Chapter 5
As consciousness slammed through Týr,so did the chilly wetness seeping into his bones. His eyes slit open, his focus a little blurry, he found himself lying in a puddle of water. What the hell had happened?
Frowning, he took in the gloomy surroundings. Two wall lamps, one casting a small pool of light over the black chest on the floor beneath it, and the other illuminating the bed opposite him. He was in the isolated bedroom under the castle basement. His gaze skittered back to the bed and the figure reclining against the headboard.
One knee raised, Nik shuffled a deck of cards.
“So, you finally decided to rejoin us?” the warrior murmured, tossing a card onto the bed.
Týr pushed up and grunted, slumping against the wall. Shit.He bit back a groan. With his head feeling as it had been stuffed with cotton wool, and his body drained of energy to within an inch of his life, staying on his ass was probably a good idea.
He rubbed his sweaty brow with a shaky hand. “Why…” Fuck, his throat hurt as if he had gravel lodged there. “…am I down here?”
“You tell me.”
Just what he needed, a funny man.
“Nik,” he growled, biting back a curse, dead sure razors had joined the gravel in his craw. “What… Happened?”
His fellow Guardian pushed off the bed, wearing only leather pants and heavy combat boots. The soft light emphasized his bare, muscled torso covered by multiple tattoos on his upper body, biceps, and neck, and glinted off his silver nipple piercings.
Nik crossed to the huge, black wooden trunk where a jug and glass waited, poured some water and brought it over.
Týr rubbed a palm over his bare, damp chest…and went dead still. “What the fuck happened to my clothes?
“You really don’t remember, do you?” Nik hunkered down in front of him.
“Don’t tell me we finally got the kink going?” he muttered, hating the pity.
Nik didn’t rise to his baiting taunt. “Youreallydon’t remember, do you?” he murmured, revealing a brief glimpse of his tongue piercing. “But, considering everything, I’m not surprised.” He handed Týr the glass, his expression thoughtful…well, as much as ice could express.
Tyr chugged back the cold liquid and passed the glass back to Nik with a shaky hand. He shut his eyes and collapsed against the stone wall again. At the clinking of chains behind him, he leaped away and fell back on his hands in the puddle of water, staring in frozen terror at the fetters on the wall. His mind dragged back to his incarceration in Tartarus…
Beaten and bloody, he lay on the dusty ground, sweltering heat surrounding him, the fight over. The fact he hadn’t yet been killed in the arena after the battle…his stomach heaved. After a century, he knew what would happen next.
As if he ever had a choice. Heavens, he wished for death, short-lived as it was, buthecould never die. Such was his punishment. He’d accepted that he was responsible for the massacre of so many innocents at the Sumerian pantheon and its eventual fall. The reason he’d been incarcerated in this hellhole.
“Bidding begins at a thousandportal summoning stones or hundred thousand pieces of gold,” the demon roared to the spectators. “He is, after all, a deity, the youngest son of Odin…”
Týr’s gut went lax, knowing the horror that would be visited upon him soon. He shut off his mind, retreating to a part of himself where nothing existed—
“We didn’t restrain you,” Nik’s quiet voice broke through the horror trapping his mind. “We brought you here, thought it safer for you. For everyone. I’m merely the watchman. You can thank me later for not chaining you.”
Týr’s focus latched onto his unshackled wrists. Several seconds passed before he could breathe again. He looked up, unable to dredge up his usual mocking repartee.
Nik’s pale eyes flickered as if in understanding. “C’mon. A shower should do you good. Maybe help your brain to recover that sparkling wit.”
The bastard would joke?
Undoubtedly, Nik seeing him felled like a useless, dried-up tree stump had brought on the sympathy Týr didn’t freakin’ want.
“You need a boost?”
He shook his head. Using the wall as a crutch, Týr pushed to his feet. His legs wobbled like a babe attempting to first stand. His knees buckled, and he dropped to his ass.
Without a word, Nik hoisted him up from the grimy puddle and put a steady arm around his waist, steering him to the other side of the room.
A little unhinged from memories of a past he could never quite lock down, he shot out, “This is just too much skin contact for me.”
