Chapter 41 Ahnna
Ahnna
The first few days of imprisonment had been shockingly easy to endure, for she and James had spent every waking moment testing the limits of their cells and learning the routines of the prison.
Ideas whispered back and forth in the small opening between them, both of them well aware that there was likely someone tasked with listening to their every word.
They were kept fed and watered, so while the hope they might find their way free endured, Ahnna had not felt the impact of being confined.
Yet as each of their ideas failed, and days turned to weeks, the walls seemed to press closer.
The air seemed to grow hotter. This prison was old, and it became abundantly clear that given the countless prisoners who’d lived and died in these cells, there was no method of escape the Amaridians had not seen attempted.
Which meant they had stymied them all.
“Water!” a voice called from above, and knowing from experience that if she wasn’t ready the wardens wouldn’t wait, Ahnna rushed to lift her pitcher up beneath the small opening.
A moment later, water flooded down, filling her pitcher even as it drenched her hair and clothes.
She’d learned to get as much of it on her as possible, for it was the only respite from the heat.
And it was always so painfully short-lived.
“Waste!” A thin cord dropped from above, and Ahnna swiftly tied the waste bucket with a tight knot, watching as it was lifted up and through the opening.
A clean one dropped through a moment later, and she caught it and set it next to the thin piece of rope she’d yanked out of the warden’s hands on the first day.
Rope, she’d swiftly discovered, that was made of some sort of weed or vine.
It was far too weak to bear more weight than a full bucket, and within a day of her stealing it, it had dried up in the heat and was crumbling apart.
“Rations!”
She lifted her hands and caught the bread, sliced apple, and piece of ham that fell from above.
There would be no more communication from above until the following day, so she sat next to the opening to James’s cell.
The walls were curved, and when she sat, the opening was at about shoulder height.
It was six inches across and the wall itself was about a foot thick at that point, which meant they could both reach into each other’s cell, and it was possible to see each other when the light was right.
She heard James’s soft sigh as he sat on his side of the wall, and the faint crunch of him biting the apple. Normal human sounds that she’d once taken for granted but never would again.
“This is how Zarrah must have felt.” She chewed slowly on her bread. “I never really appreciated what she went through on Devil’s Island until now. What it was like to know that those you care about are in danger but being helpless to aid them.”
“She escaped.”
“She was rescued,” Ahnna corrected. “As was Aren when he was trapped in Silas’s inner sanctum.
But no one even knows we are imprisoned, James.
No one other than Katarina’s family of ingrates, the wardens, and her dark guild even knows we are in Amarid.
Carlo killed everyone else who might have carried the news.
Even Alexandra will have been told we’re dead.
Which means no one even knows we need to be rescued. ”
“We don’t need to be rescued.”
Ahnna sensed James’s stubborn scowl, and despite herself, she smiled. “I believe you are exhibiting what is known as denial.”
“You mispronounced perseverance.”
She rested her head against the stone, watching the small rectangle of light in the ceiling fade into blackness as night fell.
“Not knowing is the worst part,” she finally said.
“Maybe the storms have held true and Taryn has not even returned to Ithicana yet. Or maybe Aren is already on his way to meet with Katarina to hear the offer that will be Ithicana’s damnation.
” Her chest tightened. “Do you think she’ll come to brag about her success, or do you think I’ll spend days, weeks, months, years wondering about a family that is dead and buried? ”
“You can’t think like that. It will drive you mad.”
“To think about anything else feels like I’m betraying them.
It feels right that I should suffer, because everyone I love is suffering.
” She traced a finger along the mortar joining the stones that formed her cell.
“Which is not to say that I’m giving up.
Only that it feels right that I be miserable while I try and fail and try and fail. ”
“Entirely reasonable.”
“Thank you for the validation, Jamie.”
His huff of annoyance filled her cell. “If you call me that again, I am going to fill in this hole myself.”
She moved her hand down to the opening, picking at a rough patch of stone with her fingernail. “Why? Everyone else who is close to you calls you Jamie.”
“Only those who met me before the age of six. And just because I tolerate the nickname does not mean I like it.”
“You shouldn’t have told me that…Jamie.”
“The idea that being trapped with you would be motivation to stay alive was a significant error in Katarina’s judgment, Princess.”
His tone brought to her mind the moment in the boat when he’d kissed her, the remembered sensation of his tongue tracing the scar on her face sending a pulse of remembered pleasure between her legs.
It was hard to remember what she’d been thinking, pushing him away.
Hard to recall the anger over what had been done and her fear of what was to come, though she knew that had been what had driven her.
All she felt now was regret that she’d not allowed herself to give in to desire, because it felt as though she’d never get that chance again.
“Have I mentioned that I like it when you call me Princess?” And then, because she knew it would get a rise out of him, she added, “Although not as much as when you tell me I’m a good girl. There’s no one else alive with that sort of audacity.”
James laughed softly. “You haven’t earned that one lately.”
“I’ll have to remedy that failing.”
They fell into silence, listening to the shrieks and moans of those trapped in the other cells of the Furnace as the wardens fed and watered them.
She laid her cheek against the hole, knowing that she should rest. That no solutions would come if she was exhausted.
But the screams of the imprisoned grew louder, fueled by food in their bellies, as was the case every day.
Cries for help. Desperate pleas for loved ones.
Demands to be put down. Ahnna’s heart beat faster, and with the oppressive heat, it felt for all the world as though she had fallen into a hellscape from which there would be no deliverance.
