Chapter 26
Bressen
I had no idea what time it was when the door to my cell swung open so silently I almost thought I’d imagined hearing it. Even without my mind power, though, I felt the presence.
Talyn had come to see me earlier, to explain why she’d kidnapped me, and I’d been surprised to learn she had a relatively good, almost forgivable, reason for doing so.
Her actions were ill-advised to be sure, but truthfully, I couldn’t say I wouldn’t have done much the same under similar circumstances.
Even more surprisingly, I’d found myself agreeing to help her, if only because our purposes were partially aligned.
She wanted Morland, and so did I, and if we worked together, we might actually get him back to Thasia.
She’d even given me a hairpin to work on unlocking my caronium cuff, and I’d spent most of the evening practicing.
My results were inconsistent at best – sometimes it took me several minutes, sometimes only a few seconds – but I could at least get the cuff off regularly.
It hung unlocked around my wrist now, and I readied myself to move if needed.
I didn’t open my eyes just yet. If it was Morland or Sandrian in my cell, they likely would’ve made their presence known loudly and immediately, would’ve delighted in disturbing my sleep in the dead of night before they tried to beat me again.
Stealth meant one of two things. Either someone had crept down here in the hopes of slitting my throat while I slept or…
“Your breathing isn’t even enough for you to be asleep, Lord Bressen,” came the assassin’s low voice, “and I’d rather not have your hands around my throat again since I’m here to help you.”
I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at the woman standing in the doorway. She hadn’t closed the cell yet, likely so she could make a quick escape if she needed to. She held a lantern turned down low in one hand and a cloth sack in the other.
“You’re not here to slit my throat?” I asked.
She smiled. “Not tonight.”
I winced as I sat up and swung my legs around to hang them over the cot. Every part of my body still hurt from the beating I’d taken earlier, but at least I was still alive. That was more than I’d expected at this point.
The cell door finally clicked shut behind her as she stepped further inside.
It briefly crossed my mind that she must have the key on her somewhere, and I could try to take it, but I dismissed the thought.
I’d tried to get the upper hand on her when she’d visited me earlier, and she’d quickly turned the tables on me.
She was a good fighter, and I was in no condition to test her again. For now, I’d have to trust her.
“You came back,” I observed.
She’d promised to get the caronium tip from the crossbow bolt out of my shoulder, but I’d been cynical of her return. She’d been true to her word, though.
She looked at me in annoyance. “You doubted I would?”
“I was starting to wonder.”
“I would’ve come sooner, but I had to wait for Morland to make his move. I couldn’t chance he’d come looking for me while I was down here,” she said.
“He tried to attack you?”
“He broke into my room with some rope and a caronium cuff,” she said, and I felt my blood boil in my veins. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what he’d intended to do, and while I didn’t have any love for the assassin, I certainly didn’t condone what Morland had been planning.
“Take your shirt off,” Talyn ordered as she turned the lamp up and set the cloth sack down next to me on the cot.
I raised a brow. “That’s awfully forward of you,” I said. “I thought Samhail was more your type.”
She gave me a look that said she didn’t find my attempt at humor amusing, so I gave up and gingerly pulled my shirt over my head.
“Sweet gods!” Talyn hissed under her breath as I laid the shirt down next to me.
I looked down at my chest and grimaced at the mass of purple and black bruising that covered most of it. It looked about how I expected it to. It really was a wonder Morland and the guards hadn’t broken or ruptured anything besides my nose.
“It’s fine. It feels worse than it looks,” I said, and she rolled her eyes.
I should probably stop before she got fed up and left me here in pain, but joking about the situation was the only thing keeping me sane right now.
Talyn had promised she’d protect me while we were here, but it was a miracle Sandrian and Morland hadn’t killed me the second the portal closed behind us.
I also imagined Cyra was going out of her mind with worry right now, and I wished I had a way to assure her I was at least alive, if not well.
“I can’t do anything for the bruises,” Talyn said, “but I can at least remove any caronium left in your wound and stitch it up.”
She began to pull the dressing off the wound. No one had bothered to treat it, so I’d had to clean it myself as best I could. I’d ripped part of the bottom of my shirt off in order to tie a cloth in place over it to stem the bleeding.
Talyn frowned as she looked down at the hole in my shoulder.
“This will be easiest if you lay down,” she said.
