Endure - Sara B. Larson Page 0,45

with a sash across his chest. His sash was a deep, rich blue, and the fabric he wore was white. But when my gaze traveled to his face, I had to suck in a gasp of surprise. He had olive skin, and dark eyes with the slight tilt at the corner. He was Blevonese.

“Here,” he said in my language, but his voice held a strange combination of a Blevonese and Dansiian accent. “Drink this.”

He came over to help me sit up. My head swam again, and my stomach rebelled once more at the movement. My body convulsed as I tried to hold back the urge to vomit, but the man pressed the cup to my lips anyway.

“Force yourself to drink this; it will help. I promise.”

I was barely able to do as he asked, but the moment I swallowed the liquid that tasted faintly of herbs and lemon and it hit my mutinous belly, it was as he promised — the nausea abated slightly. I took another sip and then asked, “Who are you?” My voice was scratchy from disuse, and my throat felt strangely raw.

His dark eyes met mine, but he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he helped me finish the drink and then had me lay back down. He couldn’t have been that much older than me, I realized, now that I got a good look at him. Maybe closer to Damian’s age, in his mid-twenties. “I’m a servant in the king’s household — his head healer.”

“Is that where I am?” I asked.

Again, he didn’t answer me right away. Instead, he raised my tunic and examined the bandage on my stomach, lifting one corner to glance at my wound.

“You are to go before him tomorrow, and it is my job to make sure you are able to do that.” He pushed the bandage back down again, sending a surge of pain through my abdomen.

“Why don’t you heal me completely, then?” He had to be a sorcerer, I realized, like Lisbet. But why would a sorcerer from Blevon be working for King Armando — and have a bit of a Dansiian accent?

“I was instructed to only heal you enough so that you could stand on your own two feet before the king. Nothing more.” He stood up and turned to leave.

“Wait!” I cried out, desperate to find out more, to not be left alone. “What’s your name?”

He paused by the door. “Akio,” he said quietly.

Then he left.

I lay there for what felt like hours, drifting in and out of sleep, trying not to let my mind wander. I couldn’t afford to wonder about Rylan, or Eljin, or what the king would do to me when I was brought before him. And I especially couldn’t afford to think about Damian. To wonder what he was doing — if he was safe. Had Armando begun to openly fight against Antion yet? Or was he still letting Blevon and Antion fight each other for now?

Twice, I tried to get up, to try and figure out some way to escape, but both times, my head spun, and I nearly lost consciousness. Apparently, whatever Akio had given me was just enough to hold the nausea back, but not enough to give me the strength to stand. Not yet. Not until they needed me to.

Helplessness assailed me — a feeling I was unused to and immediately hated. Unable to do anything except stare at the ceiling wondering what fate awaited me, I plotted instead, imagining ways that I could somehow get to King Armando when they brought me before him, and kill him. Rafe had commanded me to protect him; he’d made it so I could never harm him. But he’d given me no such command for the king. If I even got within twenty feet of him, somehow, I’d find a way to make sure Armando was as good as dead.

There were no windows in my cell, but I assumed it was morning when the door opened again and Akio walked back in, followed this time by two armed guards wearing all black beneath their blue sashes, curved swords hanging at their sides. The one man’s biceps were bigger than my legs — put together. Perhaps King Armando believed brute size and force would intimidate me.

He was wrong. He didn’t realize I’d trained for years with Deron, a man just as big as the guard who came over and grabbed my arm, yanking me up in bed. And not only had I trained with