He was gazing out the window, an odd expression on his face. Looking at him made me want to bring him food and spoon it into him until the normal, caustic Saiman resurfaced. Someone had done exactly that. Chicken soup and freshly baked bread waited on a tray by the bed. Both were untouched.

Calhoun, a short merc with a shock of wild blond hair, got up from his perch by the door. “Tell me you came to relieve me. I’m starving.”

“Knock yourself out,” I told him. “I’ll sit with him.”

Calhoun took off down the stairs. I pulled up a chair and sat by Saiman’s bed. He ignored me. Julie took the other chair in the corner.

The sun shone on us, warming up the white sheets. Small specks of dust floated in the light.

“There was a window,” Saiman said. “The cell was dark, but there was a window. Too narrow for me to crawl out of and barred, but I could see a small piece of the sky.”

“Hope is a bitch,” I told him. “It keeps you alive when all you want is to die.”

Saiman turned his head and looked at me, his eyes full of winter. “He was draining my blood. As fast as I could make it. When he took it, my body reacted and cannibalized reserves to make up for the shortage.”

“What did he do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“There was another creature in the castle with divine blood,” I said. “An animal. A saber-toothed tiger.”

“I heard it roar once,” Saiman said.

“Why would he need divine blood?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed. It rolled through his entire body. “They broke my legs. Every day before the sun would rise, they came in and shattered my bones with a hammer.”

Saiman had always been terrified of death and physical pain.

“Why?”

“With that much pain, I couldn’t slow down my regeneration. My body healed itself and there was nothing I could do about it.” He shuddered.

“It’s over,” I told him. “You’re safe.”

“Do you know why I accumulated wealth?”

“Because you thought it would shield you. But there are things in this world that are immune to money.”

He looked away from me. “I knew nobody was coming.”

His voice told me everything. He sat in that cell with his broken legs, looked at the sky, and wanted desperately to be rescued, but he knew nobody would care enough to rescue him.

“We were coming.”

“Why did you save me?” he asked.

“I didn’t.”