For his part, Nazeem seemed to be calmly negotiating, though he never took his hands down, and the other soldier never lowered his crossbow.
The bald soldier looked down the road, seeming to squint as his gaze passed over where the two Broken Spear were hiding.
"Don't move," said Giselle.
Then his eyes moved on, and he focused his attention back on Nazeem. He said something, laughed, and drew his sword. Nazeem turned and started to run, but he stumbled to his knees when a crossbow bolt struck him in the leg. The bald man nodded to the other soldier and turned the point of his sword toward the ground and stabbed Nazeem in the back three times.
"Come on," whispered Giselle, backing slowly into the forest and heading toward where the rest of the Broken Spear were waiting. "Ryder's in trouble. We gotta get him out of there."
Jase followed. "But how are we going to get in?"
Giselle turned and glared at the young warrior. "We're going to bust down the doors if we have to."
Ryder hung from the ceiling.
There were chains on his arms and legs. The room was full of them. They draped down from above like long drops of metallic rain. They flooded down from the ceiling, a torrential downpour in the middle of Baron Purdun's dungeon.
And in the middle of it stood Ryder. He could just touch the ground if he stood on the very tips of his toes. But he'd been here for the better part of a day, and he'd given up trying to stand. The effort it took made his legs shake like they were made of jelly.
Instead, he let the links hold his weight, choosing to hang from the ceiling as he thought about Liam's betrayal.
The door to the cell creaked open.
"I won't tell you anything," said Ryder, not looking up.
"Not even where you've been?"
Ryder lifted himself to his tiptoes and raised his eyes. "Samira." His chest constricted. He'd been dying to see her. He'd dreamed about her nightly. It had been her who had kept him going when he was imprisoned in Fairhaven.
He had desired this moment for so many months-but he had also dreaded it. Samira would know what had happened with Giselle. She would sense it. He knew the moment she laid eyes on him, he would be exposed, and he was terrified.
"I thought you died," she said, stopping just inside the door.
He shook his head. His heart filled with both joy and guilt at seeing his beloved wife. "I didn't."
A tear slipped down Samira's cheek. "I cried for days," she said, wiping the tear off with the sleeve of her dress.
Ryder felt as if his belly had once again been sliced open. "I tried to come back sooner," he said, adding, "I came as soon as I could."
"Where were you? What happened?"
Ryder took a deep breath. "It's a very long story," he said finally, not knowing where to begin.
Samira bit down on her lower lip, nodding.
Ryder smiled, looking at his beautiful wife. Of all the times he had imagined this moment, of all the nights he had spent thinking about how it would be, never had he dreamed it could be like this. He opened his arms.
"Come to me."
Samira looked to the ground and shook her head. "Ryder, there is something I have to tell you."
Ryder dropped his arms. "Yes?"
Samira stood quietly for a moment, opening her mouth to start several times but never uttering anything. Finally, she took a deep breath and looked up at her husband. "I thought you were dead," she said.
Ryder smiled. "But I'm not."
"I know that," said Samira, "now. But until this morning, I thought you were dead." She took a step away from the door. "When I found out, something inside of me died right along with you. I can't explain it, but things changed when I knew my world wouldn't have you in it." Samira sobbed.
Ryder wished he could reach out and comfort her, wished he could take away her pain. But he was stuck-both by the chains on his arms and the knowledge that he had caused that pain.
"For the past several months, I've been trying to come to grips with the fact that you were dead," continued Samira between sobs. "For the longest time I didn't even want to believe it was true. I hoped that someday I was just going to wake up and you'd be at home with me, and everything would be the way it used to be. I wished for that every night. And every morning I woke up alone in our bed." She stopped and swallowed. "Then one morning I woke up, and it finally dawned on me that you weren't coming back. That I was never going to see you again. And as much as that hurt, it was also a relief. It meant that I no longer had to torture myself over losing you. It meant that I could move on to the next part of my life. It meant that I could start living again."
Ryder could feel his heart breaking inside his chest. "But now that I'm back, you can start living again. Both of us can. Together."
Samira shook her head. "No, Ryder we can't."
Ryder frowned. "Why not?"
Samira closed her eyes. "Because," she said, "I'm in love with another man."
Ryder felt all of the blood in his body turn cold. "Who?"
"Your brother," admitted Samira. "I'm in love with Liam."
Ryder had thought he might lose Samira when she found out about Giselle. Never had he thought he would lose her to his own brother.
Ryder looked down at the floor. "I don't know what to say." He felt hollow and numb. It was like he was stuck in time. All that had been seemed irrelevant now. His life to this point seemed a waste. The future looked just as bleak-nothing to look forward to, nothing more for him in life. No reason to move forward.
"I'm sorry, Ryder."
He just hung there, letting the chains hold his weight. He didn't feel anything and he didn't think anything. There was nothing left to feel, nothing left to think.
After a long silence he looked up. "Me too," he said. But Samira was not there. He was alone, the door to his cell wide open.
"Good-bye," he said. Lifting his hand to his lips, he kissed his fingers and blew it out to where his wife had been standing.
Suddenly the nothingness inside him was filled with sorrow. Samira was gone. In one beat of his heart, he lost both his wife and his brother. No, it was worse than that. He hadn't lost them; they had chosen to leave him. They had chosen to betray him. They had purposely taken from him everything he had and left him with nothing.
The sorrow inside his chest slowly began to boil, changing from a slow sadness into a roiling fury. This wasn't his fault. They had done this to him. The more he thought about it the more his anger grew. It filled him to capacity, threatening to burst.
His muscles tensed, and Ryder shook the chains. He opened his mouth and let out a terrible shout-a yell at the top of his lungs, a mix of anguish and fury.
Then, when he had squeezed all the air from his lungs and his voice was hoarse, Ryder let go. He hung again from the chains, letting them hold his weight and admitting for the first time in his life that it was not him but the world around him that controlled his fate.
"Hello again, Ryder," came a man's voice from the door.
Ryder didn't bother to look up or even to respond. They could do to him whatever they wanted. He didn't care anymore.
"What?" asked the sarcastic voice, "no greeting for your old friend?"
Ryder heard footsteps, and four feet appeared on the floor below him-soldiers' boots.
One of the men punched Ryder in the side, sending him swaying, suspended as he was by the chains. His ribs throbbed from the blow, but Ryder didn't make a sound.
"Oh, come now," said the voice. "This isn't going to be any fun at all if you don't at least talk back. Don't you remember last time? How much fun we had?"