from person to person? Frustrated, I glare up at my captor, but he just grins down at me as if I’m the most adorable little runaway slave he’s ever seen, no doubt mentally counting money in his head. I hate this guy.
At least he didn’t call me “tart.”
I blow out a breath and relax for a moment to regroup. I’ll need energy to run away, I tell myself. I’m not giving up. I’m conserving my strength and I’ll slide off the land-hippo when we stop. Somehow. Then I can wiggle free and run away. Sure, it sounds good in my head. More than anything, it doesn’t sound like giving up, and that’s the only thing I’ve got right now.
Aron’s nowhere to be seen, but of course he’s not. We’re crossing hill after hill of dirt, the hippos plodding over them with fierce determination, and Aron stuck to the road. As I stare out, I realize there’s something big and dark floating in the air in the distance. It’s the Citadel, and it looks like a gleaming castle in the sky.
I gasp at the sight of it. When they said it was a citadel, I thought it’d be a fortress of stone, similar to Aventine’s thick walls. This is a glorious, delicate castle that gleams in the sunlight with a thousand colors and floats above the ground like it’s on a cloud.
“How…” I begin, but a wave of pain hits me and I black out.
14
I'm lost in agony.
It rolls over me with surge after surge, unending and growing fiercer by the minute. The pain is so strong that it makes me black out, only to surface again with new pain and succumb once more. I have no concept of where I am or what day it is. I don't know how long I'm being tortured out of nowhere. I just know that it keeps going and going and going. It's needles in my scalp and knives in my gut and a million things all at once. It rocks through me so hard that I vomit all over myself and I'm pretty sure I lose bladder control. How can I not? My entire body feels like it's clenched into someone's throbbing fist or I'm being turned inside out.
I scream. A lot. I keep screaming, and when I run out of voice, nothing but raspy gurgling escapes my throat. It still hurts.
It feels like it’s hurting forever.
Vague flashes of thought appear through the haze of agony. Of the soldiers talking in low, concerned voices only to disappear. Of being dumped into a bed of straw, a door slammed behind me. Of being left in the dark. I sink into the violence of my body turning against me, and time slides away.
Fog. My head throbs.
Someone kicks my leg and I turn over in the cot. Everything aches and throbs. Clearly I'm dying. I open my mouth to scream, but my throat feels like fire itself.
A hand touches my ankle and for a moment, everything washes away. Cool relief moves through me and I open my eyes to see the face of a woman with long, dark hair and silver jewelry. She studies me with a little tilt of her head and then gets to her feet.
Immediately, the pain crashes over me again. I moan, pushing my face into the straw as if that will somehow stop the agony.
"She has been screaming like this since you arrived?" The voice is cool. Sweet. Perfect. Just the sound of it makes me ache all over, makes me want something intangible and out of reach. It's the woman.
"Yes, my lady Tadekha. The soldiers said that she mentioned Aron of the Cleaver and that she was his anchor. Of course they thought she was lying…" The voice trails off.
The woman gives a sweet, musical chuckle. "Indeed. She is his anchor, true enough. The pain she suffers can mean nothing else. A lesser mortal would have died by now under such agonies."
"Then she did not lie." His voice is full of astonishment.
"Why would anyone lie about being the anchor to that one?" She makes a soft sound of disgust in her throat. "I cannot imagine who would volunteer to serve him with their life, not even this unfortunate creature."
I want to protest, to speak up, but my brain feels like an egg being fried. I press a fist against my brow to try and stave off the worst of the pain, but it doesn't work. Panting, I manage to spit