by Raye Wagner
I sighed, both disappointed and relieved to be alone.
“Who’s there?” a scratchy voice whispered from my right. “Is there someone else here?”
I froze, dropping into a crouch.
Who was that?
I inched away from the bars. On tiptoes, I returned to my bed and lay down as quietly as I could.
I waited, tense, ears straining for a long while after. Maybe I hadn’t heard a voice at all. My mind was on edge and probably playing tricks on me. Though, if someone else was down here, they could be one of the three prisoners Irrik mentioned to the king.
I just hoped Arnik and Dyter weren’t captured. My heart ached with the thought, and I hoped against hope they were safe. No one deserved to be in here, except Irdelron and Irrik. And Jotun. I shivered.
I imagined seeing Arnik’s expression when he realized I was gone. He’d be worried sick about me. I probably would have married Arnik when I was eighteen. Not because he had ever kissed me, but because he was the obvious choice. I wouldn’t marry now. I wouldn’t have children. I wouldn’t need to worry about my lack of skill. I wouldn’t live a life outside this place.
In these walls, I would die.
Dyter, he’d be beside himself.
I winced as I thought of him finding out what befell me. Did he know Mum was dead? Had he seen her . . . like that? I hoped not. This was all assuming Dyter still roamed free. I had no way of knowing if the soldiers captured him, too.
Heat sparked in my chest, and the warmth was so stark against the cold inside me that I couldn’t help noticing the emotion.
Defiance.
The urge to protect Arnik and Dyter rose within, the only emotion other than despair I’d had since Mum died.
Madeline’s words about survivors clicked in my mind, and I realized I’d found my corner of necessity.
My corner was my people, Arnik and Dyter. That was where my strength came from. I’d do anything to save my friends. Now, more so, after seeing what would happen to them if they were caught. Jotun’s torture hadn’t dragged their names from my lips, and I was determined to keep it that way, no matter what.
I’d waited too long outside my window the night Mum died. I hadn’t joined the rebels, nor fought the Drae or the king. I’d done nothing. Now, all I could do was keep my lips sealed and not betray Arnik and Dyter. I still had control over that.
The king’s face swam in front of my mind’s eye, my throat tightening as the sensation of bugs scuttled over me, and I saw my earlier error.
Spitting in the king’s face was unnecessary. I’d felt the need to show him what I thought of him, but doing so hadn’t helped me protect anyone or myself. It made him hurt me more, making me less able to protect myself later.
As I lay here, this new world separated into an altered list of what I would and wouldn’t do. I understood what Madeline meant by necessary.
I wouldn’t laugh in his face.
I would bow, even grovel, if required to.
I wouldn’t tell them what happened between Mum and Irrik.
I would lie.
I wouldn’t betray my friends.
I would let the king and Jotun hurt me.
I wanted to be brave, but here, in this damp cell with smatterings of moss, I wasn’t. Bravery was for stronger people, or people ignorant of the things I’d been put through. Being brave was easier before I’d known the depravity in the world.
I pulled the blanket tight, rolling on my side.
Bravery was for someone other than me.
I’d do what was necessary to protect my friends from this fate.
12
Time passed. My food and drink were gone. My strength had improved from careful rationing, at least enough that my legs didn’t tremble when I stood, but if I didn’t get more food soon, it would be over. I’d accept dying of many things, but dying of starvation felt too personal, too much like giving up, too much like acceptance of what the king could do to his subjects.
Ironically, I cared more about the ideals of rebellion now than ever before. If I could go back to Harvest Zone Seven with this knowledge, my input would be much different. All-consuming.
Should have, could have, would have.
This was the trap my mind went to in the dank fetidness of my cell.
The uneven ground poked at my tender feet as I paced. I’d learned which areas of the dark stone were the sharpest and avoided them.
I hadn’t seen or heard from anyone down here after that single time when the man in the cell next to me spoke, and after a while I couldn’t be sure the voice wasn’t a desperate attempt of my mind to alleviate my isolation.
