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Chapter forty-four

ATALIIA

The screams had finally stopped, the loss of the harrowing sound making room for deafening silence to fill the prisons. Somewhere in the distance, the steady echo of water dripping from the ceiling hummed against the quiet like a metronome of death.

Drop . . . one, two, three . . .

Drop . . . one, two, three . . .

Drop . . . one, two, three . . .

I counted over and over again, the words slipping from my lips in a whisper that was swallowed up by the oppressive darkness. A shiver trickled over my body as I leaned my head against the cold metal bars, a momentary reprieve to the heat pulsating through the humidity. I slipped my hand through.

My fingers found Dukovich in the dark, brushing over his arm as he leaned into my touch with a low groan. His skin was wet and sticky—hot to the touch, as if fire was flowing through his veins.

He hadn’t had a fever just minutes ago.

Fuck.

He needed water.

I raised my hand, palm outstretched toward the damp ground and flicked my fingers. Nothing happened. I tried again and still nothing. My jaw clenched, teeth grinding together as frustration swelled inside me.

They had somehow blocked lesser magic.

“Fucking black magic . . .” I whispered as I glanced around the cell, searching for anything that could help. The dripping continued its maddening rhythm, taunting me with the promise of water just out of reach.

A sudden cough erupted from Dukovich’s throat, his chains scraping against the stone with the movement as I pushed my hand back through the bars. My fingers found his face, heat blooming against my palm as it found his cheek and dragged his chin toward me.

“If you die and leave me alone in this fucking hellhole, I will bring you back to kill you myself. Do you understand me?” I bit out the question, though an undercurrent of worry ran through the words.

A weak chuckle collided with the musty air. “Never thought I would see the day you begged for me to stay alive.”

“I’m not begging, I’m threatening,” I snapped, my hand falling from his face. “There’s a difference.”

He drew in a shaky breath. “You know, love, if I had known all it would take was being imprisoned and on death’s door for you to show me you care, I would have arranged for this months ago.”

“You’re an idiot,” I hissed, but couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of my lips as I leaned my back against the bars.

A heavy sigh escaped from between my clenched teeth, exhaustion seeping into my bones, but I pushed it away. I would not risk waking to him dead beside me. I had lost all sense of time as the dank air clung to my skin like a suffocating shroud, the weight of our reality pressing down on me.

I would not die a fucking prisoner.

My eyes fluttered shut as I willed my mind to conjure a solution, an escape, a way to keep us from being harmed—anything. The knot in my stomach tightened, twisting and writhing like a living thing inside of me as I thought through every scenario.

Cin would come for us, I knew that for certain.

It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. She was impulsive and self-sacrificing, sometimes to a fault, which meant she probably had tried to come back the second Dukovich and I fell from Nithra’s back.

But Andrues was not; he was the voice of reason.

But that reason would only give them more time to torture us and we didn’t have time—Dukovich didn’t have time.

Landers still wasn’t back, though the screaming had stopped hours ago. At least, I think it was hours. Maybe it was only minutes. A fist clamped around my heart as my mind spiraled into the abyss.

If they fucking killed him . . .

“Talk to me,” I murmured, shaking the thought from my head. “You need to stay awake.”

The fabric of his clothing rustled as he readjusted his position with slow, pained movements, his chains clanking together and sending an eerie echo down the corridor lined with cells.

He positioned his back against the bars on the other side of me, warmth radiating off him and kissing my skin as I leaned against them.

“What would you like me to say, love?” he asked, his voice low and strained.

“I want to know the truth of how you really got here, how you went from being one of the most powerful rulers to betraying your realm.”

I knew fragments of why he did what he did, small pieces of his motives. But there was something deeper than just hope behind his betrayal. Someone like him, people like us, don’t betray the things we love for the idea of hope with no guarantee of the outcome.

Dukovich was silent for a heartbeat. “You want to know my story?”

It was a loaded question and I knew what he was really asking.

