Under Broken Wings (Upon Buried Embers #2)

One

Alara

The ground is cold as I roll onto my side. I’m still wearing the dress from the feast, but it’s different from before…

Before the fire, and all the unseeing eyes and limp bodies.

Before the screams and pools of blood.

Before everything changed.

The settlement burned.

People died.

Rohan lied.

Everything I thought I knew was all a lie.

And I fell for it too, didn’t I?

How stupid could I have been?

Of course he didn’t want me, of course I’m not worthy of being kept in a way where someone doesn’t want something from me.

Of course no one would like me… love me.

But I had hoped…

He’d made me hope with his care and his words. With the way he’d seemed gentle with me…

What a cruel joke.

Every touch, every quiet glance, every whispered word between us. When he taught me to braid, when he made sure I ate, when I gave myself to him completely…

I thought I’d found a place I could belong. A place I could eventually call home, where I was wanted and loved.

But it was all a lie.

A pretense to keep me pliant, so he could give me to someone else.

He only ever saw something in me that he could use.

Because he never wanted me.

No one ever wants someone like me.

I stare at the cobbled stone wall in my dingy cell, my back to the bars of another. Set into the far wall, a small, barred window at the top lets in just enough light to show water dripping down.

I’d looked across the hallway at the other cells when I was first put in here, but there was nothing but darkness within them.

I think someone is in a cell further down though, but apart from a few coughs and water dripping somewhere, that’s all the company I have. Other than my thoughts, my pain, the darkness.

The heartbreak.

I can’t even sleep to escape.

All I see is the man I killed in my nightmares, Asseya and Sparks, blood and fire, the king’s words rattling around my head like a haunting song.

He made a deal with me to give me an elf.

My throat tightens.

I understand clearly, father.

My eyes burn, but no more tears come.

Rohan made a deal with King Halen, who’s been at war with elves and has tried to capture them for years. The king so cruel that elves would rather kill themselves than be taken by him.

The king who makes the Dragorie enter deadly Games each year.

The king who is his father.

I curl in tighter on myself, scared, confused, heartbroken and empty, but it’s almost muted. Like it can’t reach me until unexpected bursts spear through me so painfully that it takes my breath away.

My body doesn’t feel like my own, my mind slow, my eyes blinking lazily, scratchy and puffy from crying.

My lungs still take in air, but they may as well have stopped working.

My heart still thumps against my ribs, but it may as well have stopped beating.

A sound echoes through the space, a door, maybe, but I don’t turn to look.

Not when someone shouts or when someone else cries out, and not when a horde of footsteps follow.

Only when a key enters a cell lock do I lazily turn over.

It’s not to my cell door though, it’s the one next to me.

Guards, at least seven of them, stand near the entrance of the door and haul a body inside before dragging them to the wall at the back, snapping chains around their wrists.

They’re attached to the wall, and the length doesn’t look very long, maybe only enough to reach the center of the cell.

Declan, the guard who held me in that throne room with a knife to my throat, kicks them in the stomach before he walks to the cell door with the others and locks it.

He eyes me with a smirk, and I look back at the limp body.

Rohan is bruised and bloody and doesn’t move at all.

A pang of concern goes through me, something that tries to escape the numbness, crawling its way up to the surface, but I shove it down and look away.

It wasn’t real, Alara, it was a trick. A lie.

A means to an end.

It was all for the deal he made with his father. So I ignore the feelings that try to hold me hostage. I convince myself that I can’t see the slowness of his breathing, the injuries, where he’s still bleeding from.

I don’t do anything other than stare at the bars of my prison, feeling like there’s another collar around my neck.

I really should have died in The Pit. It would’ve hurt less than this.

I don’t know how long the silence wraps around me for, but he wakes a little later.

A groan comes from him first, a twitch of his fingers as he regains consciousness, a deep inhale next. Then, like the skilled and honor-bound Dragonbond he is, he instantly springs into a crouch, alert and ready.

Rohan blinks, confused as he looks around the cell he’s in, eyes hard and angry—until they land on mine through the bars that separate us.

“Alara?” he rasps, eyes widening as he looks me over. Then he’s on his feet and rushing over to the bars. The chains dig into his wrists but they have enough length to allow his hands to reach through the bars toward me.

“Alara.” His tone is low and guttural, his eyes are full of concern.

I know what he probably sees.

My dress is dirty and bloody, my neck stings, so there is probably a cut there, and my body aches from the man attacking me at clan Blackscale, and he looks at me like he can see it all.

“Are you hurt?”

Yes.

“Bleeding anywhere?”

My heart.

“Tell me and I can help.”

I would rather die.

His gaze drops, cataloging every inch of me until his eyes meet mine again.

Whatever he sees in them causes him to flinch. Then he looks away, his jaw clenched.

