Chapter 107

Liam

The cells were under the training hall, down a flight of stone steps I had taken a hundred times and never once thought about.

I thought about them now. Twenty-two steps, then a landing where the air turned cold and smelled of damp stone, then a second flight, narrower, and the corridor with its row of iron doors and the single lamp hanging at the end of it. When I was twelve, Kade and I had dared each other to sit down here in the dark for an hour. We had lasted ten minutes.

Ryan came down behind me. Neither of us had said much since breakfast. He had stitches along his jaw and a look on his face I knew from border fights, the one that meant he was ready for things to go wrong.

The guard at the end of the corridor straightened when he saw us. “He’s awake. Daphne changed the dressing an hour ago.”