Chapter XXXI
XXXI
THE PLACE WAS COLD. And dark. Adel shifted, feeling as though she’d been trampled beneath a racing chariot.
Battered and sore. The cut on her thigh burned, but she was alive.
That was a mercy. Or a torment. She should feel the sink of disappointment, the heat of anger, betrayal.
Not this eerie calm. This stillness of mind and body, as if she’d known all along this would be the outcome.
The rustle in the cell beside her betrayed Felix’s presence, even if she couldn’t see him.
Cage would have been a better description than cell.
Nets of iron bars wrapped around them both, secured to the stone wall at her back.
“I did not think this place really existed.” Her voice shook with a shiver.
“You’ve never been down to the punishment cells?” His voice was muffled, as if he held his face in his hands.
“You seem surprised.” Her chin lifted. “I am not insubordinate.”
He chuckled, then stopped as if he’d just realized she wasn’t laughing with him. Silence—then an echoing drip.
He cleared his throat. “But we are not dead. That’s something.”
She inhaled something rank. “I would not be so certain. What is that terrible smell?”
A pause. “Not me.”
She was glad the darkness hid her smile. “How is your face? It seems a soft, sensitive thing to withstand a hit like that—even if Jovan’s skill as a cestus is poor and childlike.”
A huff of laughter. “Compassion and double insults in the same breath. Your abilities are endless.”
“I am a woman of many skills.”
He chuckled again, and for a moment, Adel could nearly pretend that they were friends and not fellow prisoners. And yet, perhaps being fellow prisoners was what made them friends.
“I’m fine. How is your leg? I never got to finish stitching it.”
“It burns.”
“I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not caring for it sooner.”
“You have cared for me better than anyone else ever has.” She winced as the words left her mouth, banter slipping and revealing something that felt true and vulnerable. A mistake. She’d advanced too far without backup.
“I got us locked in the punishment cells.”
“Yes. Exactly.” She let out a breath of relief and tried to arrange her tone into something light and unaffected. “I will be sure to blame you if I die of infection.”
“I would not expect anything less.”
Felix leaned back against the cold brick, turning his head so his throbbing jaw pulsed against the coolness. He wasn’t about to admit how badly that “childlike” hit had hurt.
The drips echoed.
The silence stretched.
Had they been here for days? Hours?
Minutes?
There was no way to tell in the darkness. But by the time heavy footsteps announced the arrival of one of the guards, his stomach had been growling for centuries.
A lantern burned his eyes.
Felix pressed his hand to his forehead as a shield as a guard he didn’t know appeared, arms laden with a jumble of things. In the lantern’s light, Felix saw Adel sit up straighter in the cell beside him.
“Brutus?”
“Shhh. I was never here, and I didn’t bring these things. You woke up and they were here.” He bent and dumped a tangled clutter of items on the floor outside Adel’s cell and straightened, hanging the lantern from a sinister-looking hook on the ceiling.
“I saw nothing,” Adel murmured, moving to the front of her cell where she could reach through the bars for the items. “Thank you.”
Brutus grunted and turned away, his footsteps fading as quickly as they appeared.
Felix peeled his face from the coolness of the wall and scooted toward the bars separating her cell from his. “What did he bring?”
“Who?” She looked up sharply. “There was no one. We woke up and this was here.”
Felix winced.
“You are terrible at this,” she confirmed, breaking a loaf of bread in half and passing the larger piece through the bars. The action warmed him, confirming the suspicion that a heart lurked beneath her armor. Unless the bread was poisoned.
“I can eat the smaller one.”
She shook the piece, impatient for him to take it. “I am more accustomed to being hungry.”
He made no move to take it. “So am I.”
“You? An Alexandrian medicus, know hunger?” Her eyebrows flickered in disbelief, lantern light glinting in her eyes as she looked at him.
“Not everyone is as they appear.” He shrugged. “No one is without struggle, no matter what outward appearances say.”
“You speak like an old man.”
He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his lips tipping up. “Is that a compliment?”
Her eyes narrowed, but a playful glint remained. “Act so surprised and there will not be another.”
“Ah.” He allowed a slow nod of realization. “There you are. For a moment I thought you’d been exchanged for someone else.”
“No doubt you would have preferred that.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Are you a glutton for misery, then?”
“I never cared much for the easy way of things. My mater didn’t approve.”
It was her turn to smile. “She would have liked my aipei. I was forever doing things the hard way.”
“And could you take instruction from her?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I can take instruction . . . from those competent to give it.”
“I sense an insult hidden somewhere.”
“Perhaps you are not so incompetent after all.”
“Two compliments in one day? Are you trying to woo me?”
She shot him a look that pointed to the contrary. “Are you going to take the bread?”
“If you make it even, or give me the smaller piece.”
She blinked and withdrew the bread, tearing off enough to make the two pieces equal before passing it back. “Satisfied?”
He accepted and took a bite. Cold. Hard. Crumbling in the mouth. He’d be dying of thirst before morning.
Adel uncorked a small jar and lifted it to her nose. “Water.” She took a sip.
“Aren’t you worried there might be something mixed in?”
Adel took another sip. “And die?” She glanced around at the underground cavern of cages and chains. “That would be a pity, would it not?” She passed the jar through the bars. “Poison is too merciful for Blandus Albus.”
He accepted with a nod of agreement. Unfortunately, she was right.
Adel sorted through the rest of the things and held up a bandage. “You can finish your job after all.”
He set the jar aside and wiped his hands down his tunic before reaching for the supplies. “Sit closer.” He glanced at the lantern and beckoned her to sit alongside the bars so the cut on her thigh was closest to him.
She complied, discomfort tightening the lines of her lips as she bared the cut.
He dipped the end of the bandage into the water and reached through the bars to clean the wound and dangling needle. Her muscles tensed beneath his touch.
“Does that hurt?”
“No.”
With a sigh, Felix withdrew. “Adel.” He waited for her to look at him. “You can tell me the truth.”
She dropped her gaze to the white-knuckled grip her hands had on each other. “Why does it matter so much to you how I feel? Why do you care?”
Because her fire had drawn him to seek its source. And her pain had tugged at his compassion. And the hints of her heart, no matter how repressed and disguised, had lit in him a determination to see it wild and free. But saying any of that would send her to the opposite side of her cell.
Instead, he lowered his voice. “Perhaps I have fallen in love with your wit and charming personality.”
“Well.” Her throat worked, lips parted. And then she nodded as if that was the most sensible answer he could have given. “I cannot blame you for that.”
“You have not made it easy on me.” A smile still pulled at his lips as he reached through the bars once more. He gently pressed the edges of the cut together and began to stitch.
There. They were back on steady ground. Dancing around the fissure cracking between them, threatening to collapse and pull them both in. A destructive force, this thing tugging at him, drawing him to her.
“So, what happens now that your brilliant rescue plan has failed?”
What indeed?