Page 21 of Claimed By the Depths

CHAPTER 11

Patchwork of Trauma

SAPPHIRA

“You stupid girl.”

The three words Lady Morgana used to scream at me had replayed on a continuous loop the second we’d returned to Serevalen. Any shut-eye I’d attempted in the underground prison of the palace had been greeted with her chartreuse glower.

Honeyed locks pinned back by my hand to the point of perfection, the sharp swoop of her nose and the thinness of her lips stood out even more. She was catty and spiteful, driven by the need to rule and maintain control. Her gaze had always been consumed by judgment, a desire for the world to view her as her father never had.

Which was how he came to meet his demise.

She’d slit his throat two years after I’d been inducted into the estate, and only once his body was carried away did she allow her mask to fall. Every expectation she harbored boiled with vigor, and it was only a month later that she butchered the first servant.

To her, it had been a spectacle. But the rest of us? It was a display, a tightening of the leashes already looped around our throats. Any fault or misstep was met with lashings. If one dared defy her beyond that, they were hanged from the lemon tree in the courtyard and left on display until vultures circled to pluck eyeballs from sockets and take them as an offering to the God of Death.

Two years after the first, I was the only one left.

When Caspian and Syoran found me in Velispar, the noblemen who nearly beat me to death hadn’t done so solely because Lorelie and I crossed the border without proper identification. No. It had been because Morgana had wed into power and demanded that, if I were ever found, I was treated like the “stupid bitch” I had become. And they’d done just that—mutilated me beyond return and had their way with me until my clothes were torn and tattered.

The two men who had cradled me with such ‌open acceptance and wove me back together—the two men who showed up that day—I’d fucking betrayed.

“Well, was it worth it? Did you get to see your girlfriend?” Caspian droned from the cell beside me, agony still prevalent in his raspy, yet comforting timbre.

His queries stung just as I wished they would, pouring salt into an already gaping wound. It hadn’t taken until they brought him down here, bloodied and unconscious, for me to acknowledge my flaws. If anything, seeing him in the state he was had shattered me even more because I’d begged them; I’d begged her to do whatever she pleased with me if it kept them safe.

Twisting the blade of hay between my fingers, I peered into the darkness to hunt for his frame. “No.”

“Oh, so you mean to tell me that your decision to side with the unruly cunt proved fruitless for you?” Huffing a laugh, I didn’t miss the brokenness buried beneath his sarcasm. “I’m so sorry.”

“If you wish to tell me off then⁠—”

“What? Get it over with?” he spat, the shadows lingering in every corner trembling beneath his rage. “You betrayed us! Your fucking family! Was my promise not enough for you, Sapphira? You just had to go out of your way to toss me back beneath his boot once again, even when you knew what he did to me?! Were you that desperate to get your fucking pussy wet?”

My shoulders rose, but I swallowed the defensiveness I wished to spew. His words were warranted, justified in all aspects, and I had no room to reprimand him when I’d taken his vulnerability and used it against him.

Instead, my utterance came as a whisper. “I know.”

“You fucking know?” There was a soft rustle before his fist slammed into the bars separating us. “Well, let me sprinkle some more knowledge onto your damn plate. Because of you, only the gods know if Syoran is alive.”

“Caspian, he⁠—”

“No!” The single syllable fractured, and the hitch in his breathing became audible with the stillness that followed. “Everything that unfolded on Veilmar is because you elected to hand me off to Sorva, knowing damn well that Syoran was with me. If you wished to have me hanged on the gallows? I would’ve willingly come, but you had to put his life on the⁠—”

“He isn’t dead!” I screamed, my palm slapping against the makeshift cot below me as I looked up at him.

His brows furrowed, the surrounding blackness doing nothing to hide his pallor. “What?”

Sighing, I raked my fingers through my hair. “Syoran isn’t dead, Caspian. He is alive and well. I suppose that depends on your assumption, considering he was last spotted in the belly of Serevalen’s streets with the heir to the throne and your ex-best friend’s partner.”

There was a brief pause before a laugh slipped from him. It swelled, building with the mania that billowed from his cell in thick plumes. “Of fucking course, because why wouldn’t the gods ensure such a thing happened?”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Far too much to discuss here, even if it were possible for me to do so.”

“Because of the bind that Sorva has with you⁠—?”