Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
C onsciousness returned to me in a slow ebb, like someone turning on a tap but only letting the water through drip by drip.
Everything was dark and hazy, but I slowly regained my strength, and my eyes began to crack open.
The memories came back in a wave, breaking through the pounding ache in my skull.
The feast. Austyn. Some bastard attacked me.
A dark stone ceiling glared down at me, and the rushing sound of moving water filled my ears.
Where the fuck am I?
I groaned as pain blossomed up the back of my head and made white spots pop in front of my eyes. I tried to sit up, but found my arms and legs tied down, the clinking of chains sending a sliver of anxiety through my chest. The drained feeling in my body told me they were made of iron.
I turned my head, spotting an underground river coursing along through the large, underground cavern I was in.
Firelight flickered on the corner of my vision and as I twisted to face it, I found roaring flames beneath an iron cauldron.
A hunched figure stood beyond it, bending over something I couldn't see.
The walls trembled suddenly, and the figure looked up at the ceiling before returning to whatever they were doing.
“Hello?” I rasped, but they ignored me, and I had the feeling I was not going to like it when their attention did fall on me.
A huge shadow loomed in my periphery and Kahn stepped into view, gazing down at me with a dark, bloodthirsty smile.
My upper lip peeled back, and my gut knotted with rage. “What the fuck do you think you are you doing? Let me go,” I demanded, and I stilled as I heard my voice. I was still Drake. Which meant it was him this bastard saw lying here.
“You've upset Mother,” Kahn growled, his eyes narrowing on me accusingly.
I grimaced, yanking at the chains which bound me, but it was pointless. The iron was thick and well secured, the power of the metal making me feel weak and nauseous at once.
“What do you want?” I snarled, my muscles tensing as I bucked against my restraints once more.
A distant boom sounded above us, and Kahn glanced up at the ceiling with a frown lining his brow.
The hunched form beyond Kahn stood upright and as she turned, her face was revealed to me.
Magdor.
“ You ,” I hissed. “Release me this instant. I am a Count of Carubai.”
She let out a low laugh, pushing her hood back and unveiling her black hair which fell about her like a sheet.
My eyes landed on the large chest with bottles and jars within it that she’d been bent over.
She held a jar in her hand filled with a glimmering purple liquid which she promptly poured into the cauldron, a hissing, spitting sound reaching me from within it.
Whatever potion lay in there bubbled angrily and black smoke coiled above it, filling the air with a putrid scent.
Magdor tipped her head back and began to chant something in a language I couldn’t understand, taking an iron blade from the table beside her.
She waved the blade around as her chant grew more frantic and I yanked against my restraints, my muscles flexing as I put as much power into fighting the iron as I could.
Kahn watched me with an amused gleam in his gaze, leaning closer to me with a smirk. “Not so cocky all wrapped up in iron, are you Nazari?” he taunted.
Magdor’s chanting pressed into my ears, and I felt something twisting around me in the air, like a presence I couldn’t see. But I could feel it, some horrid, intangible thing hanging there like a shadow.
“What is this?” I demanded as Kahn moved back again and my eyes fell on his mother once more.
She cut into her own arm with a groan and the darkness seemed to press deeper into the room, seemingly urged on by the blood that spilled from the wound.
“Witch!” I accused. This woman was just as foul as I’d suspected, but that knowledge didn’t give me any comfort now that I was chained down before her on a stone table like a fucking sacrifice.
“Drake Nazari,” she spat the name like it was dirt. “I am afraid you have gained too much favour with the princess.”
The walls trembled once again and Magdor paused, frowning as she turned to her son. “Kahn, go and find out what all of that noise is,” she commanded.
“But I want to watch, Mother,” he complained.
“Do as I say,” she snarled, and he pouted like a child, giving me one, last, wistful look before turning away and following Magdor’s order.
His footsteps retreated and I was left alone with Magdor, which somehow made me more fearful for my life than when her beast of a son had been present.
My shoulders tensed as she approached, her face contorting as she gazed down at my body.
“You will die for this when you are discovered,” I growled, holding on to the small hope that that might happen. But I might not live long enough to see her meet the wrath of Osaria.
