Page 72 of Keeper of the Word (The Unsung and the Wolf Duology #2)

Chapter

Sixty-Five

TOLVAR

F or the last hour, Tolvar had concentrated on his split lip. It crusted over, then if he stretched his mouth, it opened again, leaking blood down his chin. With his hands in chains behind him, he tongued it every so often, causing the cut to sting.

He did this so he did not focus on his swollen blackened eyes, or his cracked ribs, or his botched ear, or his three broken fingers, or his four toenails that had been ripped off, or the dozens of burns that lined his limbs from a fire poker. Or the countless bruises that covered his body.

Tracking time had been lost long ago. He knew not where he was being held—he’d been blindfolded on the journey here—but ’twas somewhere dank and without windows.

The darkness that surrounded him didn’t matter at this point.

He’d lost consciousness enough times that everything was a blur wrapped around him.

The first few times Tolvar had been tortured, he’d girded his courage and remained quiet as he’d been restrained by four men. Crevan screamed in his face, spittle flying, telling him that everything could end if he would tell Crevan the word.

But Tolvar’s stamina waned .

The last time Crevan had entered, he’d brought with him the balding witch—Jordain, she’d been called—her milky eye scoring him.

Whereas Tolvar had become conditioned to being seared with a red-hot iron poker, Crevan held no such instrument this time.

He’d merely nodded to the witch. She touched Tolvar’s forehead.

The burning sensation scourged through him. The howl of agony that escaped was immediate and uncontrollable. He saw only the white-hot pain before his eyes.

Jordain lifted her finger. The pain lingered. His eyes bugged from his head as he twisted his face in an attempt to gain control of the suffering.

Crevan simpered down at him. “What is the word ?”

From the fragments of conversation that Tolvar had caught, he understood that saying the word without breaking the moonstone would release the infused Shroud spell from the Edan Stone, and the witch would be able to imbue it with a cursed spell of her own.

That would not happen with the Wolf as its keeper.

Tolvar’s mouth was too parched to spit in his brother’s face, so he had gritted his teeth and sucked in large inhales through his nose. Jordain glanced to Crevan for permission to touch Tolvar again, but Crevan had said he’d allow Tolvar time to think.

When the thick, wooden door had closed behind them, leaving Tolvar alone again, he leaned his head back and moaned.

Jabs and stabs and cuts, he could deal with. This new torture tested something else entirely in him. How long could he undergo this without breaking?

Tolvar stopped trifling with his split lip, stood from the rickety wooden bench, and hobbled back and forth in the small cell, considering how long he had before Crevan and Jordain returned.

Think, damn you! Think.

But that had always been Tolvar’s downfall, had it not? He rarely gave thought before he assaulted his way through matters. He coughed, tensing at the tenderness in his ribs.

You shall require forbearance in your future.

These long-ago words from Tara struck him .

Mayhap what Tara had meant was that he needed endurance. Fortitude to see this through until someone came.

He shook his head. Of course that is not what she’d meant.

She’d meant self-control and patience. Two qualities of which Tolvar had failed miserably.

How many events might have been changed or spared had Tolvar only practiced those traits?

The slaughter at Thorin Court, certainly.

Had he been patient and not so arrogant, he would ne’er have left his home open for the taking.

And what about being banished from Dara Keep?

Although Tolvar had to admit, he would never have met Sloane without being sent to Kestriel.

But certainly, the mess he was in now was all due to the lack of forbearance the Wolf would never seem to master.

He’d gone mad seeking to track Crevan, using that as an excuse to go to Greenwood, abandoning his oath.

The path he’d chosen had brought on more hardships for everyone. And now there was no going back. No making amends.

A door swung open from down the corridor, and Tolvar braced himself for what was to come.

Forbearance, he promised himself.

He gave Jordain a deadlock glare.

In a matter of moments, Tolvar’s roar of agony filled everything. He clung to his fraying bravery, biting his tongue lest he should hawk out the word. The taste of iron filled his mouth. He grew dizzy until, blissfully, the Wolf could tolerate no more, and everything went black.

Tolvar knew he was not a blessed man. He did not deserve to be. But when he opened his eyes and discerned the white room before wandering his gaze to Sloane, he laughed with joy.

’Tis an odd reaction for a man being tortured to death.

“Am I dead?”

Sloane shook her head. Why do you keep asking that?

