The tang of blood and charred meat singed my nose, and my dream for a dungeon cell evaporated before my eyes. This wasn’t the accommodation I’d hoped for. This was no quiet cell with dirty straw in a corner and a promise of solitude.

In the center of the cramped room was a thick wooden table, similar in size to the ones in the throne room. The table filled most of the space, leaving enough room for a man to pass on either side. Heavy leather straps hung from the table’s sides, the ends fastened around a metal buckle, the perfect contraption for holding someone to the table against their will.

The woman’s screams began again, her voice expressing the horror in my soul. I scanned the rest of the room, and fear trickled into my pores, making my skin crawl.

The walls were lined with metal hooks, spikes of various materials and in various sizes, as well as thick mallets and heavy hammers. Ropes of barbed metal wound into loops hung from pegs and boxed contraptions.

I ran my tongue over my lips, and the high-pitched keening stopped. Understanding dawned on me as I noticed my sandpaper-dry mouth for the first time. I’d been the one screaming. That terrible wailing had been me.

Jotun grabbed both my arms and lifted me to the table.

Panic ran through me. Adrenaline I’d thought gone flooded me with a desperate need to escape before he could employ any of the atrocious tools of torture on the wall. I writhed, trying to escape, and he released my right arm. I flailed, hitting his arms, chest, and face several times before his hand circled my neck and slammed my head against the table.

Bursts of light blinded me with the impact, and I gasped for air as his hold tightened. The explosions of white stars increased, and I clawed at Jotun’s hand, trying to get him to release me. My vision tunneled, and I knew it was over. I’d lost.

* * *

I awoke to sharp pain digging into my back. I tried to arch away from the pain but couldn’t. I jolted to full consciousness and shifted in desperation, testing my arms and legs. My range of motion was only a hair’s breadth in any direction. I was strapped to the table!

My lips were wet but my mouth still parched, and I instinctively licked at the moisture and gagged at the oily substance coating them, its taste foul and rancid.

“It’s funny how licking the lips is always the first thing people do when they wake,” a man said.

I cracked open my eyes and stared at the king.

“In this position, if you vomit, you’ll choke. If you’re dead, you become useless,” the king said in a flat tone, his face illuminated by the weak light from the single window.

The sharp pain from my back disappeared, and the king waved a bloodied needle in front of my face before setting the tiny weapon down. “I’m surprised you passed out so quickly. Jotun wasn’t even able to welcome you properly. I should have told him that extracting information quickly didn’t mean killing you—yet.”

It didn’t seem kingly to be down here in the dungeon, amidst the evidence of my torture. Yet Irdelron seemed more at home here than on his throne.

I said nothing, afraid if I spoke, I would have to swallow. Instead, I stared at the ceiling and let the saliva pool in my mouth until there was enough to push the foul substance out with the collected drool. It trickled down the side of my face and neck and into my sawed-off hair, crawling along my skin, a disgusting trail of vileness.

“Well now, it seems that you are revived enough for my attention,” Irdelron said and moved into my line of sight. I flinched from the cruel pleasure lighting his fair face. He was in a white aketon, fitted much like the one Irrik wore, tight to his torso and sleeveless. Gold thread embroidered the edges in a filigree to highlight his muscular build. He smiled down on me as if he were my savior. “I’m so glad you will be with us. I’m most curious to see who has my Drae wrapped in knots. This is the first time in one hundred and five years he’s shown any interest in a prisoner. It’s quite interesting to behold, especially because it seems you hold some power over him. It’s good to remind my subjects of where they stand now and again, don’t you think, girl? Even a Drae.” His eyes grew distant. “Especially a Drae.” He straightened. “And a rebel, too.” He leaned over me and whispered, “You’ll help me crush the rebellion and remind Lord Irrik he is a subject, not king.”

I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.

“Tell me, girl. Who conspires against me? Give me names, and I shall end your suffering with mercy.”

Right. Everyone knew King Irdelron had no mercy, and probably never did. Besides, I’d never let Arnik or Dyter suffer on my account.

The king’s breath was warm on my face. “Last chance.”

I refused to answer. As the king withdrew, a heavy dread settled in my stomach.

