Chapter 8
I don't know how long I've been sitting here. An hour, maybe four—the light through the balcony doors hasn't changed, but that doesn't mean anything because I don't know what time it was when they locked me in.
My throat aches. Every swallow reminds me of Kairis's fingers, the way my feet left the floor, the particular quality of panic when you can't get air and no one's coming to help.
I should be doing something useful—mapping the room, testing the windows, finding anything sharp enough to matter. That's what smart people do in cages.
Instead I'm sitting on the edge of the bed watching the door handle, because my head is still spinning and standing makes me want to throw up. Not my best work.
Footsteps in the corridor. My whole body goes tight before I can stop it, every muscle bracing for the lock to turn—
They pass.
I breathe out slowly and my ribs protest, this dull ache that flares with every expansion of my lungs. More footsteps now, different rhythm, heavier, and I'm tracking them like my life depends on it because it probably does. They pass too.
This is going to drive me insane. Every sound, every shift in pressure, my body coiling for something that might be nothing—I can't keep doing this for hours, for days, for however long they plan to leave me here before someone decides I need more breaking in.
The lock clicks.
My stomach drops before my brain catches up and I'm on my feet without deciding to stand, which is stupid because the room tilts sideways and I have to grab the bedpost to stay upright. The silk coverlet bunches under my grip.
The door opens.
Kairis fills the doorway. His eyes find me immediately. Standing instead of cowering on the bed like a good little investment.
His expression flickers. Irritation.
"I expected you'd be more compliant by now." He steps inside and the door closes behind him with a sound that echoes in my chest. "Most tributes learn faster."
Well. I've always been a slow learner. Ask my father.
"On your knees."
He crosses the room in twi strides and his fist connects with my face before I can brace for it.
The bedpost slips out of my grip and I stumble sideways, catch myself on the vanity, send something glass crashing to the floor where it shatters into pieces I'll probably end up kneeling in, then cleaning up my own blood.
"Knees."
I'm still standing. Don't know why, don't know what I think I'm proving to a man who could snap my neck without breaking a sweat.
The second hit catches my temple.
I go down—knees first, then hands, the carpet soft against my palms in a way that feels obscene. Gold thread and silk.
"Better." His boot connects with my ribs.
The air leaves my body all at once and I curl sideways, can't help it, arms wrapping around my stomach while something in my chest screams wrong wrong wrong.
Another kick lands in the same spot and something comes out of my mouth that isn't a word, just noise, and it seems a trickle of blood wanted to make an appearance too.
"You speak out of turn."
Kick.
"You embarrass Coin."
Kick.
"You stand when I tell you to kneel."
The next one is harder, and something shifts in my ribs—gives in a way that makes my vision go white and my whole body seize up around the wrongness of it.
I can't breathe. The air won't come no matter how hard I try, my lungs refusing to expand, and I'm gasping against the carpet while panic claws up my throat because I can't—I can't—
His boot catches my stomach and I retch, nothing coming up but the motion tears through me anyway. I'm shaking now, full-body tremors I can't control, and some distant part of my brain is screaming at me to just stop, just kneel, just apologize and give him what he wants—
My arms won't uncurl. My legs won't move. My body has decided it's done taking instructions.
Funny. So has the rest of me.
He kicks me again. And again. I stop counting because the numbers don't matter. Nothing matters except outlasting him. Survive until he gets bored, gets tired, gets called away to something more important than one stubborn girl who doesn't know when to fold.
This is how I die. On silk carpet in a god's estate, too stupid to kneel.
There are worse epitaphs.
The floor shakes.
I feel it through my cheek, through my palms still pressed against carpet that's wet now—blood, mine, obviously.
Kairis pauses mid-swing.
"What—"
Another impact, closer this time. The walls crack and dust falls from the ceiling, drifting down slow through the light.
His boot slams into my stomach again and I curl tighter, can't keep track of anything anymore—just the pain and the floor shaking and his voice somewhere above me saying something I can't parse through the ringing in my ears.
Shouting in the corridor now. Running footsteps. Something crashes hard enough to send tremors through the floor and Kairis swears, kicks me again—my back this time, something giving with a wet pop that makes me want to scream except I don't have the air for it.
The door explodes inward.
Not opens. Explodes—wood splintering, hinges screaming, the frame cracking in half. Someone is standing in the wreckage. Someone with white eyes and a blade in his hand, and I'm looking up from the floor through blood and tears and none of this makes sense.
Discord moves.
I don't see him cross the room. One second he's in the doorway and the next Kairis is flying backward, hitting the wall so hard the plaster caves in around his body. The god follows without pausing, blade already swinging, and there's a sound—wet, final—and then another, and another.
I close my eyes. Open them.
Kairis is on the ground. Not moving. Red spreading beneath him in a pool that creeps toward my fingers, and there's a lot of it, more than I expected, more than seems possible from one body.
Discord is crouched beside me. When did he—I didn't see him move, didn't hear anything over my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. His face is close, those white eyes filling my vision, and his hands are reaching for me and I should flinch, I should be afraid, I should—
"Iowyn." His voice comes out rough and wrong. Like he's the one who's been screaming.
Great. Another god who knows my name. My life just keeps improving.
I try to say something but my mouth moves and nothing comes out, just air, just this pathetic wheeze that doesn't sound like me at all.
His hands slide under me—careful, too careful, and that's wrong, that doesn't fit anywhere in my understanding of how this works. "Renan. Clear the east corridor. Everyone else is already dead."
"On it." Different voice, dry and familiar from somewhere I can't place. "Medical?"
"My rooms. No one else touches her."
And then I'm off the ground, my body folding against his chest without permission, and everything hurts so much I can't tell what's broken anymore. His heartbeat is loud against my ear—steady, real, this constant rhythm that doesn't match the chaos around us.
He came for me.
Stupid thought. Dangerous thought. Men don't come for girls like me, and gods definitely don't tear through estates for tributes worth less than the carpet I was bleeding on.
There's an angle here. A reason. Something I'm not seeing because my brain is too busy trying not to die to figure out what I'm being used for now.
My vision blurs. Clears. Blurs again.
"Stay awake." His voice vibrates through his chest and into my skull, this low rumble I feel more than hear. "Iowyn. Stay with me."
I want to tell him I'm trying. I want to tell him to stop saying my name in that voice, the one that sounds like it matters, because I can't afford to believe it. I want to ask what he gets out of this.
He says something else. Low and soft, a word I don't recognize.
órhal.
It catches in his throat—rough, pulled from somewhere deep, somewhere he doesn't let people see. I don't know what it means but my chest does this stupid flutter that has no business existing right now.
Stop it. Whatever this is, stop it.
The corridor tilts around us. Smoke and distant shouting, getting farther away with every step he takes. His arms tighten around me and the pain spikes white-hot behind my eyes and I'm—
Dark.
Light.
His face above me, still moving, still holding me like—
No. Don't finish that thought.
"—through the tunnels, double back if—"
"—stay awake, I need you to—"
The words fragment and scatter, pieces I can't hold onto no matter how hard I try. I'm dissolving, held together only by his hands and the steady drum of his heartbeat and the impossible fact of someone coming for me.
He came for me.
And I'm going to owe him for it.
That's the last coherent thought I have before the dark swallows me whole.