CHAPTER 40
OUT AT SEA
Present Day
Iwake, choking on a heavy stream of water that pours from above me.
I scramble out from underneath it, expelling the liquid from my lungs in a series of ragged coughs.
A thick fog clings to my mind and my skull pounds with a splitting headache.
I hardly notice the familiar roll of waves swaying the floor beneath me.
I heave when the pungent odor of decay fills my nostrils. There is little light for my eyes to adjust to in the dark, dank belly of the warship. A small, flickering lantern by the door across from my cell casts the faintest glow, the small space I am confined to full of far more shadow.
“Awake at last, Valtoura,” Vos purrs from where she stands over me.
She is bracketed on either side by two male feyn. Both with black hair, both sharing her features, and both graced with the same strange shape of Kezik’s ears. The larger of the two holds an upended jug, setting it aside when he kneels before the bars dividing us.
My current position, splayed out on my belly, is far too vulnerable, and the world spins as I attempt to rise, pushing my torso off the floor.
I falter in the upward motion, remaining on my knees, my hand cradling my head tenderly where a sharp pain emanates from my temple.
There is no mistaking the slick of blood I find there, but all my lessons about tending wounds are far from my mind.
“Valtoura?” the kneeling male says in mock surprise. “I expected more from the ancients.”
“Have a little caution, Nix,” Vos warns from behind him, her finger sweeping across the small stain upon her chest where I nearly ended her with my blade. Or so she allowed me to believe. “She may be caged, but she still has claws.”
His head tilts to the side, a small bit of loose hair falling from where it’s partially bound to hang before his eyes.
The male, Nix, is cut from the granite of Terr, far larger than any feyn I have ever seen.
His is not the toned, nimble form I am accustomed to expecting from their kind, but the thick, brawny mass of the warriors I had been raised alongside in La’tari.
“Are you sure that this is Valtoura?” asks the male remaining by her side, clearly skeptical in the tale the female wove about our meeting.
The curious face he levels at me sparks the memory of the last and only time I’ve ever seen him.
It was upon Yshka’s balcony, the night I’d sought out Ishara’s home in search of allies.
The hair on my arms stiffens, a world of revelations crashing into my mind.
The Vatruke have been in A’kori longer than I or anyone else realized, working with the only house with the name and power to usurp the feyn throne.
Vos looks me over, hesitating to answer. I know the look, I have seen it countless times in my life, resting upon my own face every time I look in a mirror. The female is unsure of herself, and I grasp at the moment it reveals.
“I am not Valtoura,” I say weakly, and maybe I shouldn’t because I’m sure it is the only thing keeping me alive. Though the fate I might have among the Vatruke if I claim to be what they say is enough to raise the bile in my stomach.
“I was sure,” Vos says, and I can hear the question in her voice, no longer convinced of what she believes.
“If you are not Valtoura, then what are you?” Nix demands.
“Drakai,” I admit, the truth of it and the lie it has become coating my tongue in a thick film of bitterness.
Nix rises from where he is crouched before me, huffing an incredulous laugh. “A feyn Drakai?” His eyebrows lift disbelievingly. “Such a thing does not exist on Terr.”
Feyn.
I find my palm rubbing my sternum absently, unbidden. As if it might soothe an unknown ache lingering beneath the surface of my skin. The male remaining next to Vos looks at me from beneath furrowed brows, his eyes tracking the hand at my chest.
“Mated? Perhaps she is just a feyn.” The last he directs at Vos as she steps forward to observe me more closely.
I grip the fabric of my gown, willing my hand to still.
Mated.
“Perhaps she is only feyn,” she says, the smile returning to her face. “But mated she most certainly is. Arda, why don’t you go and see if the captain needs any assistance.”
The male by her side pales, his jaw tense as he departs from the room.
“He’s never had a stomach for these things,” Vos explains, but it is the excitement adorning Nix’s face that chills me when he unlocks the door to my cell.
There is no hesitation when he steps in front of me.
One large hand fisting my curls, he lifts me until I meet his eyes, my toes sweeping against the deck in a futile effort to find footing.
