Voices speak to me in the endless dark.

Sometimes, it’s my own voice. An incessant humming.

Then it warps. Fragments.

Becomes ten, twenty. A choir. People I used to know, calling my name. Vasalie. Vah-sah-leee. They sing to me. They recount my failures. They tell me all is hopeless, that I am lost to this prison.

Only today, they are silenced by a long, winding screech. Blades of torchlight cut into my cell, falling across my skin in stripes.

I shift from the onslaught of light, but clamps of steel dig into the raw skin of my wrists, fettering me in place. I narrow my gaze toward the window inset into the cell door. It never opens—never ever—save the rare occasions when the warden opts to ensure I’m still breathing. Which he did yesterday.

I think.

Still, I await the passing of a profile. The closing squeal of those shutters.

For the dark to swarm in once more.

My eyes have long since adjusted to it, after all. There is only ever the soft, taunting flicker from underneath the door.

Too exposed.

Far too bright.

I turn my gaze from the legs poking out from beneath my scratchy linen shift, unable to look at them for long. I count the rats instead. So many of them, huddling in the corners, gnawing on whatever they can find. Their razor-edged teeth are as familiar to me as the dirt and grime that coats my skin.

I am little more than a husk. A corpse. A set of bones, waiting to be buried.

I’m not sure my heart beats anymore.

I’m not sure I want it to.

Still, the window does not shut.

Then the groan of metal shakes the very foundation of this place—the outer door to the prison. Footfalls echo, echo, echo, a thundering pulse.

I lift my head.

Moments later, silhouettes crowd around my window, blotting out the light. The sound of keys rustle from just outside.

“Morta’s teeth. That smell,” someone says.

“If you take her out, I’ll polish your armor for a week.”

A weak pulse flutters within my chest.

“A week? You can’t be serious. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot lance.”

Have they come to carry out my execution? Metal bites into my forearms as I lean forward. I would beg for it, for that sweet moment of release. For a chance to stand on my own two legs and fill my lungs with the warm western breeze, if only for a moment before a blade strikes me down.

“I can’t believe King Illian wants to see her like this. Can’t imagine any amount of scrubbing would do any good.”

King Illian.

Like the swing of an axe, his face cleaves into my mind.

The sharp, marble cut of his jaw.

The sleek sheen of dark curls.