I obeyed without thought. Pride had burned away with my flesh. Whatever remained of me no longer knew how to resist.
The limestone was cold beneath my hands, rough and damp. When I lowered myself onto it, pain tore through me—sharp, immediate, alive. My skin caught on the uneven stone, and the breath left my body in a hoarse gasp.
Amara moved behind me. I heard the soft clink of glass, the rustle of linen, the crush of herbs between her palms. The smell rose in waves—mint, myrrh, cedar oil, and something floral beneath the smoke.
She peeled away what was left of my tunic, her fingers moving with the cautious precision of someone handling sacred ruins. The fabric had fused to my wounds during the trial; when it tore free, it carried skin with it. Pain flared white and immediate, shooting through my back like fire given breath. I bit down hard, forcing a groan into silence.
Then her touch found me—gentle despite the damage, careful even with the shaking of her hands, and defiant in the way it dared to offer mercy in a place built for cruelty.
Her hands moved with the precision of someone who had done this too many times—someone who had learned to make mercy look like obedience. She dipped a strip of flax linen into the salve and laid it across my back.
The balm was cool at first, then burning—like forgiveness poured onto an open wound. The hiss of it meeting flesh filled the small chamber.
“They watch me constantly,” she murmured, voice low and even. “I’m only allowed out to heal. No more, no less. I tend to the ones they choose, when they choose.”
Her tone was measured, but underneath it lay the quiet tremor of exhaustion.
She pressed the cloth deeper into the burn, and I couldn’t stop the sound that left me—half pain, half relief.
“I sleep on a healer’s cot,” she went on, her rhythm unbroken. “But it’s cold, and the stone beneath it never lets me forget where I am. I eat from a rusted bowl. No light. No voices. Just chains and silence.”
The scent of herbs thickened as she worked. The pain dulled, fading into a sluggish warmth that crept through my limbs. My breath steadied, but only barely.
“Sometimes,” she whispered, “I forget what color the sky is.”
The words hung between us—small, fragile things swallowed by the dark.
I turned my head enough to see her through the wavering torchlight. Her braid had come loose; a single strand clung to her cheek. Blood and dust streaked her wrists. The hollows beneath her eyes were bruised shadows, the kind that never fully faded. Her skin was pale, pulled taut across bones sharpened by hunger.
But she was still Amara.
Still whole in the ways that mattered.
Still, the woman who once saw the man beneath the scars.
I reached for her hand and drew it to my lips. Her skin was dry, callused, and real. I had forgotten whatrealfelt like.
“I promise you, Amara,” I said, my voice scraping through the wreck of my throat. “I’ll get us out of here. No matter what it takes.”
She smiled—a flicker of warmth, as fragile and fleeting as the torchlight itself.
“Lazarus…” Her voice broke softly on my name. “I need you alive. Not dying for hope.”
“I have to finish the trials,” I murmured. The words felt foreign, heavy, as if spoken by someone else. “It’s the only way. If I win, we’re free. Both of us.”
Her expression shifted. The light in her eyes faltered, replaced by something colder, fear wearing the mask of understanding.
“If they see I matter to you…”
Her voice wavered, but she didn’t finish.
The silence that followed was heavier than the stone around us. It pressed down, smothering even the torch’s crackle.
“They’ll destroy me,” she whispered at last. “And they’ll make you watch.”
My hands curled into fists. I shut my eyes, trying to drown the image her words conjured, but it was already there—branded beneath my ribs, throbbing with every heartbeat.
“I’ll find a way to keep you safe,” I said, voice low and shaking. “Even if I have to rip Severen apart with my bare hands.”
