Frozen Tides (Falling Kingdoms 4)

“Please,” he gritted out again. “Please help me.”

Finally, the clash and clatter hushed, and the battle sounds faded away to silence.

Felix inhaled, his breath making a shaky, pitiful sound, and he felt the shameful sting of tears.

He’d been left behind to rot.

He closed his eye against the dust and nothingness, hoping he could just fade away in peace. But then a small scuffle from the hall made him look up again.

Footsteps. And they were growing louder, closer.

Finally, someone came to the door. All Felix could see was a pair of eyes, briefly glancing in at him through the window before they disappeared again.

He heard a key turn in the lock, and his whole body tensed. He waited, barely breathing, as the door squeaked open.

Afraid to look up, first he saw a pair of mud-crusted black boots. Leather trousers. A dirty, blood-spattered canvas tunic with ragged, crisscrossed ties.

The glint of a sharp sword.

Felix began to tremble as he forced his gaze upward. Dust filled the air and Felix’s eyes burned from it as he tried to focus on the shape of this intruder.

Familiar. He seemed . . . so familiar.

The young man silhouetted in the doorway wore an expression filled with horror. “Damn it. What the hell did they do to you?”

“I’m dreaming. A dream, that’s all this is. You’re not really here. You can’t be.” Felix leaned back against the wall. “Oh, how funny. A dream about an old friend, just before dying.”

The dream figure came to crouch in front of him. “This is what you get for trying to be one of the good guys, you arse,” he said.

“Apparently so.”

o;Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, turning back to Felix, “but I have to leave you for a bit. I promise I’ll be back later. Rest up.” He cranked a wheel that lowered Felix’s chains, relieving him from standing on the tips of his toes and sending him slumping down to the floor. “Look at you, red with your own blood. Red is the color of Limeros, isn’t it? I’m sure that King Gaius would be proud to see your patriotism now—that is, if he gave a damn about you anymore.”

Laughing, the guard left him.

“Well, now,” Felix mumbled to himself, “this is certainly an unfortunate situation, isn’t it?”

He choked out a laugh, but it barely sounded human.

The walls of his cell were covered in foul-smelling slime; the floor was nothing more than a mixture of dirt and bodily waste. He’d been given nothing but filthy water since he’d woken up there, and not a single scrap of food. If it wasn’t for the chains holding him up, he didn’t think he’d be able to stand on his own.

“What do you think about all of this?” He posed his question to the large, hairy spider in the far corner of the ceiling. Felix had named his ugly cellmate Amara.

In his nineteen long years of life, Felix has never hated anyone as much as he did Amara.

“What was that, Jonas?” Felix had also given a name to the spider’s most recent victim: a fly who’d haplessly wandered too close to the web and was now as trapped as Felix was.

He held a trembling hand to his ear. “‘Don’t lose hope?’ ‘Keep that chin up?’ Sorry to say, friend, but it’s far too late for that. For both of us, it seems.”

The only thing that was keeping him conscious, that kept him fighting to live through this hell, was a hopeless dream of vengeance. Oh, how he would ruin her if he ever managed to escape. That deceptive, conniving, ruthless, cold-blooded, power-hungry monster.

Just the thought of her now made him tremble with rage, a wracking motion that quickly devolved into a mess of dry sobs.

Oh come now, Amara the spider said. You’ve done more than your share of harm in your life. Wouldn’t you say you’ve earned this kind of treatment?

You’re as bad as they come, squeaked Jonas the fly. You’re a killer, remember? You don’t deserve a second chance.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” he replied. “But you two aren’t helping, you know that?”