“I never told you where I’m from,” Tavin said, his eyes narrowing. “How do you know about Azurite? Who are you?”
Von slipped on his coat. “As Klyde told you, I’m no one. Carry on. I want to reach the city before nightfall.”
He moved ahead to escape any more questions. They may share blood, but he was no one to him, and it needed to remain that way.
Gods willing, he would find Klyde and return the boy. It’s not as though he knew how to take care of him. At fifteen, Tavin wasn’t a helpless child, yet to Von he was.
His sister’s child.
And Tarn’s.
A pressure tightened around Von’s lungs, making the hike more difficult. Gods, what was he to tell him?
Pardon me, lad, I am your other uncle, brother to your mother, who caused her death without intention. I am also the one who intentionally blew up your father’s ship with him on it. A pleasure to meet you.
Sure, that would be the perfect introduction. If he wanted to traumatize the boy.
A sudden rustle disturbed the bushes. Von leaped in front of Tavin and whipped out two blades. They flew and hit a tree trunk, where two yellow eyes watched them. A large black wolf emerged from the trees, prowling forward with a slow, eerie grace.
And sitting on his head was a dainty fairy with golden wings.
“There you are!” Keena announced cheerfully. “We have been searching everywhere for you.”
CHAPTER 65
Rawn
Rawn lost count of the number of deaths he witnessed beneath the Blood Keep. Prisoners died by torture, starvation, or infection. The worst deaths came from the Bloodhounds patrolling the tunnels. Sometimes, the guards would leave a cell unlocked merely to feed the hounds, or perhaps out of boredom. They enjoyed it when prisoners attempted to escape.
They always tried.
They never succeeded.
Rawn listened to screams in the dark of another failed attempt. Their pleas to be saved cut off at the crunch of bone. The dark was welcomed then, sparing him the sight. The tunnel echoed with the hungry snarls and wet tearing of flesh as the Bloodhounds viciously fought over the elf’s remains. Rawn clamped his shackled hands over his ears, desperate not to hear.
With no sun or moon, he could only mark the days when they dragged him out of his cell for questioning. Grod experimented with many ways to torture him. His favorite method was to shear pieces of flesh from Rawn’s back and douse him in vinegar.
No matter how much he denied knowing anything about a key, the pain didn’t stop. It lived in his bones, in the pores of his skin, and in every breath of his lungs.
How many times had it been? How many days?
He lost count when he had stopped speaking. He couldn’t when his throat was raw from screaming and so dry from dehydration, it may as well have been filled with sand.
The act of nobility had been ingrained in him. It was the foundation of his House, But he didn’t feel noble now. He felt resentful. Remorseful. And with it a horrid regret because he feared he would die in this place. Reprieve came only when he could sleep and dream of his family.
They should have come first.
If he had put them first, he wouldn’t be here now.
Rawn lay curled within his small cell. It hardly had enough room to move, and it was so cold. The air was rank with the putrid scent of decay and filth. His back still throbbed where they had carved off a piece of him the first day he arrived.
The main tunnel gate clanked open, and Rawn flinched. He shook when guards arrived at his cell door. He internally begged for mercy, but his mouth only managed a weak moan.
They grabbed his ankles and yanked him out of his hole and dragged him away. God of Urn, how did it come to this?
Rawn had no more strength left as the guards brought him to the same carved out room he had first awoken in. The warden’s torture chamber. The dried strip of his bloodied flesh with Greenwood’s tattoo was pinned to the wall with all the rest.
Grod wandered to a stone table assorted with rusted weapons. The guards didn’t attach Rawn’s shackles to the long chain attached to the pulley on the ceiling this time. Instead, they hauled him over to a barrel filled with murky water reflecting his gaunt face.
