Affinity

*Ch. 24 Excerpt*

The dungeon was damp and smelled overwhelmingly of rot and decay, and it was dimly lit by only a handful of torches positioned along the walls. He had protested as loudly and violently as he could as he was dragged down a corridor lined with cells of weak, cowering, decrepit creatures, but the soldiers paid him no attention. They only threw him in an empty cell and locked him in bulky shackles attached to a heavy iron chain that ran through a ring driven into the solid wall at the back of the cell.

For a week, he was left in his cell with no blood offered to him, witch or otherwise. He had been reduced to a pale shadow of himself, crazed by his thirst, taunted by the dungeon guards when his desperation became too clear. They brought cups of boar blood to him that they spilled on the ground just out of his reach and laughed when he strained against his chains to reach hopelessly toward the puddles of blood on the floor just within the iron bars of his cell.

On the seventh day, there had been a commotion outside the dungeon door. Nathan first heard shouting, and then he noticed the weak sobbing beneath the din of loud, angry voices. When the dungeon door at the end of the corridor swung open and two guards shoved a woman inside, he had watched the scene with some interest, thinking that she must be a new prisoner, the first to have been brought in since Nathan's own arrival.

As she was shoved closer to his cell, Nathan was struck by the scent of magic in the woman's blood, and he instinctively shrank back. But before he realized what was happening, the shaking, crying woman was shoved into his cell with him, and he threw himself as far from the witch as he could manage.

It was clear that she was sick and that no one had made any effort to provide her any healing or comfort. Several of her teeth that he could see were broken or missing, and there were dried sores crusting the corners of her lips. She was emaciated and filthy and hopeless, covered in scars and bruises and dressed in threadbare, ragged clothing, but still she tried hard to compose herself enough to look at him with what was supposed to be a brave face. His pity went out to her even as he thirsted so deeply for her blood that he flinched when she took a step toward him, saying something that he couldn't understand.

One of the guards reached through the bars and shoved her forward. Her eyes widened with sudden fear, her courage failing her as she stumbled and fell. On the stone floor in the middle of Nathan's cell, she succumbed once more to her sobs with her head bowed between her thin shoulders.

The guards were shouting now, calling for her to get up and for him to drain her blood, but neither Nathan nor the witch moved until, finally, Nathan summoned all the strength he had, took a step toward the girl, and extended a hand to her. With her head in her hands, she didn't see him right away, but he waited patiently until her hands came down from her face. Then she looked up at him, and her frail, trembling hand rose slowly and hovered before his before she sucked in a bracing breath and took his hand to embrace her fate.

Whether she was killed by the demons of the fortress, her disease, or him, she was going to die. She knew it as well as he did. He could see it in the solemn resignation in her heavily shadowed eyes, and he admired her courage. She was brave and strong, things that he was not.

She impressed him further when she reached up to touch his cheek and began speaking to him again. He frowned and shook his head until he finally realized that she was speaking Greek.

Flashes of his early years in Greece came to him, momentarily distorting his sense of reality as the witch's gentle voice and the guards' shouts all faded away. He squeezed his eyes shut against nauseating flashes of a viewpoint from the water. He saw early morning sky as it was just beginning to lighten, and there was a woman in the shallows who appeared to be watching him.