My breath caught in my lungs. “D-Darren—”
“She will most likely bleed to death anyway.” His hard eyes met my own, and anything I thought I’d seen, it was gone. “I’ll be back tomorrow. If she’s still alive.”
*
A couple hours later, there was a familiar squeal of metal sliding into place. The prison door was thrust open for the second time that day.
My shackles were gone.
I was too weak to look up. There was so much pain that I couldn’t risk the movement to crawl to my knees and check.
It was probably the same meal as the last. Rotting meat they wouldn’t give the hounds.
I raised my head, just the slightest, when I heard the bars click into place. A hand dropped a rough sack and nondescript bottle just beyond my reach.
I stared.
“It’s a salve.”
My head jerked up, and I saw one of Mira’s hand-selected mages staring down at me, his brows knit together in a frown.
“A s-salve?” My lips cracked as I spoke.
“To treat your wounds.” The man’s face drew tighter. “He said for you to apply it yourself.”
“H-he?”
I was too late; the mage was already walking away.
I stared at both items, unwilling to react. It was only after the mage exited the room that I finally pulled myself forward, ignoring the sudden wave of agony, to examine the items up close.
It took me five minutes to crawl the space of my cell.
The brown sack, I realized, was a woolen blanket. Nothing pleasant, very coarse, but thick and heavy to tackle the endless cold. If I wrapped it tightly, it might even sever the flow of my cuts.
Inside the bottle was a dirty gray substance.
I tested it with the tip of my finger. It was cold to the touch and smooth, like mucus. It wasn’t unlike the salves my brother used in the infirmary.
With less trepidation than before, I applied a small bead to the corner of my face.
At first my eyes stung and all I could do was hiss, but a second later, the pain subsided, and a cool, dulling sensation replaced the terrible ache from before.
I hastily dabbed some more along the deeper cuts on my thighs and arms. It stung something terrible and my vision spun. My stomach roared, and I was forced to heave up the little contents I had in my stomach.
But minutes later, the blood started to clot. The raging ache became a dull throb.
The salve was an alchemist’s potion. A very costly one.
Darren?
My mind raced, but in the end, I couldn’t be bothered. There was too much pain, too much of me to heal, and if it was him… I didn’t know what to think.
With unsteady patience, I applied the salve to the rest of my body. In time, as the deeper parts began to heal, I was able to reach more. It took me most of the night, or what I thought was the night—I wasn’t sure—but in the end, I had treated everything.
The worst of my pain was gone.
After which I was finally able to relieve myself. I was dehydrated and sharp hunger pains chased my gut, worse now that I had lost what little I had managed to keep down the first two days of interrogation, but for the first time, I was grateful for deprivation instead of abundance. I had managed so far to keep to the buckets—their foul odor of which I was now more than accustomed—but I was afraid it was only a matter of time before I couldn’t. My brother hadn’t in the end.
That last day, he had been huddled in a pool of his own filth, too weak to move.
Eventually, with the rough blanket wrapped tightly around my chest, I was able to settle into some kind of rest. But even that was disturbed. I couldn’t stop chasing the memory of Derrick and what his life must have been like in those final days. The days I could finally share.
Heavy knots pulled at my lungs. It wasn’t the kind of pain I could put out with a salve. It wasn’t the kind of pain I could escape.
My little brother had been so alone. Mira and the others had done things, the same terrible things they did to me now. My heart twisted into a hundred jagged pieces to know I had been inside these palace walls when they happened. That I hadn’t been able to save him, even in the end.
My hand jerked to my neck, to the leather cord and Derrick’s ring, the only part of him I had left. It was slippery with blood, but the copper circlet was still there, still heavy in my palm.
This was the reason I could never give up.
Derrick had faced his final moments a hero. They hadn’t broken him, even when they broke everything else.
Whatever fear was plaguing me, it was nothing compared to the horrible knowledge that I would never be able to say good-bye to my parents, to Alex and Ella…
I couldn’t let the villain win.
Even if that meant dying a traitor at the hands of his brother.
*
Darren arrived the next day without the two guards at his side. He came alone.
“Good, you used it.”
It was him.