Page 33

Somewhere among the cells and passages, a door creaked open.

Dom swallowed hard, throat bobbing roughly against the iron collar around his neck.

Morning already, he thought.

Across from him, Sigil woke to the sound of stomping feet, the only noise their guards would make. She roused quickly, blinking against the growing light as their torch approached.

The jail guards rounded the corner at the far end of the long row of cells, one of them carrying a tray. Both were pale and greasy, low soldiers, the kind who cared little what they did, so long as there was payment.

Neither guard acknowledged his existence, as usual. They stopped only to pull out Sigil’s empty tray, and then shove another one with her breakfast through the gap in her bars, using a long stick. Both were careful not to get within reach of the bounty hunter.

Their single torch turned her dark eyes to lit coals. She grinned at them, a tiger in its cage.

But after so many days underground, even Sigil had taken on a strange pallor, her bronze skin going sickly. Her leather armor was gone, leaving only a bloodstained shift and torn breeches. She leaned to one side, compensating for her wounded leg. Broken or simply bruised, Dom still didn’t know. But their weeks of imprisonment were good for healing, if little else.

“I’m injured, chained, and weak, gentlemen,” she laughed, grabbing eagerly for the bowl of gray sludge. “The stick seems excessive.”

The guards ignored her. Both wore swords, as well as a brace of daggers, and chain mail beneath their tunics. None of it would be much use against the likes of Domacridhan and Sigil, should the chance present itself.

The chance never did.

Sigil and Dom kept time by the guards. The food didn’t change, butthe guards did, a morning and evening shift going back and forth. Dom couldn’t move even to scratch out the days on the wall, so Sigil did as best she could.

“Fourteen,” she whispered as the guards scampered away with their torch. She used the fading light and her ankle chain to scrape a line down the stone wall.

Fourteen days in the dungeons of Ascal, entombed beneath the New Palace. Dom stifled a snarl of frustration.

“Two weeks here,” he hissed. “Two weeks lost.”

“Three weeks, if you count the journey from Gidastern,” Sigil said from across the corridor. “But you were unconscious for most of the way.”

“Don’t remind me,” Dom hissed, his head thumping again. What little he remembered was painful enough.

Ridha. Dead.His skin crawled.And then... not.

His last memories of the outside world were hazy. The city burning. The stink of a corpse army. A river, a boat, and his usual seasickness. Ronin had kept him from fully waking, the weight of his magic pressing Domacridhan into a deathly twilight.

Until they chained him to a wretched wall in a wretched cell, and let him return to his wretched senses.

He was grateful for Sigil’s company, though even she seemed to have lost her reckless joy. She grieved as he did.

For all of them.

As he did every “morning,” Dom prayed to his gods, even if they could not hear them. He begged Ecthaid, god of the road, to guide Corayne on her path.

She is safe with the others, he told himself for the thousandth time.She has the only Spindleblade. And Sorasa will keep her alive, no matter the cost.

He had to trust in the Amhara assassin more than anything else. The world depended on her now, and on Corayne’s ferocious heart.

Sigil’s overzealous slurping shattered his thoughts. Somehow, Dom was grateful for the disgusting distraction.

“Better today?” he said.

“There’s meat in it now,” she answered, shrugging her broad shoulders. Even without her leather, she was still mountainous, a hulk in her cell. “I think it’s rat.”

Dom was quietly glad for his Vederan nature. Their jailers had not fed him yet, but the slow pangs of hunger were easy for the immortal to ignore.

Unlike his position. His spine flared with discomfort, every muscle protesting his stance against the wall. The mysterious liquid dripped too close to his eye and he hissed, turning his head again.