Sickness, sadness, and pain do not offer the best place for clear thinking. Wallowing in mistakes made when in such states is useless. Once clarity strikes, I can find opportunities. Being wanted by someone in power grants power.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  A monk brought food to the cavaler and his prisoner, simple gruel and thin ale. The monk’s trembling hands rattled the bowls on his tray as he entered. It was offered in silence. Dragos kept his eye on the dull gleam of the man’s shaven head until he left.

  The cavaler offered him the bowl and mug through the bars. Tight squeeze managed, Dragos avoided spilling anything. He sniffed the food. It was hard to tell through his swollen, clogged sinuses, but it seemed plain, untampered. He didn’t expect they’d waste poison to kill him, but they might’ve tried adding something to loosen his tongue.

  Actually. Loosening his tongue might not be a bad thing.

  The mushy grains warmed his blood, the natural sweetness of them tingled his whole being. Dragos sighed with pleasure, though his face throbbed as he chewed. Julianos nodded as he shoveled his own gruel into his mouth, grunting. It wasn’t delicious. Far from it.

  Meals Fane had concocted at The Lady’s Stag were by far the finest dishes Dragos had ever tasted. Painful comparison. He talked about it, anyway.

  “The stolnic from The Lady’s Stag used to make the most amazing dishes. He had river trout brought fresh every day. He often served it raw, which was unthinkable, and yet made it with these pickled vegetables that had an astringent spice,” Dragos mumbled around a mouthful of mush. “Amazing.”

  The cavaler's gaze flicked up. Dragos kept talking.

  “He also used this thing, porumb? Yellow kernels on a woody stalk, but cooked soft and delicious with a spice made from dark red peppers from his garden and slathered with creamy telaema. They had the best food at the Stag.” The pang of loss the memory brought made the gruel taste suddenly bitter.

  “Where is this place?” Julianos asked, then tipped his cup up to finish his drink.

  “Sigovara. I don’t know how it fares, since I left,” Dragos admitted. Did they survive the loss? Did Fane survive? For that one sacrificed girl, he’d destroyed everything when he ruined Viorica’s spell.

  He’d do it again, too.

  His pensive gaze lost in memory, the spoon sagged in his grip. After a time, he asked, “If you can find out how they are, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Why?”

  Julianos’s flat, untrusting tone pulled Dragos's gaze to him and his dull stare.

  “I’d like to know if they fare well. The choices Viorica made for them…” Dragos almost shook his head, but the pounding in it denied him the gesture.

  “You make it sound like the woman was the striga, not you.”

  “Do you think that evil begins and ends with the Umbre? With strigoi? Do you believe things are always as they appear? I thought you were smarter than the typical cavaler,” Dragos sneered. He scraped the wooden bowl clean and wiggled it back through the bars. The drink? He nursed it slowly, though it wasn’t much better than the gruel. It still fortified him.

  “What I think doesn’t matter here. I’ve just been promoted to cavaler. This was my first mission,” Julianos replied. The pride faded to a resignation that rang hollow in his voice.

  Dragos leaned his spine against a bar and tilted his head to cast a one-eyed glance at the knight. His mouth tugged into an acidic smirk. “What you do matters.”

  Julianos flinched. Not physically, but in the man’s eyes, a rolling turmoil came and went. The moment of offense came and went before Dragos blinked once.

  The knight considered his words for a lengthy moment, then said, “I don’t know what you are, monster or man, but you seem wise. With your white hair, I could almost believe you bled children of their souls to stay young.”

  A rasping chuckle burst out. Dragos coughed and sighed, “Is that what the villagers said? People say the most insane things to make sense of what they can’t understand.”

  “How old are you?” Julianos leaned forward to ask, hands gripping his knees.

  Dragos paused and frowned. “Twenty, maybe twenty-one? Anno de Lumini 1662, not sure what season or moon.”

  “One year older,” Julianos murmured. “Not that it matters.”

  Dragos grunted. What mattered was who was inside the cage and who was outside it. He was weary from the conversation and the food in his belly. Sleep rarely summoned him, but it whispered then, a promise to release him from pain, for a while. He took it.

  The loud rattle of the door woke him.

  Reality surged back with cold iron and stone, cramped confines, the stink of mildew, and the dull, feverish tide of aches. Dragos peeled his good eye open. A censer swung in, fuming with incense. A monk stepped past the threshold, followed by another, Suta? Venox, and another cavaler with more intricate bronze embellishments and a rectangular square of orange fabric hanging from his shoulder.

  “This is the albstrig?, Mare?al Urs.”

