He made me see her again—my mother. The way she’d worked to keep us alive. The men, the nights, the shame I tried to bury. He whispered that I’d hated her for it. That deep down, I blamed her.
And then he spoke of my father.
“If only you knew who he was,” Severen had said, his tone almost kind. “I do. A man of wealth and freedom. He could have changed everything for you—but he chose his own life instead. He chose freedom over you. He never loved your mother. He never loved you.”
Those words had burned themselves into my skull, and now they wouldn’t stop replaying.
I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to push the sound out. “Stop,” I muttered. “Just stop.”
But the voice was gone now, replaced by the heavy drip of water and the clink of chains. And in that quiet, the poison Severen left behind kept spreading.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore—what was true and what was illusion. Were those really my memories? Or had he built them to break me?
Across our cell, I caught a glimpse of Salvatore. He sat in the corner in the half-light, head bowed, shoulders tense. Since his second trial, he’d barely spoken to me. There was something different about him now—something closed off.
Now, we were just two prisoners breathing the same air and pretending not to notice each other falling apart.
I wanted to ask if his whispers still followed him, too.
If Severen had shown him things he couldn’t forget.
But the distance between us was heavier than chains.
My thoughts tangled—what Severen said, what the mirrors showed, what I remembered. None of it lined up anymore.
I couldn’t tell where the truth ended and the lies began.
I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. I was starving, bruised, burned—and yet what hurt most wasn’t the pain.
It was no longer knowing who I was.
The whispers had done their work.
And I feared they were right.
The reek of blood, sweat, and decay clung to the air like a second skin. A guard’s leather sandals scraped against the floor, the sound echoing through the chamber. He was broad-shouldered, his teeth filed to jagged points, and his laughter carried the hoarse rasp of smoke and rot.
“Well, look at you two,” he said. “A pair of limp-dicked miracles.”
He spat on the ground and crushed it beneath his sandal. “Didn’t think you’d last this long, but here you are—still breathing, still twitching. Like maggots that refuse to die.”
He paced before us, his shadow sliding across the wall. “Don’t get too proud of yourselves. You’ve only made it through two trials—two. That was the warm-up.”
He rubbed his hands together, the sound like rough hide grating against itself. “Now we begin the fun.”
The room fell silent.
“Next,” he growled, “is the Trial of Starvation and Cannibalism.”
My stomach lurched.Cannibalism?
He grinned at my reaction. “That’s right. No food. No water. Only time—and the scent of rotting flesh. Let’s see which of you starts chewing first.”
The bile burned my throat.
“Maybe you’ll dine on your best friend’s liver,” the guard said, his eyes flicking toward Salvatore. “Or gnaw your own fingers to the bone. The gods love a good show.”
He threw back his head and laughed, the sound bouncing off the stone like the crack of a whip. When his laughter died, he held up a rusted iron key, dangling it from a finger slick with sweat.
