Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Dante
“If I have to burn this city to ash for it to be free of it’s blasphemy, then hand me the torch.”
Iawoke in a room I'd never seen before.
I had vague recollections of being moved, of being dragged through sand, of scales beneath me and sky above.
Hazy memories of the wind whipping through my hair as the ground spiraled away below flitted through my subconscious but drifted away if I turned too much of my focus onto them.
I remembered a girl, a voice, a threat. A loud tavern and grizzled veterans.
Anger and night. Then nothing. Until this room.
Made entirely of stone, there was no furniture inside of it except for the chair I was in.
My wrists and ankles were bound to the arms and legs of the thing.
My neck ached from the way I'd been hanging my head while unconscious and it cracked when I moved my head from side to side, trying to get a better view of my surroundings. It was dark here and damp. Moisture seemed to leak through the stones themselves making the room almost humid. Candles flickered in sconces set at regular intervals along the walls, the only light for me to see by. I wasn’t sure how long I'd been unconscious but I was certain of one thing; I wasn’t in Pavos anymore.
“—don’t know why the Geist wanted them,” someone said from the other side of the door directly across from me.
I raised my head and craned my neck to hear them better through the thick stone.
“But I heard what they said about the pair of them. They’re afraid of them, Leo.
I’ve never known the Geist to fear anything besides the Zver.
So if they’re afraid of him, that makes him worth the risk, does it not? ”
“He’s one of them, Nia,” a man argued. “He’s spent his whole life being brainwashed to believe they're his gods. They branded him with their magic. He cannot be trusted.”
“I didn’t say we should trust him, Roman,” the woman snapped. “I said we should use him.”
“And you’re so sure he would allow himself to be used.”
“I suppose we won’t know the answer to that until we tell him the truth.”
“He won’t believe you.”
“We have to try. Leo, tell him—”
“That’s enough, both of you,” a third male voice snapped.
“We believe in the power of choice here, Roman. It’s what separates us from the Geist. If we start choosing the fate of all men, we're no better than the beings who propped themselves up as our gods. And Ksenia, don’t think bringing him to us gets you out of the punishment you can expect for disobeying orders. ”
“But—”
“I told you not to return to Pavos. You went against a direct order from your prince. You will be punished.”
“Yes, my prince,” the woman grumbled.
“What do we do with him?” Roman asked, voice gruffer than before.
“Give him the truth,” the man they called Leo answered after a moment. “Let him decide whether or not to believe it.”
I heard the sound of retreating footsteps a moment later and then silence descended within the hallway beyond the door. They'd left me, all of them. I'd been kidnapped and brought gods knew where and left to rot in this cell without the decency of a proper explanation.
Roaring in frustration, I pulled fiercely against my bonds only to realize they seemed to repel every bit of magic I attempted to use against them.
I couldn’t phase out of them or break through them with my enhanced strength.
I raised the manacles and gazed at them in wonder.
What material was this that could restrict magic in such a way?
Did the Geist know our enemy had it? What else did they know that they weren’t telling us?
I yanked again on the chain but my frenzy was interrupted by a low growl emanating suddenly from the corner of the room.
I raised my gaze to find a massive beast emerging from the shadows.
It prowled forward on giant white glistening paws, licking hungrily at the poisonous saliva dripping from its maw.
I froze as those glowing red eyes devoured me slowly.
“Enough, Phantom,” a familiar female voice barked as the door of my cell clanged open. “We don’t want to scare him. Yet.”
Reluctantly, I pulled my gaze from the enormous beast now slinking back into the shadows from whence it came.
I recognized the woman now standing a few feet before me, arms crossed and brow raised, immediately.
Hers was the last face I’d seen in Pavos as she knelt over me, waiting for her poison to take effect.
I snarled, straining against my bonds as I made a doomed attempt to lunge for her.
She just tsked, shaking her head back and forth as she strode across the room, prowling just as her pet had done.
Her shoulder length brown hair shifted back and forth as she walked, warm coppery tones catching in the flickering candlelight.
A curtain of it fell toward her chocolate eyes and she tossed her head to clear it.
She was small, very much so. I doubted she stood hardly more than five feet tall.
And she was thin as well, barely more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, I was willing to bet.
And yet she carried an air of confidence, of self-assurance, that I hadn’t seen in many of the grown men I’d fought with in Pavos.
“It won’t work,” she informed me. “Whatever magic you might think to use against your bonds. And frankly, Verdunn, you aren’t strong enough to break them either.”
I paused at the word Verdunn, surprised she seemed to know who, or what, I was.