She ignored my words, reaching out and hooking her slim fingers into my tunic, ripping it open. My stomach tensed under her roaming gaze, and I roared my fury at her, pulling at the chains once more, but I was stuck in this hellhole, and I didn't even know where exactly that was.
Magdor turned towards me with the bloody knife, and I stiffened, my abs taut as she hovered the blade over my stomach like she was deciding where to cut.
“If you kill me, you’ll start a war with my kingdom,” I snarled, praying she'd buy it.
She pressed the ice-cold blade to my chest, the iron making bile rise in my throat at that simple touch and I knew she’d barely even begun yet.
“I'm not going to kill you, Nazari.” Her mouth pulled up into a cruel smile then she slid the knife across my skin, slitting it open.
I sucked air in through my teeth as blood poured from the cut and pain rippled through the shallow wound.
“What do you want then?” I demanded, my training making me draw my attention from the pain onto survival instead. I could weather torture, I had done so before, but I sensed that wasn’t her aim.
She didn’t answer, moving away and dangling the dagger over the cauldron instead.
My blood rolled off of the blade, dripping into the potion and a flash of red preceded a tendril of crimson smoke.
I shuddered as I watched her stir the contents, the dark presence in the room growing closer once more, the air thickening around me and the taste of blood coating my tongue as she chanted in that strange language again.
My hands curled into fists as I glared up at the dark ceiling, desperate to think of a way out of this.
A splashing noise caught my ear and I turned to look at the underground river, watching the deep water surge by and disappear further into the dark cave system.
A hulking shape came into view and I squinted as a rowing boat emerged, heading downstream.
Two figures sat in it, one small and one large.
But it wasn't until the boat hit the shore that I got a good look at them.
A muscular man in ebony robes jumped from the vessel, dragging a young boy in rags after him who looked pale and shellshocked.
The man had a swathe of black silk pulled up over his face so all I could see of him was two murky grey eyes.
Magdor hurried forward, snatching the boy from his arms, and shoving a bag of coins into the man's hands. “You are late,” she hissed.
“Do you know what I had to get through to fuckin’ make it ‘ere?” the man hissed.
“No and I do not care,” Magdor said. “Get out of here this instant. I have work to do.”
“What is this?” I questioned, trying to work out what I was witnessing.
The man's eyes slid to me, his brows raising for a moment in recognition and my heart stuttered as I realised he knew me – no, he knew Drake .
“Hey – help me!” I barked at him, but he didn't turn back as he jumped into his boat and started rowing upstream into the darkness, fighting the current so the river couldn’t sweep him beneath the low, rocky cave roof on the far side of the cavern.
Magdor dragged the boy along by the scruff of his neck. He could have been a teenager, but the scrawny size of him made it hard to tell. His eyes were wide with terror as Magdor walked him towards the cauldron and anxiety warred beneath my flesh.
“Please, Your Highness, I was told you needed a new servant. I promise I'll serve you well,” he said, and she shoved him to his knees.
He gazed up at her with fear in his expression and my heart jerked in response.
“Magdor,” I snarled. “Enough of this.”
“Yes, you will serve me,” Magdor spoke to the boy, ignoring me, her voice suddenly lower, more gravelly.
The air around us thickened with that cloying presence, accompanied by a pungent scent that made me thrash harder against my restraints.
“Stop!” I roared, and the boy looked back at me with terror sparking in his eyes.
Magdor lifted the knife and began to chant in words that made no sense to me, but filled the cavern with the stench of that foul power. Panic clawed at my insides as I was forced to watch whatever twisted magic she was wielding here.
“Get away from him,” I commanded for all the good it would do.
She caught the boy by the throat in a surge of motion and rammed the blade into his chest so fast that I could only stare on in shock, silenced by the unspeakable act she'd committed. He was just a boy.
My gaze met with his as panic and agony filled his expression for one endless second before his eyes rolled back into his head and he sagged in her grasp. Magdor tossed his limp body to the ground and dropped onto him, her hood falling forward to cover her head as she lowered her face to his chest.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Let me go!”