  That familiar voice belonged to the Luminatori who helped hunt him down. The disturbingly even tones prickled Dragos's skin. The monk swinging incense on a chain to ward off dire spirits was unknown to him, one of many who maintained the Palisades.

  “It smells like a charnel house in here,” the field marshal commented, a finger going up to press his dark mustache against his nostrils to filter the stench.

  Dragos pinched his lips together to hold back unwise words, squinting through the thick smoke at the men. The sun had baked blood into his clothes, he hadn’t washed in days, and he was reasonably sure one of his wounds was infected, if not on its way to festering. He did find a maggot crawling on his sleeve. For the best. They would devour the rotten flesh and save him—if he survived the fever.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Is it born of a woman?” Urs continued, stepping closer.

  Dragos groaned and—thanks to the feverish delirium that pushed at the edges of his consciousness—didn’t hold his tongue.

  “It was. It eats like a man, sleeps like one, and currently has to take a piss.”

  Any fear he should have felt was burnt to ashes. Like the floating clouds of incense, contempt lingered in the wake of misery’s fire. Dragos scowled openly.

  The field marshal, Urs ignored him.

  Dragos was unimpressed with the large man. All the finest armor in the world couldn’t make a man worthy of respect. Had a nice sword, though. Dragos didn’t prefer them. Not as good as a spear, or a net, or his claws. Bind the blade, bind the man. If you don’t fear pain, you can kill an average swordsman. Mirel’s voice echoed in his slippery thoughts. The men spoke while his focus blurred.

  Mirel stood beside him, her hemp robes pale in the muted glow of Julianos’ candle, but her hair shone bright as arterial blood, falling in waves around her shoulders. Dragos looked at her stern face, turned down to stare at him through the bars.

  “Dragos. What mess have you gotten yourself into now?”

  A loud clang against the bars rocked his skull. Mirel was gone. Urs rapped the pommel of his sword on the top of the cage again.

  “I said, what do you have to say for your crimes?”

  “Nothing,” Dragos murmured. “I’ve done no crimes.”

  But that wasn’t true. He’d done unto others as they’d done to the helpless. Was it justice? Criminal?

  Some would have felt it unjust, but Katya, Maria, and Fane hadn’t. He was locked in his own mental debate while beside his cage, Urs, Venox, and the Luminatori discussed him like a goat at the market.

  “We must do a proper Inquiry,” the monk with the censer murmured. “I will prepare the tools.”

  Dragos's eye rolled away from them at the word inquiry. If he survived this…

  Fear reared its ugly head and receded again, delirium taking its place. He sighed, “For what? So you can torture me more? This is torture. I just want to sleep, and you’re all talking right over my cage.”

  What he wanted was his box. The shape of it, the feel of old wood and hinges, and leather worn soft in places, iron-hard in others, but most importantly, the medicine inside. Desperation welled in his chest, and he crushed it quickly. They wouldn’t give it to him.

  Unless he tricked them.

  That thought swam in and flashed off like a fish in a lake. He hoped to find it again when the death bells stopped tolling in his head.

  Iron squealed. He looked up to see Urs motion for Julianos, who bent to reach into the cage. Dragos gripped his forearm with his good hand. His legs wobbled, pins and needles racing along them as he attempted to stand.

  Iron rings waited, mounted to the wall. He hadn’t noticed them before and mumbled, “Convenient.”

  The cavaler put his arm in one band and closed it, then lifted his other. The wound protested. Dragos hissed wordlessly.

  The monk with the censer handed the incense diffuser off to Julianos and scampered out the door. The men waited, murmuring. Dragos alternated leaning on the cuffs and standing. He actually preferred the cage.

  The monk returned with another, both carrying objects barely lit by the tiny yellow halo of the candle beside the stool. Dragos lifted his head and looked at the bald-pated monk who’d chased him.

  “Luminari, what is your name?”

  The even-tempered man perused whatever the two monks brought, not looking at Dragos when he answered mildly, “I’m called Brother Horator.”

  He selected something from the trays brought and faced the prisoner. In his palm, a bowl rested; the other hand steadied it as he walked. A wooden rod jutted from the rope belt he wore, much like a switch used for urging horses or beating children.

  Dragos calmed his breathing. Trapped with his arms as they were, he could do nothing. He couldn’t do much before, but now he was fully at their mercy. It didn’t matter.

  A fire burned deep in the bruised creases of his brain. He’d remember their names. When he could exact it, vengeance would be brutal.

