“How are you feeling?” Amara asked tentatively. “I haven’t seen you all day.”
“I’m well enough.” Cleo fisted her left hand that now bore the water symbol—two parallel wavy lines. The last person who’d shared this marking had been a goddess.
But Cleo didn’t feel like a goddess. She felt like a seventeen-year-old girl who hadn’t slept at all last night after waking abruptly from a vivid dream in which she’d been drowning. Her mouth, her throat, her lungs filling with a sea of water. The more she struggled, the more impossible it was to breathe.
She woke just before she would have drowned.
Cleo nodded at the wooden door to Amara’s right. “He’s inside?”
“He is,” Amara said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything. Open the door.”
Amara gestured toward Carlos, and he opened the door that led into a small room no more than eight paces wide and eight paces long.
A prisoner was inside, his hands chained above his head, lit by two torches on the stone walls on either side of him. He was shirtless, his face bearded, his hair shorn short against his scalp.
Cleo’s heart began to pound hard against her chest at the sight of this man. She wanted him dead.
But first she needed answers.
“Leave us,” Amara said to Carlos. “Wait in the hall.”
Carlos’s heavy brows drew together. “You want to be left alone with this prisoner?”
“My honored guest wishes to speak with this former guard—one who would choose to do Lord Kurtis’s bidding rather than mine.” She sneered at the prisoner. “Yes, I want you to leave us alone with him.”
Honored guest. What an strange description for Amara to use for someone she had offered up, along with the others, to the fire Kindred as a willing sacrifice only last night.
Of course, the night had not gone nearly as smoothly as the empress had anticipated.
Very well, I’ll play the role of your honored guest, Cleo thought darkly. But only as long as I have to.
Carlos bowed, and with a gesture toward the guard who’d led Cleo there, they swiftly departed and closed the door behind them.
Cleo’s gaze remained fixed on the bearded man in the shadowy room. Once he had worn the same dark green guard’s uniform as Carlos and the others, but now his dirty trousers were in tatters.
The room stank of rot and filth.
The symbol on the palm of Cleo’s hand burned.
“What is his name?” she asked with distaste.
“Why don’t you ask me?” The man raised bloodshot eyes to look directly at Cleo. “But I doubt you even care what my name is, do you?”
“You’re right, I don’t.” She raised her chin, ignoring any momentary shiver of disgust and blind hatred toward this stranger. If she didn’t stay calm, she wouldn’t get the answers she needed. “Do you know who I am?”
“Of course I do.” The prisoner’s eyes glittered in the torchlight. “Cleiona Bellos. A former princess whose kingdom was stolen by the King of Blood before she was forced into marriage to his son and heir. Then the king lost his precious kingdom to the Kraeshian Empire, so now you have nothing at all.”
If only he knew the truth. She actually had everything she ever thought she wanted. The symbol on the palm of her left hand continued to burn, as if the lines were freshly branded upon her skin.
Water magic, fused with her very being.
But as untouchable as if a wall divided her from the power of a goddess.
“He’s already been questioned to no avail,” Amara said. “This may be a waste of our time.”
“You don’t have to stay,” Cleo replied.
Amara was silent for a moment. “I want to help.”
Cleo actually laughed at that, a low chuckle in her throat that held no amusement. “Oh, yes, you’ve been so helpful, Amara. Endlessly helpful.”
“Don’t forget, we’ve all suffered because of Kyan,” Amara said defiantly. “Even me.”
Cleo bit back a response—something cold and cruel and accusatory. A game of who had suffered the most between the two of them.
But there was no time for such pettiness.
Amara had offered all but her very soul to help Kyan in order to gain power. Cleo knew how persuasive he could be, since she had experienced it herself when the incorporeal fire Kindred whispered promises in her ear last night.
Kyan wanted his three siblings free from their crystal prisons and in possession of new flesh-and-blood vessels, and Amara had made sure that a selection of sacrifices were ready.
Kyan had only half succeeded.
Nic. Olivia.
Both gone.
No, she thought. I can’t think about Nic now. I need to stay in control.
Cleo forced herself to focus only on the bruises on the former guard’s face and body. Yes, he’d been questioned like Amara said. But he hadn’t been broken yet.
She didn’t spare a moment of sympathy for this prisoner and his current predicament. “Where is Kurtis Cirillo?”
She said the name like something she’d spat out and squashed into the ground with the heel of her boot.
The man didn’t blink. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t?” Cleo cocked her head. “Are you sure? He is the one you’d begun to take orders from, rather than the empress, isn’t he?”
He cast a disparaging glance toward Amara. “I don’t take orders from any woman, I don’t care who she is. Never have and never will. You have a difficult road ahead of you, princess.”
“Empress,” Amara corrected.
“Is that official?” he asked. “Even with your older brother still alive? I believe the title of emperor is rightfully his.”
“Ashur murdered my father and brothers,” she replied curtly. “He is my prisoner, not my rival.”
Amara’s ability to lie was second to none, Cleo thought.
“Answer the princess’s questions truthfully,” Amara said, “and I promise your execution will be swift. Continue to be evasive, and I promise you will suffer greatly.”
“Again”—the man had the audacity to smirk at her—“I don’t take orders from women. I have many friends here among your guards. Do you think they’ll follow your command to torture me without hesitation? Perhaps they’ll refuse such a command. A few bruises and cuts are just for show, to make you think you’re in control here. Perhaps they’d free me to torture you instead.” He snorted. “You’re just a little girl who’s deluded herself into thinking she has power.”
Amara didn’t react to his rant other than shaking her head. “Men. So full of yourselves, no matter what station you hold. So full of your own bloated self-importance. Don’t worry. I would be happy to leave you chained up in here, without food, without water. I can easily make this a forgetting room like we have back home.”
“What’s a forgetting room?” Cleo asked.
“A room in which one is left in darkness, solitude, and silence,” Amara replied, “with only enough plain, tasteless food to sustain life.”
Yes, Cleo had heard of such a punishment. Prisoners were left alone until they went mad or died.