Ty didn’t return that day.

I couldn’t tell if it was Tuesday or not, but Jotun didn’t return for me either. I’d overheard Lord Irrik say I’d been here three weeks. Did that mean I’d been here a month now?

A month since my mother died. Moons, but I missed her. Ty filled the hole somewhat, but no one could ever replace my mother.

Somewhere in the middle of wondering why Jotun opted to have Tuesday off out of all seven days, I must have drifted off again in a sleep that wasn’t sleep at all. I tossed and turned, imagining Lord Irrik in my cell, and the king, and then both of them laughing at me. Dyter appeared, and even Mum, her face in anguish as she tried to comfort me. The knife was pushed into her chest. Then the king’s Drae pulled it out and handed it to me.

When I awoke, someone was brushing my arm in a cool caress.

“Tyr,” I mumbled.

Keeping my eyes closed, I relished the gentle contact, but my arm was stiff from being flung up over my head. My aching muscles screamed to move, and I withdrew my arm from his attention. As I moved, the brush of his fingers tickled, and I giggled, opening my eyes.

My lips parted, and it took me a while to understand I was still in my cell.

A dark circle, almost as big as my face, hovered right above me, and there were pale petals of yellow surrounding it. I blinked, and the anemic sunflower came into focus. The giant flower had fallen over and hovered directly over my head.

Inhaling through my nose, I almost choked on the smell of fresh vegetation.

In. My. Dungeon. Cell.

I pushed the sunflower away and sat up.

I’d finally broken. It was the only explanation.

Surrounding me was a tiny garden. Barley grass, wheat, and a small stalk of corn had sprouted from the meager dirt layer between the stones. Other plants I didn’t recognize had begun a doomed life cycle, wilting in the darkness of the cell. Not believing my eyes, I ran my hand over the spikes of the barley, and the thin plants tilted and fell, their roots in the stone of the dungeon cell inadequate to sustain them. I picked up a shoot and bent the tender stalk.

What made them grow?

Yesterday, I ate bread with these exact seeds on it. Today, the same seeds were full-grown.

I stood in the middle of my cell, spinning on the spot.

The moss yesterday. The patch hadn’t been that big the day before, not even a patch at all. Now I was sure of it, though I’d been puzzled when Tyr held it out to me. There was something wrong with this dungeon cell.

“Ryn?” Ty rasped, making me jump. “You still alive?”

“I’m here,” I answered, looking down at my shredded shift. “Are you al’right? You’ve been out for a long time.”

He coughed. “I’ll live. Jotun found out we’re sharing food.”

“He won’t move you away, will he?” I asked, holding my breath.

“I can’t say,” Ty answered. “I told him I wouldn’t share with you again.” He paused. “Do you have any food?”

I laughed under my breath. “Such rebellious tendencies.”

“It goes with my rugged, dark looks.”

“Is that what you look like?” I asked. “Dark hair, dark eyes, a beard?”

He was surprised. “Yes, how did you know?”

“I have powers you wouldn’t believe.” I glanced at the garden in my room.

Crossing to the chamber pot, I could just see the outline of the flagon of nectar.

I unplugged the cork and drank several gulps before forcing myself to stop. I found the oiled cloth behind the clay flask and unwrapped it and the burlap cloth beneath. The cheese was salty and dry, and the dense, nutty bread dissolved in my mouth, leaving several whole grains to grind with my teeth.

My gaze landed on the plants by my blanket as I chewed. Pumpkin. Barley. Kamut. Pursing my lips, I shook a few of the seeds from the loaf I held into a far corner, not touched by the current crop.

“Do you want some cheese and bread?” I asked Ty. “If you have an extra container, I can pour you some nectar.”

“Some what?”

“Nectar. The fruity drink we get. I don’t know what else to call it. It’s kind of like mead.” Dyter had never served anything like it, nor had Mum.

He chuckled. “No, but thank you. I have some of the drink left. Do you have enough?”

I sighed, looking at my dark cell. The phosphorus glow cast an eerie light, and the fronds and leaves looked sad and pathetic in the dark.

“Someone left more for me,” I answered. “A friend, I think.” It was as close as I’d come to telling him about Tyr.

Awareness of my situation struck me. Besides the obvious ongoing torture-and-death problems, I was in serious trouble right now.

As I crouched to pass the food to Ty, I said, “Hey, Ty? Have you ever had plants grow in your cell?”

He snorted. “What?”

“Like, you go to sleep and wake up with a sunflower by your head, that kinda thing?” I asked. “It’s just, how would they grow in here? It’s so dark and . . .”

Holy pancakes. I sounded crazy. And sounding crazy when I had several friends was okay but not when I just had one.

At least he was caged in and couldn’t run.

“What do you mean? You’re wanting to grow plants? Are you sure you’re al’right?”

I didn’t answer, just stared at the growth at my feet. “Um.”

“Ryn?”

I touched the tip of the sunflower with my toe. The leaves and stem were scratchy on my bare, sensitive skin. Regretting my next move because the sunflower was the first bit of beauty I’d seen in here, I bent the stalk to rip the flower head off.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold on,” I worked the stalk back and forth. Turned out, sunflowers had really thick stems.

“What—?”

“Nearly there,” I huffed. The flower ripped off after a full minute of bending and twisting, and I glared at it as I crossed to the bars. “I’m passing something to you. And . . . well, here.”