My stomach gave a loud rumble, and I wrapped both arms around my middle over the filthy tunic that displayed the recent events of my life in splatters and splotches and stains. My hair was stiff and matted, and my smell bothered me—not the lavender soap scent I smelled like before.
How I’d run through the freshly overturned dirt of the Harvest Zones beside Arnik, avoiding new crops, and laughing as farmers shouted after us.
How I’d made jokes of my future to Mother while gazing at the clear blue sky, bird song floating down from the roof to where we sat in the garden.
My chest tightened . . . I had to survive.
“I need food,” I said as loudly as I dared.
When no one answered, I raised my voice. “I need food.”
With increasing volume, I yelled my need for water, but only silence met my pleas. Perhaps this was a different type of torture meant to break me. Perhaps I’d been left here to die, useless and wasted. The king thought I possessed information crucial to taking the rebellion down, and he’d confessed I was a pawn in his power play against the Drae. I had no idea what the king saw in Lord Irrik to be convinced the Drae favored me, but I knew the king was irrevocably wrong.
The Drae was the bane of my existence.
I rested my head on the bars, closing my eyes. A trickle of scent wafted past. Something less offensive than the rest of the air down here, and fear and hope warred within.
Necessary. Water was necessary. “Who’s there?” My voice cracked. “I need food and water.”
A cell opened, followed by a muffled thump. A man cried out, his wail like a wounded animal, and the clank of a door closing with the click of a lock ricocheted through the low underground space.
Someone was here, and that someone could give me water.
“Water,” I whispered. Only half the word came out.
I sank to my knees by the bars when no one answered.
That was when I felt his presence. Lord Irrik stood outside my cell, staring down at me, anger pulsing from him in waves. I lifted my tired eyes and silently told him how much I hated him. I didn’t bother moving. If he wanted me, nothing I could do would stop him. Scrambling away was unnecessary.
I was so busy directing my hate at the Drae I didn’t see Jotun until he announced his presence by reaching through the bars with his torture gloves on and grabbing the front of my tunic. The guard yanked me forward, smashing my face into the bars, repeatedly, and bursts of white exploded across my vision.
The two of them took turns in their abuse. I gasped as searing agony pierced my arm and climbed up to my shoulder. Nausea hit me in a crashing wave, and I gagged, falling onto my hands on the uneven stone.
“No more,” I pleaded.
Mercifully, my vision returned, and I saw the hall was empty of Lord Irrik and Jotun. They were done with me for now.
“Drak,” a man said, his voice hoarse and low. “What did you do to piss off the king?”
His words registered slowly, my mind trying to push past the fog of desperation and pain to make sense of his question. I just needed . . . “Water.”
“Water? What did you do to the wat—Oh! Drak, sorry,” he said. Something crashed against the stone. “Hang on, lad.”
Great, and now I was apparently a guy. Way to kick a girl when she was down.
Something scraped agains
t the stone.
“That’s as far as I can reach. But if you put your arm out, you should be able to reach around the lip of stone and grab it. It’s not water, but it’s the closest thing I’ve got.”
He had water? Or something like it, and he was sharing? I was far too desperate to care if this was a trap. I hauled myself over and stuck my arm through the bars and around the rock wall protruding into the hall. The structure ensured prisoners couldn’t see into the next cell.
My fingers grazed something, a sharp piece of ceramic, and I stretched to hook the edge. I pulled the container back and blinked back tears when I saw a curved shard of a flagon filled with several measures of clear liquid. The broken flagon was just small enough to fit through the bars.
I lapped the sweet liquid up like an animal, afraid to lift the makeshift bowl for fear of spilling any of the treasured contents. The fluid coated my tongue and then slid down my throat. The nectar seemed to absorb into my system before ever reaching my stomach, replenishing me immediately. Queasiness roiled through me but settled quickly as a wave of relief claimed me.
