by Laken Cane
She looked away, and stared instead at the gouged, bloody wall. “You don’t know me.”
She heard the smile in his voice. “I know you, Princess. I know you well enough.”
“Do you believe I’m going to deliver this world from the witch?” She turned to look at him then, an eyebrow cocked. “Save you?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t ask if it mattered. I asked what you believe.”
He cocked his head. “I believe you will try.” Then it was his turn to shrug. “But first you’ll need to carve your way out of this disturbing and very secure prison.”
She lifted her chin. “I will. Don’t doubt that.”
“One word of warning. Don’t let Damascus discover your greatest fears. She will use them to torment you until you have fled into the dark madness of your mind.”
“And even then,” someone whispered.
“The bitch already knows my fears,” Rune said, hoping her voice didn’t shake. I can handle anything but the crawlers.
And anything but Z’s torture.
And anything but brain in a jar…
Fuck.
His eyes were steady. “Take me with you when you go.”
She frowned, then slid her fingers over her face to her swollen, broken nose. “I won’t force you to stay here.”
His thin black hair slid across his pale skin as he shook his head. “I mean when you leave this world.”
She said nothing. Was she willing to expose her world, her people, to a man such as Nikolai Czar?
“You don’t trust me,” he said, when she remained silent.
“Of course I don’t. Why would I trust you?”
“There are different levels of trust. You don’t trust me not to harm your world.”
“No. No, I don’t.”
“If I live there, Rune Alexander, I will help take care of your world. I wouldn’t destroy that which assured my survival.”
“That would be a stupid thing to do,” she agreed.
“It would. And I am not a stupid man.”
She leaned slightly away from the cold, stained wall. “There are many reasons you might want to destroy my world. Maybe you’re secretly the witch’s bitch and she wants to send you as a plant.”
His laughter was sudden and real and she could only stare in amazement. The sound was so out of place in the dungeon of horrors that she couldn’t at first understand what it was.
Laughter.
Someone groaned, and that sound of agony echoed off the stone walls, overriding the burst of amusement the Death Shimmer lord had released.
After that, the plop, plop of water dripping from the ceiling to the floors was the only sound in the hellish place for a long, long moment.
“Please,” Nikolai said, finally. “This is not the world in which I should spend eternity. Even with Damascus gone, this is not the world for me. I’ve lived here too long and I need out. For my sanity’s sake, I need out.”
“What about your shimmer. Your people. You’d desert them?” she asked.
“I was Death Shimmer hand before our lord sneaked away with his tail between his legs. It is time he came back to take over what is his. My leaving will force his hand.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then the people will manage.”
“I won’t stop you,” she said at last, “unless you give me a reason to.”
“Nikolai.” The voice was masculine and tired. “The sun of her world will kill you. You would trade the sun for a different place to exist?”
Nikolai didn’t answer.
“You do believe she’ll redeem us,” someone said, a whispery, raw voice laced with pain. “You believe it.”
No matter how hard she tried, Rune was unable to penetrate the thick, black shadows to see the speaker, but the voice was oddly, dreadfully familiar.
She closed her eyes. “I know you. What’s your name?”
There was no answer, only stubborn silence and shallow breaths.
“Be careful,” Nikolai warned, “that you don’t ask a question you really don’t want the answer to.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the mysterious speaker.
“I’ve been getting fucked-up answers all my life,” she replied. “I can handle it.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“You haven’t been hurt yet,” someone said—not the same voice as before. Not a voice that sent shivers of recognition down her spine.
“She’s been hurt plenty,” Nikolai said.
“Not here. She’s new.”
Rune wasn’t sure but she thought the speaker was female. The voice was soft, refined. Gentle. But beneath that was something terrible.
“You enjoy it,” Rune guessed. “You like the pain.”
Nikolai raised an eyebrow. “You’re very intuitive. Not that I’m surprised.”
“It’s in her voice.”
He leaned his head back against the wall. “Some of them were…”
“Wicked,” the woman said when he hesitated. “Yes. Some of us were already wicked.”
“Their time here has forced them to change to deal with their punishments. The darkness, the agony, the humiliation. It’s how they have survived.”
Rune shuddered.
“How long have you been here, Abby girl?” Nikolai asked the unseen person.
She was silent for so long Rune thought she wasn’t going to answer at all. But finally, she did.
“Fourteen years,” Abby said. “Give or take a year. The witch hauls me out when she wants to use me for something…fun.”
“My God,” Rune said, aghast.
“I am not your God,” Abby replied, her voice stronger. Perhaps she enjoyed the break in the monotony. “But if you have one, you should beg her for help.”
“The witch will break you,” the other person said. “No matter how tough you think you are.”
And again, tremors of unease trickled down Rune’s spine. “I know you,” she insisted. “Tell me your name.”
Silence.
The softest of sighs reached her ears. Nikolai watched her, his eyes bright in the darkness. Bright with interest.
“Please,” Rune said, unsure why she cared so much.
“You knew me once,” the person agreed. “But I am no longer that person.”
Rune’s swallow hurt her dry throat. “Your name.”
