My head is wet and sticky, my fingers red. I blink. Someone pulls me. No, I try to say, but the words only play in my head. I spot Jhamal, running faster than the wind toward me, fury in his eyes. His javelin flies from his fingers and someone holding me lets go. But others grab hold of me. I can’t move. I can’t breathe.

“No!” Jhamal roars, fighting through the army of them growing around me. Their prize. The prey they’ve hunted for so long. Captured. I look for someone, anyone, to help. But all I smell is the mountain where I sent my people—burning.

CHAPTER TWO

METAL CLANGS AS I come to. Something tickles my throat, but I can’t seem to cough. Jhamal’s hands work carefully over me, sewing something. His brow is slick with sweat, worry kneaded there too. He pulls a bandage, tearing it with his teeth.

“Help me! It’s too much blood, please!” he says to someone, and I squint but the world is hazy. Where am I? The surface beneath me is cold at my back. It’s hard, like a floor. Stone walls and a row of iron bars form the cell around us. We’re imprisoned? My breath catches and I try to sit up, but pain shoots up my back. I lie back down, pain rippling through me. Everything hurts.

A woman hobbling by shoves a needle and thread through the bars at Jhamal.

“All I could manage,” she says before limping off.

“Thanks.” He takes it.

I’m sprawled out on the ground. Something stings and the wrinkles in Jhamal’s brow soften. He presses down on my leg and works the needle in and out. My skin tugs. Stitches? He’s sewing the flesh back together where my gold cuffs meet my arms. It’s only then I notice scrapes all over my body. I see them, but I feel nothing.

I close my eyes, running my fingers across the wounds, trying to remember.

“What did they do to me?” I try to say, but it comes out like a cough.

Jhamal’s head doesn’t lift, his focus as rigid as the iron holding us in this cell. How long have we been in here? How long have I been out? Questions are a cloud in my mind, but my tongue is heavy. My head lulls sideways and there are other faces peering through their own cell bars, heads tilted in curiosity. I try to speak, but my throat is a useless lump. The world ripples like water and I am heavy. So much heavier than before.

“The Ancestors have not brought you this far to leave you here, my Queen.” Tears pour down his cheeks. “Stay with me.”