He gave a brittle smile and turned my hand over, kissing the back of it before he stood to leave.
I lay down in the bed, more mobile than I should be after Jotun’s treatment, though I felt a deep cut on my thigh that would take a long time to heal as well as what felt like cracked ribs. Whatever Tyr did to heal me had saved my life at least twice.
“Thank you, Tyr,” I whispered.
“Ryn. Ryn.”
I moaned and rolled onto my side as someone urgently called my name. My eyes flew open. I’d rolled onto my side . . . with cracked ribs. Sitting up, another thing I shouldn’t have been able to do, I pushed down the blanket and unraveled the bandage on my leg. The gash that had been there was a scabbed cut, and most of my other cuts were gone.
“Ryn,” Ty shouted, snapping me out of my bafflement.
“I’m al’right,” I said. I wasn’t certain how or why or what it meant. But I was alive. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said. “Nothing that won’t heal.”
I bit my lip, unsure whether to tell him about the hooded man. The warning in my gut was only slightly uneasy, but I decided to heed it for now.
He growled, a deep gravelly sound that sent chills down my spine. In his raspy voice, he said, “I could hear your screams from here, Ryn. Why do they hate you so much?”
I shrugged, my silent response lost to him. The problem was, the king and his Drae didn’t hate me, not really. I was insignificant to both and somehow stuck in the middle of their power play, destined to wait until one of them emerged the victor.
“Are you al’right?” Ty’s voice was strained.
“As al’right as anyone in here,” I answered. Arnik and Dyter were still safe, I hadn’t betrayed them.
“I hate that they’re doing this to you. I wish I could get you out.”
Why would he wish that? He hardly knew me. Yet as the thought crossed my mind, I saw it wasn’t true. Our dependence on each other for food, but mostly for companionship in this terrible place, had forged something between us.
I would lie for Ty. Things that weren’t necessary to do for him when I first got here now seemed necessary.
“You, too,” I whispered. And I meant it.
He inhaled sharply and, not for the first time, I wondered what his face was like. “Why are you here, Ty?”
The scuffle of him moving toward our wall spurred me to sit up and join him. I rested back against the stone wall, only the solid rock between us. These days, I felt most grounded when I talked with Ty.
“Same reason as you, I gather,” he finally replied. “The king’s guard slaughtered my entire family. He wants to know what I know.”
His tone was closed, and I didn’t pry. It’s not like we were desperate for time down here. I hadn’t told him anything about why I was here, but it didn’t surprise me he’d read between the lines. “They killed my mother. Lord Irrik killed my mother. He pushed the dagger in anyway.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. His soul is dead inside and has been for a long time.”
“I hate him,” I said, seething with vehemence.
We sat there, not talking, the repetitive dripping in some far corner our only company.
“How many rooms are down here?” I asked.
“In this wing of the dungeon, ten cells. This is the lowest dungeon; there are only three people with keys that get this deep. Lucky for us, no one else is here at the moment, though there are prisoners in another wing.”
“There are?” I turned my head toward him, wondering if they were from Zone Seven. “Are they alive?”
“From what I saw when Jotun took me to his fun room, yes. But I’m afraid that’s all I know.”
The tip of my tongue burned with the urge to tell him I may know them. That could get the prisoners in trouble though, and if it was Arnik or Dyter or even the hunched old Syret, I couldn’t risk it.
“So what do you want to do today?” he asked.
I laughed under my breath. “I thought we could go out and pick strawberries in Zone Two.”
“I’ve heard they’re huge this year.”
“Unusually so,” I said brightly. That was where Mum and I would’ve gone. She would’ve made it so the strawberries were big and red and delicious.
He chuckled in his razorblade voice. “Perhaps afterward we could hire some horses and go for a gallop to the Gemond Mountains.”
“How delightful.”
This time he laughed. The hoarse rattle echoed through the dungeon and slowly faded to silence. “It is kind of a holiday today,” he said. “Jotun has Tuesdays off.”
I frowned. How did Ty know it was a Tuesday?
A door opened, and I hushed, hearing Ty do the same.
The air shifted, and the scent of pine and soap and steel floated by. My stomach clenched, and I inhaled the smell if for no other reason than it was the only freshness in this rotting world. I scrambled away from the bars and crept back to the bed in the dark, burying myself in the covers.
The outer door clanked, and I stilled as a blade scraped along the bars of Ty’s cell.
Lord Irrik sneered, “Don’t get comfortable, Ty. Jotun is anxious to visit with you tomorrow. He’s devised a new solution he’d like you to sample.”
Irrik laughed, but Ty didn’t answer. Three people with keys to this level of the dungeon, and Irrik had to be one of them.
My stomach churned as Irrik taunted Ty. Wasn’t it enough that Jotun tortured him? Now Ty had to put up with this, too? Irrik’s cruel remarks made me angrier than anything had since the monster killed Mum. I said nothing, both because I didn’t want to draw the Drae’s attention to me, but mostly because I knew I couldn’t do anything. Right now, I had no chance. But another time, I might.
Necessary. Opposing Irrik was a luxury I couldn’t afford to indulge in.
The clack of metal on metal rang out as Irrik dragged the blade across the bars again, but as he came into view, I cracked my eyes open and saw it wasn’t a blade but one of his talons. There’d been nothing in Mum’s stories about Drae partially shifting.
“Good morning, little Ryn,” Irrik said, his dark presence looming outside my cell.
Don’t come in . . . don’t come in . . . don’t come in. Maybe he’d assume I was still passed out from Jotun’s beating. Should I pretend to be worse than I was so the hooded guard didn’t get in trouble?
“Good try, human. I heard you talking with Ty,” he said, his voice dropping into a low growl. The key clicked in the lock, and the door opened. My heart pounded in my chest like a caged bird.
“I know the hooded Tyr comes here to help you when he thinks no one will notice, but I notice, Ryn,” he whispered, crouching next to me. “I’m watching you,” he continued, tracing the tips of his fingers down my arm. “And I’m not the only one.” His eyes burned into mine.