I stretched as I passed the sunflower head, shoving it through the gap in the bars. I felt the tug as he took the thick stem from me, and I listened as he pulled it into his cell.

Then nothing.

I raised my brows. “Ty?”

“W-where did you get this?”

I settled back against the stone. “Funny story, actually. Yesterday, I brushed sunflower seeds onto the floor, along with some other grains. Then, I wake up today and there’s this mossy oasis in my dungeon cell.”

It was true. I’d crossed the cell several times, only feeling spongy moss underfoot instead of sharp stones.

“Seeds,” Ty said.

I frowned. He wasn’t being very quick on the uptake. Shock, I realized, mentally hitting my forehead.

“I know it’s really strange,” I said. “That’s why I was wondering if it’s ever happened to you? Is there magic in this castle?” I knew nothing about such things.

There was a lengthy pause. “There must be. I have no other explanation for it.”

“To the library I’ll go,” I quipped.

Ty was still silent.

“What happens when Jotun comes and sees a garden in my room?” I asked. This was my real problem.

Ty cursed. “Ryn, you need to get rid of everything. Right now.”

The urgency in his voice spurred me to standing. “Al’right. But why? It’s not my fault.”

“I know,” Ty said. “But I can’t predict how Jotun will react. I’ve never heard of anything like this. Who knows what he’ll do.”

Drak. He was right. I stared at the garden, hating what I had to do to stay alive here. Gripping the corn stalk, I ripped it up.

The barley was next, and the rest of the sunflower stem, then the moss. But the moss clung to the rock and resulted in bleeding knuckles and torn feet from doing my best to scrape it away.

“Someone’s coming. Under your bed,” Ty urged. “Put it under your bed.”

“Who is it?” I hissed, heart pounding because I hadn’t heard the door open. My hands grew slick with trepidation. Please be Tyr . . . please be Tyr.

A cold voice answered me from the front of my cell. “Who would you like it to be?”

A sense of doom sank into me as I turned, hands full of leaves and stems, to face Lord Irrik.

I’d never seen him truly angry before. As I backed away from where he stood radiating fury on the other side of the bars, it astonished me that there was a more terrorizing level to this man than I’d encountered before.

“They just appeared,” I blurted.

His eyes were slits—he’d partly shifted to Drae—and he studied me with his reptilian eyes. “What have you done?”

My chest rose and fell as I hyperventilated. As he unlocked the door and entered my cell, I dropped the plants, and clasped my hands together. “Please, it wasn’t me. I have no idea what happened.”

“No idea?” he asked, his lip curling in a sneer.

The door clanged open down the hall, and Irrik’s eyes widened. He grabbed me in an iron grip and threw me from the cell. I rolled across the stones of the outside passage, crying out as my hip struck solid rock.

The Drae was on me in a beat, gripping me by the back of the neck. He directed me past a few empty cells before he shoved me forward to the ground and snarled to someone over my head, “Make it good.”

Gingerly getting to my knees, I tilted my head to look at Jotun.

* * *

“Why do you help me, Tyr?” I slurred.

He wiped the tear trickling down my cheek then bent over me and kissed my forehead in answer. I felt the warmth of his feelings for me radiating from his tender touch.

“That doesn’t tell me anything,” I complained as he lifted one of my arms.

A wry smile showed under his hood, but it was tight and lacking in humor. I must be a sight, so I could hardly blame him. Jotun had taken Lord Irrik’s command to heart. By now, I’d learned Jotun obeyed all the king’s orders, except when it came to Irrik-related matters. The mute guard seemed to hold an all-consuming hatred towards the Drae. I had no idea why. Maybe Jotun was jealous of him. More likely, there was politicking I’d missed while in the torture chamber. One thing I did know: Jotun’s deep-set grudge did not bode well as long as he believed Lord Irrik favoured me because that made me an Irrik-related matter.

Games. Always games.

I groaned as Tyr reset my dislocated shoulder, and then I asked, “How long will I live?”

My question was rhetorical, directed to the universe that allowed such atrocities to occur, not the man caring for me.

When Jotun dragged me down here, I never expected to live longer than a week, and I couldn’t bear the thought of this abuse going on endlessly. The game between Lord Irrik and the king surely couldn’t continue much longer. Soon, the king would realize I was worthless to him. . . If he even recalled he’d put me down here.

Either way, I was dead. It may take a week or a month or a year, but I was dead.

Maybe it would be better if Tyr stopped healing me, if the healing only put off the inevitable. How much could one body take before it simply failed?

Tyr paused, and I realized I must’ve said at least part of this aloud. As I looked around, I saw the room was now back to its stony, plant-free self. Too little, too late. I hoped the plants didn’t come again.

A drop landed on my arm, and I startled, glancing up at Tyr’s hooded face. His strong jawline wasn’t clean shaven, not like it usually was, and his full lips were twisted as if trying to contain . . . A tear trickled from his cheek to his chin and then dripped.

“Tyr,” I whispered.

He was crying. For me.

My heart squeezed, and my throat clogged with emotion. He held one of my hands gingerly, stroking his thumb over my palm. Instead of pulling it up to his face, he brought his face to my hand.

Ryn, he thought, full lips pressed together. I’m going to get you out of here. I swear. Please hold on.