Page 65 of Caress of Fire
“I need to go down.” She turned hard eyes to Fedryc. If she showed even a hint of her distress to him, she knew he would send her away in a flash.
Fedryc nodded to her, then after a quick gesture to a guard, a gurney was brought to her, attached to a thick rope. Fedryc fastened her to the gurney, going over each clamp twice, then locked gazes with her again.
“One last time. Wait outside, see your brother after the medical crew have gone over him.”
This was the first time his voice had held any kind of plea, any begging note, and it made her almost think about it. Almost.
Marielle couldn’t speak so she shook her head. Fedryc’s shoulders slumped and he turned to the guards and gave them the okay. As she was lowered into the bowels of the well, more smells assailed her nostrils and she had to bend over the gurney, holding her nose and closing her eyes.
The gurney finally stopped. It took Marielle a few seconds to gather the courage to open her eyes. When she finally did, she found herself surrounded by horrors that would engrave themselves on her brain for the rest of her life. Bodies, old and more recent, were strewn across the ground. Body parts lay scattered carelessly as cadavers stared out of empty eye sockets.
Henron came to her, wordlessly working to free her of the gurney. Fedryc’s Captain of the guard finally lifted his silver eyes to meet hers. There was an unspoken support there, not exactly pity, but an understanding that she just had to come and be there.
Marielle moved, then yelled as a rat, fat and hostile, jumped out of a corpse’s chest and skittered across her feet.
Up on the wall above her head, Fedryc shouted a question, but Marielle heard it without understanding the words. Henron spoke to her, his hand closing around her upper arm, but she pushed it away despite his superior strength.
Her vision was a tunnel. Gone were the bodies and the stench. All she could see was the slightly human form on the ground. “Devan.” She whispered the name like a prayer as she knelt beside her brother. “I found you.”
Devan lay on his stomach, his head turned to the side, obviously unconscious. Her voice broke as she stared down the ruined remains of her brother’s face. Deep bruises covered his once pale, freckled skin. His cheekbones had exploded into a mangle of red flesh, pus oozing from the wounds, and his eyes were swollen shut. If it wasn’t for the shock of red hair on his head, she wouldn’t be sure it was the same boy she had looked at every day since his birth.
Her fingers trembled as she ran them lightly over Devan’s back, or what was left of it. Long, deep gashes ran across his skin, crisscrossing over and over. A familiar word came to her mind, one that bore the weight of the worst pain she could think of.
Lashes. Those are lash marks. Devan was whipped.
Marielle shook her head as her hand drew away from the wounds and she closed her fingers around Devan’s left hand. A pained whine came from his mangled lips and something ripped apart in her chest. Something that had been stretched to a tenuous length since the day she’d left her home for the Delradon liaison office to find herself locked in the dungeon.
It snapped and she knew she would never be whole again. Maybe Fedryc had been right.
She turned pleading eyes to Henron, who looked down at her with a sadness that churned and boiled into despair in her chest, down her stomach and inside the fabric of her very soul. A sound came from his wrist and Henron spoke in Delradon, fast and low, never taking his eyes off her.
“Medics are on their way. They’ll take you out first, then Devan.”
“No.” Marielle blinked, disbelieving. “Devan first. Are you out of your mind?”
“The longer the Draekarra of the High Lord is exposed, the longer Aalstad is vulnerable to those who did this.”
Marielle stared at Henron then slowly, like in a dream, she got to her feet. She didn’t care that he was many times stronger.
“My brother is not dead yet.” Her entire body shook as she spoke. “And you will send him up on that gurney first or I swear to you, you will have to tie me to that thing, kicking and screaming.”
“Fedryc gave orders.” Henron’s voice had lost its warmth, and the cold strength of the Captain of the Guard shone through.
“Then you have a choice.” Her limbs rippled with anticipation as she prepared to do what she’d threatened. Devan didn’t have long, and she was getting him on the gurney if it killed her. “You can obey orders or do what you know is right.”
Henron held her gaze for a long time, then his eyes slid to Devan. “He won’t survive.” Henron’s voice was laden with sadness but also with regret. “It is a mercy if he dies fast.”
“Fuck your mercy!” Marielle’s voice was filled with tears and pain. “I won’t let him! He’s all I have left!”
Henron looked at her again as the medical team called from the top of the well, then he snapped something sharp in Delradon into his commu-link.
“You will have to help me.” He walked to Devan’s side quickly, then looked up at her expectantly. Marielle squatted on the other side of her brother, her eyes on the Captain of the Guard. “He will be in agony when we move him.”
“I know.”
“Fedryc might just kill me for this.” Henron exhaled, then nodded. “On three, you have to lift him like I do. We can’t place him on his back.”
Marielle nodded, then followed Henron’s lead. As they grabbed Devan’s bloody shoulders, fresh blood poured over her hands but she held on.
