Page 93

During the assault, he had managed to protect his head by tucking his chin and raising his arms, using his forearms to block the kicks while simultaneously employing the chains as both shield and weapon. The iron links had served him well—he’d used them to distract his attackers, tangle their legs, and trip them when the opportunity arose.

The memory of the fight played through his mind in fragmented pieces. The satisfying thud when he had successfully tripped the first guard, sending the man crashing to the stone floor, made him smile.

He was alive.

Battered, bloody, and exhausted—but alive.

They would have killed him, he was sure of it, if not for the timely arrival of the second set of guards.

Now he knew there were more than just the two loathsome men who had been bringing them their meager meals. The cell was under more extensive watch than he’d initially assumed. Or perhaps they had simply been fortunate, and this incident had occurred during a changing of the guard.

Either way, it was valuable intelligence—something that might prove useful if they ever managed to escape this place.

He let out a low groan, partly from pain but mostly in the hope that vocalizing his discomfort might somehow make it feel less intense.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if I got hurt,” Leila’s voice cut through the darkness.

His head still pounded, so he couldn’t make out her tone. Was she joking? Or was that an accusation in her voice? Gratitude?

Yes, I lied. So what?

He had wanted to be cruel when he said those words, had wanted to hurt her the same way she had hurt him with her deception. And obviously, he had succeeded.

The truth was simpler than his wounded pride wanted to admit.

He would rather die than let anyone hurt her.

Anyone, it seemed, except himself.

He shifted against the wall, trying to find a position that didn’t send fresh waves of pain through his battered body.

“What makes you think that’s what I did?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. In the silence that followed, he could hear the soft rattle of her chains as she moved. The sound was different somehow, not the usual resigned shifting he had grown accustomed to, but something more purposeful.

He was too weak to wonder much about what she might be doing. His eyes drifted closed of their own accord, and he found himself leaning more heavily against the stone wall, letting it support his weight as consciousness began to ebb and flow like a tide.

He drifted in and out of awareness, caught in that strange liminal space between waking and sleeping, where pain became a distant, manageable thing.

He might have been sitting there for minutes or hours when he became aware of a gentle touch on his face.

Soft hands cradled his jaw, and the unexpected tenderness of the contact made his eyes flutter open. Through his swollen lids, he could make out Leila’s form crouching before him, her face close to his in the darkness.

She raised her hand, and he caught the glint of metal in the dim light.

The dagger.

She had managed to retrieve it and keep it hidden.

“They didn’t notice that you kicked it over to me,” she explained, her voice barely above a whisper as she began working on his shackles.

The metal of the blade scraped softly against the iron, and he could feel the vibrations of her efforts through the chains.

“Can you move?” she asked, her attention focused on the lock mechanism as she manipulated the dagger’s point.

Gideon took a careful mental inventory of his body, testing his limbs cautiously. Everything hurt, and he felt as weak as a newborn foal.

“Not very well,” he admitted, his voice barely a whisper.