Page 64 of Caress of Fire
She screamed.
“Let me go!” she shouted, struggling against Fedryc’s hold, but it was no use. He wasn’t letting her go.
“I told you to keep her out!” Fedryc turned cold, raging eyes to the guard, who almost melted away on the spot. “Take her upstairs, now!”
Marielle collapsed in Fedryc’s hold, despair and grief washing over her as her fear materialized in front of her eyes. “He’s dead!” Her voice broke and sobs shook her shoulders as Fedryc wrapped his arms protectively around her. “Devan is dead, isn’t he?”
Fedryc patted her hair, holding her body tightly against his as she sobbed. “He lives,” he said against her hair. “For now.”
Marielle stopped crying and twisted to meet his silver gaze but her joy died as soon as she saw the grim lines of his mouth.
“I need to see him. Let me see him.” This was a desperate plea, and when Fedryc shook his head, she understood that horrors she couldn’t bear awaited her in that dark, damp hole.
“You do not want to see Devan right now.” Fedryc spoke softly, his face grim and his eyes filled with something that made her bristle. “Henron and his men are taking care of him right now. I have a medical evac team on the way with a hover transport.”
“I don’t care if he’s injured.” Marielle pushed away from Fedryc and he let her go. “He’s all alone there. He needs me.”
Fedryc’s face closed off and his eyes turned cold. He wasn’t hearing her. “I can’t let you go down there, Marielle.”
“No!” Marielle shouted again, this time without sobs in her voice. This made Fedryc look down at her, and when she saw pity in his eyes, she was filled with a rage that threatened to spill out. “Let me see him. I need to see him…”
“It is a sight I wish I could unsee.” Fedryc’s voice was soft and low, and it flayed the skin on her face, on her arms, anywhere his damn pity touched her. “Please, my Draekarra, go wait outside. You will see your brother once the medical team has lifted him out.”
He reached for her, his hand about to close on her arm and send her away. Send her away from the one who needed her the most.
“Don’t touch me!” Marielle’s shout was filled with rage and pain and Fedryc let his hand drop by his side but still put his body between her and the door leading to the well. “You will let me go to my baby brother, Fedryc Haal, or I swear on my parents’ souls that I will never forgive you.”
Time felt suspended as the Draekon Lord held her stare, their two wills colliding with each other. She was powerless, small and weak, but her strength came from that core of herself she had been building all those years. That protective streak that had been her entire existence until she met him. She was Devan’s sister and Devan’s mother, all in one, and right now, she would plow through anyone who stood in her way.
“If I allow you to see this, I fear I might lose you.” Fedryc spoke with the truth in his voice, his face. “You are no stranger to the cruelty of the world, but you have never faced true evil before.”
“If you don’t allow me to be with him, you will lose me.”
Her words were final, and his face lost its expression of pity to be replaced by a sadness so deep, it tore at her soul.
“Very well then.” He turned sideways, allowing her to pass through the door.
Her entire body trembled but Marielle walked, her back stiff and her head held high as she entered the lair of an evil greater than she had ever imagined.
Chapter 21
Decomposition hit her nostrils at once. Not the vague smell of decay from upstairs. No, this was a rotting flesh stench, so strong she couldn’t breathe completely, nausea hitting her like a slap in the face. Her eyes took a long time to adjust to the near total darkness, and Marielle walked with slow, careful steps. She could discern the faint outlines of men, all turning to see her enter the room. They all stood around a waist-high stone wall, lining what she knew to be the pit where Devan was being held.
From somewhere behind her, Fedryc ordered a man to turn on a glowing, floating orb, and the space was bathed in a faint purplish light. Marielle immediately wished he hadn’t.
Bodies lined the walls, left there like garbage by Ignio Marula’s men at least a month ago. Rotting, falling flesh made their faces unrecognizable but Marielle could see from their clothes and size that the victims were male and female, maybe even children, from the size of some.
A horror she knew Fedryc had tried to shield her from.
As she neared the stone wall, she saw the pit was round and deep. This was the dry well where the next poor souls sentenced to die in the Pits were held. As she walked, a hand closed on her arm and Marielle met Fedryc’s stare. She didn’t push him away but closed her own hand around his.
Then she was at the wall and she peered down to see Henron staring back at her. At his feet was a tangle of bones and corpses, and between them, a slumped form that had nothing human about it.
“You let her come down here?” Henron’s voice was disbelieving and harsh. “She can’t see her brother like this.”
“Marielle made her choice.” Fedryc’s simple answer made Henron shake his head and Marielle got the distinct feeling that the man wished he himself wasn’t the one who had climbed down the well and seen her brother.
It made her all the more desperate to come to Devan’s side.
