She shook her head. “You choose to come down here, and basically, you have no rights for the duration of that time.”
“But others are punished down here.”
“A servant can be sent down here, yes,” she replied, taking a breath, reaching for my cheek, making a face as she started to survey the damage. “Varic could order Tiago down here,” she said, her hands on my throat, wincing. “And he wouldn’t, of course, but technically, he could also have Hadrian brought down here in chains, and he would be defiled with Varic’s express permission and blessing.”
“Hadrian would never submit to that.”
“No? Even if it were a command given by the prince?”
“Varic would never do that.”
“Agreed. But that doesn’t mean Hadrian wouldn’t submit if he did.”
I shook my head, passing her the club.
“Don’t you think that both weapons would be better off in your hands than mine?”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but you have to stay right with me, like attached at the hip.”
“You mean like we’ve been since we met?”
I grunted.
“You’re a mess.”
“You’re gonna have a beauty of a black eye, and your lip is split.”
“I’ll heal this by tomorrow,” she told me as we slowly, carefully walked to the edge of the room and looked up the stairs. “I wouldn’t have healed the other.”
And I knew what she meant. “Yeah. No. Me neither.”
Taking the stairs slowly, once we were out, I looked left, back the way we’d come, and then looked to the right. It was darker that way, but also quieter.
“Thoughts?” I asked her.
“There could be zombies.”
“Really,” I said dryly.
She scowled at me. “No, not really. There’s no such thing as zombies.”
“I didn’t use to think there were such things as vampyrs.”
“Fine, I’ll grant you that. But zombies? Come on.”
Neither one of us was in our right mind, and I knew that, because we were calm and terrified at the same time.
I started forward.
“May I say something?”
“Why the hell not,” I said, turning to her.
“It’s tight in here,” she said, stretching out her arms and able to touch both walls. “Do you think that paddle, with how big it is, will do us any good?”
It wouldn’t, no.
“Okay,” I said, dropping it, wrapping my now free arm around her.
“Yes, this is already better,” she said, sighing deeply, snuggling in close.
It was.
“You know,” she began as we walked slowly forward, realizing that even this far deep, this far back, there were still candles on the floor and the floor was wet, running with sea water in places, but still, it was lit. “No one we passed on the way down knew that we weren’t supposed to be here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, everyone down here took us for thralls, even dressed how we are, even with the seal around my neck, around yours.”
“But that’s what you said, right, that some people choose to be down here.”
“Right. So it’s not rape, it’s not assault, because this would have been seen as our choice.”
“You lost me.”
“No amount of talking or explaining works here, because it’s expected that some people will beg and plead, and that for some it’s just a game. Some are sent here as punishment by their lord, while others come of their own free will.”
“I don’t—”
“Anyone can do anything to us down here, and they are well within their rights to do so. It’s on us that we’re in the wrong place.”
“Not if you can get pulled through a door and—”
“But that’s what I mean, that wasn’t the entrance. The entrance is guarded, and everyone gets checked in. There are checkpoints and all manner of security to make certain that this could never happen.”
“But that door was open.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her voice somber. “But it shouldn’t have been.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that someone purposely grabbed me and brought me down here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shivering against me. “But I’ve been here for centuries and nobody has ever grabbed me and carried me down to where the thralls are kept before.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, I don’t think this was about me.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Someone grabbed me knowing that you, my knight in shining armor, would not run for help but would instead run after me. And I didn’t know what was through the first door either, meaning I had no idea where I was being taken, but once I was dragged down to the fourth level, it hit me. I knew I was going to where they keep the thralls, and that’s why I stopped screaming.”
“Why?”
“Because at that point it was only my nightmare; it didn’t have to be yours too.”
“Very noble, but there was no way I wasn’t coming after you.”
“I know that,” she told me. “And I suspect whoever took me knew that too.”
“I don’t––”
“Jason, someone wanted you, not me. This is about you, and you need to figure out why someone wants to hurt you.”
“Not that you’re not scaring the crap outta me, but you just got over saying that servants are sent down here to have punishment inflicted, which again, not right, and Varic needs to end this like yesterday, but this is punishment. And other people sign up for this moment in Dante’s wet dream on purpose. But nobody dies down here. Nobody gets fucked to death or whatever.”
“Yes. True. What’s your point?”
“That’s my question, then: what is the point? Why grab you, why have me chase after you just to what, rape us both?”
She was quiet as we kept walking, and then she suddenly stopped and froze, her head snapping up as she met my gaze. “Somebody’s coming.”
“What’re you––”
“It’s easy and simple. They grabbed me, you followed, they find us down here, they kill us, no one ever sees us again.”
“Varic would find us. He’d track me.”
“Probably,” she agreed, “but still, you’re dead. And yes, he’d kill whoever he found your scent on, so anyone who bumped into you, definitely whoever put this mark on your neck—eviscerated easily.”
I started moving faster.
“But still, no one ever knows what exactly happened.”
The dread seeped into me then, and I was thoroughly scared. “It’s sort of genius.”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed, her voice tiny.
“So we should probably run,” I told her.
And we did.
Eight
The tunnel was straight, which wasn’t great, and I kept hearing things behind us, animals, men, but when we hit what looked like an underground lake, Nerilla surprised me by squealing in happiness.