“How —”
“Story time is over,” Cresta said, her voice hard enough to remind Kiva that they weren’t friends. Until recently — even presently — they were closer to enemies than anything else. “Try to sleep.”
Kiva blinked into the darkness of the shower block. “H-Here?”
“You can’t go back into the dormitory. Another episode like that, and the guards will come investigate,” Cresta said, shifting into a more comfortable position.
“But it’s f-freezing.” Even as Kiva said it, warmth began to flood her again, her withdrawal symptoms returning now that the shock of the icy water had faded. And while the shower had been frigid, the late spring air was temperate enough. Once she was dry, it wouldn’t be too awful. She’d slept in worse places — but never while being weaned off an addictive substance.
“Sleep,” Cresta ordered, ignoring Kiva’s complaint. “While you still can.”
Kiva wanted to argue, wanted to ask the million questions she had while her mind was clear, wanted to bask in her current clarity before she succumbed to more angeldust come morning. But Cresta was right — she needed to sleep while her body would allow it, gathering her strength to get through all that was ahead, both mentally and physically.
And so, clenching her jaw against the hot-and-cold sensations streaking beneath her skin, she closed her eyes and allowed exhaustion to pull her under.
The next three days were some of the worst of Kiva’s life, the following four nearly as awful, and another week after that almost as unpleasant.
Through it all, Cresta honored her debt and remained by Kiva’s side, giving her just enough angeldust every morning to survive the workday — less each day — and sleeping beside her in the shower block every night. Often, Kiva would thrash and scream, fighting the ex-quarrier for all she was worth. Equally often, Cresta had to hold back Kiva’s hair as she purged her stomach. Even the charcoal lost its effectiveness as the angeldust ran low, with there being no relief from the nausea, the stomach cramps, the sweating, and the chills. Every inch of Kiva’s body ached, not just from her repeated toiling down in the tunnels — something she was barely aware of doing, her hours underground a haze of mud and dust and pain — but also from battling against her very self, night after night, without end.
It was too much, too hard, too much.
Every day, she wished for death, her agony too great to bear — and not just the agony of her withdrawal. As the drugs began to leave her system, the memories began to invade, the things she’d witnessed, the things she’d done. And the people she’d done them to.
It was a different kind of pain — the worst kind of pain. The kind she would never heal from. The kind she didn’t deserve to heal from.
And so she shoved the memories away and embraced the torture of her withdrawal, until, two weeks after her return to Zalindov, her tremors began to ease, her nausea began to settle, her desperation began to fade.
It was over.
But the worst was still to come.
Chapter Two
Kiva looked down at her palms, noting the bloody blisters and torn calluses, but she felt nothing. Just as she’d felt nothing for weeks.
Nothing but cold. Nothing but numb.
She couldn’t summon any concern.
She deserved this.
Penance, she told herself, even if she knew it would never be enough.
“Eat.”
A lump of stale bread was shoved under Kiva’s nose, the hands holding it covered in dust but without any blood. Hands that had seen hard labor for years and were used to wielding a pickaxe hour after hour, day after day.
Warden Rooke had been wrong about Cresta dying swiftly in the tunnels. The ex-quarrier was like a cockroach; Kiva was beginning to doubt anything would kill her.
“Five minutes!” called the nearest black-uniformed guard, his hands on his whip as he swaggered along the luminium-lit underground passageway. There was no need for the announcement — the lunch break was the same length every day.
“Eat,” Cresta repeated, pressing the bread into Kiva’s hands. They sat in line with the other inmates, their backs slumped against the limestone wall, their tools resting at their sides while they shared a brief moment of respite.
When Cresta elbowed her in the ribs, Kiva mechanically brought the offering to her lips, chewing through the dryness.
“Now drink,” the redhead commanded, and Kiva did so, scooping a handful of murky water from a puddle near her feet. It tasted like dirt, but it washed the bread down and kept her hydrated.
Survive. That was the most she could manage these days, even if she was only delaying the inevitable.
Kiva had always known her end would come quickly in any allocation outside of the infirmary. She wasn’t like Cresta — she couldn’t keep up with the grueling labor indefinitely. Having arrived back at the prison just over five weeks ago, Kiva was surprised she’d lasted as long as she had, and she knew it was only because of the ex-quarrier. Whether out of pity or something else entirely, once Cresta had seen Kiva through her withdrawal, she hadn’t abandoned her, as Kiva had assumed she would. She wasn’t warm, she wasn’t friendly, and she barely spoke aside from forcing Kiva to see to the most basic of human needs, but somehow in the last five weeks, they’d become partners. If one fell down, the other was there to pull them up — with Cresta doing most of the lifting.
Kiva still didn’t understand why. There was so much left unspoken between them, not the least of which was Cresta’s role as the leader of the prison rebels, and whether she knew who Kiva really was. Prior to Kiva’s escape, she hadn’t, but so much had changed since then — including how there were no longer any prison rebels left for Cresta to lead.
Warden Rooke had seen to that.
Despite so many inmates having perished in the riot — Grendel, Olisha, and Nergal, among others whom Kiva had known — the Warden had still ordered a mass execution afterward. None of Cresta’s circle had been spared the hangman’s noose, with her alone having been reallocated to the tunnels in Rooke’s sadistic attempt to prolong her suffering.
It was the only reason Kiva could think of for why the redhead remained by her side — because in some twisted way, Kiva was familiar, she was safe. And maybe Cresta needed that, having lost almost as much as Kiva.
No, Kiva thought, staring at her bloody hands again, not as much.
It hurt to think his name, to recall his face, but she made herself do so while reaching unconsciously for the amulet resting beneath her tunic, the guards having been ordered not to take it from her upon her arrival.
I want you to have it as a reminder of tonight — of everything you helped make happen, Zuleeka had said through iron bars deep beneath Vallenia’s River Palace.
Even without the royal crest hanging around Kiva’s neck as a constant, choking reminder, she would never forget. It was impossible. She saw him every moment of every day, his blue-gold eyes filled with pain and horror as he realized the truth: that she’d taken everything from him — his throne, his magic, his heart.
Jaren Vallentis.
The once-heir to the kingdom of Evalon, now forced out of his own palace and on the run — all because of Kiva.
And it wasn’t just Jaren. There were others she cared about who now suffered because of her choices: Naari, Caldon, Tipp, even her brother, Torell. She had no idea what had befallen any of them in the weeks since that night when everything had been torn apart.