Solitary confinement. She hadn’t been in this room for a long, long time.
She was back, then. Ireth’s memories told the story. Kazen had summoned the numen and controlled him with Sandis’s blood—then he’d simply walked them back to their prison.
While Rone had walked away.
She bent over and cried, her breaths fragmented, her ribs sore. Had it all been a ruse? A farce? Had the man she’d begun to love really betrayed her for paper?
Her heart twisted, bent, ripped. It hurt. It hurt so much.
It had all been a fantasy. All of it. Her belief that she could escape. That she’d find Talbur Gwenwig and he’d take her in . . . Was he even real? Could her mind have played a trick on her, shown her what she wanted to see? Even if Talbur was her great-uncle, why would he care about her? If he had cared, she would know who he was. He would have been there while she grew up. He would have helped her and her brother after her parents died.
Talbur Gwenwig was nothing more than a dream, just like Rone.
Sandis huddled in the corner of the small space, away from her own mess, the cool walls spreading a chill across her skin. She was naked, her dress turned to ash from the summoning. Of course Kazen wouldn’t grant her any decency. No food or water. This room was meant to break her. It had before.
She wept dry tears. Pressed her hands into her swollen eyes. She wished she’d never met him. Wished she’d never left. Wished she’d never spoken to Heath the night Kolosos ripped him apart. Wished she didn’t care about any of it.
She wished Anon were here.
A hard sob shook her. Lifted her from the floor and turned her inside out. The concrete pressed against the heavy scar tissue that spilled down her back. She tried to think of something—anything—to pull her back to herself. Her heavy thoughts conjured an image of stars dotting the heavens above the Lily Tower . . . but no. Rone’s silhouette was there on the edge, tainting it.
She had nothing. She had— Taking a shaky breath, Sandis reached quivering fingers below her neck and traced Ireth’s name.
“I-reth?” she whispered, choking between syllables. “I-I-reth?”
Please, she prayed. You’re all I have left.
A warm pressure built behind her forehead and trickled down like blood, raising goose bumps in its wake. It settled warmly above her stomach.
Sandis hugged herself, trying to hold the sensation in. She balled her body around it, protecting that last semblance of love. Ireth would never leave her. Ireth was not a fancy.
Holding herself against the darkness, Sandis cried until the dregs of her energy were spent, and then she fell into a cold and fitful slumber.
Rone waited outside the front doors of Gerech Prison. He leaned against the innermost wall that separated the massive structure from the rest of Dresberg. He could tell his presence rankled the guards nearby, but they didn’t make him move. The front of his shirt was stretched out and wrinkled from being wrung and knotted between his hands. His skin was cold and clammy despite the warm day. Though he had bribed the warden handsomely and had both emigration documents and travel plans inside his jacket, that ball in his gut still rolled back and forth, back and forth. An even pattern. It was smaller now, but so was his stomach. Food hadn’t been particularly appetizing the last couple of days.
His whole body jerked at the sound of the left door opening, its hinges groaning against its massive weight. He stood erect, clamping his shirt in both fists. He stopped breathing, waited.
Guards came out first, and then— Rone felt the marrow drain right out of his bones. He barely recognized her, even as his feet moved him forward of their own volition. His mother was gaunt and pale, too thin. Her dress was filthy and ragged at every seam; her hair hung in greasy strings from her scalp. She looked older, like she’d become his grandmother over the course of nine days. Her skinny arms trembled, and she winced at the sunlight.
Mom.
She startled when Rone threw his arms around her.
“Rone?” she asked. Her voice was tiny, frail.
She smelled awful, worse than the sewers. “I’m here, Mom.” Her matted hair absorbed his tears. “It’s all right now. You’re going to be all right.”
Her skeletal fingers dug into his back as she embraced him, and she wept into his shoulder, soaking through all three layers covering it. One of the guards tried to usher them along, but Rone held his ground, letting his mother mourn all Gerech had taken from her. Letting himself hold her like he was twelve years old again. Ten. Six.
Soon it wouldn’t matter. They’d take their things and leave this place.
The ball in his gut rolled back and forth, back and forth.
Sandis stirred from her uncomfortable doze to the creaking of metal against concrete—the blessed sound of the door opening. Her joints groaned as she tried to push herself up. Her bones felt like overworked metal rusted over and pressed too thin. Her eyes crusted with old tears. Her stomach pressed against her spine. She wasn’t sure how long Kazen had kept her in that room this time. At least three days, since the only time the slat at the base of the door had opened was to give her a glass of water so she could last her full punishment. Stale, warm water, but it had been so sweet to her. She’d licked the spilled drops off the floor.
The space smelled horrible. Sandis had been given no food, but her body had still eliminated what was left in it, and there was nowhere to go but the corner. Brushing greasy hair from her face, Sandis summoned the last dregs of her energy to sit up. Light blinded her, and a draft spread gooseflesh across her naked skin.
She tried to stand but didn’t even get close before her knees buckled and she fell onto her face. A dry sob escaped her lips.
“Put those away. We won’t need them,” Kazen’s voice crooned from the doorway as he waved away an offered set of handcuffs. “She is sufficiently broken.”
The water was so hot it hurt. If Zelna wanted to drown her, she could have done so without a fight.
The old woman’s hands were merciless as they scrubbed Sandis’s hair and skin. Only around her script did Zelna show any care. Soapsuds burned Sandis’s eyes. Every time Zelna shoved her head underwater, Sandis gulped mouthfuls of tinny water to quench her relentless thirst. Kazen stood nearby, supervising everything. His gaze felt like oil against Sandis’s skin. Even if Sandis had the energy to fight back, she wouldn’t. If she could just fall back into her role as the perfect slave, maybe Kazen wouldn’t hurt all the others to punish her. Maybe he’d be lenient. She could protect them, even when no one had protected her.
Zelna dragged Sandis out of the tub and dried her with a coarse towel, then barked at her when Sandis was sluggish to get her arms into her shirt, which was open in the back to reveal her ranking as vessel. Zelna stuffed her into pants as if she were dressing a doll. Her punishing grip left its share of bruises, but never once did her long fingernails scratch Sandis’s skin, not with Kazen so close.
Sandis could barely think, let alone walk, and Zelna complained of having to half carry her to the small dining room where the vessels ate. It was empty. Sandis blearily wondered what time it was.
A bowl of porridge dropped on the table in front of her. With trembling hands, Sandis gripped a spoon and began to eat. The first few bites stuck to her throat and fell leaden into her shrunken stomach. Her whole middle ached with the weight of the food and the water she received shortly thereafter. But the ache soon subsided as hunger took over. So did the fog that had encompassed her brain these last days.
Her thoughts pulled themselves into order as she assessed her situation. Remembered.
Sandis forced the last bite of porridge past the sore lump forming in her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, but tears managed to leak from the corners of her eyelids.
She was back where she’d started. Underground. With the grafters. With Kazen.