Chapter 11 Eleven

Chapter 11 Eleven
Cupid

They came for me without warning.

One moment I was standing there meeting the Dragon King’s furious gaze, defiant despite my nakedness and the trembling in my legs. The next, the door burst open and two massive Nexium soldiers stormed in.

Dragus spoke to them in their guttural language, a series of sharp, clipped words that sounded strange and harsh. I had no idea what a single syllable meant, but I understood the tone perfectly.

Take her. Make her suffer.

“No!” I screamed as their hands closed around my arms, firm as iron chains. “Let me go! You can’t—”

But they were already dragging me toward the door, my feet scrabbling uselessly against the smooth stone floor. I was still half-naked, wearing nothing but the scraps of my torn robe barely clinging to my shoulders, golden blood and other evidence of what I’d just spent the past few hours doing with Dragus still marking my skin.

“Please!” I twisted in their grip, trying to pull myself free. “Please, just let me—”

One of them yanked even harder and I stumbled, my knees hitting the ground hard enough to crack against the stone floor.

They didn’t slow down at all, if anything they kept dragging me even faster, my shins scraping against the floor as I fought and thrashed and screamed with no response.

I reached desperately for my magic, what little remained after the suffocating darkness of this place had drained me, and after all that… physical exertion with the king had left me hurting and raw.

Please, I begged whatever power still flickered inside me. Please work.

I focused on the floor underneath the soldiers’ feet, trying to make it slippery, thinking maybe I could manage to coat it with ice or water or anything that would make them fall.

My magic sparked weakly, and for a brief moment, I felt it take as the stone grew slick under my feet.

But these were Nexium soldiers. Creatures of darkness who walked on volcanic glass and rivers of lava, a little ice meant nothing to them.

They didn’t even slow down, barely noticing anything was happening.

“Damn you!” I spat, renewing my struggles. “Damn you both, I’ll—”

What? a bitter voice in my head asked. What will you do?

The undeniable truth crashed over me. It was hopeless.

I wished, goddess, how I wished, that I had Nexium magic right then. Dark magic that could hurt and harm, magic that could lash out and make them bleed the way I was bleeding, hurt the way I was hurting.

Magic that I could use as a weapon instead of a healing hand.

But Heartwalker magic couldn’t bring harm. That was the fundamental truth of what we were, the core limitation built into us by Aphrodite herself when she created our kind.

We could heal, and we could mend, and we could create love and light and all the soft, gentle things that made the world beautiful.

But we could never hurt anyone.

“You won’t get away with this,” I screamed anyway, because even if it was a lie, even if my magic would never let me follow through, I needed them to hear my rage. “I swear it! I’ll make sure you all pay for this! All you Nexium devils, down to your King!”

One of the soldiers laughed, a strange harsh grinding sound like rocks scraping together. Clearly,y they were not used to laughter.

“The Heartwalker threatens death,” he said in his heavily accented voice, his voice dripping with disdain. “As if a creature of love could ever spill blood.” He spat on the ground beside me. “Pathetic.”

He was right, and that made things so much worse.

The corridors blurred past, passage after endless passages of black stone lit up only by rivers of lava running through channels in the walls.

The heat was unbearably heavy, getting worse with every step as we went down a shadowy flight of stairs. Sweat poured down my face, mixing with tears that I refused to acknowledge.

Finally, they stopped in front of a heavy iron door set into the wall, and one of them produced a key that glowed with sickly green light and unlocked it.

Behind it was darkness. Complete, absolute darkness that seemed to swallow light itself.

And heat. Heat so intense it hit me unexpectedly, stealing the breath from my lungs.

“No,” I whispered, real fear creeping into my voice for the first time. “No, please, don’t…”

They threw me inside.

I crashed onto the ground hard, the force driving what little air I had left from my chest.

Before I could even scramble to my feet, I heard the rattle of chains, and felt cold metal snap around both my wrists and ankles.

Dark magic pulsed through the restraints, binding me in place. I could barely move, barely shift position.

The chains were short enough that I couldn’t stand fully, nor could I sit comfortably. And yet they were just slack enough that I would be in constant discomfort every time I moved.

I looked up desperately at the two soldiers silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the corridor’s red glow.

One of them, the one who’d laughed, stepped forward. He looked down at me with such pure disgust that I had to shrink back from him.

Then he spat directly in my face.

The wet glob hit my cheek and I flinched, humiliation burning me up hotter than the oppressive heat around us.

“You’ll pay for that too!” I hissed. “Just you wait.”

He frowned darkly and raised his hand high, pulled back to hit me with a powerful blow that would likely break my jaw... or worse.

I squeezed my eyes shut and flinched, bracing for the impact. But it never came.

I opened my eyes to see the other soldier gripping his companion’s wrist, shaking his head in a silent warning.

They stared at each other for a long moment, some wordless communication passing between them. Then the first soldier lowered his hand slowly, his lip curling in a sneer.

He said something in their language; a string of words that sounded harsh and mocking and full of venom even to me who didn’t understand.

Then he turned and walked away, his companion following close behind.

The door slammed shut with a final loud BANG.

I heard dark magic being used to seal it, a sickly crackling sound and the smell of burned sulfur. Then the footsteps faded away down the corridor.

And then nothing. Nothing but darkness and heat and the sound of my own ragged breathing.

The cell was so small I could barely stretch out my arms. If I stood up, which the chains barely allowed, my head would brush the ceiling.

The walls pressed in from all sides, close enough to touch without fully extending my arms. It was like being in a closed coffin.

And the heat. Oh goddess, the heat.

One of my duties as a junior Heartwalker was to burn the old, worn-out bows and arrows in a giant burning forge at the far end of our realm.

If you stood too close to it, you risked getting a major burn and would need to be fixed up by a Hearthealer, and even that forge was nowhere as hot as this.
The air itself felt thick and cloudy, heavy with moisture and the harsh stench of sulfur that made my eyes water and my throat close up.

Within minutes, I could feel my skin beginning to blister. Red welts rose on my arms and legs where they touched the hot stone walls. My lungs burned with every breath, like inhaling fire.

“Let me out!” I screamed, throwing myself against the door as much as the chains would allow. “Please! I can’t breathe, I can’t—”

I slammed my fists against the iron, again and again, feeling skin split and blood well up.

“Please!” My voice broke. “Please, I’ll do anything, just let me out! Get me out of here!”

“Try to stay calm.”

I froze. That voice had come from behind me, from the darkness at the back of the cell.

It sounded rough and croaked with disuse but it was unmistakably kind.

“It won’t hurt as much,” the voice continued quietly, “if you try to stay calm. Think about something else, somewhere cool and safe, go there in your mind and you’ll feel the pain a lot less.”

I spun around, or tried to though it was difficult as the chains were limiting my movement. I squinted desperately into the pitch blackness.

“Who…” I coughed. “Who’s there?”