Page 139 of Somno Slave

My breath shudders.

We’re back.

He’s taken me back to his torture.

The Friars stand around him in orange. This time, I notice little things, stupid things. The way the fabric looks patchy, darkened in some places and slightly washed out in others. The stitching that’s jagged at the hems. Blue thread.

It runs beneath the orange hems in ugly, uneven lines, bright where it should be hidden. It’s not decorative, not careful. The stitches are thick and crude, punched through fabric like wounds.

My gaze catches on it and something inside me recoils.

“They marked everything they owned,” Deogal says beside me. I flinch toward him. He is standing close now, whole and dry and terrible in the dark. His eyes are on the men. “Even mercy.”

Before I can answer, one of them takes the younger Deogal’s wrist. He shrieks like he knows what’s coming next. My own hand tightens instantly around my bracelet.

“No,” I whisper.

The Friar places Deogal’s arm against the stone with careful precision. Another kneels beside him, robes pooling orange around his knees.

Deogal starts shaking his head before they do anything. His mouth opens around a sound that doesn’t fully become speech. Panic hollows him out. He tries to pull back, weakly at first, then harder, chains scraping violently beneath him.

“Please,” he says.

My chest tears open around it.

The Friar only lowers his head, almost tenderly.

“Stay still,” he murmurs. Then he brings the iron down, and the crack detonates around the cell.

Deogal screams, and my own wrist explodes with pain. I stagger back, clutching it, but there is nowhere to go. The bracelet burns cold against my skin. Pain pulses beneath the silver, deep and bright and impossible, like the bone has split clean through me too.

I choke.

Deogal folds over his ruined hand, breath coming in broken, animal bursts. His fingers twitch wrong. One of the Friars catches his chin and lifts his face again, forcing him to look upward while tears spill hot down his cheeks.

I can’t breathe.

The older Deogal turns to me then. He watches my face instead of the torture. Watches the tears gathering, watches theway I cradle my wrist, watches my body breaking around pain that does not belong to it. His expression softens.

“Rheda,” he murmurs.

I shake my head, but he is already there. His hand finds my cheek, warm against skin gone cold with panic. His thumb moves slowly beneath my eye, catching a tear before it falls.

“Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

Another sound tears from the boy on the floor. My wrist throbs so violently my vision blurs.

“It hurts,” I whisper.

“I know.”

And God help me, I believe him. His hand slides to the back of my neck and draws me closer, not forcefully, not this time. He holds me against him while I shake. My forehead presses to his chest. His fingers stroke slowly through my hair like I am the one who needs comforting. LikeIam the one who has survived something.

“They made me watch my own body become something useless,” he says quietly against my hair. “They taught me pain could be patient.”

Another sound tears through the chamber. It’s not screaming this time. Wet coughing.