Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

MAEVYTH

A hard shove from behind sent me flying forward into a dark cell. Fire streaked across my knees and palms as the gravelly floor bit into my skin. I turned just as the iron door swung shut, and my captor peered in through a small hole carved into it.

Scrambling to my feet, I charged toward the door, slamming into the unyielding surface. “Let me out! Please! Let me out!”

“You aren’t going anywhere, sweet girl,” the dark-haired guard taunted.

“My sister … she’s …. I need to help her!”

“I’d say your sister’s better off than you, at this point.” He let out a cruel chuckle that goaded my anger.

Teeth grinding, I slammed my fist into the door, and a bright light flashed in my face on a blast of heat that shot me flying backward. Pain struck my spine as I crashed into the dirt floor, the air firing out of my lungs on impact. Every muscle trembled with whatever current ran through me. As it slowly subsided, I rolled to the side, groaning.

The guard chuckled again. “Smells like roasted oranges.”

“What do you say? High moon?” the blond guard asked beside him.

“Yeah. Evening guard will take over, and we’ll meet back here. Tell Ruvym and Stolyus.”

I focused on breathing, as they prattled on about something sinister-sounding they had in mind.

“Stolyus?” The other guard groaned. “Bastard’s about as fun as a dried up barnacle. I don’t trust him. I think he’d rat us out, first chance he got.”

“Give him a bit of baneberry, and he’ll dive headfirst off Dandymir tower, if we tell him to.”

Both guards chuckled.

“What I wouldn’t give to see that,” said the one whose voice I’d come to recognize as the blond. “The shady cunt has been acting weird lately. Always scratching at that arm.”

“Probably has muripox. Maybe we throw him in with her.”

Both guards laughed again, and I pushed to a sitting position, drawing in a deep breath.

“Go on now. I don’t know how much longer I can stand this. My cock feels like it’s about to break from its breeches. I’m dying to watch.” Dark-Hair’s words confirmed what I’d already dreaded.

At the sound of their retreating footsteps, I glanced around the cell. Only the flickering of the torch outside the door streamed in through that small window, provided a dim light. My muscles ached as, throat dry, I patted around on hands and knees, searching for a weapon, or, by some miracle, means of escape.

A wire of tension stiffened my limbs, my body growing weary from the stress of the evening. First, Aleysia’s banishment, running through the woods from whatever creature inhabited it. Now this .

Aleysia. I hadn’t even had time to mentally process the events from earlier. The very real possibility that Moros had slaughtered her.

Leave it , my brain urged. I couldn’t afford the preoccupation right then. I had to secure a way out of the cell before they returned.

Then I’d find my way back to the woods. Back to her.

Even if it meant returning to nothing. I had to know if she was dead, or alive.

It was the unknown which clawed at me, perhaps worse than having seen Moros, or whatever he’d become, haul her off, because at least then, however devastating as that would be, I could’ve let go. I might not have cared what lay in store for me with these men, at that point, because without my sister, nothing mattered to me.

I hadn’t seen her die, though.

And because of that, however small, there remained a sliver of hope. A reason.

The will to fight.

In the shadowed corner of the cell, I reached out and fingered a hard, stony object. Smiling, I took hold of it and scrambled back into the light to see what kind of weapon it’d make, but with it illuminated, I frowned on staring down at the strange, black object clutched in my palm.

Out of the top of it, two long, bristle-like structures unfurled, followed by dozens of hair-like fibers that tickled my skin. And pincers. Pincers that plucked at the fine layer of skin on my finger with the promise of a sharp bite.

I let out a piercing scream and dropped the object onto the floor, where it exploded into hundreds of small black bugs that scampered across the surface.

I shot to my feet and backed myself to the wall. At a tickle on my shin, I lifted my skirt just enough to see two crawling up my leg. A needling pain pierced my skin.

Screaming again, I kicked out, sending them flying, and stomped on the dozens more heading toward me. Crunchy carapaces crackled beneath my boots, the spray of guts wetting my exposed skin.

A much bigger bug skittered in my direction, snapping its pincers at me. A panicked gasp hitched my breath, and I stomped on it. Bright yellow guts shot up onto my skirt, oozing down the fabric.

A long hiss echoed through the cell, and all the tiny versions of the bug skittered toward the bigger one, as if sucked into it. Their shiny black shells crumpled into a pile of black ooze.

Blowing out a hard and shaky breath, I stared down at it all.

A tickling sensation at my arm threw me into another frenzy, as I yanked back the sleeve to find nothing there but a stray hair. Shivering, I slapped my hands over my arms and legs, completely rattled and shaken.

From the shadows, two more large bugs stepped into the light. One black like the other. The second, red with black markings.

“Oh, my god. Please.”

The clanking of metal snapped my attention toward the door, where the dark-haired guard from before could be seen through the window.

“Ferrys gets first. He’s due at the gallows first dawn,” he said, my heart hammering at the click of the lock.

The bugs slinked back into the shadows as the light from the doorway spread over the dark cell, and two guards stepped inside. The third stood at the doorway.

“Jevhyr is after, then we set her loose in the pit.”

I had no idea what the pit was, but the tone of his voice when he said it carried a harrowing edge of amusement.

A fourth guard stumbled alongside them, the one I recognized from the forest, who’d seemed against their ideas.

“Ah! Looks like someone changed his mind, after all.” The redheaded guard patted him on the shoulder.

