CHAPTER ONE
ELYSSARA
It’s beenfour days since I was taken. Maybe five, but I can’t be sure. Time’s a bruise—swelling, tender, impossible to track. Days bleed into nights, measured only by the sludge they call food tossed through the bars like scraps for an animal. I don’t know when exactly, but it seems to be once a day.
The dungeons reek of piss and unwashed bodies, and the air is thick with imminent death, punctuated by the pained groans of whoever else dwells down here.
My eyes have adjusted to the dark. I can see the slick, grime-covered stone floors, the outline of bodies curled up on rat-infested cots. But worse than that is the sound. The sound of keys jingling as the guard approaches. The heavy thud of boots descending the stairs. A warning of what’s to come. Because I know what happens now—someone will be taken, and they’ll never return—only replaced by a new body.It might be me today.
I push myself to sit—a woeful attempt to prepare myself—but the sharp pang of pain through my ribs cripples me, and I drop back onto the cot. They’re probably broken. I hiss a curse, and my lip splits again. The crusted blood from days earlierbreaks apart to make way for the river of crimson that spills from my lower lip.
We’re a game to the guards. If they don’t take us, they brutalize us in our cells for savage enjoyment—a spectacle to everyone else in the Kryntar dungeons. We either endure it, or we watch. There’s no mercy in either, and I’m not sure which is worse.
The thudding boots are closer now, the jingling of the keys thundering through my mind.
“Get up, Lightborne,” a female voice croons. “It’syourturn today.”
“Why not just do it here?” I croak, my voice hoarse from disuse. “Make a hero of yourself while I’m in chains.”
I know I shouldn’t provoke her, but bitterness is not so easily buried.
“Not today. Death must be earned, too. Especially by a Dravari whore,” she spits the words with disdain.
“Better than being a leashed dog for a king ruling a wasteland,” I retort.
The woman steps close enough for the bars of my cell to cast shadows across her face, and drops her voice into a low whisper. “But still far better than being a forgotten princess of a lost throne. Or a kinslayer and prince who rules nothing but a treehouse.”
Kael.
My breath hitches, and I recoil. A cruel smile plays on her lips, and she knows she’s struck something real within me.
He betrayed me. He fucking gave me up. And yet I still cling to the fragile hope that he’ll come for me—that it was all part of the plan. I know I shouldn’t. But hope is a cruelty of the mind—a mirage in the desperate dry of the desert.
I’ve relived the moment he let me go again and again. The way his knees hit the ground, the way he resisted Maldrak’sguards, the way the Gateway of Threads swallowed me whole. But mostly, the way he screamed my name like a prayer.Or was it more like a curse?
“I would rather be no one at all than be complicit in Maldrak’s plans,” I grit out, pain still flaring in my ribs.
The woman turns the key in my cell’s lock, and the heavy door groans open. She strides across the cell and sits on the cot's edge. She raises her hand, and I brace myself for impact, but her fingers graze my cheek, pushing my dirty, blood-soaked hair behind my ear.
“Oh, I’m not just complicit, darling. I run this little empire for Maldrak,” she mocks with a lilting tone. “And, don’t worry, Lightborne. You willbegto be no one when we’re finished with you.”
My pulse stutters. Heat crawls up my neck like a warning. Panic threatens to consume me, but I’ve been prey before. I soothe myself the way Revryn taught me:
Tell me something you can smell, see and feel, little one.
One heartbeat at a time.
One foot in front of the other.
One moment is all you have.
“But today is your lucky day, Lightborne. His Majesty would like to dine with you this evening,” she says, still stroking my hair with tenderness so at odds with her words.
I startle.He what?
“We need to clean the filth off you—make you look slightly less like a Dravari gutter rat.”
I push up on trembling elbows, but her fist finds my ribs before I make it halfway.
