MARKED TO BURN, BORN TO RULE

CHAPTER 3: LIMBO

NADIA'S POV

I hear the sounds before I actually wake up, snarling that sounds really close and then not close anymore, and something that sounds like bones breaking, more than once, and this unfamiliar voice, yelling stuff I can't make out.

Then nothing for a while. Just the dark and this weird feeling of moving even though I'm pretty sure I'm not the one moving, which I guess makes sense since I got knocked out, but it still felt weird thinking back on it after.

Anyway, when I actually wake up for real I'm not in the woods anymore. I'm somewhere warm, on something that's not dirt or dungeon stone, and for like half a second that actually feels kind of good before my whole body remembers to freak out.

I try to get up but my legs don't work right, so I end up half sitting half falling into a wall that definitely wasn't there before. The room's carved into actual rock, torches on one side, no windows I can see anywhere, so also no way out that I can see either, which is great, love that for me.

There's a bandage around my ribs that wasn't there before, and someone cleaned the cuts on my arms while I was out, which honestly bugs me almost more than the actual ambush did. Somebody had their hands on me while I couldn't do anything about it.

Again. Great. Love that too.

"Easy." Some guy's voice, low, not mean exactly. "You're safe here."

"Where am I." The words doesn't even come out like a real question. My voice is trashed, more like a croak.

"Somewhere they can't find you."

I don't believe that, like at all, because the last people who told me I was safe died proving they were wrong, so as far as I'm concerned literally everyone in this room is a threat until they prove otherwise.

So I try to get up again and I make it like two seconds before my legs just stop working completely, and I go down.

Somebody catches me before I hit the floor, and I fight that too, elbows and whatever else I've got left, which isn't much honestly.

"Hey. Stop. Nobody here's gonna hurt you."

I actually look at him properly for the first time. Dark hair, tired looking eyes, built like basically every warrior I've ever seen back home, except there's something different in the way he's looking at me, and I don't really have a word for what that is yet.

"Who are you?"

"Nikolai." He says it like it's supposed to mean something. It doesn't. Not yet anyway. "You're safe, Nadia."

"You know my name. How do you know my name?"

"I knew your mum." Something crosses his face when he says that, gone before I can even figure out what it was. "You look just like her."

"How?"

"Long time ago." He says it carefully, like he's picking words one at a time. "She used to bring us food sometimes. Back when this whole camp barely counted as a camp."

"That's not really an answer."

"It's the only one I've got right now."

He hands me a cup of water. I don't take it. For all I know it's drugged or poisoned or whatever, and I am not finding that out the hard way twice in one night, no thanks.

"I don't want anything from you," I say. "I want to know where I am and I want to leave."

"You can barely stand up."

"Watch me."

"Nadia." He says my name like he's already tired of me, except his eyes don't match that at all somehow. "Nobody dragged you anywhere. My people heard you scream and got there before those wolves finished what they started. That's it. That's literally the whole story."

"Forgive me if I don't just take your word for that."

"I wouldn't either, honestly. Not after whatever you've been through." He doesn't come any closer, which I notice, and I hate that some dumb part of me is even noticing stuff like that right now instead of just staying mad. "But you can leave whenever you can actually walk out of here on your own. I'm not stopping you."

I don't get to try, because that's when this old woman walks in and literally everyone in the room goes quiet at once. Even Nikolai stands up straighter, like her showing up changes something about how careful he's got to be.

White hair pulled back tight, eyes that look like they've seen way more than eyes are supposed to see, and she's looking right at me like she already knows exactly who I am. Which is honestly the scariest thing that's happened all night, and that's saying a lot given the night I've had.

Then I see it.

Around her neck, on this plain little cord, half of a pendant.

The other half's in my pocket right now, still wrapped in that scrap of paper my mum shoved at me right before she died telling me to find exactly this.

"You," I say, except it barely even counts as an actual word by the time it comes out.

She doesn't say anything back. Just looks at me, then at the little bit of pendant sticking out of my pocket, and her whole face changes into something I also don't have a word for. Nikolai's watching both of us now like he forgot I was even trying to leave in the first place.

Nobody explains anything. Nobody says one word about who she actually is or why she's got the exact other half of the thing my mum died getting to me.

I just sit there against the wall, staring at some stranger's pendant, waiting for someone, anyone, to just tell me what any of this actually means. Nobody moves. Nobody says a word. It's like the whole room's holding its breath right along with me, waiting to see what happens next, and honestly I don't know either.