Lifting her unbroken arm, she reached into the opening between her cell and James’s, and a gasp pulled from her lips as her fingertips connected with his.
“Are you all right?” His voice was low.
She shook her head, then whispered, “No.”
The heat of the floor seemed to grow hotter, and Ahnna imagined that whoever tended the great furnace below had added fuel to the flames. Making the cells hot enough to madden but not hot enough to kill.
“They feed the furnace six times a day.” James’s breathing was as strained as hers, both of them trapped in a box of steam. “It’s a regular pattern. The worst of the heat lasts for about the count of two thousand, but it’s worse after water rations due to the steam.”
Only half an hour. Yet having endured it so many times, Ahnna knew it would feel like eternity. “What is the count at?”
“I confess, you caused me to lose track.”
Ahnna dragged in breath after breath, feeling as though she were suffocating. “James?”
“Yes?”
“I changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“I want you to touch me.”
James gave a soft laugh, then coughed. “Is your goal to drive me to tear down the wall between us with my bare hands, Princess? Or are you only aiming to add to my torment?”
Her mouth curved with a small smile, each breath a challenge as the water that had been poured into her cell evaporated off the hot stone. “Both?”
“Wicked woman.” But then his hand closed around hers. “I’ve got you.”
Ahnna tightened her grip on him, feeling as though his touch was the only thing holding her sanity in place as the prison raged with the howls of its inmates and the furnace beneath slowly cooked her alive. “Don’t let go.”
“Never.”
He held tight to her hand through the worst of the heat, but it gradually eased, the steam dissipating through the small hole above them. It became easier to breathe, but Ahnna kept her cheek pressed to the wall, her hand locked in James’s.
“I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind,” she whispered. “I’m afraid I’ll go mad, and that everything that matters to me will burn and I’ll never know it.”
“I won’t let you lose your mind. We’ll find a way out of here—it’s just a matter of figuring out how.”
Panic started to rise, as choking as the steam, but then James’s fingers moved from her hand.
Slowly, he traced up the veins of her wrist to her elbow, and then back down, and the sensation made her pulse hum in an entirely different way.
Up and down her wrist, and then he said, “Would you like to know what I’d do to you, should I find myself on the far side of this wall, Princess? ”
“Yes.” The word came out as almost a moan, and she struggled to comprehend how the feel of his fingers on her wrist was somehow the most erotic sensation she’d ever experienced in her life.
“Are you sure you can handle it?” His voice was low, and it stroked places that his fingers couldn’t reach.
“I am certain.” There was no other answer, because if he stopped touching her, stopped speaking to her, her mind would surely crack.
“I hadn’t finished kissing you when you decided to stab me with my own sword,” he murmured, tracing a finger over her palm and making her fingers curl.
“And I’m a man who finishes what he starts, so I’d surely start there.
Tasting those sweet lips while my tongue explores that mouth of yours, all while I think about how it will feel when those lips are around my cock. ”
Ahnna’s breath caught, heat rising to her cheeks because no one had ever spoken to her like this. No one had dared. “Your Highness, this hardly seems appropriate language for a prince.”
“Nor for a princess. Shall I stop?”
“No.” She squirmed, rubbing her thighs together, an ache forming between them. “No, my curiosity is piqued.”
“I wouldn’t dare leave you unsatisfied, even if it is only your curiosity.
” His fingers locked with hers, and he pulled, forcing her shoulder deep in the hole, her cheek pressed hard against the stone.
His lips brushed her knuckles, and Ahnna whimpered, wishing desperately that her other arm wasn’t broken so that she might put fingers between her legs.
“I’d move to your throat,” he murmured. “And leave my mark on your skin, because you are mine, Ahnna, even with walls and circumstances and bad history between us. I’d rid you of those clothes and lay you down on the ground while sucking on your perfect breasts, tasting those nipples that I recall are the color of roses.
I’d make them pinker still because I know you like the feel of teeth on your skin. ”
Ignoring the pain in her arm, Ahnna moved her right hand between her legs and found her clit.
“You’re touching yourself, aren’t you?” He tugged harder on her arm, stone digging into her shoulder, grip on her wrist implacable. “Enough of that, Princess. You’ll come when I’m ready for you to come.”
Ahnna’s pulse roared in her veins, desire running so hard and hot that she felt almost feral with the need for climax. But she obeyed him.
“This entire time, of course, those long legs of yours will be wrapped around me.” He kissed her knuckles again, then sucked on one of her fingers.
“I confess to having a small obsession with your legs, Princess, and I’ve stroked my cock to completion more times than I care to admit with thoughts of them filling my head. ”
Ahnna’s back arched, her nails digging into the skin of her thigh to keep from touching herself. Her climax was rising on his words, on his voice, and on the feel of his mouth on her fingers.
“I think next, I’d spread those legs wide to look at that pretty pink pussy of yours. Admire how wet you are and how much wetter I intend to make you, and then I’d—”
“Oh, nemesis! What are you whispering about down there?”
Ahnna sucked in a shocked breath at the sound of Carlo’s voice.
“Oh, James!”
The snarl that tore from James’s lips sounded barely human as he shouted back, “Fuck off, Carlo.”
The Beast gave a low laugh. “I think not, James. I have some crushing news that I’m desperate to share with you.”
Ahnna almost whimpered as James let go of her arm, the ache of being left on the brink of climax almost painful, but then Carlo said, “It is the beginning of the end for Ithicana.”