I don't know how long it's been, but I was starting to lose hope.
"I'm going to puke," Yri manages, and I kick the empty bucket across the floor. It slides to a stop just in time as he vomits, but thankfully this time it's not bloody.
"What's going on?" Soren rumbles, his voice low and raw.
I slump back to the ground near his head, on the floor beside his half of the bed. "They got Yri as we were dragging your heavy ass, trying to find a new spot to lay low while you slept it off. After he started to go down, a couple bastards appeared out of fucking nowhere, hands up in surrender."
I give him a few seconds, not only because I know he just started to come to and will be confused, but I still feel like hell. "And that's when they told Ezra about the poison and claiming they'd trade the antidote for a couple pints of her blood," I finish on a whisper.
Yri sluggishly adds, "So she told them to prove it and they shot Cai, then again with the cure to show it worked."
I fight my rolling stomach, still feeling sick. The poison didn't have long to spread through my system, so I'm not nearly as bad as the other two, but it still wasn't a miracle cure. But when I didn't start vomiting blood, it was enough to prove their claim. Soren though, if he wasn't as massive of a man as he is, I doubt any amount of antidote would have been able to bring him back.
"She didn't," he whispers brokenly, knowing the answer without us saying a word.
We sit there for a few minutes, trying to get our heads on straight. "I tried to stop her."
I close my eyes, shame washing over me like a tidal wave. I could see the moment she made her decision in her eyes, but no matter how much I tried to talk her out of it, I couldn't. I was too sick to fight off the assholes on my own, couldn't just grab her and run without leaving Yri and Ren behind. There was no solution I could find in the heat of the moment that would keep everyone alive.
They're my weaknesses and we're her's. They played us perfectly and backed us into a corner. We were so goddamn fucking close, but it just proves the thing that I hadn't wanted to admit to myself.
"We don't deserve her, we never did."
I pass back out for a while, but there's no way to tell the passing of time in this cell. There's a single bed that I managed to drag the other two onto after we were tossed in on the cement floor before passing out the first time. There’s a single bucket and a small drain on the floor, but that’s it. Three sides of cement and the other wall is made of iron bars with a door in the center.
It’s a cliché villain dungeon, and I know Ezra will be mocking it on principle. I close my eyes, letting my thoughts keep me company. There’s no food and I doubt any will come. They’re only keeping us alive long enough to use against her, no doubt expecting her to snap and fight and want something to lord in front of her face.
Maybe then. Maybe if they take one of us out in a show of strength we can figure out a way to escape. I groan, already defeated, because it’ll just be a repeat of what happened in the forest; someone would get killed or left behind. Yri and I aren’t novices by any means, and I still can’t figure out how these men were able to sneak up on us, how they appeared out of thin air.
Eventually, Ren’s able to sit up, and maybe a day later he’s able to pace the room. We trade off sleeping in the bed, barely able to fill the painful silence with conversation. We all know how this is going to end, that we don’t have the means for a way out, and we’re just...lost.
“What do you think they’re doing to her?” Yri croaks, trying to see anything down the hallway from the bars.
It’s dark, the ground made of cement, and we can see a few more cells on the opposite wall on either side of us, but no one answered when we tried to reach out for information.
“Don’t,” Soren spits, the first blip of emotion I’ve seen on him since he awoke. “I can’t go there, I.” He cuts himself off, shaking his head and pacing the room.
There’s a small sound in the hallway and we all freeze, Yri craning his neck to try and locate the source of the sound. I get to my feet, preparing myself for the inevitable. Maybe if one of us gets close enough, we can at least get her free before they kill us. I could make my peace with that fate; a chance to redeem myself, just a little, make my existence count for something.
Footsteps echo, a single set. This is good. If we can get the door open, the three of us can overpower him. One of us might go down, but even weak, we can do some damage. Without Ezra here, with knowing we’re going to die anyway, we could still put up a decent fight.
When the figure comes into view, I actually double over, vomiting into the drain on the floor. The blood drains from my face with the violent reaction, and the edges of my vision blur. Vyrian helps to pull me up and I close my eyes, taking in deep breaths until I can stuff back the memories.
But seeing her face brought every last bit of pain I’d buried to the surface with a vengeance. Every blow my fathers dealt me, the smell of burning flesh. The screaming, the crying, Blood staining everything around me and smoke, so much smoke.
“How? How are you here?”
Her face is deathly pale, like she hasn’t seen the sun since I let her go. Her dark hair brushes her shoulders in a straight curtain, desperately needing a wash, and her once bright blue eyes seem dull. But still, there’s no mistaking that face, despite the bruises.
Blue eyes meet mine, and for just a brief second, the life flickers into her eyes and her face hardens into a determined mask. “They got me a few years after you let me go. I was shipped off to this location, and have been here ever since.” Her voice is rough, as if she isn’t used to speaking much.
“Cai, who is this?” Soren asks, his brow furrowed in confusion. Because this is the one thing I was never able to tell my flight, never wanted them to know in case the fallout ever came back on me.
“She’s the human I let escape in the counter attack.”
Because that was the heart of the matter; the dragons believed in an eye for an eye. The humans killed our females, so it was only fitting we eliminate theirs before killing them too, so they could know that pain. It wasn’t bad enough they dragged me off at sixteen and expected me to slaughter people in the fights, they wanted me to kill innocent women right alongside them. Human, but still people, and most didn’t even know how to fight back or what was happening, had no idea about the uprising the human group organized. Yet still, they were all expected to die.
I was clearing houses on the street and found her hidden in the closet, but I just couldn’t do it. She was a couple of years younger than me and radiated innocence and fear. So I hid her in with the corpses that were being taken to the pyre and got her into the woods. I couldn’t do more than that, but it gave her chance at least.
