Lena
The stone walls of the lower cell didn't sweat water; they bled cold.
For five days time had lost its shape, day and night bleeding into a single endless twilight marked only by the distant, muffled chime of the castle clock tower. My knees were raw from the damp straw, my throat burned with every swallow, and the iron shackles had rubbed my wrists to a dull, angry red.
None of that was what kept me awake.
It was the thread.
Even three floors down, buried under granite and centuries of stone, I could feel him. Whatever cruel, twisted thing had tied itself between us hadn't broken when he threw me into the dark. It had only stretched, thinning into something like a silver wire, pulled tight enough to hum.
Over the last two days, that wire had begun to fray.
He's sinking, some qu
