Page 33 of Captive

Chapter 8

The next day, they arrived at their final destination.

The outpost was two or three times as large as the one they’d passed through before. A tall fence surrounded it.

As they neared the gate, Novikke stopped, her stomach twisting with fear as she looked at the dark figures moving around the outpost. Aruna gave her an impatient look. She motioned for him to give her the notebook. He sighed and handed it to her.

“Will they listen to you?” she wrote.

She could tell that he was annoyed at her for bringing it up. Because he didn’t want to think about what he knew they were going to do to her.

Things had been uncomfortable since the ruins. They’d not spoken after that. He’d avoided looking at her.

But then he nodded. He looked like he believed it, too. Novikke waited for a sense of comfort that didn’t come.

“Is this the last time we’ll see each other?” she asked.

“Most likely.”

She felt like she should say more, but what else was there to say? There was nothing more he would do for her. This was the end of the road.

He held the book for a few moments, looking as if he was going to speak again, then didn’t. He took her by the arm and guided her into the camp.

She steeled herself, already feeling the tension of Panic in her throat and chest. Things were about to get a lot worse.

Past the gate, the place was illuminated with sharp, flickering light from the fire at the center of the camp, and compared to the complete darkness outside, it felt like midday. It was the only thing Novikke found comforting about the place.

As they walked through the outpost, fewer people stared at her than at the last place they’d stopped, but those who did glared with so much hatred that she looked away rather than meet their gaze.

She inhaled a slow, shaking breath. Aruna glanced over at her and gently squeezed her arm, but said nothing.

They came to a door. He must have learned his lesson last time, because he took her inside with him instead of leaving her alone.

They went down a hallway and into a room where several people stood. They’d been talking, but they stopped and stared at Novikke when she entered.

Aruna said something. One of the others—a woman in elegant black and silver armor—waved the others off, and they left, leaving Novikke, Aruna, and the armored woman alone in the room.

The woman looked her up and down once, then turned back to Aruna, as if Novikke were hardly worth her notice.

Aruna began talking a lot more than she’d ever heard him talk. Explaining who she was and why she was here, she assumed. Novikke watched them discuss her, trying to guess what they were saying. She would have given anything to speak their language right then. The not knowing was torment.

Finally, the woman stepped forward, took her arm, and pulled her out of the room and back down the hall.

They left the building, and the woman led her away, across the outpost. And Aruna didn’t follow.

He did nothing.

An icy wave of fear went through her, striking deep at her core.

There was nothing shocking about any of this. It was exactly what she’d known was going to happen for days already. Why, then, did it still feel like a knife in her chest? Why was it only now that she felt genuine despair?

She could pick out his voice among the chatter behind them. She could hear him talking with someone casually. As if he’d already forgotten she existed.

She looked at the ground, unresisting as the woman guided her.

The woman brought her to a small wooden hut with a dirt floor. It was empty inside except for a few tall wooden posts driven into the ground.

Sitting at the base of one of the posts was a sun elf with a black eye who looked up at them as they entered. There was an iron collar carved with runes around his neck—a magic inhibitor.

---