Chapter Seventeen
The soldiers threw Jina and me into a dungeon, dirty hay scattered across the stone floor, the stench of urine thick enough to make me gag.
Across the narrow passage, another soldier stopped at the cell near ours. The door groaned open and hands reached in, dragging out two men, their clothes little more than rags. The prisoners grabbed the bars, the walls, anything from being taken.
“Please.” One of them dropped to his knees. “Please, I have children—”
“You’re to face the serragator.” The guard’s voice was flat.
How many times did the soldier have to drag a prisoner out? How many times did he have to say those words? And what in the world was a serragator? Another wild animal Theron caught on behalf of the queen? Only to be credited, not to Theron, but to the crown prince.
Soldiers hauled the men to their feet and dragged them down the passage, their voices fading into the dark until there was nothing left but the drip of water somewhere in the walls and the distant sound of the crowd above us, cheering.
With the soldiers gone, I pulled Minha close with one arm, sobbing into her shoulder. She held me tighter, careful of my wound and holding on like I might disappear.
“It’s so good to see you alive,” I murmured into her hair. “I’ve missed you so much.”
She placed her forehead to mine and held it there. “I’ve missed you more, Sis.”
We inhaled and exhaled a long breath, relieved to see each other.
“How are you in Caelum?” I managed between breaths, pulling back.
She was leaner than I remember. Her ash brown hair braided back like mine, sharp features harder than before. Whatever she’d been through in this castle had carved something new into her face.
“The same way you got here, I suppose.” She dabbed the corners of her eyes.
“Tell me everything.” I slid down until the cold stone met my back, my arm still burning where the horn had wounded me.
The Seaborn healed almost any wound. That’s what Nira said. So why was the pain getting worse? Was the boarox the exception to “almost”?
“Wait. Let me check.” Minha walked the perimeter, running her hands along the walls, pressing at the stone, checking the floor with the toe of her shoe.
That was Minha. We hadn’t been locked up long and she was already planning.
“What are you doing?”
“The one down there.” She pointed toward the west. “There are holes like someone was trying to dig out the bricks.” She exhaled and sat beside me. “I bet we can dig ourselves out of here.”
Later I would examine our possible breakout, but I had no strength in me. Exhaustion had taken its toll on my body.
“Tell me your story.” I winced at the pain, shifting for a comfortable position.
“The fisherman took me on his ship,” Minha said. “But then a pirate with a dark coat and a hat, a very handsome man indeed, bought me with gemstones. Ones like the queen wears on her fingers.”
Anger seared through me before she even finished.
“Is his name Theron?”
“Yes.” She picked at the hay. “He brought me straight to his queen.”
My jaw tightened. “Then what happened?”
“That woman cut my face with a weapon she had under her sleeve.” Minha touched her cheek.
“When I healed and my blood dripped blue, she told me I was Seaborn. I thought that just meant we could breathe underwater, like when Mac threw us into the sea. But no.” She let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Apparently it also means fighting wild animals for sport. The boarox was the largest and most dangerous I’d ever faced,” she added, like it was nothing.
“You’ve been fighting the whole time you were here?”
She nodded, her gaze distant, like she was trying to forget.
“Minha.” My chest ached. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She shrugged. “I’m still here.”
I stared at the wall across from us. “I’m going to hurt Theron.”
Minha was quiet for a moment. “Don’t blame him. I think he had a debt to pay.”
There was that word again. Life is a debt you spend your whole life repaying. Theron had said that on the ship.
“What do you know of his debt?” I asked, wincing, sweat beading across my forehead.
“Every time I get dressed for the arena, one of the servants dresses me. Some spill more than others.” She lowered her voice. “They despise the royal family. Every last one of them. They want the true crown prince to take the throne.”
“Who is—” The question died in my mouth. Because I already had an answer I didn’t want. When are you going to stand up to them and take what’s rightfully yours? Fraya’s words came back to me, words I shouldn’t have heard.
Theron had a room in the castle. A chamber kept ready, as always, Pierre had said. Like he had always belonged there.
He couldn’t be.
Minha narrowed her eyes at my wound. “Why aren’t you healing? Let me take a look.” She gently peeled the shirt more and examined, her stoic expression giving nothing away. “When did you know your blood was blue?”
I turned away. I didn’t want to see. “I never told anyone.”
“Neither did I.”
“When the general whipped me, I healed so fast, I never bled.” I sighed, my body hot to the touch. “When did you know?”
“When I was making the special dagger.” She patted her waist, her weapon tucked away like mine. “You still have your pearls?” She placed a hand to my forehead and worry etched her features.
“I do,” I said.