The quiet guard chuckled nervously. “Why should you cunts get all the fun?” He cleared his throat and scratched at his arm, which appeared red and entirely inflamed.

Even if he might’ve once expressed opposition, there seemed to no longer be a chance to sway him. “Please,” I begged. “Please help me out of here.”

The guard cleared his throat again, turning his cheek as if refusing to look at me, and what little hope I had shriveled. “Quiet yourself. Mortal whore.”

The men broke out in laughter. “Someone get Stolyus some baneberry! He’ll go after Ferrys!”

“The hell I will,” Stolyus countered. “She’s …. She’s a disgusting mortal! I’d rather watch.”

One of the men chuckled, knocking him on the back as he handed him a bottle of what I presumed to be the liquor. “Well, let’s get it on, then! No more dawdling about.”

A man in tattered clothing was shoved into the room, his hair disheveled, eyes wild as they set on me. Markings and scars covered his skin, and on his wrists were copper-colored shackles. The guards unlocked the chain between them, but kept the shackles in place.

“No worries, he won’t be using any magic,” Dark-Hair said, as if that were the bulk of my concerns right then.

“For fuck sakes, at least arm the poor bastard. That cunt of hers might not let go!” One of the guards shoved a holstered blade into the disheveled man’s pocket, and it was then I realized just how much of a threat they perceived me to be.

As the prisoner drew near, I backed myself to the wall. I’d be no match against whatever magic the guards had wielded back at those woods, but I’d be damned if I’d let any of the bastards get the best of me then. At his hip, I caught the glint of that knife, and he paused his approach, glancing down toward it and back to me, wearing a wicked grin.

“You like that blade, little one?” He removed it from the holster, slowly drawing it out, and held it out to me, clutching the sharp end in his palm.

“’The fuck are you doing, man? You want to die! She’s mortal!”

“Which means she’s weak,” the prisoner said over his shoulder, never taking those predatory eyes off me.

“Oh, this is going to be good.” Redhead rubbed his hands together and shifted on his feet.

Body trembling, I looked down to the proffered weapon and back to the prisoner. In one quick lurch, I swiped it out of his hands, holding it out in front of me.

The sound of Red’s chuckle was drowned by the other guards’ boisterous laughter.

“Look at you tremble like a petal in the breeze. You think you can fight me, flower? No magic. Just fist to blade.”

“I’d bet three quints she’d give you a run for it,” the blond said behind Red.

“Three quints …” Red snorted and glanced back. “Can’t even buy a tankard of mors mead with that!”

“Mors mead? Only faeblood drink mors mead.”

Eyes shifting between the two guards and the prisoner who circled me, I waited to see if they’d fight. Fighting would’ve offered a distraction. A distraction meant escape.

“Calling me faeblood now, are you?” The guard pushed the other in the chest, the clang of his steel breastplate echoing through the room.

The second guard socked his elbow into the first guard’s nose, knocking him back against the wall.

As the man before me glanced back at them, I swung out, the blade slicing across his arm. I slipped past him and spun around, putting myself between him and the guards at the door.

“Fucking hells!” He growled, examining the wound. “Oh, you will pay for that, flower. Of all the foolish things!” Snarling, he lurched toward me, and I swiped out at him with the knife again. He lost his footing and tumbled backward onto his butt in a clang of metal when the shackles hit the concrete.

“My blood? It’s tainted all right. Nearly lost my eyesight from the sickness.” I poked the tip of the blade into my finger, wincing at the slight sting there, and jabbed the knife toward him.

Eyes wide, he scrambled backward, and his body broke into tremors, his brow glistening with sweat.

Afraid? Of me?

A wild surge of victory swam through me, and I edged closer, jabbing the knife again. “C’mon, you boorish pig!” I shouted, taunting him like a madwoman, but I didn’t care. I refused to be violated by the grotesque swine. “The germs in my blood will eat you alive!”

I was exhausted and furious.

And I still had the guards to contend with.

It was then it struck me. I hadn’t heard the guards make a sound.

The prisoner’s lips curved to a whimper as he raised his hands up in surrender. I slowly trailed my gaze to the stony wall at his back, where the flickering torches from the hallway showed my silhouette slowly getting swallowed by a monstrous shadow that blocked out the light.

A flash of black streaked over top of me on a quiet whoosh, and I watched in horror as an enormous silver object stabbed through the man’s chest.

The prisoner’s legs trembled, mouth fully agape, his arms outstretched, as if stunned by the strike. When the steel object recoiled, spilling blood and bits of organs onto the floor, I opened my mouth to scream, but could summon nothing more than fast, shaky breaths that sent puffs of cold air from my mouth.

Muscles board-stiff, I willed myself to look behind me, dizzy from panting. When I turned around, an impossibly giant scorpion stood in the doorway, its stinger stuck upright, hovering over top of me, pincers at the ready, big enough to lop off my head in one snap.

My body fell into hysterics, and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Could only stare at the creature in mute horror.

Droplets fell onto my face, and choking for a breath of air, I lowered my gaze to blood spilling onto my open palms.

“Oh, god,” I whispered. “Oh, miserable, wretched god, make it quick and painless.”

The tick of insectile claws against the ground snapped my attention back to the terrifying creature stepping over the two guards lying disemboweled at either side of it.

A blackness settled over me.

And all went blissfully silent.