her eyes meeting two shiny ones that gleamed in the dark. The sight may have incited fear in another woman, but Liliana had long made pets of such creatures in her father's home. Still, she examined her roommate carefully. It was a small, quivering thing, its bones showing through its skin. Hardly a threat. Tearing off a piece of bread, she held it out. "Come, little friend. "
The mouse froze.
She continued to hold the bread, almost able to see the way the tiny creature was torn between lunging for the food and protecting itself. Hunger won and it darted to grab the bread from her grasp. An instant later and it was gone. It would return, she thought, when its belly forced it to.
Closing the container with half the loaf still inside, she placed it beside the water and made her way to the straw. For a dungeon, she thought drowsily as her body began to shut down, this place was not so terrible. The monster clearly needed to take lessons from her father in how to make it a filthy pit full of screams and endless despair.
The dream always began the same way.
"No, Bitty, no. " She was small, maybe five, and on her knees, shaking a finger at the long-haired white rabbit who was her best friend. "You have to fetch. "
Since Bitty was a rabbit more enamored with eating and sunning himself, he didn't so much as twitch when she threw the ball. Sighing, she got up and fetched it herself, but she wasn't really sad. Bitty was a good pet. He let her stroke his long silky ears as much as she wanted, and sometimes he made enough of an effort to move to follow her around the room.
"Come on, slugapuss," she said, pulling him into her lap. "Oomph, you're heavy. No more lettuce for you. "
Under her hands, his heart beat in a fast rhythm, his body warm and snuggly. She struggled to her feet under the burden. "Let's go in the garden. If you're really good, I'll steal some strawberries for you. "
That was when the door opened.
And the dream changed.
The man in the doorway with his black hair brushed back from a severe widow's peak, chill slate-gray eyes and cadaverous frame, was her father. For a frozen moment, she thought he'd heard what she'd been planning for the strawberries, but then he smiled and her fear lessened a fraction. Just a fraction. Because even at five years of age, she knew nothing good ever came of her father seeking her out. "Father?"
He strolled into the room, his eyes on Bitty. "You've looked after him well. "
She nodded. "I take care of him really good. " Bitty was the only kind thing her father had ever done for her.
"I can see that. " He smiled again, but those eyes, they were wrong in a way that made her stomach hurt. "Come with me, Liliana. No," he said when she would have bent to place Bitty on the floor, "bring your pet. I have a use for him. "
The words scared her, but she was only five. Cuddling Bitty close to her chest, she toddled along after her father, and then up. . . and up. . . and up.
"How thoughtless of me," he said when they were halfway. "It must be difficult for you, all these stairs. Let me take the creature. "
Certain she felt the rabbit flinch, Liliana tightened her hold on Bitty. "No, I'm okay," she said, trying not to huff.
Eyes of dirty ice stared at her for a long moment before her father turned, continued to climb the twisting, winding staircase to the tower room. The magic room. Where she was never, ever supposed to go.
However, today he opened the door and said, "It's time you learned about your heritage. "
There was nowhere else to go, nowhere he wouldn't find her. So she walked into that room full of strange scents and books. It wasn't as gloomy as she'd expected, and there was no blood. Relief had her smiling in tremulous hope. Everyone always said her father was a blood sorcerer, but there was no blood here, so they had to be wrong.
Looking up, she met his gaze as he loomed over to take Bitty from her protesting arms. Her smile died, fear a metallic taste on her tongue.
"Such a healthy creature," he murmured, carrying the rabbit over to something that looked like a stone birdbath set in the middle of the circular room. Switching his hold, he suspended Bitty by his silky ears.
"No!" Liliana said, able to hear Bitty squeaking in distress. "That hurts him. "
"It won't be for long. " And then her father pulled a long, sharp knife from his cloak.
Bitty's blood turned the silver of the blade a dark, dark crimson before it flowed down to fill the shallow bowl of the horrible thing that wasn't a birdbath.
"Come here, Liliana. "
Shaking her head, sobbing, she backed away.
"Come here," he said again in that same calm voice.
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Her feet began to move forward in spite of her terror, in spite of her will, until she was close enough for her father to pick her up by the ruff of her neck and push her face close to the fading warmth of Bitty's blood, her blinding fear reflected in red. "See," he said. "See who you are. "
Chapter 2
Liliana jerked awake on a soundless scream, her mouth stuffed with cotton wool and her head full of the cold finality of death. It took her long moments to realize that the door to her cell stood open; Bard watched her with those large eyes of liquid black.
"Hello," she said, voice strained with the echoes of nightmare.
He waved her forward.
She got to her feet, ready to fight dizziness, but her body held her up. Relieved, she stepped out, following Bard's ponderous steps through the dimly lit passageway until he stopped at another narrow door. When he did nothing else, she pushed through and felt her cheeks color. "I'll be but a moment. "
Taking care of her private business, she used the mirror of black glass to tidy herself up as much as possible - there wasn't anything she could do about her beak of a nose, or the eyes of dirty ice so wrong against her mother's honey-dark skin, or the strawlike consistency of her matted black hair, much less the slashing gape of her mouth, but she was able to sleek that hair back off her face at least and tuck it behind her ears, wash off the blood that still streaked her wrists.
"Well," she said to herself, "you're here now. You must do what you came to do. " Though she had no idea how.
She'd grown up hearing the people her father had enslaved whispering of the four royal children, the true heirs to the jewel that was once Elden. The hope in their furtive voices had nurtured her own, fostering dreams of a future in which fear, sharp and acrid, wasn't her constant companion.
Then, a month ago, driven by a steadily strengthening belief that something was very, very wrong, she'd stolen away into the putrid stench and clawing branches of the Dead Forest to call a vision as her father could not, his blood too tainted - and seen the tomorrow that was to come.
The heirs of Elden would return.
All of them. . . but one.