“What’s your name?” the man asked. His age was hard to place, his voice odd, like a series of blades chopped up his words. He spoke with the inflections of someone from the Harvest Zones, however.
I was too tired to explain, but I didn’t want to be rude, either. Not after he shared his drink with me. As I drifted back into the land of dreams, I simply said, “Ryn.”
He said something, but whatever it was fell unnoticed out in the hall between our cells.
“So you’re from Zone Seven?” he asked in a parched voice.
The question was just the latest during our on-and-off conversation of the last indiscriminate period of time in the shadows. These shadows weren’t my friends. But this man might prove to be.
“Born and raised,” I said. This wasn’t strictly true. I was more at ease talking to the man, Ty, now and more certain of the kind of person he was, but who knew what he’d repeat under Jotun’s thumb. Better not to impart anything that could be shared. He was probably doing the same.
First rule of torture club, don’t talk about torture club.
“Here, I got more food yesterday,” he said in his husky voice.
Yesterday, or hours or days ago, I’d asked him what happened to his voice. He told me King Irdelron poured acid down his throat. One of the king’s favorite torture techniques, something he did regularly. Explained why Jotun couldn’t talk, as well as most of the king’s guards, I guess. After that, I wasn’t sure I had the right to complain about bugs under my skin.
I was sitting against the conjoining wall already and shifted to reach my arm through for the goods.
“Are you sure?” It belatedly occurred to me to ask if he could spare the food.
“You’re still in the early stages, Ryn,” he answered. He knew I wasn’t a boy by now. “They only do routine torture on me. You need your strength.”
“Oh, goodie,” I said. “Routine torture. Something to look forward to.”
He chuckled. “Here.”
Our fingers couldn’t quite touch, and he had to push whatever he was passing to get it all the way to where I could reach it. Was it wrong that I longed to touch his hand? That even the tiny human contact of our conversation made me want to curl in a ball and cry like a baby?
“Why do they feed you double what they feed me?” I scowled—not at Ty but at the unfairness of an unfair situation.
Ty said in a hard voice, “Jotun seems to have taken a particular dislike to you.”
“Why?”
He paused. “You know Lord Irrik?”
This time a real growl rumbled from my lips. “I do.”
Ty began to ask more but then cut off his question, saying instead, “Jotun thinks the Drae favors you. I’d guess that’s why he attacked you. Usually he sticks to his torturing schedule like clockwork.”
I snorted.
“Lord Irrik dragged him away when Jotun smashed your head against the bars.”
“Really? I thought he joined in.” I frowned, trying to remember.
“Next time you see Jotun, take a look at his face. I hate the Drae as much as anyone here, but it was one of the better punches I’ve seen,” Ty said with a dark, rasping chuckle.
I quirked a brow. The Drae had acted strange at our first meeting, then violent, then strange, then he’d finished off my mother, then strange, then kissed me to take control, then emotionless. Which led me to his visit here. He hadn’t prevented a single bad thing from happening. The opposite, actually. He had another reason for doing these things, and I didn’t want to get caught in the games of the Drae and the king. I’d always had a clear set of rules for my life. Emperor Draedyn ruled the realm from his lands in the northwest. Within the realm were three kingdoms—Verald, Gemond, and Azule—their sovereignty given to the Drae emperor. We gave him all our capable men over twenty years for his war; we gave him and the other kingdoms some of our harvest. We worked each day to get enough food and to keep the guards’ attention elsewhere.
But those rules didn’t matter anymore.
“I’d rather Lord Irrik didn’t come down here again,” I said. “If that’s what happens.”
We fell into a heavy silence, and my eyes closed.
“Of course, me having more food could be because Jotun has a crush on me,” Ty quipped. “He’s a great admirer of good looks.”
His remark dragged a real laugh out of me, brittle though it was. “Now it’s all coming out. How long has your sordid affair been going on?”
