Cadel is not quiet exactly, but he’s gone silent when no one is talking to him directly, withdrawing into himself, his gaze roving over the ground, looking at the leaves and dirt in a way that none of the rest of us understand.
Mia is red-faced and frustrated, grabbing and hauling the traps in one by one before throwing them out again. She’s muttering under her breath, but Legion is still, his eyes seeking the dark places, peering into them, searching for something or someone.
Everyone feels the something wrong.
“We should head back,” I say.
“No, we have mouths to feed,” Mia says almost desperately. She glances at Legion and back at the fish pot she’s about to drop back in the river.
I clamp my mouth shut and start moving around like I would if I were in Foreen, tense, ready to react. I didn’t realise how nice the last couple of days were, not living in such a volatile situation.
“How did you escape the citadel?” Legion asks.
I can almost feel all the heads turn towards me. I find it ironic that it was his story that triggered me to start questioning it myself.
“It’s not an interesting story.” I try to deflect.
“They never are, but I’d still be interested in hearing it, as a distraction.”
I look down and see that his knuckles are white on his knife. He needs to know more than he’s letting on.
I sigh and indicate the path. “Let’s walk and talk.”
Mia is ahead of us now, huffing and puffing
“I went to the citadel because I saw a baron watching my family. He turned and ran, and I knew I had to get to him before he reached the citadel. I chased him. Oh, it was so stupid, but I would do it again. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, stop him, plead with him, kill him. Of course, I couldn’t catch him. I thought I could make a deal. No, I did make a deal; they just didn’t honour it.”
“Heathens,” Legion hisses.
I snort a laugh. “I thought so, too, after. The Beta’s Voice is the one who heard me out and made the deal, but then she gave me to the Beta’s Fang. That was when I saw that…” I trail off, remembering the look of horror on Walker’s face when I’d walked into the citadel. My shock as I stared at him as he was led in. “Anyway, the torture,” I stutter over the word and curse myself for it, “was intense and fairly constant. I thought he would kill me, but he kept me alive. The first couple of months were hell. I couldn’t talk because I just used to scream so much. I grew weak; light hurt my eyes because they kept me in the dark. The sound of people screaming never stopped. I tried calling out a few times, but no one answered.”
Legion is silent, but he looks like he might throw up.
“After a while, I got used to the pain, started detecting patterns, and I started thinking logically again.”
“They didn’t break you.”
“I guess not. They came close, but I didn’t want to die there.”
“So, what did you do?”
Mordecai, Jarek, and Cadel are listening intently, but I can’t look at them. The fact that my scent is blocked is the only reason no one can smell my fear and shame. If I look at them, they will see it.
“I knew they would make a mistake one day, get complacent and forget something important. So, I just waited, and one day, someone unlocked the door to come in but got called away. I ran, hobbled, dragged myself. At every corner, I expected to be captured, to hear a shout and have someone discover me, but they didn’t. I made it up to the courtyard, and there was this cart full of bags. I jumped in and hid in the back. When he got out of the city, I jumped out and went into the wilds to die.”
“Except you didn’t.”
“No,” I say with a frown. “It was strange. I was sick, delirious for days. I couldn’t see properly; my body was bent and broken; I had several broken bones and so many bruises my body was black and purple. My fingernails were missing, and I couldn’t talk, only make a rasping sound. My fear was so intense I smelled sour.”
“What happened?”
“I healed. I just slowly, over hours, weeks, months, healed until I could walk then run, whisper then talk, until my wounds healed and my bones mended. The fear I was able to push down, and the longer I stayed free, the more confident I got.”
Legion makes a sound.
I look at him and smile. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Legion. I’m alive. There are so many who went into that hellhole who didn’t.”
“I know,” he says gently, “but I have the capacity to feel sorrow for them and for you. I am sorry that happened to you. So sorry. But who opened the—”