“Yes,” I breathed, my answer slipping into the silence. The one word held a plethora of emotions, charging the air around us.

It may have been the most honest thing I had ever said to him.

I cared about him, that was the truth.

And though I didn’t know if I could ever give him the parts of me I knew he wanted, I would not let him die thinking he didn’t mean something to me.

“My mother was a maiden to the King of The Silliands, but she was not bred to be sold like most maidens are. She was taken from my grandparents when she was fifteen as payment for a debt that my grandfather couldn’t pay.

The King had seen her beauty and wanted her for himself, forcing her to become his concubine, even though she was just a child,” Dukovich continued, his voice low and tinged with bitterness.

“When she became pregnant with me, the King was furious.

He accused her of being unfaithful and had her thrown in the dungeons.

She gave birth to me in a cell and by some miracle, we both survived.

The king, not wanting a bastard son, sold us to a wealthy lord when I was just a babe.

That lord was a member of the War Council and raised me for the first ten years of my life as his own and protected my mother.

“That lord’s son was Malik. Being close in age, we became fast friends, neither of us understanding that we were not ordinary children.

Malik’s father, Lord Henrik was next in line to become High Priest, which meant Malik would become his successor.

Though Henrik treated me as his own son, he did not train me, did not ready me for the ways of court like he did Malik.

But I watched and learned everything I could through cracked doors and stolen glances at royal parchment.

” His chains rattled softly as he shifted again, a wheezing cough forcing itself from his lungs as the metallic scent of blood mingled with his feverish sweat.

“When I was ten years old, a group of guards from the House of High showed up at the door of Lord Henrik’s manor.

They had been sent by my father to tear me from the only home I had known—from my mother—and bring me to the House of High.

The Queen still had not produced a male heir and I was his only chance of furthering his bloodline.

So he legitimized me as his son and heir, and I was thrust into a world I knew nothing about.

A world of politics, power struggles, and twisted mind games.

The King and Queen hated me. I was nothing more than a political bargaining piece in their scheme to hold on to power.

They beat me, burned me, tortured me every time they got the chance.

Every time I made a mistake, I was punished, adding another scar to my body as their reward.

It was the monks that truly raised me, it was through them I learned what The Silliands really was—learned the true history of our realm.

The atrocities, lies, and deceit that had been committed and used to build a kingdom on the backs of the innocent. ”

Realization dawned on me then. He’d always said that he’d planned the betrayal of The Silliands for years, that his scheme was concocted as a child and I never truly believed him.

Maybe I never wanted to believe him.

Didn’t want to believe that underneath the cruelty he had shown me that he might actually be a good man.

“Is that when your plan started, when you decided you would betray them?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered softly. “I was next in line to become king, and that meant I would have the power to make a change and I could not do nothing with that.

I took what I had learned to Malik and slowly, we started planning.

With me as King and him as High Priest, we had an opportunity to change everything the realm had become.

I learned to navigate the treacherous waters of the royal court, always watching my back and trusting no one.

I had to be smarter, stronger, more ruthless and cunning than anyone else if I hoped to sit on that throne.

And so I did whatever it took to claw my way to the top, never forgetting the lessons of hardship and resilience my mother had taught me.

“Over the years, I began to glamour myself, erase every ounce of her likeness from my skin, so when people looked at me, they only saw the king—they only saw his face etched into my features. I built up every physical defense I could to withstand their torture, to be ready when the time came to act. Readying myself for the worst outcome while praying for the best. Malik and I mixed Svech with ink and slowly tattooed it onto our skin to build up a tolerance to it, to get it flowing through our blood so it would not affect us if caught. I sharpened my mind, my wit, my charm to a deadly edge, thinking that would be enough, but it wasn’t. ”

Dukovich fell silent for a long moment and though I couldn’t see him, I could sense it like a whisper across my skin, the pain this story brought him. My hand fell to my side and slipped through the bars, finding his in the dark as the tips of them intertwined.