6. Saige #2
The memories assault me all at once. The glistening sapphire water below us as Raven and I jumped from the docks, only to be told how filthy it was with city waste later by Yevna.
Yevna mending our clothes—her stitches a far cry from those Leo taught me later in life but done with just as much love as gruff Yevna could give.
Grinning like wildcats as we rowed a boat for the first—and only—time.
Yevna refused to let us ever again after we capsized and Raven nearly drowned when she got caught below.
I shared so much of my life with those two women.
How many times had we danced barefoot in the kitchen?
Or stayed up talking until an ungodly hour, til our throats hurt?
But somewhere along the way, we grew up, we got older, realized there was a world beyond the bubble we’d created for ourselves.
When I wake, the cell beside mine is empty.
“Archer?” I call out, to the only person—Azkari—I know in this horrific place.
“They took him,” Rook voice speaks from the shadows.
My stomach bottoms out.
Panic surges through me and I grip the bars between my cell and Archer’s, trying to peer inside. I’m still clutching my paring knife. “Who took him?” Although I already know.
“The souldren elite,” he replies. “Three came for him while you were unconscious, dragged him away.”
My body seizes up, but I don’t feel anything. There’s just a strange blankness where understanding should be. I stammer, “How did I not hear? How—”
“He didn’t want you to,” another voice says.
“That’s Cahir,” Rook explains.
“What… What did he do?” Guilt unfurls and settles low in my stomach, nauseating. I don’t know how to carry this.
“I’d have thought that much was obvious,” Cahir replies dryly. “He took your place.”
“What?”
“You heard me, bookbinder. He took your place.”
“Ke-Vor can handle them,” Rook interjects. “Better him that your fragile mortal mind.”
My heart is hammering, and I can’t fathom why an Azkari stranger would offer himself up to the torture racks with a trio of monsters at the helm.
The gratitude and relief I feel sickens me to my stomach.
Whatever he’s suffering—it should be me.
Another person dragged into my mess. The realization comes in waves.
Joking about the stupid mouse. The terror for Yevna and Raven.
And now this? I’m utterly powerless. I can do nothing except feel it, except know that it’s all my fault.
“What does Ke-Vor mean?” I ask into the deafening quiet.
“Dark Sheild,” comes the reply from Rook. There’s a note of reverence in his voice, and a murmur of respect from the cells around us. Gods, if what they say is true about Archer taking my place, they must hate me. I’ve been here a matter of hours—a day—and I’ve already had their leader punished…?
“So he’s your… captain?” I say quietly, waiting for the whispers to start again.
“He is our general, our brother, our protector,” Cahir replies somberly.
“Beyond these dungeons, he had many names. He is a great many things. But the title, Ke-Vor was born here in Gravereach when he kept taking people’s places on the tables.
You are not the first he has endured pain for. And you will not be the last.”
“Why?” I croak. “Why would he do that?”
“It’s who he is, bookbinder.”
I swallow the thick lump in my throat. “And it’s true? That Malevron is back?”
“If Malevron had ever truly been gone, this godsforsaken place would have ceased to exist two hundred years ago. He’s the reason you’re here.”
There’s a bitter taste on my tongue as I recall the two Azkari who snatched me from the Copper Kettle, those evil brands seared deep into their flesh.
There was also the Azkari who asked after Leo in the bindery only a few days ago, and the Azkari who came before him.
There was the mark on the table in Yevna’s courtyard, and now…
Now, here I was. In an Azkari prison run by Malevron’s monsters, monsters who are currently torturing the warrior who’d helped me, who’d silenced the whispers and taken my place on the tables.
“I don’t know what I believe,” I say hoarsely.
“Typical mortal,” Cahir retorts. “You always—”
A near deafening roar rattles the very bars of the cells, the damp ground beneath my boots trembling with the force of it. Another begins before it ceases, the savage sound echoing through the prison like rolling thunder.
“What is that?” I ask into the dark.
“The valreth,” Cahir answers. “Once woven from the Weave itself to bear Azkari riders to the war that never came. Now they guard the gates of Gravereach.”
A chill rakes down my spine. “More monsters?”
“The very worst. Giant maned pantheras with wings to carry them across land and sea, and poisoned barbs hidden in their tails. Those who perish on the tables feed the valreth, but do little to sate their hunger—”
“They’re bringing him back!” someone calls from a cell in the distance. “Ke-Vor returns.”
My heart lodges in my throat as I grip the bars between mine and Archer’s separate cages, scanning the dark for any sign of his hulking great frame.
When movement catches my eye, it’s the mirror-armor of three enormous souldren elite moving through the tunnel that I see first. The body they drag between them is limp. My breath catches.
“No.”
“Quiet, Bookbinder,” Cahir’s voice sounds. “Don’t draw attention to yourself, or his sacrifice will have been for nothing.”
I remain frozen as the trio of monsters dump the unconscious Azkari back in his cell, the door slamming closed behind them, the keys turning in the locks.
I still can’t see Archer properly, only that he isn’t moving.
I don’t know what comes over me. I’m sure I’m the last person he wants comfort from—I’m the reason he’s hurt, but I scramble towards him, getting as close as I can.
I don’t know why, but I put my hand through the iron bars into his cell.
I know he likely wants nothing to do with me after taking that punishment on my behalf, and I can’t blame him for that.
But I leave my hand there, hanging between us.
His body twitches, as though he’s still in whatever nightmare they inflicted upon him.
“I see you,” I whisper, my lower lip trembling. “You’re not invisible. I see you,.”
There’s a brush of air.
“I see you, Archer,” I tell him again.
The glow of the torchlight flares to life before snuffing out completely.
And then a hand grasps mine in the dark, and squeezes.