Spaces Between

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•Chapter Thirty-Eight•
Black and Blue
(ASGARD)

The dungeons were an awful place.

The yelling and the hollowed look of the other prisoners made me want to rip my hair out. 

From what I could tell from sheer context clues, I realized that most of them didn't look like the hardened criminals I had saw the last time I was here.  Some of the cells on the opposite wall were full of older men and boys—they weren't loud and vulgar like the ones farther in the dungeon.  They just looked like regular, every day Asgardians.

Most of them look terrified.

Even more so when they looked at me.

I had curled myself up in a ball. I was as far back in my cell as I could physically be and positioned half behind the bed and the water basin. You couldn't see me from the hall unless you stood right at the dividing barrier of my cell and the adjoining one.

Well, that's where I stayed until a familiar voice shout down the hallway.

I didn't care who saw me. I was on my feet before I could even see Alrekr.

He was shouting rather vulgar Asgardian curses at who ever was dragging him down here. His voice sounded pained—and very, very mad.

When I finally saw him, my heart stopped beating.

His face was bloodied; bruises and cuts lining the skin of his face. His lip was busted and his left eye was nearly swollen shut. Blood caked his hair. Nothing looked broke, but he cradled his ribs as the guards dragged him along.

I stopped just before the barrier. Alrekr looked up at me.

"Lorien." It was no more than a gasp of air—pained, as if every breath her took hurt him. Broken rib, maybe? What had they done to him?

My eyes never left him and the guards hulled him up into the cell beside mine, throwing him the floor. I fell down on the ground next to him on my own side of the divider. I pushed my hand against the shield as the guards the locked Alrekr's back in place. They were gone before Alrekr could even manage to push himself up.

I was crying before I even realized I was, "Are you all right?"

Alrekr gave me a half-hearted smile.                                          

"I've been better," he chuckled. He grimaced, holding his side still as he pushed himself into a seated position. "But I suppose it was expected after I refused a sadist Nobleman."

My gut twisted.

"What happened up there?"

Alrekr rubbed his temple, "Alder offered me my father's position as a Nobleman."

My eyes went wide. "What?"

Alrekr motioned to his bloodied face, "though he made it clear afterwards that he originally intended on killing me, he offered me to live under his rule as the Noble of Aequum."

"But your father is still alive, right? And what about your older sisters?" I asked.

"He doesn't care about my father, he'd rather him rot away down here in the dungeons." Alrekr sneered, he pursed his lips together. "And as Lady Koa said, he believes himself superior to Dena, and Loreri has already rejected her claim."