A hot sting sliced across my nose and cheek with the crack of a whip. I tried to turn my head away from the source of agony. I screamed as my cheek burst into searing pain, and I thrashed in my restraints, unable to avoid what was causing my anguish. The burning spread across my face and down my neck to my chest with successive lashes.

“No more!” I begged.

The burning waned, and a dull throbbing took its place. Tears leaked from my eyes, and snot ran from my nose through the substance on my lips and into my mouth. I retched, but my stomach was empty, and I spit the bile and snot and poison out as I coughed.

“You’ve deluded yourself. You think this is as bad as it will get?” Irdelron shook his head in mock sympathy as he leaned over me, the gilded vial of Phaetyn blood dangling from his neck. “I already know you’ll give me the answers I seek,” he whispered, caressing my face. “Everyone does. This? Jotun and I do this for fun. I have an odd . . . obsession with besting mortality. Have you ever noticed how easy it is for one life to end? I own that power. It’s my life’s work.”

He reached for the vial, his eyes losing focus.

I was being foolish. I knew it before I acted, but his fake sympathy was too much. I spat at him, that vile mixture in my mouth. My spittle sprayed his chin, neck, and the top portion of his pristine aketon.

In an instant, the fake kindness was gone, and white-lipped fury took its place. Irdelron slapped me, the force of his hand jerking my head to the side. He spun, his back blocking my view of what he was grabbing. Then he seized my hand and smashed it flat. He held the object high, and I pleaded with him as the stake glinted in the weak light. But he only laughed. He brought the weapon down, splicing it through my left hand.

I screamed in agony as the pain exploded. I writhed, but every movement made the pain worse, and I attempted to hold still. I tried to wiggle my fingers, but even that sent excruciating waves of anguish up my arm. The rest of the world melted away, and my entire universe was the brutal torment crushing the bones and veins in my left hand.

Jotun’s impassive face came into focus when the initial pain diminished, leaving an almost unbearable throb. I glimpsed the door swinging shut out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white aketon showing as it did. Irdelron was gone. I whimpered in relief.

Jotun turned to the wall, to his weapons, and my heart fell.

He came to my side, a thin needle pinched between his thick, now gloved, fingers. He set a clay container down on the edge, by the hand that was nailed to the table, and removed the lid.

I swallowed, clenching my jaw, tightening my core in anticipation of more pain. I closed my eyes, not sure if it was better to remain in ignorance or see the next means of torture.

He pinched the inside of my elbow, and shards of ice crawled up my arm toward my heart. I opened my eyes, and the room fractionated into tiny slivers that shifted and twirled, preventing me from making any sense of the countless pieces in front of me. I had a single moment of relief before the torment began.

The tiny ice pieces surged inside me, ballooning as they morphed into insects and arachnids. They coalesced in purpose and descended, gnawing and clawing at me, shredding my skin and burrowing deep to lay their eggs. They climbed under my ragged tunic and into my hair. I tried to turn my head, but there was no way to prevent them from digging into my ears. I forced air out my nostrils again and again, trying to keep them from my nose, but the number multiplied, and I had to close my eyes as a second wave descended.

The bugs pinched at my lips, and I folded them in between my teeth to prevent the insects from getting into my mouth, but as they filled my nostrils with their clawing, crawling legs, I was forced to open my mouth so I could breathe. The eggs under my skin started hatching, and the new creatures tore their way out. I screamed, chomping the bugs and spitting them out as fast as I could. Their legs stuck to my tongue, and I spit and chomped while trying to suck in enough air to stay alive. But I was slowly losing. A slithering centipede with millions of feet crawled across my cheek toward my mouth. I whimpered in horror, gagging as I tried to chomp the creature so I could breathe. But the pieces of the one became dozens of smaller invertebrate, and their segmented bodies wriggled into my throat and then into my lungs. I screamed, my voice raw from the overuse, and then I retched.

Pain shot up my arm as another creeping beast gnawed through the rest of my hand, the dead fingers discarded to the ground for other crawling things to eat.

They were in my ears, in my brain, eating away at everything that made me, destroying me until there was nothing left.