“Tell her,” Abby said. “What use is hiding? What use, down here?”
Other voices joined in, their whispers becoming murmurs that became shouts. “Tell her. Tell her.”
“All right.”
The voices stopped chanting at once as the prisoners waited.
“You did know me, a million lifetimes ago. Once upon a time I could fly, and my name was Cree Stark.”
And as though the declaration awakened long suppressed memories, Cree began to cry.
Chapter Forty
“I saw Fin,” Rune murmured, realizing as soon as Cree said her name that Fin had been the bird to fly her to Flesh Shimmer.
Cree, still hidden in the shadows, finally swallowed her sobs. “He’s not dead?”
“No. But…he wasn’t exactly himself. I didn’t recognize him. He never shifted to human form, and I’m not sure he could.”
“Cree Stark,” Nikolai said. “Beautiful name.”
“You’re a bird shifter?” someone asked.
“I was a bird,” Cree said, weakly. “Now I’m…”
“Just a woman,” Rune finished.
“Not even that,” Cree whispered.
“Who cares? The princess is here. We are saved,” someone—a female—exclaimed. “We’re free!”
Others shouted, but not a lot of them. Most of them wanted to believe—Rune could feel their need—but they were afraid to.
She was afraid for them to.
Slowly, they crept from the shadows of the long, narrow dungeon and crouched close to her, reaching out
broken, gnarled fingers to touch her abused body.
She didn’t have the heart—or the guts—to tell them she was not their savior.
“How many are in here?” she asked, instead.
“Seventeen in this block,” Nikolai answered.
“The cages above?”
“Holding pens,” Wicked Abby answered. “Those prisoners will either be dragged into dungeons like this one or killed outright.”
“Some of them,” Nikolai added, “will be taken outside and tortured, then used as decorations to dissuade potential threats.”
“Why?” Rune asked. “Why?”
“Because this is the atmosphere in which she thrives,” Nikolai answered.
Her claustrophobia began to tap insistently on her shoulder, and Rune pushed the clingy prisoners away. She tried to take deep breaths, but even the smallest of inhalations rolled sluggishly down her throat and stabbed at her chest with tiny, sharp blades.
“Is she dying?” someone asked, her voice tinny and distant. “Is she?”
“She doesn’t look like the princess,” Abby said. “The witch has kicked her ass.”
Rune groaned, dizzy, then leaned to the side and threw up. Pain blossomed behind her closed eyes, hot and black, and she dry heaved as the prisoners watched in silence.
Every time she thought she had it under control the pain swam through her head a little harder, and her stomach swirled up to meet it.
“Shit,” she mumbled, and that was the last thing she remembered until she floated slowly back to the surface of consciousness.
“You’re in bad shape.” It was Wicked Abby’s voice, her cool fingers brushing back Rune’s hair. The caress was soothing and gentle, and Rune didn’t move, afraid it would stop.
Her nausea, for that moment, was gone.
But at last, she lifted swollen, heavy eyelids and viewed Abby for the first time.
Abby’s skin was so black that her teeth were like beacons when she grinned down at Rune. Her hair flowed over her shoulders, a midnight waterfall of long, black curls and tangled braids.
Her eyes were light green and almond shaped, set over prominent cheekbones.
“What did Damascus put you down here for?” Rune asked, her teeth chattering. “Being too beautiful?”
Abby laughed, but Nikolai answered. “Yes. That is exactly why the witch buried Wicked Abby in the darkness. She was jealous. Our witch is a very, very jealous woman.”
Rune lay shivering, her head in Abby’s lap, as the woman continued stroking her hair. Each stroke took a rope of pain and pulled it from Rune’s head—she could physically feel the pain being pulled from the pool of agony inside her and flung to the dungeon floor.
There was a smile in Nikolai’s voice when he spoke. “Our Abby girl’s hands can cause the most excruciating agony, or the most delicious ecstasy. She likes you.”
“She’s so broken that all I can offer her is some relief,” Abby said. “But maybe for her, that is ecstasy.”
“Yeah,” Rune mumbled. “It’s good.”
“I can’t heal you,” Abby said. “But I can cover your pain. For a while.”
“Thanks.”
She closed her eyes but didn’t sleep—just lay on the cold, wet floor and let Abby take away the pain.
“Why are you still alive?” someone asked. “You look like death. All broken and bloody and chopped up like raw meat. Why are you still alive?”
“She’s immortal,” Nikolai answered. “Aren’t you, Princess?”
“Rune,” she said. “Just Rune.”
She wanted Z. She wanted him to be happy and smiling and alive.
She had a feeling that was asking a little too much.
The witch hated her—of course she did. Rune had come to destroy her, and despite her power and the fact that she’d imprisoned Rune, she was still going to have the fear in the back of her mind that yes, Rune would kill her.
It was only a matter of time before she consulted with her wizards and found a way to trap Rune in inescapable darkness forever.
She’d bury Rune alive, and leave her there for eternity.
If Rune allowed her to.
And she certainly wasn’t going to be merciful to anyone Rune loved.
“Are we getting out of here?”
The question floated to Rune’s ears and interrupted her thoughts, so quiet she almost didn’t hear it.
