Page 14 of The Blood that Binds Us

“Lock them both up.”

My eyes fly open, and Sin thrusts me away from him, into the hands of two uniformed guards. Another two pull Cathal to his feet and steer him behind us, our footsteps echoing in singular purpose as we head back towards the dungeon stairwell. Cathal yells something back to Sin, but I don’t register his words, my mind spinning as I try to make sense of what just happened.

I’m alive.

My knees take the brunt of the fall as one of the guards shoves me back into my cell, and I barely take notice as they lead Cathal, still muttering to either himself or his own escorts, around the corner that continues out of sight. At least he is being kept far away from me, far enough I can’t see that diabolicalness in his eyes, or hear that maniacal laughter in my ears.

I touch the chilled stone beneath me.Real. I run my hands over my arms, my face, through my hair.Real.

I am real.

I don’t allow myself to remember how his blue eyes had looked in the dark.

Twenty-one. My cell door has twenty-one bars. I don’t know how many times I’ve counted them, only that it is a lot. I eat. I sleep. I count. River has not come to see me again, and a guard has been bringing me meals twice a day instead. Based on my food intervals, it is the third day I’ve been locked down here.

The fever set in yesterday. My skin gleams with perspiration despite the chill nipping my bones like hungry sparrows. If Sin doesn’t come down here and kill me, the infection will.

We’ll take real good care of them.

Cathal’s threat on my family hasn’t left my mind since it left his ugly mouth. They need protection. The mother who accepted me as her own… Cosmina who showed me compassion when no one else did… my brothers and sisters who welcomed me into their home, even when I wasn’t one of them.

I should have never gone hunting alone. It was a rule we didn’t break—no one ventured off by themselves. Morrinne and I had the watch the afternoon I was captured, while the others were away at the jobs they kept in the nearby city. Our food supply was dwindling, and Morrinne had been so preoccupied with knitting a scarf for my other chosen sister, Zorina, I didn’t want to disturb her. Winters are harsh in Autumnhelm, and Zorina never sat still for long. She was a wanderer, always taking to the woods and venturing the outskirts of Innodell. Morrinne always pestered her about keeping warm. It didn’t matter that transcendents naturally keep warmer body temps—Morrinne wanted her to have a scarf to keep the chill off her neck, and she insisted Zorina would wear it despite her efforts to convince Morrinne she would simply shift when she caught cold.

Legion had been quiet for a while and naively, I forgot the deadliest predators are often the stealthiest. It wasn’t until they looped the iron chain over my head and across my chest that I even knew they were there. My family would return to learn from our panicked mother that I was missing—and the worst part—Morrinne would blame herself, even though it was my mistake, and mine alone.

* * *

The slow, rhythmic clacking of leather shoes against the ground announces his arrival. I scramble to sit up straighter before he reaches my cell, not wanting him to see how weak the infection and iron has already made me.

Sin stares down at me through the bars, scanning my face—first one eye then the other, before dragging his gaze over my cheeks, the curvature of my mouth, the slump of my shoulders. What he is looking for, I don’t know, nor do I have the energy to care at this point. He leans back slightly while studying me, his hands shoved deep into his black trouser pockets. Keeping my expression fixed, I poke mental fingertips into his mind. My core clenches as a tempest of wrath and pride and shame spirals into my gut like a fisted punch. I press against it harder, forcing his collective to flatten against mine so I can read him easier.

“Stop,” he snaps.

Startled, I drop my hold, and my collective springs back into place.

“I can feel you in there—in my head. I thought I was going mad before.”

“You could feel me in there?”

“Barely, but yes. If I’m focused, I can feel…everything.” A perk of Adelphia’s blessing I’m sure, though his disgruntled tone suggests he does not appreciate it. “I never felt anything like it before. I brushed it off as nothing, but when Cathal told me what you were, it made sense. How does it work?” His stare flattens me against the wall, demanding, cold.

“I can read feelings, intentions. I don’t know your thoughts—don’t waste the energy trying to block them.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you would say if you could read them?”

“Does it even matter?”

Sin stares at me a few seconds longer before moving to lean against the cell, slipping his hands in to loosely hold the bars. “Answer a few questions for me. Honestly,” he adds in warning.

I wave my hand for him to continue.

“You’re a bloodwitch.”

Not a question, but I nod anyway. “Mhmm.”

“Tell me who you really are and how you ended up here.”

A cold wind sweeps across my neck, maybe from the thought of revealing anything about myself that could later be used against me, or maybe from the fever that now bedevils my body. I wait a few breaths before answering him, musing over how much detail I want to spill to my enemy. The answer is none, but I can’t spin another lie and risk getting caught in it.

---