“Told you I could make him squeal! Ten silvers, pricks.”
I keep my vigil on the tent, uncaring of what they do to my body.
“Do you remember me, Dark Commander? No?” Crippling pain as he drags his knife across my side. Warm blood seeps from the wound, mingles with the rest. “You’ll never forget me now.”
I don’t respond.
I don’t even make a sound when the bastard waterwielder from yesterday returns and summons a slab of thick ice to my left flank—and holds it there.
Every nerve ending screams for relief. Burning, devastating, all-consuming pain lances through me. Even after he melts the ice and forces the same bloody water down my throat, I don’t give them the reaction they want.
But the physical pain is nothing compared to the turmoil racking my heart. It’s been two fucking days.
Why hasn’t the waterwielder emerged?
It’s because I want to be the one to kill her, I tell myself.
But I know it’s a lie.
And that hurts worst of all.
Chapter Forty-Nine
It’smid-afternoononthethird day when it finally happens.
I can’t hold myself up anymore. My arms throb as I sag between the posts. Dried blood coats my face and my chest. Both eyes are swollen, my vision nearly nonexistent except for a blurry slit.
But it’s enough for me to see her when she finally emerges.
Her face is pale and gaunt, cheeks sunken, but it’s unmistakablyher.
My shoulders loosen.
The daily beatings must’ve taken their toll on me, because when she sees me, the waterwielder looks overcome with a bone-deep horror. Like she might fall to her knees and vomit all over the matted grass. It must be my vision that shakes—it can’t be that her knees wobble as she takes a step toward me, then another and another, until she’s halfway to the platform.
“Princess!” The general’s gruff voice echoes through the camp, and the waterwielder freezes, turning as Sorka strides toward her. “Are you well? The effects wore off? You’ve eaten?”
She nods once, tucking her hands behind her back. For a moment, they appear to be glowing. I blink slowly, and they’ve returned to normal. A trick of the light.
“Good. Come with me.” My teeth clench, bruised jaw aching, as he rests a familiar hand on her lower back and leads her away. She takes three shaky steps, then turns her head to stare at me. Her pretty blue eyes shimmer in the sunlight. She’s too far to discern the emotion in her watery gaze, but my idiot heart calls it devastation.
No.
I won’t let her fool me a third time.
Twenty-six punches and three zig-zagged cuts carved into my arm.
That’s how long it takes for the waterwielder and general to emerge from his tent. Both their eyes are bloodshot, and a heavy sense of loss slopes the general’s proud shoulders.
She must have told him of her lover’s fate.
His son.
I wait for the general to charge toward me, to exact his retribution with fists and ice and blade.
But he only takes the waterwielder’s elbow and gives her a tour of the camp. Her wary eyes find me again and again. Something tight pulls in my chest. Her teardrop necklace rests between her collarbones where it belongs.
I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.
