68. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
Talyn didn’t know the details, but she knew the former king had spent the last twenty-five or so years in Revenmyer.
Indeed, his otherwise handsome face still bore a hauntedness she assumed was a consequence of his time there.
If she could get Sandrian to talk about it, perhaps it would buy Bressen enough time.
“He held you in Revenmyer,” Talyn prompted. “For twenty years?”
“Twenty-five,” Sandrian corrected.
She knew he’d feel the need to set the record straight if she purposely got some of the details wrong.
“He threatened to send me there as well,” she said. “What was it like?”
Sandrian’s eyes narrowed on her a moment before his gaze became distant as a memory seemed to overtake him.
The room grew quiet as everyone waited for him to go on, and Talyn heard the faint click of one of the caronium cuffs pop free.
“King Sandrian?” she prompted quickly to camouflage the sound.
She hoped the use of his supposed title would further distract from the click that had seemed to echo throughout the chamber. She remained crouched behind Bressen, her dagger held loosely at his throat.
Sandrian’s eyes met hers, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he’d seen through her subterfuge. Then he spoke.
“Be grateful you’ve never seen the inside of that place,” Sandrian said. “There are no demons in the three hells because they’re all in Revenmyer.”
“Demons?” Talyn asked. She’d heard stories of the monstrous little creatures that inhabited the prison, but she didn’t know much about them.
“Nightmare demoni,” Sandrian said. “When you’re awake, the walls writhe with them.
You hear them moving around, see their red eyes blinking in and out in the darkness, feel their claws scraping against your skin.
The only time you’re free of them is when you’re asleep, and then a whole new nightmare begins. ”
Talyn shuddered involuntarily, and Bressen went still in front of her. He was likely wondering if Sandrian’s story was making her rethink her plans to help him. Did he still plan on sending her to the prison if they got out of this?
Samhail might’ve been able to talk the lord out of sending her, but that was before she’d betrayed him.
What if she helped Bressen escape only for him to throw her into Revenmyer?
She’d made her peace that when the Nemesis took her, she’d spend the rest of eternity in one of the three hells, but she’d at least hoped to avoid any torture in this life.
Talyn shook herself mentally. It didn’t matter anymore what it cost her. She’d made a mistake bringing Bressen here, throwing him to his enemies, and it was time she accepted the consequences for that.
“What kind of nightmare?” she asked, and she felt the urgency in Bressen’s body as his hands moved behind him again. He didn’t want Sandrian to give her any reason to change her mind.
There was no humor whatsoever in Sandrian’s smile.
“Every fear, every regret you’ve ever had comes to life in your dreams,” Sandrian said. “Everything you’ve ever done that hurt someone else becomes magnified and replayed over and over again in your head, and this time you feel the pain right along with them.”
Talyn swallowed. She’d killed a lot of people, and while she couldn’t think of any deaths she truly regretted, that might change if she had to feel the pain of what she’d done to them every night when she tried to sleep.
She’d given most of her victims a quick death, but there were a few exceptions.
The man she’d thought had killed her sister, for one.
His death hadn’t been quick by any means, and it definitely hadn’t been painless.
“You invaded Thasia,” Talyn argued. “You started a war where thousands died. Didn’t you deserve punishment?”
Sandrian’s eyes narrowed, and Talyn knew she shouldn’t have said that. Bressen knew it too, and she felt him go rigid again.
“I’ve killed a lot of people,” she went on before Sandrian could say anything. “I deserve to be punished, and if it doesn’t happen in this world, I know it will happen in the next. Perhaps it’s a blessing you’ve served part of your sentence here already.”
Sandrian stared at her for a moment before he burst out laughing. The sound was harsh and grating in the otherwise silent room, completely devoid of actual mirth. Even Morland’s wheezing had stopped where he still lay on the floor close by.
“My dear,” Sandrian said, “I didn’t take you for the kind of fool who actually believes the gods are fair and just.”