My hands clasp around his wrist, pulling to free myself.
But he only laughs as I struggle, his grip like soldered iron.
“I could ask,” Vos says as she slides into the cell, “What you are. The name of the mate I will rend from your bond just as you have done to mine.” She glides in front of me, a smug smile on her lips.
“But even if you tell me everything I want to know, you owe me a debt of pain, a debt I will spend the rest of your long life collecting.”
It’s the only warning she gives, before revealing the jagged blade she conceals at her side as she places it against my ribs and begins to carve.
The scream tears at the tender flesh of my throat as the blade finds its home near my spine.
Piercing the skin at my back until it drags upon the rib beneath, severing tendon and nerve as it flays the flesh open wide.
Vos takes her time, slowly slicing through the muscles.
Each fiber on fire as the sinew slowly separates, her knife working its way around to the flesh of my side.
My head tips back as the last of my strength leaves me. Nix eyes the exposed flesh of my throat, his fangs protruding wantonly.
“Show me your true form,” Vos says, the same demand she has issued after each of the five ribs now boasting the bloody evidence of her attention.
But my arms are slack at my sides, weary from struggling through the four attempts she delivered to my side before. My body is heavy with a mixture of hot and cooling blood, drying to cake against my skin, and my mind is hazy, unable to form the words I offered at the beginning.
I can’t.
When the iron of Nix’s hand finally releases its hold on me, I smack against the floor in a nauseating puddle of my own blood and vomit.
I’m vaguely aware of footsteps when Vos’s voice comes from the other side of the small space. “Leave her, brother, she is too fragile to continue in this form.”
His stride is too reluctant when he departs. I shudder to think about how far the male might have persisted if not for his sister. For the first time since I woke aboard the ship, I feel relieved, listening to their steps as they leave the dark room.
There is nothing to stop the slow trickle of blood as it leaks from my ribs.
I can’t help but think that this is a better end than what I might have endured at their hands if my body were made of something stronger.
I’m hardly aware of the door when it opens again, or the patter of nimble feet when they venture into the growing pool of my blood.
A petite female kneels by my head. The tips of her long swath of white hair soak up the deep crimson on the floor, the fabric of her snow-white dress doing the same.
She glances toward the door and a larger part of myself than I’d like to admit suffers an excruciating loss when she slides the feynstone ring from my finger and into her pocket. Her hands wrap about my torso and a blinding pain courses through my body the next moment.
I loose a scream straight from the depths of haliel.
The familiar agony of healing melds with the terror that rises within me when I see clearly the vision Vos has for my future.
I have no doubt that once I am healed, the torture will begin again.
A cycle that will repeat until she is satisfied that I have endured a punishment she deems worthy of the male I’ve stripped from her life.
I grasp the healer’s wrists in fury as much as in fear, the demon that lives within me roiling in rebellion of the female’s gift. Death. I choose death over the life they have in store for me.
“No!” I scream, my voice rasping and shrill even as her gift attempts to mend it.
Small as she is, her brow pitches down in terrifying determination as she presses her weight against my chest, forcing her gift into me. I grit my teeth, glaring at the healer. The boat creaks and groans as it shudders beneath us. I’m only vaguely aware of the alarmed shouts that rise overhead.
“Stop it,” the female hisses, her forehead beading with sweat, as she glances behind her.
I suppress a sob when the door slams against the interior of the room, Nix ducking beneath the doorway as he enters. The healer parts from me. The ship ceases its turbulent rumble, as she rushes to stand before him, head bowed.
He brushes her hair over her shoulder. An act I might consider tender if I could not see the dark thoughts lingering behind his eyes when his gaze falls upon me in the same moment.
He brings his fangs to her ear and whispers, “Would you like to watch, mi’ajna?”
She glances back at me, a mournful look on her face as she offers him a single nod.
“Good,” he says, sweeping wide around the female as he strides toward me.
His eyes cross over my wounds, and he frowns. “You were told to heal her.”
The female shrinks from the wrathful pitch of his tone.
“She fought me,” she says, the timbre of her voice wavering.