Chapter 34
ARLET
Fever burns my body. Every breath scrapes raw across my lips, and the movement scorches my ribs, and the stone beneath me is so cold it feels like another kind of fire.
Voices assault my ears, cutting through the stuffy sensation and stabbing at my aching head.
“Tell me how she is doing. I can’t fucking see anything from here.” Vann’s voice is hoarse.
“She’s resting,” Thorne responds.
“She had a fever when I touched her last. You’re supposed to be helping me keep her alive, but now I realize I’ve yet again trusted a traitor with the wit of a drunken ogre’s left ball.”
Thorne makes a clicking noise. “I’ll have them come and take him back to your original cell, then.”
“Thorne—I—forgive me.” The desperation in his voice makes my throat contract, and I focus on keeping my breathing even. “She sounds different. Is she awake?”
For some reason, knowing he senses that change makes me blink my eyes open. Thorne is leaning against one of the walls, arms crossed and a frown etched deeply into the folds around his mouth. My cell looks the same—bare stone, an iron-barred door, the faint flicker of torchlight in the corridor.
He raises an eyebrow. A question. Do I want Vann to know I’m here and ready to talk? I shake my head.
“She’s still fast asleep. Maybe your ears got damaged in the fight?”
Vann practically growls, and something wakes up inside of me. I feel like shit, and there is an intrinsic comfort to this man. Despite how I wish there wasn’t.
I gingerly and quietly drag myself toward the sound of his voice. My palms scrape raw against the rough stone. I press my face near the hole until the chill seeps into my skin. I can see only the faintest glint of movement on the other side—his shape blurred by shadow.
“What’s that?” Vann demands, shifting his position.
“I am tending to her,” Thorne responds, pushing off the wall and kneeling next to me. It’s then that I notice the small pack of things open on the ground. There’s a bandage wrapped around my wound, I realize as he pours something into a silver spoon.
He brings it to my mouth, and I swallow the bitterness. More of his herbal concoctions.
“Tell me again why you decided to help us?” Vann asks.
I’m grateful he’s asking, because in truth, I don’t know. It was easier to understand why he helped me with my fertility—and then he had mentioned something about me bearing a half-human heir, but now I will never bear Arion’s child.
It’s my turn to raise my eyebrow.
Thorne hesitates, still watching me. “We might be heard.”
Vann clicks his tongue. “You already told me we were alone in this section of the dungeon.”
I can practically feel Thorne roll his eyes. “Despite what you might believe, I have helped her since the moment she left that island.”
Vann scoffs.
“Laugh all you’d like, troll, but you have no idea what it is to be me. I found acceptance in Mrath’s court, but I am still a half-blood. Do you know what that means?” Thorne says, his voice low.
“You might experience some unkindness, but you seem to have lived a life well enough.”
“Wrong. I grew up in a labor camp—something that replaced the prisoner camps after the war. Half-bloods have no place in elven society, just like humans. How many others like me have you known?” he demands.
Vann goes quiet. I certainly didn’t know any others like Thorne.
“I imagine the answer is ‘none’ because most of us die before we have a chance to be let free.”
“Did you escape?” Vann asks.
“Mrath came to the camp and took me and my sister,” Thorne says.
Shock ripples through me. A sister? I didn’t know Thorne had any kin.
Vann doesn’t say anything, but I crack one eye open in the darkness to look at Thorne. He’s never been so open before, not even when I’d asked him direct questions in my rooms.
“And what happened to her?”
“She’s dead.” Thorne stops talking for a long moment, arranging instruments and herbs in his kit. He avoids my gaze. So much time passes that I think he is done speaking.
And then he says, “She was exceptionally powerful and talented, and beautiful on top of all that. The gods blessed her. When the time of the choosing was starting, Mrath wanted to make sure that she was the only logical option. I helped her. Arion, at that time, was running another kind of experiment, though I doubt he knew how much Mrath had done to influence his choice. Now, he seeks a human to give him an heir, as it was back then. His throne has been a constant struggle for a very long time.”
“Can half-bloods reproduce?”
Thorne shrugs. “There were reports that said yes, but my sister wasn’t able to.”
“Wait—was she in a program of some sort?”
Thorne looks up at the wall. Then meets my eyes.
“My sister was the last consort before Arlet. They gave her six months, and then she was executed.”
My heart skips a beat, and the conversation in my room comes back to me.