Ty’s wheezy chuckle echoed through our cells. “It’s one-sided. I hold out hope he’ll move on. I get the willies when he pulls on his gloves.”
The willies. I grinned. “How old are you?”
He paused. “Twenty.”
Huh. I sat back, unwrapping the parcel he’d passed me. Flat bread. Hard, flat bread. Yummy. Ty was a lot younger than I’d pegged. He was almost my age.
“I thought you were my imagination the first time you spoke,” I confessed. I leaned against the wall, my head resting on the stone. “I called out for you when I ran out of food and water, but you didn’t answer.”
“It happens in cycles,” he explained. “The torture. They’ll go through periods of starving you, too. The key is not to take anything for granted. You have to store enough food and liquid so you’ll have it when they don’t give you any.”
I wanted to ask him how that was possible, but I didn’t want him to know where I hid it, just in case. “Al’right.”
We fell quiet again.
“Is there anyone on your other side?” I asked.
“No, you’re the first—the first one to survive. There are other prisoners in other wings, however.”
“Why are we separated?”
“Who knows,” he rasped. “Maybe we’re just special.”
Another horrible thought occurred to me. “How long have you been alone here?”
I heard Ty take a sip and wondered what he looked like, what had happened to him, and what would happen to me. I don’t know what my state of mind would be if he hadn’t been here to talk to.
He spoke again. “It is better now that you’re here, Ryn. Please stay alive.”
The rattle of keys at my door woke me, and I sat up, disoriented. Sleep had been peaceful, like before, and for a moment I thought I was home with Mum. But Jotun stood in my doorway, and the reality of my situation struck just before his hand connected with my face.
My eyes watered, but I bit my tongue, refusing to let a whimper escape my lips.
The guard grabbed my arm, a method he seemed to favor, and hauled me from bed. I scrambled to stand, but he yanked me one way and then another, throwing me off balance. I tumbled to the ground, only to be yanked back up and then out of my cell and down the stone hall.
I tried to get a glimpse into the cell next to mine, but all I could see was a lumpy mattress with heaps of blankets. Ty was likely buried in that mass, and
his warnings drove thoughts of him away. There was only one reason Jotun would come to get me.
I thrashed, screaming and clawing at him. But Jotun didn’t flinch. When I fell to the floor, he dragged me over the unforgiving stone until my skin was raw and bloody and my shins battered and bruised.
He climbed the stairs, and I scrambled to keep up with him, deciding it was better not to inflict pain on myself. Each step was more difficult than the last. The screams of victims being tortured assaulted me as we crossed the landing, and I couldn’t help the sob that bubbled up my chest and out my lips.
“Please,” I begged. “Please, Jotun. You don’t have to do this. Please. Please!”
He didn’t even glance in my direction while I cowered at his feet. The tall guard unlocked the door, and his lips flattened as he stooped over to pick me up. He scooped his hands under my arms, like a mother picks up a child, but instead of pulling me to him and offering comfort, he slammed my body to the table, dazing me with the brutal impact.
He tilted his head to the side, waiting.
I knew what he wanted, and I gritted my teeth. “I’m not telling you anything.”
Time lost all meaning. I screamed until I had no voice. I was sure my skin was flayed. I was sure I was going to die. I wished I would.
13
I awoke in Jotun’s playroom, still strapped to the table. A hooded figure leaned over me, and my eyes widened in a silent scream. He shushed me, putting his fingers to his lips, and moved away. The person strode around the room with confident steps despite the dark. He was tall, just shorter than Lord Irrik, but his clothing didn’t fit nearly as well. He wore a black aketon, but his was sleeved, and he wore matching gloves. The fabric was plain cloth, much rougher than Lord Irrik’s clothing or even the guards’. This man’s aketon also had a hood, which was pulled up, covering most of his face and casting the rest in shadow. He wore black leggings and black suede boots that extended almost to the hem of his aketon.