Page 38 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

“It should have been you. We would have been long gone from here. But I…” I could never deny you, she’d almost said. “It was important to you.”

“It was. Is.”

Zylah nodded, eyes burning with unshed tears. She hated that he was suffering. Even if she hadn’t known him, even though she couldn’t see him, she could hear it in his tone, in his quiet breaths. He was in so much pain, so much pain it was breaking him.

She sucked in a breath, mentally preparing herself for what she was about to do. “I need your help with something.”

“Anything.”

“Since you haven’t tried already, I’m going to assume you can’t summon anything within your cell.”

A quiet exhale of frustration. “Correct.”

“I need you to tell me if you can see anything I can use as a lockpick. And I need you to keep talking to me whilst I search for anything I can find on them.” Zylah jerked her chin towards the bodies beside her.

“I can do that.”

There were questions she needed to ask him. Answers he might have, but those could wait. He should have been dead from so much exposure to vanquicite; the pain he must have felt from that alone would be maddening. Zylah shouldn’t have been able to move, either, but it felt as if the worst of it was over now that she was accustomed to the nausea, the weakness. She’d lived with it for so long already. She reached for the first body, carefully feeling for pockets, pins, anything she might use. It was a young male, she realised as she searched, the scent of baked bread clinging to his clothes.

“So, you and Raif?”

Zylah stilled. Of all the questions he could have asked. “Are nothing.”

“But you were something.” There was something in his tone, and though Zylah had asked for the distraction from the task at hand, this was its own kind of torture.

“Yes,” she told him. If she started from the very beginning, would it help him remember? Would it help him piece everything together for himself? Or would it only cause him more pain?

“Before—”

“Before Aurelia made him into a monster. Before I watched him put a vanquicite sword through your chest.” Her voice wavered. “Yes.” Only Raif had been a monster all along; Zylah just hadn’t known it. She swallowed down the lump in her throat, hating that every solution she thought of came with another five questions about Holt’s wellbeing that she had no answers for.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me ask that.”

There was nothing on the male of use, so Zylah moved to the next body as carefully as she could, cursing under her breath when she almost tripped over a limb. She wanted to believe Holt’s interest was because part of him remembered her, but her heart was hurting too much to get her hopes up. “It’s alright, Holt. I have no secrets to keep from you.” Except that was a lie, wasn’t it? Because if she risked telling him what they were to each other, there was no knowing what damage it might do.

“The female in the cell to your right has her hair fastened with pins. I think, judging by the style.”

Zylah smiled at that, the memory of Holt fixing her hair in the tavern not far from where they sat hitting her square in the chest. He used to style his sister’s hair for her, and he was rather good at it.

“There are also metal hooks holding fabric to the base of the throne, but I don’t know if they’ll be too thick to bend out of shape,” he added.

Her search of the female had been futile, and though she wasn’t certain if she could summon anything to her in that moment, knowing there was the possibility of useable items within reach was better than nothing. Because there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that if she stood any chance of getting her hands on anything, it would need to be in very close proximity.

“That’s good.” She moved the bodies as carefully as she could, hoping it wouldn’t look distasteful and that Holt would understand her need to sit. “My weapons?”

“The vampires took them.”

“Of course they did,” she murmured to herself.

“I’m going to throw your water canister over. To your right.”

She didn’t have the chance to protest, the container landing with a thud beside her and Zylah forced herself to reach for it.

“Raif was right,” Holt said quietly as she sipped at the water. “Every time Ranon commands me, it’s like I lose a little piece of myself. Like there’s a crack right down the front of me, waiting to split me in two.”

Zylah pressed a hand to her heart at his words. She knew all too well how that felt. How much energy it had taken to hold herself together when she was breaking. And he had been there for her, through all of it. She unwound his bracelet from her wrist, rubbing the bell one last time. “Here.” She tossed it through the bars, hoping it would reach him.

His shadow moved, and Zylah knew he was inspecting the leather cord between his fingers. “It’s yours,” she told him. “A reminder. That sometimes we have to get a little lost before we find ourselves again.”

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