“Ah, there we are,” she cooed. “Ready to have a listen, then?”
“Who are you?” I growled. “Why have you brought me here?”
“More importantly, Verdunn, is who are you?” she asked, turning toward me and stopping her pacing long enough to glare in my direction.
“You should know. You seemed to think me important enough to risk your life sneaking into Pavos to kidnap me.”
“Sneaking into Pavos is hardly a risk for someone like me,” she answered with a dismissive wave of her hand that had me wanting to know what she meant by someone like me.
“But you, well, you threw the Geist into quite a tizzy with your arrival. Pavos was peaceful before, as peaceful as a city surrounded by war and ruled by cruelty can be at least, but then you came along. So tell me what about you is so important that two Geist were executed for not foreseeing your arrival?”
I couldn’t help but show my surprise at that.
“You didn’t know,” she surmised. “Unsurprising. The Geist never execute their own kind openly. Doing so would admit they can be killed. Of course, you already know they can, don’t you?
You were there, in the sands, when one of your gods died on that ill-fated scouting mission.
Did your precious Captain tell you how odd it was for three riders to be found in formation waiting in the desert?
Did anyone admit it was strange that a simple scouting mission should be attacked with such force?
Did you ever wonder who the true target of such an attack might be? ”
She was watching me, curiosity plain in her expression, in a way that reminded me much of how Kleio always looked at me when he was waiting for me to figure something out. I blinked, slowly realizing what she was trying to get me to see.
“I was the target,” I said after a moment. “You came for me that day.”
“I didn’t,” she clarified. “Some of our finest riders did. We weren’t expecting a Geist in your group.
They never leave their city. But they must have known we would make an attempt.
As always, their vanity caused them to believe one low-level Geist would be enough to defend against us.
They were wrong. But you had Valin as well, didn’t you?
And you proved to be quite the fighter yourself.
Apparently, Sanctuary is training Champions better in the physical arts than before. That’s good to know.”
I was hardly listening after she’d reinforced my fears. Those riders had come for me. Those young recruits, just boys, had died because of me. I slumped against my bonds.
“They went to great effort to conceal your arrival in Pavos, you know,” she continued. “They assigned you to the care of one of their finest, most ancient warriors. They sent one of their own into the sands for you. Tell me why, Verdunn. Tell me why you’re so important to them.”
I didn’t answer her.
“I know what you did,” she said then, her voice taking on a more wicked edge. Switching interrogation tactics, then. I’d seen Cosmo do the same enough to recognize it. That didn’t help ease the sting of her words as she continued. “There’s only one way a Verdunn leaves Sanctuary to enter Pavos.”
Jaw clenched, I tried to turn away from her, but she just walked around until she was in my line of sight again.
“Who was she?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She didn’t need to be any louder. The guilt stabbed into me like a knife even in the quiet. “Someone you trained with your whole life? A friend? Someone you didn’t even know before?”
I said nothing, biting my tongue so hard it started to bleed. But I didn’t stop.
“Very well, Verdunn,” she said with a sigh. “Keep your secrets. When you’re ready to talk, I’ll return. Know that I have much more to tell you than you have to tell me. It's in your best interest, I believe, to hear my side of the story your worthless gods have fed you.”
With that, she turned away from me, hips swishing side to side as she made her way back to the door.
From the corner, red eyes blinked at me in the darkness.
It set me on edge, which was likely the intention, but I fought to keep my gaze on my interrogator as she wrenched open the door and stepped into the empty hall beyond.
I considered telling her right then. That I already knew the truth.
That I'd never been all that devout in my worship of the gods.
That I'd already seen hypocrisy at the highest level, had lived with it my whole life.
But I didn't. Even though it would have been easier.
Even though it might have gained me some measure of freedom, giving them what they wanted, every part of me rebelled at the idea of giving in, of letting my kidnappers succeed.
“Valin will come for me,” I cried out at the last minute, a desperate threat I had no idea whether it was true or not. I wasn’t even sure Valin would know where I was, much less that he would risk coming for me if he did.
To my surprise, that only made the woman smile as she turned back to face me, eyes glinting in the light.
“He wouldn’t dare cross Prima again,” she said. “Not after what happened last time.”
She tapped her eye pointedly before slamming the door behind her on the way out.
I gaped at where she'd been moments before, understanding dawning upon me. Prima had been the one who took Valin’s eye.
They'd faced each other in the desert and she'd injured him grievously enough he couldn't heal from it.
Which meant Valin knew she was out there.
And if Valin knew Prima was out there…then Valin knew everything.
And he’d lied to me.