Page 31 of Great Falls Rogue
Coal rubbed his wrists, pacing the small cell. Had he had his wits about him this morning, he’d still have ensured Kreger never drew another cadet—much less Leralynn—for as long as the man lived. However on the edge of darkness as Coal had already been, the whole mess had happened without his control. Which would make for an unpleasant conversation with River later.
Leaning back against the cold stone wall, Coal felt the adrenaline begin to drain out of him by necessity. The body could only hold on to battle’s sharpness for so long. He knew what would come if he let go of his mind in this dark, foul place. Knew what it would trigger—and was too exhausted to fight it.
Time passed. He had no idea how much. He’d spent enough time in cells to know not to count the seconds.
His lungs tightened as the sun sank below the Academy’s walls, as the air cooled. His breath, harsh now, came out in puffs of condensation.
His hands were shackled, his shoulders screaming from the strain. The taste of blood and fear choked him, blood from his last beating crusting along his skin. The islanders who’d held him for the past year never intended to let him leave. Never let him take his life either, no matter how he tried.
A noise scraped against Coal’s hearing. He shifted, the sores beneath his shackles sending lightning bolts of agony down his skin.
“You aren’t alone.” A feminine voice sounded behind him, soft steps circling until a young woman with intelligent brown eyes came to stand before him. She was small, barely reaching Coal’s shoulder, yet she filled his world with a lilac scent that drowned out all else. One of the islanders he’d not seen before.
With a gasp, Coal roused himself, scrambling against the damp floor for a link to reality. The woman, whose name Coal never learned, had kept the shards of his sanity together—only to destroy them all in a single blow when she disappeared without a word. Coal knew the wound was his own fault for having entrusted himself to her, but that made it hurt no less.
It was the woman’s scent that Coal remembered most. A lilac so clean and crisp, it could drown out the stench of fear. Coal never expected to breathe in such a lilac scent again—until a cadet named Leralynn of Osprey walked into his world, grabbed a blade, and ripped every abscessed memory wide open.
Acadet. And yet when Coal took her in the cave that month ago, his soul had woken. For the first time since escaping the islanders, he had felt alive, the scents of the forest’s pine and rain-wetted earth so potent, he tasted them with each breath.
Coal strode to the bars, his hands wrapped around the iron. Staying away from so much as touching her for a month had stressed Coal’s self-control to the limit. He was too honest with himself to pretend that the growing nightmares had nothing to do with the strain. He had slipped once. Just once, when he chose Lera for a choke-hold demonstration because he could not bear the thought of another’s arm at the girl’s throat.
Spinning, Coal struck his fist against the metal, the pain singing through his bones and flesh. Physical pain was easier to endure than the one gripping his chest. Even now, days later, he remembered every second of that exercise. How anxious Leralynn had been, how little she trusted him. Standing so close to Lera, her small, tight body pressed against him, Coal had breathed in the lilac with the hunger of a starved man.
Yet the moment he had, the woman from the islands appeared, the vision of her melding with the cadet in Coal’s hold. Fury had risen in Coal’s chest, the pain of abandonment spurring a flash of chains and questions. And then…then Lera had fought him like a cornered animal. The same girl who, a month ago, had stood up to River—despite the threat of a whipping that terrified her—all to protect Coal, now couldn’t bear to trust him in broad daylight before a class of others.
Lera’s fear of him, the breach in her trust, had unraveled Coal at last. Yes, the guard who’d brought Coal here was right. Coal was rabid. And the sooner he was put down, the better.
Sitting on the hard stone floor, Coal listened for the tower bell marking the passage of time. He little expected River to come for him today—the man liked to be in control before doing anything and would take time to calm down. Plus, it now fell to the commander to clean up the mess Coal had made, which—had the positions been reversed—Coal would have eviscerated River for.
The walls of Coal’s cell closed in on him, the edges of his vision blurring in preview of the too-familiar terrors. Knowing what was to come made Coal’s heart race no slower, however, his lungs stretch no less with bit-back screams. Pressing himself against the wall of his cell, he settled in for a long night of seeing chains and whips and heated iron. His mind did not disappoint.
Not until full dark settled and Coal suddenly smelled the scent of sweet hay and the lathered sweat of hard-worked horses. Felt helpless dread fill him as a large man with dark coiled hair loomed over him, blocking out all the light of the stable, twisting him as easily as if he were a child.
“Everything you are, you have, you’ll ever become is because of my good graces,” the man’s voice snapped along with a deafening crack of his belt. The strap ends wrapped around Coal’s ribs, making him scream loud enough that the horses whickered in discontent. Terror clawed at his throat—terror and a strange sort of resignation. “When I order a horse saddled, you saddle a horse. You don’t lie. You don’t pretend he’s lame to save yourself a bit of work.”
The whip fell again, and Coal screamed again, unable to stop himself. Tears blurred his vision of the rough wooden stable wall.
Each hiss and crack of the whip felt stamped upon his mind as much as his body. The whip fell again, again. Until the pain made darkness close around him.
9
River
Striding down the stairs of the dungeon corridor, River breathed in the damp air, the keys in his hand clanking with each step. His head pounded, the ache pressing on the back of his eyeballs and pulsating against his skull. He’d barely had time to piss since the brawl yesterday morning, much less eat, sleep, or wring Coal’s neck, as he was desperate to do.
The six guards still laid out in the infirmary—a dozen others falling into the walking wounded list—made unscrambling duty schedules alone a nightmare. That was before even considering who disobeyed whose orders, and how command needed to be restructured. Adding to that, the Academy’s top healer had chosen this time to bloody disappear, and Sage was in a rightful fit. At this point, River little cared for how the problem started—he’d gotten a mix of explanations ranging from cocks to women—a well-trained regiment of soldiers didn’t have a right to degenerate into a mob.
Which brought River back to Coal. And the cadets. River paused, running a hand through his hair. He’d forgotten to send word to Leralynn canceling the morning tutoring session, but she’d hopefully work out the reason for his absence from the study. More likely than not Lera would be glad for the reprieve—given that her disobedience of his direct orders to stay in the study was another matter to be dealt with. Another issue he was looking forward to very little.
One problem at a time.River started walking again, reining in his focus. In the shadow of what the islanders had done to Coal in captivity, leaving the man in lockup overnight hadn’t been ideal. But Coal had been in the heart of the mob, and anything less would have had the guardsmen revolting. How much further River would need to take discipline was dependent as much on Coal himself as anything else. Which meant River had to be very, very careful, especially when he opened the door, lest Coal did something to get himself into hotter flames.
Drawing a lungful of moldy air, River coughed loudly before turning the final corner, small empty cells lining both sides of the wall, the damp ceiling less than a foot from his head. The Academy had been a fortress once and still had the facilities to hold more prisoners than it could ever see. With Coal having no line of sight to the corridor, River little wanted to surprise the man who might well have spent the night punching stone walls to ward off nightmares.
River braced himself for that too. Braced himself for many things.
None of them included finding Coal kneeling on the floor, his hands braced on his thighs as if it took all his concentration just to keep breathing. Sweat glistened on his arms and tight face, matting his loose blond hair.Stars.The whole cell stank with acrid fear.
River paused to collect himself, hiding away the self-loathing he felt for making this happen. Then his cool voice rang through the bars of Coal’s cell. “Good morning.”
