“Are they listening?” I hiss-whisper to him, more than loud enough for any surveillance to hear.
“Always,” he murmurs back. “We will talk, but not yet.”
He releases me and steps away with a warning look. I stay quiet until he is almost at the door.
“You knew, though.”
He spins on his heel, red skein of hair whirling dramatically.
“Enough, Jax.”
“You know my name. Nobody else has even asked it. But you know it. Because you…”
“Enough!”
He crosses the room swiftly and grabs me. Or at me. I’m off balance to begin with, thanks to the lack of limb, and the attempt to dodge his grip is enough to make me tumble over.
“You betrayed me,” I hiss from the floor. “What? Did you need a scapegoat? Or once Rath was gone, you didn’t think you needed to help anymore?”
“Stop. Talking.” Tyvian claps his hand over my mouth and presses his lips very close to my ear. “Be careful of the accusations you make, and who you make them to.”
I wasn’t going to make any accusations, but that was a decision that sixty-seconds-ago-me made. Current me wants, no, needs someone to blame. I have been through too much to behave myself. I was minutes from freedom when someone pulled that dream away from me and cast me into this nightmare. There is no way out of the korabi palace now, not with the tunnels all caved in. I am trapped here, and in all likelihood I will die here. My dignity has been stripped from me, along with my limb. I have been treated with cruelty and indecent aggression.
These are all excuses for what I say when he moves his hand away from my mouth.
“Suck my fuzkin’ balls.”
“Disrespect will get you nowhere.”
“I could have been tortured. He had a room where the walls are full of knives and whips and instruments that didn’t even make sense in the context of my body. He could have killed me slowly and painfully, and you would have let him. So please, kind sir, suck my fuzkin’, sloppy balls.”
“Interesting that you should fear torture from a king, and yet assume his dungeon master will allow you disrespect.”
Oh, Tyvian wants my respect? That’s rich. He’s a traitor. First to Krush, and then to me.
“His dungeon master should know better than to cross the human who has been dealing with…”
“Enough,” he growls. “I have not betrayed you.”
“Oh, yeah? Then how did I get caught? How did my leg end up crushed into a million pieces?”
“Not through me.”
“There’s nobody else.”
Tyvian folds his arms over his chest and looks down at me with what I can only describe as a patronizing look on his face. “There are many, many factors at play here, human. It is possible that you are not as smart as you believe yourself to be.”
“No. It’s not. I know exactly how smart I am. That’s how I’ve survived for so long. You don’t live long in Megaris if you overestimate yourself.”
He’s trying to gaslight me away from his betrayal. It would be one thing if he could admit it, but this nonsense where he tries to make me think I am responsible for my own capture is not going to fly.
Tyvian’s eyes narrow. I see a flash of pure danger there. It occurs to me, very suddenly, that I could die in the dungeon and that would absolve him of all guilt. If he is what I am accusing him of, then he is very dangerous to me.
He reaches for me, claws extended. I scream at the top of my lungs and make a dash for it. I keep forgetting that my prosthetic has been destroyed. I have the memory of it being there, but memory does not stop me from tumbling head over heels and smashing into the wall. Blood spurts from my nose, eliciting another loud curse from me. I put my hands to my face, then onto the wall in an attempt to get up, leaving partial bloody prints as I go.
“What is…”
Krush is at the door, taking in the spray of blood from my nose and Tyvian’s hands on me. He leaps immediately to the correct wrong conclusion. His silver eyes narrow, his sharp teeth are bared in a ferocious and furious grimace. He rages into the room, grabs Tyvian, and hurls him away from me. Tyvian hits the wall I took the wires out of, partially covering my previous sins.
“What are you doing to my prisoner!?” Krush is furious. “How dare you lay hands on her before I do? I have not so much as touched her, and yet you feel as though you have the right to beat her?”
Tyvian stands up, attempting to grasp some kind of dignity back from the crushed wall where the imprint of his body now resides.
“I did not beat her, sire. I will admit, I was going to beat her. That is well within my purview, is it not? I have never been censured for punishing an unruly prisoner.”