Cree’s question, tentative and afraid.
The bird’s bravado and pride and arrogance were gone.
“What did she do to you?” Rune asked, wanting to know, dreading the answer.
She hadn’t liked Cree, but there in that dungeon, she felt a certain connection with her. Somehow, the bird made her feel less alone.
“I can answer that.” Wicked Abby continued caressing Rune’s hair, but there had been, for one brief second, a hesitation as she listened to Rune’s question. “At first, the witch played with the bird. Got her trust. Made her feel special.”
Bitterness crept into her voice like furtive little thieves, and her fingers began to stroke a little harder against Rune’s head. “The bird believed Damascus loved her. They shared a bed. They shared stories. They got into each other’s heads and hearts…at least that’s what the bird believed. Isn’t that true, Cree Stark?”
For a time, there was silence. Even the room held its breath. Then, “Yes,” Cree whispered.
“But then, things began to change. The witch took pleasure in hurting the bird—ignoring her, leaving her behind, parading other lovers before her—and soon the emotional pain turned to physical pain as Damascus ordered the bird whipped. Beaten. Starved. Raped.”
She paused, and her fingers once again gentled against Rune’s skull.
But Rune could no longer relax. Her stomach tightened and her body tensed, waiting with the rest of them to hear Abby tell Cree’s story.
“The bird wondered constantly how to get back into the witch’s good graces. How to regain her love. And she thought and thought about what she could have done to displease Damascus in the first place.”
Rune shuddered.
“Finally,” Abby said, her voice almost playful, “Damascus called in another of her favorites. She ordered her to torture the bird, to make it a public torture. “Hurt her, but keep her alive.” That was the order.” And once again, Abby’s fingers tightened on Rune’s skull.
There was no relief, no pleasure in the woman’s stroking fingers then. And the first tendrils of pain began to creep in, slipping out from the tips of Abby’s fingers.
Sinking into Rune’s flesh.
But something—whether the warning in Nikolai’s eyes or the butterflies in her gut—kept Rune still.
She didn’t dare move.
Moving right then would be a very, very bad idea.
“It became a public entertainment,” Abby continued. “The torture of the bird.” She looked around at the shadowy, silent prisoners. “Some of you were already in the dungeons, and you missed the shows.”
When no one assented nor denied, she went on. “It became a game to find new ways to keep the bird alive but make her wish she were dead. To find new ways to please the witch. Because that’s really all that mattered, you see. Pleasing the witch. The cost to others?” She shrugged. “That did not matter at all.
“If the torturer displeased the witch, she too was punished. She lived in terror because every move would result in either pleasing the witch or disappointing her. One did not wish to fall out of favor with Damascus.”
Harder and faster her fingers moved, as though she were a masturbating woman whose hope of an orgasm was just out of reach.
Rune didn’t move.
The other prisoners drew back with wide eyes and open mouths, hands firmly over their hearts, and listened like joyously terrified kids around a campfire.
Likely it was a break in their monotony of constant horror.
In the background, hidden from sight, Cree Stark sobbed quietly.
“Go o
n,” Rune said, when Wicked Abby had been silent for too long. “Tell us the rest of it.”
Abby looked down at Rune, a spark of surprise lighting her odd eyes. She eased the pressure of her fingers immediately. At last, she nodded. “The witch was growing tired of the…the game. The torturer knew she had one, maybe two days left before her cruel mistress would order her thrown back into the dungeons to live out the rest of her life in darkness and regret.
“Perhaps she would order the torturer to become the tortured. The bird would not become the torturer—there was no fear in that. There was not enough spirit left in her. There was not enough strength left in her. She hung on the wall of the castle and became fodder for the carricorns.”
Cree was suddenly silent.
“She’s fainted,” one of the prisoners murmured.
“Then the torturer decided with her one or two days remaining as entertainer of the witch and torturer of the bird, she’d do something drastic to gain that elusive and oh so desirable favor.”
“What did you do?” Rune asked. Her hoarse voice hurt her throat, but still she didn’t lick the water from the floor.
It wasn’t like the thirst would kill her.
“I’d done everything there was to do to the poor thing,” Abby said, not even a little surprised that Rune knew or dared to call her out as the torturer. “I’d cut off body parts and allow her to shift to regrow them. I’d…well, there is no use detailing all the horrors done to her, is there? Except one. That last one.”
“What did you do?” Rune asked again, a little stronger. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Get up now,” Abby said, suddenly. She forced her fingers off Rune’s head with a sound like sucking air. “Hurry before…hurry.”
Rune didn’t have the strength to get up—not without help.
Nikolai grabbed her arms and jerked her away from Abby. “Good girl, Abby.”
Abby ignored him. She dropped her face into her hands and gulped, over and over and over, as though a chunk of meat had caught in her throat and refused to go down.
Finally, she lifted her head. “I took the only thing she had left. I took her wings. One feather at a time, one scream at a time, I took her gorgeous wings.
“I took her wings, and I took her ability to shift.” She shook her head. “She was a huge, magnificent eagle. Now she is a husk waiting to die. Wishing she could die.
