The Witch's Daughter - Laken Cane Page 0,74
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