Free The Shadow Throne by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I could move my arms in front of me and slide to a sitting position. But nothing else improved. In the privacy of the room, one of the men who had carried me there kicked at my legs and gut, cursing me and telling me he’d had friends on the wall I exploded. He kept at it until another voice finally told him to stop.
    After that, I withdrew into my own mind. I kept going back to those final moments. Imogen’s expression while I untied her. There was fear and doubt, but it was more than that. Anger that I’d rescued her, but maybe relief as well. Roden had said that Imogen looked at me as if she loved me. Had there been love anywhere in her expression?
    I didn’t know. All I could think about was why she had stopped the archer. Why couldn’t she have just kept running and saved herself?
    Aware that I wasn’t giving him any attention, the man who had kicked me before started at it again, harder this time. His foot connected with the very spot where Roden had broken my leg, and the pain of it forced a reaction from me.
    “Ah, you have a weakness there,” he said. “I’ll remember that.”
    “All of you are dismissed.” That voice belonged to the person who had kept a boot to my face. The men who responded called him Commander Kippenger.
    I heard the room empty, then noted the sound of a knife being removed from its sheath. He placed the blade at the base of my neck and I hoped he’d make my death quick. My heart already felt as though it were full of holes, so he couldn’t make it worse. I just wanted it over fast.
    But that was not his intention. He ran the knife back down my torn undershirt and sliced it off me in pieces. I wished he had removed the blood too. I couldn’t bear to feel it on my skin. Then he reached down and pulled the king’s ring off my finger. Finally, he removed my boots, I assumed to keep me from running away. I had no thought to even try. When all was finished, he pulled the sack off my head. I should have blinked as my eyes adjusted to the light, but there was so little, no adjustment was needed.
    I was in a hastily dug prison cell, almost entirely buried underground, and lined with rough wooden boards to hold back the earth. The only existing light came through cracks in the roof high above us, but those gaps also leaked dirt and water and likely invited rats inside as well. Due to the nearness of the swamplands, the ground beneath me was muddy at best. Yet the irons on my wrists and ankles were anchored deep in the wall. I couldn’t pull free from them, even if I had the will to attempt it.
    Kippenger was tall, with dark blond hair and a prominent nose. I supposed there’d be women who found him handsome if they didn’t stare too long and see his flaws. Namely that he was obviously a cruel sort of devil who seemed to take my capture as his personal badge of honor.
    “There,” he said once he stood back to look at me. “Whatever you were before, you are nothing now. To the rest of the world, you will be dead. King Vargan is on his way here. He thought he was coming for the interrogation of your servant, but he’ll be pleased to see we now have a much higher prize.”
    I didn’t answer. I didn’t care.
    “Vargan will spread word of your death to the farthest reaches of these lands,” he continued. “Robbed of their king, within days Carthya will be extinguished like a candle in a breeze.”
    My mind was already wandering again. I wondered whether Herbert and Evendell had survived. If Mott had gotten away, if he had seen what happened to Imogen. If he had seen me. And what they’d do to me here if I refused to surrender in this war. The blame for the destruction of my country lay solely at my feet.
    And I had no will to make any of it better.

T he most difficult time to be hungry is when the pangs first start. When the body realizes it’s missed a meal and signals that it wants food. But after a while it gives up asking; it gives up expecting anything. The pangs will return,