XXXI
THE PLACE WAS COLD.And dark. Adel shifted, feeling as though she’d been trampled beneath a racing chariot. Battered and sore. The cut on her thigh burned, but she was alive. That was a mercy. Or a torment. She should feel the sink of disappointment, the heat of anger, betrayal. Not this eerie calm. This stillness of mind and body, as if she’d known all along this would be the outcome. The rustle in the cell beside her betrayed Felix’s presence, even if she couldn’t see him.Cagewould have been a better description thancell. Nets of iron bars wrapped around them both, secured to the stone wall at her back.
“I did not think this place really existed.” Her voice shook with a shiver.
“You’ve never been down to the punishment cells?” His voice was muffled, as if he held his face in his hands.
“You seem surprised.” Her chin lifted. “I am not insubordinate.”
He chuckled, then stopped as if he’d just realized she wasn’t laughing with him. Silence—then an echoing drip.
He cleared his throat. “But we are not dead. That’s something.”
She inhaled something rank. “I would not be so certain. What is that terrible smell?”
A pause. “Not me.”
She was glad the darkness hid her smile. “How is your face? It seems a soft, sensitive thing to withstand a hit like that—even if Jovan’s skill as a cestus is poor and childlike.”
A huff of laughter. “Compassion and double insults in the same breath. Your abilities are endless.”
“I am a woman of many skills.”
He chuckled again, and for a moment, Adel could nearly pretend that they were friends and not fellow prisoners. And yet, perhaps being fellow prisoners was what made them friends.
“I’m fine. How is your leg? I never got to finish stitching it.”
“It burns.”
“I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not caring for it sooner.”
“You have cared for me better than anyone else ever has.” She winced as the words left her mouth, banter slipping and revealing something that felt true and vulnerable. A mistake. She’d advanced too far without backup.
“I got us locked in the punishment cells.”
“Yes. Exactly.” She let out a breath of relief and tried to arrange her tone into something light and unaffected. “I will be sure to blame you if I die of infection.”
“I would not expect anything less.”
Felix leaned back against the cold brick, turning his head so his throbbing jaw pulsed against the coolness. He wasn’t about to admit how badly that “childlike” hit had hurt.
The drips echoed.
The silence stretched.
Had they been here for days? Hours?
Minutes?
There was no way to tell in the darkness. But by the time heavy footsteps announced the arrival of one of the guards, his stomach had been growling for centuries.
A lantern burned his eyes.
Felix pressed his hand to his forehead as a shield as a guard he didn’t know appeared, arms laden with a jumble of things. In the lantern’s light, Felix saw Adel sit up straighter in the cell beside him.
