Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Thirty Seven: Blackmail

He woke up very slowly. His head was throbbing, blood pulsing behind his eyes as he struggled into consciousness.

The first thing Jordan became aware of was the candle. It sat in front of him on a table, and outside its halo of light the room was pitch dark. He couldn't hear anything, but he couldn't determine whether it was because the room was silent or the knock to the side of the head had damaged his hearing. He groaned; he heard it, and sagged with relief. The movement drew his attention to the rope binding his wrists.

"Ah," someone said, somewhere in the darkness, "You're awake."

Jordan tried to swivel in the chair to see who had come up behind him. His back felt horribly exposed and he couldn't feel the weight of his knife against his hip.

He guessed by the total blackness that his magic was still off limits, too.

Whoever it was took their time in walking around his chair. They carried a lantern, which they set down beside the candle, and then they leaned against the table, bringing their features into the light. It was a man with dark hair and blue eyes, and he was smiling, but Jordan wasn't set any more at ease by it; it was a sharp smile, cold. He felt judged rather than reassured.

He wasn't going to be the first one to speak; he wouldn't have known what to say anyway. He sat frozen in his chair, and his thoughts were racing too fast for him to pull together any kind of escape plan that might actually work.

"Not talkative, are you?" the man said. It was hard to discern what he thought about Jordan's silence from his tone. "Most people are struggling and begging by now."

"Don't know what I'd be begging for," Jordan said, willing his voice not to break. "Until I know what you want from me."

The cat-like smile was back. There was something wrong about this man, something off – something, other than the fact that he was shackled to a chair in a dark room, that told Jordan he should really be running away as fast as possible. He was aware now that the room smelled old and disused, and he could've sworn he heard the steady trickle of a water leak onto hard flooring somewhere behind him. In sharp contrast, his companion was dressed no less elegantly than Lord Harkenn, in clothes that were clearly expensive.

"Where's Laurel?" he asked.

"Oh, the girl?" the stranger said, and as he shrugged away from the table Jordan saw the edge of a scar cutting his collarbone in two. "She's alive."

Ignoring the thudding of his heart, and the fact that it felt like it had moved up to beat against his skull, Jordan said, "Good to know. I asked where she was."

"Don't make assumptions about your position here, my friend," the man said. His smile had frozen. "You are very much on the wrong end of the stick to be getting smart with me."

Jordan fell silent and willed his shaking to his stop. He didn't feel like crying, though he thought it was because he'd already gone past the point of crying into numbness. It hadn't sunk in yet. He didn't know where he was, he was unarmed, he was tied up, and in the back of his mind he could so vividly remember the night Nika had returned home after the murder of the Unspoken. At the time it had felt so distant from him, but it was currently feeling very immediate.

"That's better," the man said, when the silence stretched out. He made a gesture.

There were the sounds of a struggle; two sets of footsteps behind him and a muffled shriek. Aware of his captor's eyes on him, Jordan didn't try to speak or turn around, but strained through the gloom to identify the two figures that had just arrived as they stopped nearby.

Laurel's silver hair was ruffled and knotted; she was gagged and held from behind by a large man whose features Jordan couldn't make out. She fell still, outwardly calm, and met Jordan's eyes as she shook her head minutely.