Page 107 of The Spoils of Victory

Lyr struggles in the arms of the bodymen, begging, “Please, Damon—” One of the bodymen hits Lyr with a closed fist. It’s a blow that would have knocked him down if the other two men weren’t holding him.

Lyr looks at Damon’s face. Being hit doesn’t matter. All that matters is Damon. But Damon is looking at Lyr and seeing nothing but betrayal.

“Well, Bastard?” says Atticul, bringing his blade back to Lyr’s neck. “Do you want this traitor dead?”

“Do what you want with him,” Damon says.

Lyr swallows. He expects to die now. He wishes Damon would hold the blade himself.

“Very well. You know there is a price on this whore’s head? He escaped the dungeons under the Rose Palace somehow. And Selim wants him back to interrogate further about his foul dealings with the Hevelikar.” He nods to his bodyman to uncover Lyr’s mouth. “Bred for sin by the Hevelikar were you? How many other men have you seduced for their evil ends?”

Damon isn’t looking at them. He’s looking down at the tabletop, face grey.

“None,” says Lyr. “I wasn’t sent to seduce him. I was sent to Damon because of a prophecy.”

“Revolting,” says Atticul happily. Still loving every moment of his victory. “Perhaps Jareleezi wants you back. Selim could offer her a trade when we find her. You for the Books of Alios.”

“She’d never trade the Books of Alios for me,” Lyr says. “She’d likely kill me for failing her.”

Atticul ignores this. “It seems this whore of yours is quite a prize. I should have kept him for myself from the start.”

“No whore of mine,” says Damon softly. “It seems he was never mine. It was all Hevelikar lies.”

Atticul addresses his bodymen, “Take him to the ship.”

They start to move, marching Lyr out of the keep. Lyr struggles. Hard. Hard enough that he manages to break free. He turns, dodging Atticul and running back up to the keep. He races to Damon who has come outside, looking dazed, looking like a ghost. Lyr grabs Damon and the runes on his chest glow bright.

And Damon, like the skilled soldier he is, grabs Lyr by the wrist, forces him back an arm’s length and punches him in the face.

Lyr goes down, down into the dark. The last thing he hears is Atticul laughing.

Lyr wakes on the Azuria Ascendant, in a dark room with bound wrists. He lies on the boards and sobs quietly to himself until there comes the docks, a prison cart and another cell under the Rose Palace.

All the while he feels the cold grip of Jareleezi. Are the Dareks really going to try and trade him back to her after they have interrogated him for all he knows?

The terror of it is so great it almost blots out his grief. His memories of her are fractured in places. A few are vivid but most are hazy. He remembers her dark chambers. Being bound, being drugged, being hurt. He remembers her chanting.

When he thinks of it feels like a memory cracks open. He remembers Jareleezi’s chants as she cut swirls into his thighs and things forming in the room around them. Demonic creatures. Black and glistening like they were wet or oily.