Page 95 of This Dark Descent
It wasn’t an Anthir jail at all—it was the Kelbra dungeons.
The other man yanked a chain by the door. The manacles on her wrists pulled taut, drawing her arms above her head until her toes barely reached the floor. She bit back a cry as the metal dug into her wrists.
“I have some rather simple questions for you, little mouse,” Rezek said in a honeyed voice. “All you have to do is answer them honestly, and I’ll let you go unharmed.”
Ari spat at his feet.
The other man backhanded her hard, and she bit down a cry.
“Mm, perhaps not a mouse,” Rezek mused. “I suggest you don’t give Kyvin here reason to hurt you any more than he needs to. He does have a tendency to get carried away.”
Rezek leaned casually in the doorframe, arms crossed, as if watching a favored pet at play. “Tell me how Mikira is winning these races. No non-enchant can do what that horse has done.”
She said nothing, even as something warned her to be careful, to not provoke them. It was a part of her that had shrunk over these last weeks. Hearing it now, feeling its pull, a fury lit inside her. She would not be that person again. She would not hide. Not before a man who wanted to watch her cower and beg, who took pleasure in her pain.
Not when another part knew that the moment Rezek had the information he wanted, he would kill her.
Kyvin’s fist slammed into her stomach. Air rushed from her lungs in a pained gasp, the metal cuffs digging deeper into her wrists.
“Damien isn’t coming for you,” Rezek said softly. “It’s just the three of us, little mouse.” Her heart sank with every word. The sergeant had arrested him, but he’d seen her get taken. He had to know where she was, and if there was one thing she’d learned about Damien Adair, it was that he always had a plan.
He would come. He had to.
Rezek chuckled quietly. “Oh, you think he cares about you, don’t you? How sweet.” He drew closer, eyes searching hers. A faint, familiar buzzing leapt from his skin like static.
She recoiled. “What are you?”
Rezek smiled. “I think you know. You can feel it, can’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
He laughed, running one finger along the chains to her wrist before retreating to the doorway. “You mean only as much to Damien as you can do for him.”
And she had done all she could already. The golem was made, the race nearly won. What use did he have for her now?
Stop it.She shoved the dark thoughts aside. If Damien didn’t need her, he wouldn’t have bought her that dress, wouldn’t be helping her discover her new abilities, wouldn’t have said the things he’d said.
She hated how little effort it took for her to believe that someone would discard her.
“You think I’m lying, don’t you?” Rezek asked, a strange sort of twisted pity in his voice. “Didn’t you ever wonder how those men found you?”
Her head jerked up before she could stop it, and Rezek grinned. “Damien told them where you were. He hired them to steal from you, to make you desperate so you’d work for him.”
“That’s impossible,” she rasped.
Rezek made a disappointed tsking noise. “This is what happens when you put your fate in the hands of people like him. They use you.”
Kyvin withdrew a small, sharp knife from a belt at his waist, and something old and familiar simmered to life inside her. Something she thought she’d destroyed.
Fear.
“Now, then,” Rezek said in a low, dangerous voice. “I suggest you don’t make me repeat myself.”
As Kyvin grazed the point of the blade along her collarbone, Ari met Rezek’s cold eyes and lifted her head. His words were poison, and she would not let them weaken her. Even if what he said was true, she would not bend. She would hear it from Damien’s own mouth before she condemned him.
And she would tell Rezek nothing.
Kyvin pressed the point of the blade into the spot just below her bone with a grin. “Scream for me, little mouse.”
