Page 62 of The Prince's Captive

That small blessing now meant she was sitting in this dungeon waiting for when the Inimicus would hand her over to their heretic.

It wasn’t her place to question. But she did. Even her faith was mediocre.

Her head throbbed, and she could feel dried blood caked into her hair near the knot on the back of her head.

She’d have been blessed more if that hit had just killed her and put her out of her misery. But there was a reason she was still alive.

For however much longer that was.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there with her hands clasped, lips softly moving through Hagne’s prayers, but at some point the light shifted. She blearily looked up to see Inimicus and their light runes coming to a stop in front of her cell.

For a moment in the poor light, the light hair and green eyes almost had his name on her lips.

But then he gestured for the doors to open and she saw his face more clearly. His hair wasn’t blond, and he was dressed in black. It wasn’t Gavril. It was Prince Nikias.

Maybe it was better it was Nikias. He probably didn’t know her language, so he couldn’t try to deceive her.

“Up.”

An older looking Inimicus had spoken in her tongue. One of their learned mages, she imagined. Probably one of the few who did speak it—that also wasn’t Gavril.

Two of the Inimicus opened her cell and stepped inside.

She did not get up.

“Soldier. Up.” The older Inimicus barked again.

She kept her hands clasped and stayed on the ground.

Nikias muttered something, “—contumax lupa—drag her—must.”

The two Inimicus in her cell unlocked her chains around her ankles. Marcella just bowed her head and continued reciting Hagne’s Prayer Thirty-Three.

“—skin as impenetrable as rock and my heart as solid as iron, keep me steadfast when the tides rise—”

“—saying?” Prince Nikias twitched at her voice but just turned to ask the older man.

“—Sordes—fruitless—waste of energy—fond of it—most of the Sordes we capture—”

The men grabbed her by her arms and hauled her up, but she was dead weight in their arms. Her legs dragged on the ground as she kept her hands clasped and kept moving through her prayer. The more she prayed, the more Nikias twitched every time her voice left her mouth.

“—stop—”

The man barked in her language, “Soldier. Cease.”

She ignored him and continued praying softly, “—light reach me in even the darkest of—”

The Inimicus dragged her out of her cell and into the hall. Then her head was rattling once again and she gasped for air, losing her words for a moment. But she saw Nikias give the Inimicus who’d cuffed her on the head a nod as they set off, hauling her away.

When she was able to string two words together in a thought, she resumed her praying, this time just moving her lips silently as they hauled her dead weight through the hallway.

After turning right, quite a bit of winding and going up a staircase, they finally shoved Marcella into a room that had her blood running cold and the speed of her prayer increasing. There was a tall table in the middle of the room. A woman was in the room already, bustling about the other counters and tables on the edges of the room. She wore a trimming on her clothes that Marcella had seen before on only one other Inimicus. She was a heretic.

Books were strewn about, notes in their language she presumed, as well as instruments made of metal the likes of which she’d only imagined before in her nightmares from the horror stories. The reality was so much worse.

No one survived this room so no one could give an accurate account.

“—Asentai, hear my pleas, send your protection to your daughter—” she stopped praying silently, instead her words coming out in a soft gasp.

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