Attempting to clear his thoughts, he focused solely on the feeling of his lungs expanding and contracting. Slowly, the tension seeped from his body, leaving in its wake a new awareness of his body. Small aches and pains that he’d been ignoring. Stiffness in his muscles. Soreness along some of his deeper scars. Bone-deep weariness. He acknowledged each discomfort, then willed them to the back of his mind.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. He wasn’t keeping track of time. But he felt his shoulders slump. Felt his thoughts drift.
He blinked his tired eyes. He didn’t want to fall asleep. Not until Amryn was back. But his eyes continued to burn. He just needed to rest them for a moment. He closed his eyes—
And fell into a nightmare.
He was in a tent he knew too well. His wrists werechained to the beam above him, his shoulders straining to take his weight. His toes barely touched the ground. Another crank of the pulley and his shoulders would leave their sockets. He knew that from painful experience.
Dread rolled through him. He was back. Somehow, he was back in Harvari, about to be tortured—
No. It was worse than that. He wasn’t back.
He’d never left.
Grief tore through him, a despair so sharp it cut more painfully than any of the blades that had ravaged his skin. He’d never left this jungle. Never gone home. All of that had been a dream. Everything at Esperance had been conjured by his breaking mind. Amryn . . . his wife . . .
He trembled, and the chains rattled above him. Because Amryn wasn't real. She didn’t exist. She never had. She was a figment of his imagination. A desperate wish. A taste of heaven, while he was trapped in hell.
The stench of blood, sweat, and other human waste mingled with a hint of smoke from the small fire. The heavy canvas trapped the heat inside, making the space burn like an oven. Then again, maybe that was just Carver, burning with fever once more. He was fighting yet another infection.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to win this time.
Raza normally took great care with him. After all, Carver was the emperor’s favored general. The Harvarians had never had a prisoner of his status. They wanted him to survive as long as possible. As such, Raza’s tortures were always methodical. Never rageful. But sometimes he went too far. Broke one too many bones. Sliced just a little too deeply. Left the iron against Carver’s flesh just a little too long.
Sweat rolled down his ruined back, the wounds still stinging from his latest whipping. His shirt had been torn from him weeks ago. All that remained of his uniform were the tattered pants that hung too loosely on his frame. The only other thing he wore was the silver ring Raza had allowed him to keep. It was another form of torture. A taunt. Because while Raza hadn’t broken him—had only managed to draw screams from him, never answers to his endless questions—the man had still broken something deep inside him.
“Hello, General.”
A shudder ripped through Carver, his blood running cold. That voice. Calm. Almost pleasant. Never cruel.
It would be easier to bear if it was cruel.
Raza stepped in front of him, hands clasped behind his back. “I trustyour rest was comfortable?” He chuckled, shaking his head once. “Forgive me, I could not resist. A little joke, yes?” He tapped the tip of his blade against Carver’s bare chest. So many lines marred his skin. Half-healed cuts. Full-on scars. Fresher lacerations that had clotted and now dripped because he’d flinched back from Raza’s blade.
The Harvarian torturer chuckled again. “I sometimes wonder what you dream about. Me? Or something else? Something that brings you comfort, I hope. Even Craethen dogs deserve a moment of peace.” He smiled, flashing his straight, white teeth. “A moment of peace makes the horror more unbearable, does it not?”
Nausea churned in his hollow gut. If he had anything in his stomach, he would have thrown up, but he was barely given enough food and water to survive. Sometimes, the guards amused themselves by throwing him a rat or a snake, just to see how hungry he truly was.
“I have a surprise for you today,” Raza said, moving somewhere behind him.
Carver tensed. Raza’s surprises were never good, but Carver could guess what was coming. If he’d been strapped down on the bloodstained table on the other side of the tent, he’d be tortured alone. But if he was strung up here, facing the vacant manacles that dangled from a beam like the one he was chained to . . .
Raza was going to torture someone in front of him. Again.
Carver’s teeth ground together, his fingers rolling into useless fists. He wanted to strangle Raza until his sickening smile finally faded. Stab him with his own blades until those dark eyes no longer glittered at him. Break his bones with the same hammer he used so meticulously on Carver.
Instead, he would have to watch helplessly, unable to answer Raza’s questions, while another man suffered and begged Carver to speak.
Every man Raza tortured in front of Carver was a captured soldier who wore the ragged remains of the black Craethen military uniform. Sometimes, they were men Carver knew. Those sessions were the hardest. Seeing them bleed. Hearing them scream. Watching them die. It destroyed another part of his decimated soul every time.
The tent flap slapped open behind him. He heard the shuffle of boots, the dragging of feet against dirt.
He pinched his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see the face of whatever soldier Raza had brought in this time.
A groan filled the tent, but it turned into a sharp cry as the pulley across from him was cranked, chains rattling in response.
Carver’s eyes remained closed.