She was a half-blood…More elf than human, everyone said. As if that made a difference.
It takes earnest effort not to wake up now, but I don’t want either of them to stop talking.
“After he killed her, I believe that is when Arion pledged himself to Abhartach, to help stabilize his reign.”
Vann is quiet for a long time, then says, “It seems your story is more complex than I originally gave you credit for.”
“When I knew what Arion was planning, that he was going to try this again, I went to him. He didn’t know me—didn’t recognize that I share features with my sister. He just saw a defector from his own kin, and welcomed me after an…arduous vetting.”
Torture, I imagine.
“I knew that sooner or later, Arlet would be here, and I saw my chance to make this union mean something.”
“Like what?”
“When Arlet bound herself to Arion and became the consort, a law went into effect. Humans and Peredhels are to be released from labor camps and given rights.”
Another part of me flinches. Humans in labor camps? Thorne had told me that there were none being harmed.
He dips his chin, as if he is thinking of just that.
“Surely you could’ve just waited and Mrath would’ve done the same,” Vann says.
Thorne laughs. “Then you don’t know Mrath very well. She puts on a good enough face for your people and your king. But she is far from noble.”
“I heard that the humans were being subjected to more than just labor,” Vann says, and my stomach churns.
“I have heard that as well.” Thorne sounds grim.
“Does Arlet know?”
Thorne hesitates. “No. I didn’t want her to worry. The past two weeks have been brutal, and one more thing would have sent her spiraling. She already looks like a skeleton.” He says the next thing directly to me. “For that, I am deeply sorry.”
My cheeks heat, partially out of anger, partially out of embarrassment. I hate being lied to. But I suppose that matters little now.
Vann doesn’t respond to that, and Thorne doesn’t offer any more information.
Instead, he packs up his things. He stands, nods to me again, and goes to the iron door.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” he says, looking at me but clearly directing his comments to Vann.
Then he leaves, and I wait for something to happen—for my head to clear or the throbbing in my chest to lessen.
Cursed One? I say gently.
I’m here, she responds. Just…observing. I think I’m remembering something from my life.
I hum in response.
“Arlet?” Vann says again. “Gods on their stony thrones,” he murmurs. “I thought you wouldn’t wake.”
I consider responding, feeling torn. A part of me wishes to remain hidden.
“I’m…awake.” My throat feels flayed.
A shaky breath leaks through the hole. It sounds half like a laugh, half like he’s swallowing back a sob.
It makes my stomach twist. I have seen Vann tender and vulnerable before, but those memories are strange. I remember when we stayed the night in Mrath’s Enclave and he told me that he wished I would find a softer, gentler life.
My head buzzes with pain, and there is nothing patching me back up to make it all better. The lack of the Fuegorra is harder than I expected. I’d gotten so used to it in the last year being there to help, to cure, to mend. Now, my own body feels inadequate.
That feeling…it brings back all the years I hid in shame when they pulled out rosters for the breeding pens. There’s something deeply painful about not being able to trust my own body to do what it should. It makes me feel like my life—my essence—is too much for it to handle.
I wished desperately that feeling would leave.
Vann’s quiet for a moment. “You lost a lot of blood. I tried to get them to help you. They told me it is forbidden. Fucking bastards.”
I try to shift upright, but pain rips through my side. My fingers graze the bandages at my ribs—though Thorne had changed some recently, there is still cloth torn from a shirt wrapped around my wounds. Vann’s shirt, I recognize. “What…happened?”
“I was trying to help you,” he says. “They left us alone for a bit, and I tried to burn the wound closed and wrap it. They separated us for a while, but then Thorne came and got me, wearing someone else’s face. He said he would help you. Do you feel…better?”
The air is too heavy to breathe. Thorne is helping me again. Even here, in the dungeon. What is he playing at?
“Hardly. And…tomorrow,” I whisper. “There’s no way I will make it through another fight like that.”
Vann is silent, and while he had been so quiet in Enduvida, there’s something about his silence now that enrages me.
I want to turn away from him again. To block him out once more and cut my heart off. There’s no matehood now. No reason that I should be able to hear him, or even care what he has to say.
“I won’t let you die. If I have to strap you to my back while I fight off a thousand beasts, I will. They told us we could leave if we make it out alive, I intend to make fucking Arion keep good on that promise.”
I rest my forehead against the wall. My neck burns under the collar. I hate the tug of his words, hate the way I soften to him.