Ani and Rafe froze, holding their breaths as the sound of steps echoed all around.
“Hello, there,” the woman’s voice sang, whistling as she grew closer.
Ani tried to withdraw from Rafe’s hold, but he held on, squeezing her hand to stay still. Quickly drawing her cloth mask back onto her face, she forced her heartbeats to calm.
A candle light flickered, the sharp, sudden light blinding her eyes. Squinting, she looked around, finally getting a sense of their surroundings.
As she expected, they were in a dank dungeon with cobblestone floors, corroded iron cells, and a steel table holding metal instruments. Warnings sparked in the back of her mind. She finally turned to Rafe and met his masked eyes. Without his hood, his warm brown, disheveled hair fell into his face and his mouth thinned in a pained line. Glancing down, she saw that his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing strong, pale, flexed muscles wrapped in bleeding bandages. His wound must have opened again. She suppressed the urge to reach through the bars to examine the severity of his injury — especially not with the woman crouching down in front of her cell.
Her masked eyes caught on their locked hands. “How sweet,” she smiled in a hoarse voice. She focused back on Ani, bring the flaming candle closer to observe her. “I have a question for you.”
“Don’t answer her,” Rafe gritted out.
The woman clicked her tongue in disapproval but barely spared him any interest. She held her enclosed fist out between them. As she opened her palm, Ani’s black stone necklace dangled around precariously.
Her heart jumped into her throat. So, they had taken it from her.
“What is this little trinket?” the woman asked, tilting her head.
“I’m sure you have eyes to see for yourself,” she blankly responded. “It’s a necklace.”
The woman barked out a laugh. “You’re funny. But I’d think very carefully when you answer again. Where did you get this?”
Ani narrowed her eyes, gently gripping Rafe’s fingers in hopes he’d understand and let go. He did. She dragged herself across the wet stones and came as close to the woman as she could. Clutching the bars, she stared at her stone necklace. “It’s mine.”
“Is it?” she challenged, her eyes flaring a warning at her.
Mine, mine, mine, mine. The words kept chanting in her head. She felt the uncontrollable need to claim it back for herself again. Staring straight at the woman, she let silence hang in the air.
Ani lunged, slamming her body against the bars and reaching her hand through the bars.
Easily escaping, the woman smirked, holding the stone out of reach. “You’re a feisty one. The Master will like you.”
The Master?
Pursing her lips, the woman abruptly blew the candle out, submerging the space into darkness again. “Light it,” she ordered.
“What?” Ani snapped.
“Light. It. Now.”
She wanted her to light the candle? The absurdity of her request had a hysteric laugh bubbling out of her. In the cave, she remembered the torches blazing to life, but one thing she knew was that it didn’t happen from her. Whether he resided in the necklace or acted as a ghost in the wind, she knew he wasn’t here with her now — the phantom, the abyss, the force. She would never know.
“You laugh?” the woman seethed, her voice sounding menacing now that the light was extinguished.
Ani heard Rafe moving behind her. “Do you hear yourself? How utterly mad you sound?” he spat.
“You shut up,” she snapped, lighting the candle again until the sneer on her face was visible. “M,” she shouted, looking behind her at the steps leading up to a door.
It creaked open and another masked man descended, holding a coil of rope in his hands. “I told you she wouldn’t cooperate,” he muttered to the woman, quickly walking to Ani’s cell as he took out a key.
Ani felt trepidation slither into her guts. If he opened it, could she jump the two and find a way out? Could she and Rafe both escape? The sound of the key turning in the lock heightened her breaths. She could feel the tension emanating from Rafe as well.
The cell opened.
Ani jumped up, racing towards the man.
He kicked her in the gut, slamming her body against the ground.
“NO,” Rafe bellowed, the sound of his body banging against the iron bars reaching her ears.
M chuckled in perverse satisfaction, slowly unraveling the ropes and weaving them around her body as she gasped in pain. She tasted blood in her mouth, and her ribs cried in agony.
Binding her until she couldn’t move on her own, he wrenched her by the hair and dragged her up. “You’re going to walk,” he whispered harshly into her ear, digging the tip of a knife into her back.
“YOU STAY AWAY FROM HER,” Rafe roared, slamming the cell as if he could tear it down with the force of his body.
Ani looked back at his frantic, crazed movements, her chest twinging when she sighted his freshly bleeding bandages. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” she said calmly, hoping her false sense extended to him as well.
“Take me instead,” he pleaded, his breaths coming out unevenly. “She doesn’t have anything of value. I can give you —”
“The Master wants to see her,” the woman dismissed, taking the end of a rope and yanking her forward. Without looking back, Ani was dragged towards the steps, listening to Rafe shouting as he slammed into his cell over and over again. Unwillingly leaving him behind, she ascended the stairs and came to a wooden hallway lined with scenic paintings and countless doors. She held onto a calm determination, telling herself this might be an opportunity for a bargain or her only chance to seek out healer at least. It wasn’t until she saw a small group of other masked men coming out a door lining the hallway that her calm facade started to break.
“You know what to do,” M murmured to the head.
Nodding, he led the men towards the dungeon she could still hear Rafe raging in. Ani whipped her head around, her own panic accumulating. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Your friend needs to be knocked down a peg or two.”
Ani stopped walking, trying to turn back towards the dungeon, but the woman pulled on her ropes. “Keep doing that, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t live through the night,” she hissed.
Rage thumped along with her heart beats. She wanted to rip into the woman's skin and carve out her heart. Just imagining what was about the happen to Rafe shriveled her control. He was outnumbered, injured, and suffering because of her. Guilt slammed into her conscience as M pushed her along, piercing his blade into her lower back until a small trickle of blood seeped down.
“If you hurt him, I will kill you,” she said lowly, vowing to herself they would welcome death in relief when she was done with them.
“Bring it on,” M chuckled, underestimating just how far she was willing to corrupt herself at this moment.
Stopping her in front of the furthest door in the long hallway, the woman knocked on the wooden surface.
“Enter,” a deep voice boomed from the inside.
Still simmering, Ani was shoved through the threshold, and forced to kneel before a large, oak desk. Glaring up, she saw a towering man leaning against the desk. With silver hair, golden eyes, and a mask covering the bottom half of his face, he looked young, daunting, and curious.
The woman walked over to his side and placed the stone necklace in his outstretched palm. Turning it around in his hands, the silver-haired man observed it with intent eyes.
“What is your name?” his deep voice resounded.
Ani narrowed her eyes. Rafe’s warning about names didn’t escape her.
He chuckled, crouching down until their eyes were level. He held the necklace up. “You don’t even know what this is, do you?”
Ani clenched her teeth. “It’s a damn necklace. And. It’s. Mine,” she gritted out.
“R,” he called out softly, holding his hand out again. “Give me your dagger.”
Ani bit down on her tongue, sensing the imminent danger.
The woman smirked as she handed him her blade. As the man brought the tip of it to her throat, Ani stilled, preparing herself for either her end or a very painful experience.
“I just want to check something,” he breathed, closing in on her.
Dragging the knife across the delicate skin of her collarbones, she felt the sting of her skin breaking and the warmth of her blood touching air. With just that small slit, the man took the dagger away and watched her with furrowed brows.
That’s it? she thought, baffled.
With the way the room held its breath and the man’s intensity, it looked as if he was waiting for something. She was just about to ask, when the earth started to tremble. The man’s eyes sparkled, even as it grew stronger.
One second, she was looking into his golden eyes, and the next, she was in the abyss.
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