I turned to Venay. “You enchanted the book. Do you have some sort of connection to it? Is there a way to locate it?”
“A connection?” She shook her head. “No.”
I frowned, staring down at the tabletop.Frustrateddidn’t even begin to describe how I felt.
Venay stood up, her white gown effortlessly flowing down her slim figure. She walked alongside the table, trailing a finger over the shining surface as she approached me. “I didn’t want to have to use this kind of magic, but seeing as we have exceeded all other options, I will for my friend's son. She would have wanted me to do everything in my power to help him.”
My eyebrows drew together as I gazed up at the enchanter. “So, thereisa way to locate it? What kind of magic?”Why didn't she mention that before?
Archer soared out of his chair, white-knuckling the edge of the table. “Venay,” he growled her name as a threat. “No. We agreed?—”
“I know what we said. But your daughter may just be foolish enough to go to try and save him herself if we don’t help. And her death is not a chance the gods would want us to take,” she shot back, her voice stern but still ethereal. “Her death is not a chancethe worldcan afford to take.”
“You could die…” Archer disputed under his breath, as if no one else was in the room beside the two of them.
“She could die andhecould die.”
The concern in her voice when she saidhestrummed up some confusion inside of me, though I chalked it up to the pain of wanting to save her friend's offspring.
She closed the discussion by repositioning her silver eyes upon me. “I will help. Meet me in the courtyard two evenings from now.”
My jaw wilted along with my hope. “Two evenings from now? Why not tonight?”
“The Jewel-Light Meteor Shower is two nights from now,” she reminded me. “And the kind of power I must use to perform the ritual to help you, will come directly from the gods themselves.”
Chapter
Fifteen
SEBASTIAN
Each day, Beaumont delivered me double the strikes than the day prior. The beatings began with just the chain as my enemy, but now having been here for over a week, I fell victim to things much worse.
Being a soldier, I’d been punished and beaten before, but this was a whole other level of torture. I had only been allowed to see a healer once, when the beating I received had almost been enough to kill me. It was good to know that Beaumontactuallyplanned to keep me alive, but the agony I felt was beginning to make me crave death instead.
I was pretty sure I’d fallen into some state of psychosis, because I was no longer fully aware of what was happening to me. Which honestly, was for the best. If I made it out of here alive, I didn’t want to remember the things that had been done to me. When I was in Craterra, I heard the Draemornians describe in vivid detail what they would do to Maeve if they found her. Turns out, they didn’t discriminate.
My ankles were tied together with rope and my hands were knotted the same way across my abdomen. Cement soothed the burn of the hundreds of slits in my skin as I laid on the floor of my cell. At first, I thought I’d be able to fight my way out of thesebars, but there hadn’t been a single opportunity where I could have tried without granting myself an instant death sentence. Beaumont never came to see me alone, and during the day, there were guards stationed every ten yards throughout the dungeon. I could have tried at night when only one guard stood watch, but I had become so weak that I had no shot at being successful.
My only chance of getting out of here was my friends, and if saving my life meant risking Maeve’s, I prayed that they would just let me die.
I thought I was fucked in the head before, but if I made it out of here alive, I didn’t think I’d ever be the same. My mind was stuck in the darkest of places, intruding on my every waking thought. The one thing that kept me going was how thankful I was that this was happening to me and not to my friends, or toher.
Somewhere in my state of delirium, I heard the rattle and clang of metal.
“Good morning, Prince Hawthorne,” a bastardly voice sang into my cell.
Fuck.
“Or should I say,formerPrince Hawthorne. Can you be a prince of a kingdom that no longer exists?” Cyprian Beaumont mocked, his voice worming into my ears like shitty music.
I scrambled to sit up, though maneuvering your broken body when your limbs were knotted together was no easy task.
With a click, the cell door unlocked and Beaumont slunk in, holding a glass of water and a lump of dry bread. He threw the meal to the ground in front of me, then one of his guards untied my wrists so I could eat the only sustenance I would be offered today.
Even knowing that the water was tainted with magic suppressant, I consumed every drop. A week of dirt and dust hadleft my esophagus raw, forcing me to gag when I swallowed the crumbling bits of bread.
When I finished devouring my meal, instead of securing my wrists again, one of the guards untied my ankles and pulled me to my feet. He grumbled when he realized he would have to support my full weight. I was far too weak to stand, and also pretty positive that my ankle was broken.
