Page 24 of Flame and Sparrow

So they still weren’t prepared to let me die just yet.

Lucky me.

My next thought was my appearance, and I frantically ran my trembling hands over my face, holding my breath until I was certain it was still smooth. My skin was sore—bruised, no doubt—and bits of crusted blood crisscrossed my chin and throat, but I didn’t feel raised scars nor pointed ears.

My sister and her necklace still protected me even now.

A rush of mixed feelings overcame me. I fought the urge to curl back up on the ground, feeling battered and useless down here in the dark, and ever more certain that Savna would be handling this situation far better than I was.

Instead of curling up, I rubbed the last bits of grogginess from my eyes. They watered and stung—partly from exhaustion, but also from the acrid scent of smoke filling the air.

Was something burning outside?

I pushed myself upright and leaned against the wall, wincing from the pain in my ribs. How many times had that bastard kicked me? How many of my ribs were bruised—or worse? I tried not to think about it, focusing instead on dragging the pitcher of water to me and picking a few bugs from it. Hands still shaking, I lifted the pitcher to my lips and sipped slowly.

The bread I’d been given was still on the ground beside me as well, hard as a rock and missing tiny bites…stolen by mice, I assumed. I shuddered at the thought of them crawling over it—and me—while I was unconscious. I ripped off a few chunks and tossed them into the water, trying to soften them to something I could more easily swallow.

I was fishing one of them out when the door to my cell opened.

I pushed closer to the wall, bracing myself, trying to look sturdier than I felt.

Torchlight blazed brightly at my intruder’s back, turning them into a mere silhouette, but I was fairly certain it was a man. A very large man. He lingered in the doorway a moment, his attention caught by something down the hall.

Was he one of the four guards I’d been studying?

Or one of the tormenting trio back for another round of torture?

I didn’t think he belonged to either of these groups; I didn’t immediately recognize anything about him. But maybe my senses were simply too beaten down and exhausted to properly gauge anything.

I tried to listen closer as he stepped into the room, but there was nothing to hear; he moved with exceptional grace and silence for a human. I tried to inhale his scent, but all I smelled was smoke—something outside was definitely on fire, more and more of the heavy odor wafting into my cell with every passing moment.

I stopped trying to smell or hear him, focusing instead on what I could see as he came closer…and I quickly realized that this was not any guard I was familiar with.

He was a mountain of a man, tall, yet well-muscled, and despite his size, he seemed to glide rather than walk, his movements precise, confident, unhurried. I felt frail and awkwardly unbalanced in comparison—especially after over a week in this hellish cell. A hood was drawn over his head, casting shadows over most of his face. The outline of the snug-fitting hood suggested a strong jawline and a thick head of hair but revealed little else.

“What do you want?” I rasped.

He held up his hands in a gesture of peace. There were several rings of gold adorning his fingers. “I was ordered to take you upstairs when you woke, that’s all.”

I didn’t like the idea of beingtakenanywhere.

But I was in no condition to fight him off, so I simply kept staring, wary eyes following his every movement. I scarcely blinked; if I couldn’t manage formidable at the moment, then I was determined to make sure he knew I was wide awake and aware.

He stared right back at me. I still couldn’t see much of his shadowed face, even with my advanced sight. Only his pale eyes stood out, and their exact color was impossible to tell. Blue? Silver? Maybe some combination of both. His gaze caught on my bloodied chin, and then my right cheek.

The bruises and cuts must have been impressive, judging by his frown—though I suspected the feeling of remorse went no deeper than his expression.

“You should have told those guards what they wanted to know.” He produced a key from his pocket and removed the shackles from my ankles as he spoke. He left the ones around my wrists, but unhooked their chains from the wall and secured them in his fist instead. Somehow that fist seemed more solid than the cold wall of stone rising behind me.

“I’d die before I betrayed my allies,” I informed him, still watching his every motion with as much focus as I could muster.

“How wonderfully brave of you.” His tone was droll, just short of mocking.

“What good is a coward to our cause?” I snapped.

“More good than a dead woman, I’d guess.”

I swallowed down my reflexive, biting response and continued to study him silently. The cloak he wore was too finely made to have spent much time in dirt-encrusted dungeons such as this one. His boots appeared recently-shined, and those rings on his fingers…yes, he was far too well-dressed for a common guard. His speech, too, was elevated enough that it wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a royal court.

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