Page 7 of Vengeance and Vipers

* * *

JULES

So close!

The piece of rock my foot is on crumbles under my toes, and I hear it bounce loudly to the ground. I adjust my grip and hold on tight, my fingers screaming from the strain. Siggy’s sticky silk was easier to climb than these thousand-year-old walls, that’s for sure.

With one last effort to pull myself up the last few inches, I push through the pain with a strained grunt and grab for the iron rungs of the grate above me.

Success!

I hang from it for a second before I can get my other hand up to join it, and I use my feet as leverage against the wall, pulling with one hand and then with the other. But the rungs are solid, and, now that I’m up here, I can see that they’re modern, and they’ve been cemented into place quite recently.

With a growl of frustration, I begin the climb down.

I hear Krase chuckling from his cage.

‘I can see your cunt,’ he calls out crassly.

I ignore him. Yes, he definitely can, but that’s because all I have to wear is Dante’s shirt and some smelly horse blankets.

When I get to the ground, I wrap the shirt around me again and sit back on my hard rock bed.

I brush my fingers over my chest for the tenth time. I can’t feel the brand. The conjure really is up and working again, but how? In my dream, Krase fixed it, but surely that isn’t possible.

I watch him in my periphery. I know that he and his brother play around with fae stuff, so he’d probably have the knowledge to repair it, but how did he from all the way over there?

‘How did you do it?’ I come right out and ask.

‘Do what?’ he asks, playing with the rodent in his hand.

‘Fix the broken conjure on me.’

He taps the side of his nose and doesn’t say anything. I scowl.

‘Will they bring us food?’ I ask.

‘Hungry are you, lass?’

‘Aye!’ I mock.

I rub my eyes and take a shaky breath.

‘I haven’t eaten in a while,’ I admit.

‘How long?’ he asks.

‘Don’t know.’

I actually think my last meal was the one that Jayce procured for me from one of the orc vendors. Thoughts of him make my chest hurt.

He and Axel have just left me down here after everything that we …

Sadness has me putting my back to my dungeon mate, trying to keep my pathetic tears a secret even from Crazy Krase.

‘I can take the pain away if you like,’ he says.

‘What pain?’ I try for a laugh, but it falls flat. I rub my eyes again. ‘Even if you could, why would you? Don’t you hate me too?’