Page 12 of The Blood that Binds Us

Aldred snaps his fingers at me and waves me forward. “With me, then.”

Restraining the urge to scream a combustion spell in his face, I follow Aldred the rest of the way to the castle. He leads us down the stairs at the end of the long ornate hallway, down to the sickly yellow dungeon where I spent my first night chained to a post. Barred cells stretch along both sides of the hall, the stench of death hovering around us like a sentient host welcoming us to its rotting, forgotten home. With no iron bracelets on my wrists, Aldred unknowingly walks with a predator at his back.

Sin believes my power to be that of a garden witch and nothing more—he doesn’t know every throb of his pulse beckons to me like a virgin begging to be touched. I wonder what his goddess-blessed blood would taste like if I slashed open his chest and drank from his bleeding heart.

Aldred pulls open one of the cell doors with a metallic clang that rattles the room and motions for me to hurry inside. I fix him with a hardened stare as I step into the too-small space, and he—he turns his back to me—to pick up a bundle of chains from the dark corner under the stairs. If I wasn’t so godsdamned determined to not be the monster my mother was sure I’d become, I could have ended his life a hundred times over now, each time more painful than the last. I’ll escape from this castle, one way or another, but I won’t shed blood to do so. And right now, there’s no chance I’m slipping through this keep unnoticed—not yet anyway.

Flexing the chain between his hands, Aldred returns to find me standing with my arms already outstretched in front of me. I will my face to erase all expression, knowing it is best to keep the uncertainties of my current predicament to myself. He slaps the iron on my wrists and binds them together with just enough slack I can keep my hands from touching. I don’t so much as blink when he slams the cell closed with an ear-splitting clatter.

* * *

I perk up at the smell of food before I take note of who’s carrying it. River slides a dinner tray through the small opening under the bars—a bowl containing some kind of meaty stew with vegetables, a chunk of soft bread, and a few cubes of cheese. Unable to satisfy the rumbling in my stomach quickly enough, I scarf it all down immediately.

“I’m sorry, dear. Singard… he gets into thesemoods.”

“Does he force you to serve him?”

“Gods, no,” she chuckles, and I discover I adore her laugh—a warmness amidst the algid emptiness of the dungeon. Her face falls as she realizes my question was genuine. “I don’t find myself agreeing with every decision that boy or his father makes, but I do love him like a son. Raised him as one too. His mother isn’t around, you know.”

I didn’t know, but I suppose I have never seen the Lady of Castle Scarwood before.

“Where is his mother?”

“Now that is venturing into territory I don’t think I’m fit to discuss. These walls have ears, best to remember that. Eat up, dear—I’ll be damned if you reduce to skin and bones on my watch.”

Her faint laughter fades as she climbs back up the stairs, and it isn’t until the heavy door closes behind her that I realize how much I yearn to hear the soft creaking of those steps again, indicating her return. Hopefully with more food.

Alone with intrusive thoughts of traipsing through a sea of bodies adorned in kingdom uniforms, I stare into the flames flickering softly from inside metal sconces. I envy the fire, so unbothered and content to burn as it strives to reach greater heights. If it were to climb a little too high and reduce the castle to ash and dust, no one would blame the torch for the destruction—for doing what it was simply created to do. If only I were as lucky.

The ceiling rumbles above my head with what sounds like frenzied footsteps, and I almost puke at the lurching in my stomach, as if someone was pulling on the invisible rope connecting me to the Black Art. I peer through the bars as the dungeon door flies open, the stairs squeaking as someone barrels down them.

I suck in a breath but let it loose when a different dark headed male than I was expecting drops into view and hustles towards me, fumbling with a ring of keys.

“What is happening upstairs?” I ask as the pounding of frantic feet continues above us.

The guard thrusts one of the many keys on his ring into the cell’s lock and hauls open the door, ignoring my question. He grabs me by the elbow and drags me towards the stairs, not slowing his steps as I stumble behind him, my legs weakened from the iron.

“Are you taking me to him? Has His Grace decided on my punishment?” Or is he simply ready to act on his promise to rip the truth from my tongue as he threatened at the river? I struggle to plant myself, to force us to halt, but he yanks me harder, scrambling my feet like a startled goat. “Listen to me—you sneak me out of here, and I will reward you with whatever you want. I have coin. Plenty of it. Let me go and it’s yours.”

He pulls me up the stairs, not so much as glancing behind him with my offer. Hurtling us through the door, the guard escorts me down the long stretch of hall and into the foyer with the towering archways. The room is packed with bodies, but it is Dusaro that rushes towards us, his tight-lipped expression nothing shy of furious.

Dusaro grabs me by the crook of my arm and jerks me around his body, slamming my back against his chest. He grabs a fistful of my unbound hair and rips my head back, exposing my neck to the kingdom steel he presses against it. Blood turns to ice in my veins, and I go still, lowering just my eyes to survey my surroundings. Several guards stand in a semicircle around the room, hands on the swords at their hips, ready for the order to draw. With Dusaro now at my rear, I behold the backs of Sin and a woman at the far end of the room. She is tall with a petite, slender frame, loose midnight curls coiling around her waist. She angles towards me and—

Goddess above.

Ileana.

Legion hadn’t held onto Ileana for her arcane talent—she was as mundane as they came—but she helped orchestrate an attack against the rebellion that ended in her capture. This was during my first stint with Legion, several years ago when I confessed my secret to their leader. It wasn’t that Ileana was a die-hard kingdom supporter; she simply hated the destruction Legion wreaked in the cities and heard the rumors they were recruiting soldiers by force. She and a few others managed to take out a quarter of the camp with arrows before they were on them. Cathal killed her friends but insisted they keep her alive—that death was too merciful for a woman with a tongue as spiteful as hers. They chained her up and delighted in her suffering as they dragged out her punishment. Not going back for her the night Cosmina snuck into the camp and freed me has not ceased to be my biggest regret. I cowered in the moment I needed to find my strength the most, and she continued to suffer because of it.

How in the gods’ names did she end up here?

A muscle feathers in her brown cheek, and I follow her menacing stare to the man slumped on his knees before her, twin swords at his neck courtesy of the two guards hovering above him.

The sight of him flares my chaos, and the iron colors my wrists with matching amethyst bracelets, reacting to the magic bubbling there, antagonized by the mere image of him breathing in my presence.Ourpresence. Because kneeling before her, an arrow protruding from his makeshift armor, is the man who tortured us both.

Given Cathal’s human form, the arrow must be iron tipped, preventing him from shifting. He rolls his head back to look at Sin with those glaring blue eyes—eyes that watched as his friends kicked me into submission, beat me into misery, and violated me into nothingness.

“I only knew it was a matter of time before you’d grace us with your presence again,” Sin smirks at the Legion commander.

---