Page 31 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Desperately, I clawed for an anchor. Something that still felt like hope in a world devoid of it. I’d managed to gather the pretty trinkets scattered throughout this hollow room, arranging them alongside candles on the windowsill in the closest thing to an altar I could build. It was that subtly flickering flame I focused on now.

But the anchor fractured.

Two sets of eyes flashed through my mind—one a pale winter lake filled with laughter, the other inquisitive liquid silver—and my next breath came in a desperate gasp. As though I could hold back the grief that had been suffocating me for months.

The memory of the men whose blood spilled on Portal Day lodged like a blade in my chest. The agony was nearly as piercing as the sound of that godsdamned scream.

Inhuman, that pain. It wasn’t human.

Nor was it new.

No. The torment within these walls had become the soundtrack to my nights, just as the incessant squawk of birds beyond them was the anthem of daylight.

Strategic, I assumed. After all, why else put me in the room directly above the dungeons? Moros might not lay a finger on me after the betrayer convinced them they could use my skill set, but he could damn well break down the walls I’d so carefully constructed inside my mind.

3,717.

Copper tainted the air, and I hissed as crimson bloomed across my palm—a poisonous petal damned to fall.

My torture wasn’t the same as what Ally endured beneath me.

But it was likely more effective.

If I’d possessed any information of value, I would’ve cracked like an egg months ago.

Every year of training within Nat’s halls begged me to go to her. To help her. To make her pain stop.

Set it right.

But as always, the door was locked.

There was no unweaving those particular wards, no matter how desperately I tried to sever their threads.

Trapped.

Trapped by the devil himself.

The betrayer had ensured only three people could open my glorified prison cell—the same three bastards we’d once called friends. And that fucker’s magic was as solid as a physical wall. Impenetrable. At least to my months of attempts to weave through it.

At least until they came for me and demanded I put her right after they’d shattered her body again.

I should refuse.

It felt like I was an accomplice to the most horrific kind of crime. And it was killing me slowly, because I couldn’t keep doing this. Putting her back together so they could tear her apart again, bone by bone.

It was only a matter of time before that steel will crumbled.

Shit, it was already beginning to. Her mind slipping bit by precious bit.

3,853.

Fuck.

They usually stopped after an hour. Usually stopped when her screams devolved into gurgling cries, a heartbeat before silence fell like a blade.

Please.

I wasn’t even sure whether I’d said it aloud. An empty, hopeless plea to gods who’d abandoned us both long ago.