Page 57 of Heart of Night
I pick up the fork and spear the first slice of meat with so much force the prongs bend, earning a raised brow from Ephegos.
“The bread first.” He picks it up and hands it to me. It’s then that I know the note was from someone who intends to help me. It’s the look on Ephegos’s face as he watches me set down the fork and reluctantly lead the bread to my lips. “Faster.”
His eyes flick to the fork, to the curved metal piercing through the tender meat at an odd angle where it should be straight. This is different. It’s not the magic in my chest rallying to aid me; that’s still silent as the deep waters of the Gulf of Tears, but a new strength that I have never experienced.
“Eat, Wolayna,” Katrijanov warns, stepping closer and drawing his sword. “Now.”
The nausea lifts from my stomach as I realize that, while my powers might have been subdued, my body has changed under the blanket of the drug. It is only beginning to lift, and I already feel strength humming in my muscles where they have been weak for weeks, small changes that I yet need to learn to interpret, but the effects are clear. I bent a fork with my bare hands, and it wasn’t even intentional. What if I channel that new sort of power, put it to use? Could I stand a chance against the general at least? I’m not hoping to defeat a creature capable of magic, and Ephegos proves me right as his power snaps around me like iron bonds, immobilizing me, and he plucks the bread from my hand and shoves it into my mouth while Katrijanov holds his blade to my throat.
“Swallow,” he orders, and I do because Ephegos’s magic is now cutting off the air supply through my nose, and I need my mouth free to be able to breathe. It’s the oldest trick in the world, yet it works. The bread slides down my throat, scratching and pushing at the tissues as I swallow the half-chewed bite.
“Good girl.” Ephegos’s smile makes me want to puke into his face, but my head is swimming—from lack of air or the drug taking effect without delay the way I’m used to—and I sway in my seat.
Ephegos’s magic holds me upright, but I don’t manage to keep conscious long enough to know if he eventually drops me—or does something worse.
Twenty-Eight
Myron
Unlike the last times, the torture chamber is illuminated enough to see every last splatter of dried blood on the stone floor. It would be easy to rinse it away, but leaving the traces of pain is such an effective way of intimidating the wits out of a victim. I would know; I’ve used that tactic on the Crows who dared hunt Ayna in the woods before she became my wife.
Wife… I shake my head at a word so weak, so pathetic in comparison to what she truly is to me while, from my shoulder, the sensation of the bond is ripping through my chest, my limbs, my entire body until all I can do is pant and gasp.
“A bit early to pass out,” the guard whose name I really don’t care to learn comments. “Usually, he at least pierces you with a tool a few times before you start hyperventilating.”
It’s true. I’ve used the controlled over-oxygenation to escape Katrijanov’s expert skills on the table I’m strapped to. A strategy I learned early in life when my father had deemed cutting me open with a burning knife over and over again the best way to prepare me for stepping into his legacy one day. “You need to understand pain in order to learn what it takes to be a King of Crows,” he used to say when he excused his cruelty.
I wasn’t the only one he hurt. As my cousin and direct heir, Royad shared my fate. The days when we were tied to my father’s table side by side, Royad’s eyes filled with fear, and my heart beat out of my chest when I couldn’t free myself to help him… Those days still haunt my sleep. Those and the moment when I found Ayna in the forest at the feet of the Crows, her human body breaking.
“I wouldn’t miss the fun for the world,” I spit at the guard, baring my bloodied teeth where he hit me in the face, just to show him that, no matter how hard he strikes, I won’t break. I’ll take my time-outs, sneaking into oblivion every now and then, but when I return to consciousness, I’ll grin at them while they try to rip me apart.
Nothing can. Not anymore. Because Ayna is alive and beautiful and needs me. I can feel her very essence in my bones, can hear the echo of her heartbeat in every thump of mine. Even if they shatter this shell, a part of me will remain untouched—and that’s the part that belongs to her.
My soul.
“Spoken like a true fool.” The guard adjusts the strap at my wrist until it cuts into my skin, waiting for a wince I’m not willing to give him. “You should know better than to provoke your tormenter.”
“As if you care.” I spit my blood on his black-and-blue uniform. One of Katrijanov’s men from the Tavrasian military, not a palace guard. I noticed that early on, in this dungeon, guards answer to Katrijanov. The highest Tavrasian general walks in and out of here like it’s his second home. This isn’t a place to make the king’s enemies disappear or to store criminals until their trial or execution. This prison is a place of war.
The guard shrugs and heads for the door, leaving me to my fate the way he always does after securing me to the table so hard I can’t feel my hands and feet after a few moments. Maybe that’s his way of showing mercy. At least, I’ll barely feel the knife on those parts of my body until a lot later, when they toss me back into my cell and I wake up from the unavoidable unconsciousness I drift into when they push beyond my limits.
Thank Shaelak, all those injuries were well hidden when Ayna saw me in the throne room. I couldn’t bear the look on her face if she saw me like this. It was bad enough to witness the pain in her eyes as she assessed the visible injuries, the bruises on my jaw and cheek that are a joke compared to the real injuries.
I close my eyes, readying myself to face Katrijanov with the same cold nonchalance I usually muster, and focus on the sensation of Ayna’s presence through the bond.
It was more potent after she touched her toes to my shin, almost as if that brief physical proximity triggered something in me that I can no longer lock down, but the resonating response I seemed to receive earlier has dulled once more. Whether that’s because she is at the other end of the palace, levels above my cell, or because they gave her the same damned drug that keeps my own powers in check, I can’t tell. I wish I could. That would stop me from musing about the worst possible scenarios—like that they found a way to nullify the bond just like they managed with the magic.
Before I can work myself into a blind panic, footsteps sound far down the corridor. Two pairs—one heavy, one relatively light. And a third pair?—
I blink my eyes as I recognize those footfalls, the measured cadence, the power in each step, the familiar lightness.
“My friend,” Ephegos says as he enters the stone chamber with his signature smile, and I can’t help but feel like a missing part of me has returned. Until I recognize the hatred so well concealed in his gaze and remember all the things he’s done to take his revenge on me for his half-sister’s death. He will stop at nothing to see me suffer.
I know I’m right a moment later when Herinor crosses the threshold, an unconscious Ayna draped over his arms and an apology in his eyes.
Fuck the Guardians. Fuck my father and all the Crows of his generation who angered Vala enough to curse us and drive us from our homelands. If we’d never set foot on Eherean soil, we’d never have ended up in a place where what few Crows I trusted would turn against me because of that curse.
And he wouldn’t carry my mate into this godsdamned torture chamber and set her down on the second table. A table I have never given a thought to since I’ve always been alone in here with whatever cruel masters of pain were working my body to shreds. But in this reality, Herinor puts Ayna’s wrists and ankles in leather straps, her silver-blonde hair spilling over the edge of the metal table as he ties her up. She is in her nightgown, a long, sepia dressing robe tied at the waist covering most of her body. Gods, she looks like they pulled her straight from her bed.