“I cannot believe that my dreams would offer a vision so sweet in the middle of such nightmares.” He drank in her dark eyes, her delicate cheekbones. He had to remember her.

This is the last time, she spoke.

“Last time?”

Last time that I visit you here.

Tolvar leaned back his head, his eyes leaking tears.

You can do this. Her voice echoed. Use your faith. ’Tis stronger than you believe. Her close-lipped smile undid him. I wait for you.

He opened his eyes and bawled like a child on the floor of his cell.

He was coming to understand that not only was Jordain’s touch the worst agony he’d ever experienced, but that ’twas draining the life from him.

The Curse of Adrienne was the only explanation.

He was certain of it, even sitting in the darkness.

A blackened blot stained his wrist. He did not know how many hours had stretched into days and how many days had stretched into the eternal anguish he now lived through, but Tolvar’s routine had become simple.

Sleep. Torture. Sleep. Torture. Eat moldy bread.

Vomit. Drink what seemed like a thimble of water.

Sleep. Torture. No longer did he pace or try to exercise his body.

His mouth was constantly dry, and his stomach ate at itself.

The word held fast inside him, though his tongue and the inside of his mouth were covered in ulcerations from where he’d bitten over and over again.

When he dreamed, ’twas in hellish night terrors in which he witnessed Crevan’s success of bringing down the light, Asalle as a place of evil, and every foul thing Tolvar could imagine.

But the Wolf was on the verge of breaking.

He did not stir from the cold, stone floor where he lay when he heard the door to his cell open.

Crevan sat on the bench. He was alone.

“I have come to talk some sense into you. Brother to brother. ”

Tolvar did not move. “Just have your torture and be done with it so I may return to imagining you die in the worst way possible.” His voice was hoarse.

“No doubt you have envisioned some interesting deaths. Give me the word, Tolvar. What does it matter to you at this point?”

Tolvar had considered the same thought a few times. What did it matter? Especially if he was to die here?

It mattered.

“Give me the word, and I’ll relinquish Thorin Court back to you. You can spend the rest of your days there as earl. As Father wanted.”

Tolvar kept his gaze off Crevan.

“There was a time when we were close. You may not believe this, but I do not enjoy watching you suffer.”

If Tolvar had the strength to laugh, he would have.

“We may not see eye to eye, but you are my brother.”

“Eye to eye? Crevan, we see so differently, we are in different worlds. If Father were alive, he would disown you, so ashamed of you he would be.”

Crevan kicked Tolvar in the kidney. Tolvar grunted.

“Father never understood me. He never favored me. He never paid the least attention to me. I always lived in the shadow of my great brother.”

“Is that what this is all about? Stars, Crevan. You killed him. Is that not enough for you?”

“Jordain has scried all the possible outcomes. The Capella Realm is going to fall into my hands. I shall be sovereign over these lands. Would that I could bring Father from the grave to witness it.”

Tolvar glanced at his brother’s hideous, torn face. “The Capella Realm is going to fall. But not into your hands.”

“I have Adrienne.” Tolvar flinched at the word.

“I now have the Edan Stone. And soon, I shall have the Five. At first, I meant to simply do away with them. But Jordain showed me greater plans. With the Curse unburied and with the coven of witches’ powers, the StarSeers, too, shall be mine.

They shall See under my servitude. Their gift of fortune shall be mine to control. ”

Tolvar did laugh at that. “That is, without a doubt, the most idiotic sentiment I have e’er heard. There is no controlling the stars!”

“Oh Tolvar. My Brones gave me tidbits of your conversations last year.

The foolish, brave hero on a quest of faith, only to be the most faithless person alive.

You lie there and hope your friends will come to save you.

Is that not faith? How can you have faith in that but not believe my words?

This is exactly what you did last year in your search for the Unsung.

If you believed in more than your own brute strength, you would understand the gravity of my words.

“But no matter. In the end, the Fox will break the Wolf. The StarSeers will be mine, and their Sight will make me the most invincible sovereign the continent has e’er known.”

“You left out ugly, crazed, and craven. Anyone who needs that much force, that much darkness surrounding them, will ne’er control anything. Because you have no control over yourself.”

Forbearance.

Tolvar waited for Crevan’s retort, but all that came was a kick to the face. Tolvar heard as much as felt his nose break.

“Rest up. I shall return with Jordain.”