Page 17 of Of Nine So Bold

Metal clanged as the gate closed. Footsteps followed, the soldiers chuckling as they walked away.

I lay there for a heartbeat, breathing shallowly and attempting to get my bearings. I ached all over, but I didn’t feel any injuries. No wetness from blood or wounds. Nothing broken. More symbols were engraved on the bars ahead of me, and beyond them was only another tunnel wall and nothing else I could see.

“So they’re throwing their own in here now too, huh?” someone muttered nearby.

I tensed. Oh… no.

Moving carefully because of my dizziness and apprehension alike, I rolled over to face the room.

A few torches burned where they’d been shoved into crevices in the rough stone wall, creating patches of light amid the dense shadows of the massive cave. The ceiling hung in darkness far above my head, with the firelight only barely tracing the edges of the stalactites hovering there like spears ready to fall.

And everywhere ahead of me, there were giants.

Dozens, maybehundredsof giants, the myriad shades of their skin so coated in dust that they blended with the drab rags of their clothes and the rough rock walls around them. Small fires burned in dented metal bins at the heart of a few of the groups, providing some measure of warmth. But plenty remained along the walls, huddled beneath the torches or clustered together in the shadows.

To a person, their eyes were fastened on me, the supposedhumanin their midst.

“I’m not Aneiran,” I said, inching backward carefully. “I swear I don’t want any trouble.”

A scoffing sound came from one of the groups to my right. “Like we give a shit what you want.”

I tensed as a massive guy rose to his feet from beside one of the largest fires near the wall. His head looked like a rough block of stone, all blunt and square like the universe had given up before he was fully formed. His dirt-colored hair was lashed back tightly against his scalp and gleamed with grease in the firelight, and his skin was pale gray like granite and just as rough. He had a twist to his lips that spoke of cruelty and said he enjoyed it, while his eyes scraped over me with contemptuous anticipation, as if I was a bug he looked forward to crushing.

Certainty settled like a lump of stone in my gut. Clay and Lars used to tell me about guys like this one. Back when the two of them were children and their family had cast them onto the streets in the capital city, they’d avoided giants like him for the sake of self-preservation. The guy was a bully, through andthrough, and the way the people around him pulled away when he stalked toward me only reinforced the impression.

Several other guys got up behind him, and it didn’t take much to mark them as the bully’s henchmen. They weren’t quite as large, nor quite as intimidating, even if they would still tower over me. The contempt on their faces looked like echoes of his, as if they would as easily mirror their boss’s laughter as his rage. They existed to follow his lead, to react how he did because they wanted to belong.

But the sadism in their eyes said they loved every minute of it.

“I say we start with his arms,” the head bully commented. “Rip them off and listen to him scream.”

His buddies grinned. “Great plan, Norbert,” one of them chimed in.

Norbert? This behemoth’s name wasNorbert?

Like it mattered. His name wouldn’t stop him from killing me.

My fingers pressed into the rock, straining for any trace of nature to help me, even underground. Pain like pinprick needles stabbed into my wrist from the manacle clamped there, while my powers were just as absent as they’d been when I was dragged before the queen.

My heart raced. Dex had always insisted on training us to fight. My friends and I had spent years up in the mountains, drilling everything from individual combat to how to wage battle as a team.

But I had no illusions that would help me survive now. If anything, I’d be lucky to leave a bruise on any of these guys before they tore my head off.

“Yeah, you tell ‘im,” another henchman said with a grin. “Watch him bleed out.”

Norbert the Bully ignored the agreement like he expected it. Holding up a hand, he didn’t even glance over at his henchmen when they came to a stop like trained dogs.

His cruel grin widened. “But first, let’s give him a little payback for how his human buddies have treated us.” He snapped his fingers and then pointed at me.

The henchmen started forward again. I scooted backward across the rocky floor, my legs too shaky to allow me to stand in my hurry to put distance between them and myself.

“But what if this is exactly what the Aneirans want?” came a voice from somewhere to my left.

Norbert made an irritated noise. His henchmen stopped moving, as if they were suddenly torn on what their leader wanted them to do.

Rustling followed. Near where the voice originated, people moved out of the way.

An old man walked from the shadows. His face was weathered and wrinkled. There were creases in his dark gray, stone-like skin like what one often saw in the deepest parts of a cave, when water had dripped for so long that it made the rocks look like they possessed countless ripples. His gnarled hair looked like dried gray moss, tangled and grown out past his shoulders, while his equally gray beard was long and unkempt. His dark robes were so old and threadbare, it took me a moment to recognize the symbols stitched into the hem in faded gold.

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