Nor fear.
Nor pain.
The terrible shake of a rattled soul.
My teeth clank together, even my organs quake, and with this terrible full-body shudder comes the agonizing reminder of what Rekk did to my back—
I groan, remembering the way the whip snapped against my skin—over and over—adding to the relentless shudder that
just
won’t
stop.
Looking past the oversized brown tunic shrouding the top half of my body, I see iron cuffs bound around my ankles with an interlocking chain. My wrists bear the same, the chain draped between them connected to the one between my feet with a stumpy length of metal. No doubt meant to stop me from doing anything but sit here and rot in my own filth.
The dull ache in my shoulder tells me that what I assume is an iron pin is still deeply embedded in my body. Probably festering.
Shit.
My hand comes up to pluck the stringy piece of what I also assume is Rekk’s finger tendon from between my chattering teeth. I flick it away, the motion making my entire back blaze, a serrated howl threatening to rip up my throat.
Instead, I begin humming my calming song, hoping it’ll soothe me from the inside out—
“Th-th-thought you were dead,” a high-pitched voice squeaks at me from the cell to the right of mine, and my tremble abates so suddenly I almost believe I imagined it.
I tilt my chin as best I can, half my vision slit as I look at the creature peering at me through the gloom with beady black eyes, furry gray claws wrapped around the bars separating us.
A woetoe. Male, by the look of his long whiskers that are wiggly at the ends, unlike the females of their kind, with theirs straight like blades.
“Surprise,” I rasp.
His glossy black nose twitches, and my gaze drops to the yellow pronged teeth jutting from his maw, the incisors long and slightly curved, pinched together at the tip. His face is mostly shaded in wispy gray fur, a churn of wiry black hair curling around his paddled ears. “Your eye looks s-s-sore.”
I make a noncommittal sound.
Truth be told, it’s the least of my concerns.
“Name’s Wrook. What th-th-they got you for?” he asks, releasing the bar to scratch behind his rounded ear, his gaze scraping across the dried blood on my fisted hands.
“Doing bad things to bad folk.”
I think.
The gore that was on my skinsuit suggested as much.
“I heard them s-s-say you’re going to t-t-trial with the Guild of Nobles?”
I hack out a laugh that burns my hoarse throat. “Of course.”
Not everyone gets an audience with the Guild. Only the ones they’re deliberating between a public draw and quartering or tying up in the coliseum.
Guess I made the cut. No surprise there.
Based on my interactions with Rekk, there’s no way the Guild isn’t going to utilize this unique opportunity to lure more Ath to the surface. I guarantee that’s the only reason they’ve deemed me worthy of a trial. To drag it out. Give them time to formulate a plan.
Problem is, it might just work.
“What brought you to this fine establishment?” I ask, trying to distract myself from my slitting thoughts.
“S-s-stealing,” Wrook says, rolling back, twisting his body into a knot. His clawed foot extends up, scratching the seemingly relentless itch behind his ear.
“Isn’t that why your lot is so valued? Why lock you up?”
“To punish my master.” Untangling himself, he scurries to the far corner of his cell and begins scratching at the stone in a flurry of motion, tilling up shards that scatter across the ground.
My brows rise.
He’s ambitious. Good for him. Though I’m not sure why he’s digging down. The only thing beneath us is the velvet trogg’s den. He’d be trading one death for another, though perhaps he’d prefer to die surrounded by Gore’s trash and not the bars of a cell.
Maybe I should dig, too.
A sob comes from across the hall, and I peer into the shadowed corner of the opposite cell, seeing the vague outline of a female bound in a quivering ball, her white garb shredded in places, blistered feet bare of shoes.
“What about her?”
Wrook pauses, whiskers twitching as he looks over his shoulder at the female. “Refused to t-truthtune for Th-The Crown,” he squeaks out.
My chest packs full of sharp stones that wedge against my ribs …
I think of the tents erected about the city, soldiers stationed around the perimeter and herding lines of trembling children through the flap, one at a time, to where a Truthtune is always sitting. Ready to sift through their heads to decipher whether or not they can hear any of the four elemental songs.