  Brother Horator stepped close and dipped a silver-tipped finger into some liquid that was not water or an oil Dragos recognized but something wet that glistened. He murmured a prayer to the light. Simple words.

  “Light protect us. Light guide our steps. Light bless you and keep you. Light drive away the shadows that encircle this being, your child.”

  The monk pressed his finger to Dragos's forehead. The substance stung when it was rubbed across his skin. A second later, a hot trickle of blood slid alongside his nose.

  “He bears the sign of a pact-bearer. What master do you serve?”

  Dragos barked a laugh.

  The monk took a step back, away from the captive’s sudden volume. Dragos’s one good eye swept the room. “Sign? That’s not fact, that’s farce. Why are you bothering with these fake gestures? That thing on your finger cut me. Who are you performing for? These? Who already know your little games?”

  The switch snapped out and struck Dragos across his already torn cheek. He bared his teeth at the man, a low animal growl rose from deep in his chest.

  “Silence, beast! Unless it is a confession or a question, you will not speak!”

  “Ask something intelligent!” Dragos snapped back.

  Urs yawned. The monks clutched their trays, eyes riveted with a blend of horror and eagerness. Julianos stood with his arms crossed, expression as flat as the wall.

  Dragos never expected their sympathy. But how could they not recognize the manipulation? They were complicit in it, as he’d already pointed out. It served them.

  “Did you consume that child’s soul?”

  “No.”

  The monk used the tip of the switch to pull his disheveled clothes down enough to reveal an edge of the owl tattoo. “He bears the witch mark.”

  “It’s a tattoo, idiot. Any twit with something sharp and ink—” The switch cracked across his mouth. The sting and lingering burn fueled Dragos's anger. Hot blood trickled down his chin as he firmed his lips and glared at the monk.

  “You stole that child’s soul, and Light knows how many more! Repent and let the Light welcome you back!”

  “I repent,” Dragos snarled, his one eye boring into Brother Horator’s, “for ever tolerating the likes of you.”

  The switch slashed again and again, tearing his robes, then his flesh, drawing blood.

  It was nothing. One more pain to add to the collection. The indignity, however, built to explosive levels in his head. His weakened body surged, fingers curling into fists. With more will than strength, he grabbed his chains and lashed a kick at the monk.

  The surprise on the bald man’s face was delicious as he flew back, crashing into the cage in the center of the room. He tumbled into a heap of hemp robes. The other monks set their trays down to scurry to help their brother to his feet. Horator flailed and scrambled to his feet, shoving the others away. When he rounded on Dragos, the murderous look in his eyes gave the captive a thrill of triumph.

  “So you do feel emotion,” Dragos laughed. The man’s face was dark with rage and humiliation.

  “Bind his legs!”

  Julianos stepped around the cage, but slowly, gaze slipping from his superior, Mare?al Urs to Brother Horator. He knelt beside Dragos, having secured the rope he’d used to lead the albstrig?, he bound the man’s ankles. As he rose, he murmured, “I’m sorry.”

  Dragos met his gaze and gave him a bloody smirk. “You’ll be saying that many, many times before they steal your humanity, and you end up like them.”

  Julianos glanced at the men beyond the cage.

  Dragos could see the man’s turmoil, but it mattered little. He'd succumbed to the rage inside that demanded all their deaths. That behavior could instigate his own. He was wanted. They shouldn't kill him, but they might, if he pushed them too hard.

  If he escaped this, his desire for vengeance would grow considerably.

  Perhaps to the cost of his humanity.

  Cavaler (kah-vah-LEHR): Knight of the Luminatori

  Stolnic (Stol-NEEK): Pantry manager, much like a butler, but with responsibilities regarding the kitchens more than the house and grounds.

  Porumb (po-OOMB) [rolled r]: corn

  Telaema (teh-LAY-mah): similar to Greek yogurt

  Striga/strigoi (STREE-guh)/(stree-GOY): All manner of creatures with wounded souls. It could refer to the undead, to witches, or ghosts, depending on the context.

  Umbre (UM-bruh): Shadow

  Anno de Lumini (AH-noh DAY loo-MEE-nee): Year of Light

  Suta? (soo-TASH): Like a Centurion, a non-commissioned, professional officer.

  Albstrig? (ALV-streeguh): White witch. Barn owl. A pale ghost or evil spirit.

  Mare?al (ma-reh-SHAL): Field Marshal.

  Luminatori (loo-min-ah-TOR-ee): Religious order. Monks that meditate on the Light, unrelated to the Zioruluc, which is considered Unspoken, a false light that drives one mad. They control the Cavalarul de Lumina.