“What makes you think there’s still a piece of caronium in it?” I asked.
“Samhail and I were attacked in the woods while we were traveling, and the men had crossbows with caronium-tipped bolts. Samhail was shot twice, and in both cases the tips of the bolt stayed lodged inside him when he pulled them out.”
“Samhail was shot?” I asked in surprise.
“They snuck up on us.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Snuck up on you while you were…doing what exactly?”
Talyn didn’t say anything as she pulled items out of the sack and laid them on the one chair in the cell. Even in the lantern light I could see the blush that reddened her cheeks.
“Samhail was shot because he was too busy fucking you?” I guessed.
Talyn’s head jerked up, and anger flashed in her eyes. “No, he wasn’t fucking me,” she snapped. “He was-”
She clamped her mouth shut, biting off the retort, then shook her head. I frowned as I thought I saw pain cross her features.
“It doesn’t matter what we were doing,” she said. “We weren’t paying attention, and the men got the drop on us. Samhail took the first shot in his armor, but they hit him in the side and stomach when he reached up for his swords.”
“How many men?”
She shrugged. “A little over a dozen or so?”
“How did you get away?” I asked.
She looked at me as if the answer was obvious. “I killed the men and got Samhail to the nearest village.”
Of course. How foolish of me for not guessing as much.
“We got lucky and happened to find one with a perimortal healer,” she went on as she doused a clean cloth in alcohol. “But the healer was delivering a baby at the time we arrived, so I worked on getting the caronium tips out of Samhail’s wounds until the healer could get to us.”
“So you’ve done this before,” I said.
“Once. This may hurt a bit.”
I lurched back as she reached for my pants and began to unbuckle my belt. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her what in the three hells she was doing, when I realized her intent. She whipped the belt out of the loops and folded it twice before handing it back to me.
I scowled at her but put the belt in my mouth and lay back on the cot as she began to clean the wound with the alcohol-soaked cloth.
I pulled the belt out of my mouth. “Why would you help Samhail?” I asked. “According to him, you were his prisoner. You could’ve left him to die in those woods and been free. Why didn’t you?”
Talyn’s hand went still over my wound, and for a moment I could tell her mind was far away.
“There was a man in the town where I grew up who owned a hilynx,” she said. “Are you familiar with those?”
I nodded. Hilynxs looked a bit like white jaguars with tufted ears, but they were bigger, and their fangs were venomous.
They were rare, and it was believed the only remaining ones in the world were in captivity.
The occasional traveling circus might have one, but they were entirely too dangerous to keep as pets.
“Everyone believed the man was crazy for keeping the thing, especially since he let it roam free around his house,” Talyn said as she held a pair of tweezers over the fire and then dipped them in the alcohol. “I asked him once why he kept it. Wasn’t he afraid it would kill him?”
“And what did he say?” I asked.
“He admitted he was in fact afraid of the thing. He knew it could easily turn on him and kill him at any point, but for him, that was part of its appeal. The hilynx is one of the most impressively lethal animals in the world, and it gave him an immense sense of power to be near it and not have it kill him.”
I furrowed my brows. “So…you saved Samhail’s life because he’s like a hilynx, and you…felt powerful every day he didn’t kill you?” I guessed.
She met my eyes then. “I saved his life because it would’ve been a travesty to let such an impressively lethal man die at the end of a crossbow bolt fired by cowards looking to claim a reward.
That hilynx was wasted, living tucked away in that man’s house when it could’ve been out in the world being what it was meant to be. An apex predator.”
I was silent a moment. “And that’s why you saved him?”
She shrugged. “That, and I was sure you and Cyra would hunt me to the ends of the earth if I let him die.”
I nodded. “Very true.”
She pointed to the belt, a silent order to put it back in my mouth.
“What happened to the hilynx?” I asked.
Her face hardened a bit. “It got upset at the man one day and tore him to shreds. After that, the city guard put it down. They shot so many arrows into it that it looked more like a giant porcupine by the end.”
I blinked. That wasn’t quite the ending I’d expected. But then, that seemed to be her point about Samhail.
“Belt,” Talyn said, and I lay back again and clamped my teeth down on the leather.
I grunted loudly and grabbed the sides of the cot as Talyn dug the tweezers into my shoulder. The woman was certainly no healer with a gentle touch.
“I feel it in there,” she said a few seconds later.