“Fuck,” he breathes, running his hands down his face, and then he spots the chains on his wrists. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

I turn my head and stare at the cells across from me, ignoring the way my body reacts to his nearness, the way my heart aches from the concern in his voice.

He’s in pain, yet wants to offer me comfort and protection.

My soul yearns for it, but my mind knows better.

It’s a lie.

And my broken heart knows what that will get me. More pain.

I’m so, so tired of pain.

“Alara, answer me.”

No.

“At least tell me if you’re hurt, let me see.”

I raise a hand and touch my neck, feeling the dried blood there from the knife Declan held to it.

Shame it didn’t go deeper. It should have gone deeper.

I should have pressed forward against it in that hall and ended it all, my blood spilling over the purple carpet, staining it red.

That way I wouldn’t be feeling like this. I wouldn’t be feeling like I’m shredded to pieces after what he—

“Alara!” His voice sounds alarmed now. Sharp. More urgent, like he’s panicking…

How good he is at faking his concern for me.

Was anything from him real? Do I even know who Rohan is?

No, of course I don’t.

Stupid, pathetic, na?ve Alara.

Stupid elf.

I blink again, removing my hand from my neck and letting it fall limply to the floor. My knuckles scrape the stone, scratching the skin.

The chains rattle, and I can tell he’s trying to get them off his wrists when he grunts in frustration, blood dripping onto the floor with the effort.

When he can’t remove them, he grips the bars again, eyes on me.

“Alara, look at me.”

No.

“Let me see you.”

To ruin me again?

“Let me explain.”

To lie to me again?

“I need to see if you’re alright.”

I roll over.

“Will you talk to me?” he asks.

Why?

“You need to listen to me…” I hear him grunt. “Alara you’re… scaring me. It’s been three days.”

I blink at the wall.

It has?

“Will you roll over and look at me? Let me see if you’re okay?”

To take me under your spell again? To drown me in something that isn’t real?

“Please, Alara, don’t shut me out. Shout at me, hit me, or something just… just don’t go silent on me.”

Is that desperation I hear in his tone?

A door bangs somewhere, and Rohan curses.

“Alara, fuck, come here, we don’t know—”

Footsteps approach, heavy, and then a voice. “Hungry?” Silence. “Aww, come now, don’t be like that,” Declan says.

I hear the jingle of keys, and then the door to my cell opens.

“Don’t you go anywhere fucking near her!” Rohan’s roar bounces off the cell walls, loud and deadly, the chains rattling harder.

A sack lands in front of me. It’s old, dirty. I wonder what’s in it for a brief moment, but then I realize I don’t care.

“Aww, Dragonbond, scared I’m going to hurt the elf?”

Something touches my bare foot, and Rohan loses it.

He must not like his possessions being touched.

“I will kill you! I will drain the life from your eyes!”

Declan laughs, crouching before me and moving my hair out of my face before touching the tip of my ear. My stomach recoils, the numbness escaping me a little as Rohan keeps shouting, going crazy in his cell, the chains rattling so loud it makes my ears ring.

“Elves are so… dainty, aren’t they? Or is that just you?

” He grabs my chin and forces my eyes to meet his malice-filled ones.

“I haven’t seen one up close before, are you breakable?

” He tilts my face to the side. “Darcia seems to think so, but your healing is far greater than ours, she confirmed it.”

I blink.

Darcia…

“What the fuck did you just say?” Rohan demands, his hands on the cell bars, cold eyes staring at Declan. “What. Did. You. Say?”

Declan glances over at him, brown hair falling in his face. “Darcia. She came running to the city after you apparently kicked her out, begging for an audience with the king.” He looks back at me. “She was really forthcoming with information.”

His hand moves down my body, and I still, utterly frozen as his hand grabs my breast.

There is a dangerous growl, the temperature rising in the usually cold space. “Get. Away. From. Her.”

Declan grins, but it’s replaced with a frown when a door bangs open.

“Declan?” Someone shouts, male. “King Halen’s requesting you.”

Declan frowns, but stands. “We’ll have to cut things short this time, scum.”

“Don’t you touch her again,” Rohan warns.

Declan pauses after he locks my cell door and peers into Rohan’s.

“You have no control here, Dragorie. Your words are wasted.”

Then he walks away, leaving a heavily panting Rohan in his cell, staring at the space where he once was.

Tension lines his body, jaw clenched tight.

He takes a few deep breaths, then a few more before he turns toward me.

“Little Whisperer. Come to this side of the cell, I won’t let them touch you.”

Isn’t this what he wanted, though?

“Please.”

To give me over for them to do whatever they wish to me?

The chains rattle again.

“Alara?”

I close my eyes and curl in on myself again, willing the numbness to take me away from it all.

At least then I won’t feel a single thing.

At least then, I won’t have to feel what he did to me.