I want to turn away from him again. To block him out once more and cut my heart off. There’s no matehood now. No reason that I should be able to hear him, or even care what he has to say.
“I won’t let you die. If I have to strap you to my back while I fight off a thousand beasts, I will. They told us we could leave if we make it out alive, I intend to make fucking Arion keep good on that promise.”
I rest my forehead against the wall. My neck burns under the collar. I hate the tug of his words, hate the way I soften to him.
“Arion won’t let us leave. He’d rather release beast after beast until we are torn to shreds—you can’t think he will keep that promise. It’s just for the show of…I don’t know. Freedom? Choice? He’s the kind of man who—” I hiss when I move and the fresh wounds pump more pain through my system. “He will dangle the carrot in front of the beast to keep it moving. This display is sweeter for his people if there’s a chance we could win. We never will.”
Vann is quiet again, and then he moves closer. “We will. You have to believe it. You have to?—”
“How long have we been here? It looked like they took you before we were sent out,” I say, cutting him off. He had been covered in bruises.
“Two days, maybe three. It’s hard to tell. No light. No guards except for feeding rounds.”
My stomach grumbles in response. Food. Something I have been deprived of for so long. What I wouldn’t give for something to fill the stretch of my stomach.
I look in the cell and see nothing.
Desperation claws at my belly. Have they not been feeding me?
The hole carries Vann’s breath. I reach out and touch the stone, half hoping he’s doing the same on the other side.
Then a bit of bread slides through the hole.
“You need to eat more,” he says gently, without malice. The tenderness is so present that I almost wish I could hear him grumble as he used to.
I close my eyes.
“Thank you.” And then I take a bite of the meager portion. It doesn’t taste bad. Quite the opposite, in fact, but it is very stale. And the lack of saliva in my mouth makes it hard to eat properly.
“You should drink,” he says. A moment later, something slides through the hole—a small tin cup, its edge wet. “I stole it when they left the door open.”
“So they haven’t been feeding you either?”
“There are other prisoners down here it seems. They don’t talk much, though.”
I take the cup carefully, swallowing in slow, painful gulps. It’s water, and it tastes like old iron.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
A low hum answers, almost like a sigh. Then, quieter, “I know I don’t deserve to have you talk to me. I shouldn’t have kissed you, I just…”
He trails off and I pause my eating to stare at the hole. “You lied to me. And then I told you not to come, but you still did. We are here because of you,” I accuse. Somehow, my eyes conjure enough moisture to burn. Despite how miserable I feel in my body, I still have the power to cry.
“I know. I never deserved something as good as you, Arlet,” hesays. “The truth is that I fell in love with you. Against my better judgment?—”
“What the fuck kind of answer is that? Against your better judgment? Do I really mean so little?”
“No,” he scrambles. “I have told you my past. I thought that…”
“I don’t forgive you for it.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
Silence stretches, long and fraying. I remember what happened in my bedroom the day of my wedding. I—I can’t think of that right now. It’s like I can feel my heartbeat in every part of my body, but I ignore it all as I sit there, listening to Vann’s breath.
I don’t want to move. I just sit. Listening.
In the back of my mind, Cursed One yawns.