Blood Oath (Darkest Drae #1)(28)

Necessary. Water was necessary. “Who’s there?” My voice cracked. “I need food and water.”

A cell open, 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 against 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.