“I tried to give Theron some to help me rescue you, but he refused them.” She shrugged. “What pirate would refuse pearls? I guess he doesn’t need riches. But the fisherman, on the other hand, when he found out what I carried during my conversation with Theron, he grabbed them from me during sleep.”
“I’m sorry.” I had no other words of comfort.
“It’s fine. We have each other and that’s all that matters.”
I managed a small smile. “We could still use mine to bargain with if needed.”
“Perhaps.” Minha rose and headed to the metal bars of our cell. “Hey, guard. We need help.”
No answer, but moans of other prisoners echoed.
“Do you think Nam knew we’re Seaborn?” I asked. “But she bled red and still was able to open oysters.”
She turned to face me. “Nam knew more than she let on. I bet she ate or did something to bleed red.” She slapped the bars. “Hey… assholes. I need help.”
“I believe the same. Nam protected us by not telling us what we were.” My words slurred like I had drunk ale, my body heat spiking higher. I’d never felt this sick before.
Footsteps thumped down the corridor, then a soldier appeared. “What do you need, girl?”
He didn’t sound angry. In fact, he was smiling flirtatiously.
“We need a nursemaid. My sister is sick.”
The soldier’s eyes moved past her to me, taking in the wound, the sweat, the way I was leaning against the wall. Something calculating moved behind his expression.
“What do I get?” he drawled.
Minha leaned her hips against the bar, licking her lips. “Depends on what you bring me.”
A smile spread to his ears. So they had done this dance before. I didn’t know when Minha had learned to negotiate with guards, but watching her work, I had a feeling she’d had plenty of practice since the fisherman’s ship.
“I’ll go get her,” he said, and disappeared back down the corridor.
Minha dropped to her knees beside me, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead.
“You’re burning up, Sis,” she murmured.
“How do you know so much?” I barely heard my own voice, sweat soaking through my suit.
“I was always in Nam’s business more than anyone else. Always asking questions she was tired of answering.”
We shared a weak laugh.
“I miss those days.” I lowered my head to the ground to cool my face. “Even though we were prisoners, I miss our family.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked. “I think about them all the time. But after we get out of here, we’re going after them. Now that we know what we are, we are more dangerous than anyone in that cavern ever let us believe.”
“Yes,” I punched that word with every beat of my heart.
“When I was with the fisherman, I’d thought my life was over.” Minha lay beside me, her voice dropping low.
I understood. Russo had been cruel.
“What did he make you do?” I closed my eyes, then fluttered my eyes open.
“Fish.” She let out a short laugh. “Open shells. Same as always, just different water.” She picked at the hay.
“But then Theron’s ship appeared one morning off the starboard side.
The fisherman didn’t even protest. It was like he feared him.
He took the gemstones and handed me over like I was cargo he was glad to be rid of. ”
“And Theron, what was he like with you?”
“Distant. Not unkind. He had to deliver me to the Seelie queen. He didn’t look at me the way he looks at you though.”
I didn’t want to ask what she meant by that, but curiosity always won. “How does he look at me? You’ve never seen us together.”
“I saw him in the front row.” She shrugged. “And I’m very observant.”
“And?” My eyes felt heavy.
“Like you’re a problem he can’t solve.” She pushed a strand behind my ear.
I closed my eyes. Heat radiated from the wound in slow pulses, spreading up through my shoulder and into my chest. Each breath cost more than the last.
“Minha.”
“I know.” Her hand found mine. “Stay with me. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”
That almost made me laugh. “I’m… not… going… anywhere.”
“You’d better not. I didn’t survive this place just to lose you to a boarox scratch.”
I attempted at a laugh but failed.
Somewhere down the passage, a door opened and closed. Then footsteps, lighter than the guard’s, moving with purpose. Minha was on her feet before I registered the sound, putting herself between me and whatever was coming.
The torchlight shifted. Figures appeared at the bars. Soldiers and a woman—small, older, carrying a worn leather satchel over one shoulder. I knew those kind eyes.
“Nira.” The word came out barely above a breath.
She looked at me the way she had in that room before the arena, and offered that same sad smile. Then her gaze moved to my arm, to the blue stain spreading through the suit, and her expression shifted with urgency.
“Please, my sister is sick.”
Nira jerked her chin. A guard turned the key in the lock. The cell door swung open.
“Take her to the infirmary. Now.”
What servant used a commanding tone with guards?
I tried to think back to the arena, when my sword had nicked the boarox. Had it bled blue? Or had that been my own blood already dripping by then? I couldn’t piece it together. The fog in my head made everything slippery, the memories shifting every time I reached for them.
I wanted to tell Minha the oclego had bled blue in the water off Russo’s ship. And the boarox, I thought it had too. Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe the fever was inventing things. I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
Arms lifted me and darkness took me whole.