Talyn blinked at the disgust in his tone, and even Bressen paused to look up at him.
“The gods are as petty and vengeful as any human,” Sandrian went on.
“As for our dear Lord Bressen, have you asked him how many people he’s killed over the years?
How many women did he and that pile of stones you seem to favor fuck and then abandon before he took one of the most powerful beings on the continent as his wife? ”
Bressen’s body jerked, but Sandrian wasn’t done.
“Bressen didn’t avoid Revenmyer because he’s a good man,” Sandrian said, his voice full of scorn.
“He avoided my fate because his side won the war, because he’s powerful both in magic and title, and there’s no one to tell him he can’t do what he wants.
If I’d won, you can be sure the great Nemesis Incarnate,” he sneered the name, “would’ve had my cell in Revenmyer instead.
And I can guarantee you he’d still be there, because I wouldn’t have been careless enough to let him escape.
Just as I won’t be careless enough to let the two of you escape now. ”
Talyn’s blood seemed to stop in her veins before surging forward double-time as she recognized the knowing look in Sandrian’s eyes, the look that said he was no longer buying her act.
“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” Sandrian asked coldly. “Trying to distract me?”
Talyn’s head snapped to the side as movement caught her eye, and Morland lurched to his feet.
The man limped to the side wall where two giant axes hung crisscrossed over each other.
Still holding his hand over the wound she’d given him, Morland pulled one of the axes down and stalked back toward her and Bressen.
Talyn pulled herself up and held her daggers out, ready to fight.
“Talyn, get out of the way!” Bressen yelled.
“No!” she shot back. “I got you into this. I won’t let them kill you!”
Morland let go of his wound so he could grip the axe with two hands.
He swung the heavy weapon back over his head as he prepared to bring it down, and Talyn got ready to port.
She had to strike in a way that would push the man off balance and keep him from bringing the giant blade down on top of Bressen.
Just as she was about to port, a force seized Talyn’s mind. She’d only had a rudimentary shield up, and someone had just crashed through it, sending a sharp pain stabbing through her head.
Talyn’s body threw itself out of the way of Morland’s blade unwillingly, and she cried out in horror as the axe descended toward the Lord of Hiraeth. She tried to port, but her body wouldn’t obey.
The wet sound of hard steel meeting soft flesh that she expected to hear never came, though. Instead, the deafening clang of metal meeting metal echoed around the room.
A scream lodged in Talyn’s throat as she tried to make sense of what she’d just witnessed. At the last second, Bressen had moved out of the way of the axe’s blade so it came down onto the chain holding him in place rather than onto his head.
Talyn’s eyes widened as Morland raised the axe and brought it down again in the same spot, and the already-damaged chain broke fully apart.
Then Bressen was on his feet – just barely – and he yanked the chain through the rings that linked the shackles to the floor.
The shackles were still on his wrists, but without the chain to bind them, he had the use of his hands again.
His two caronium cuffs lay on the ground, and Talyn’s heart leapt into her throat to realize he’d managed to free himself and apparently take over Morland.
The force holding her mind – Bressen’s magic – released her, and she sprung to her feet ready to fight. Even as Sandrian screamed in fury, the guards around the room began to change, the dark blue shells of their symbionts creeping over their skin.
Talyn saw Sandrian’s arm shoot out toward Bressen, and she reacted without thinking. She ported to him immediately, then ported again the second she touched him. They both disappeared an instant before Sandrian’s lightning crackled through the space where they’d been.
Sandrian screamed and clutched his head, and Talyn knew Bressen must be clawing through the man’s mind shield.
She shivered involuntarily as she remembered the pain of that experience, but there was no time to dwell on it.
The dozen or so guards in the room had fully shifted into their symbiont forms and were heading toward them with claws out.
Talyn shot forward to meet them, just as Sandrian sent a bolt of lightning at Bressen that made the lord jerk and fall to his knees.