Free Bloodletting Part 1: The Affinities Cycle Book 1 by Mark Ryan Page B

scared her even more than their situation. She didn’t understand the extent of what happened in the village. Everyone killed? Massacred? If so, her parents were among the victims. And what of—
    “Tetra?” she blurted. “Where are the boys?”
    Laney wiped the tears from her cheeks, but more replaced them and she broke down again. Halli put down the stone cup and gently pulled her friend into another embrace. Laney sobbed against her chest. “Shhhh … it’s okay.” Halli whispered softly as she stroked her friend’s hair.
    “They’re in another cage,” one of the other girls said. “There’s a whole ton of caves under the tree roots, each with cages.”
    “Tetra … he.…” Laney’s sobs almost made her incoherent. “He wasn’t with them. I never saw him leave your house … he … it.…”
    “What?” Halli sat frozen inside, unable to move lest she crack and shatter. Her arms tightened, holding Laney against chest. Despite the frigid dread a faint flicker of warmth lit in a corner of her mind. She remembered searching for Tetra in her dreams, feeling his distant presence. He lived. She knew this. And yet … there was something distant about his life force. Not just in proximity, either. Something about her brother was further, as though he wasn’t just far away, but was … words failed her thoughts.
    “What happened?” she pressed the girls.
    Laney flinched. “Your house … it burned to the ground. It collapsed as they took us away. He never came out.”
    ***

Chapter 16
    Sven Malschev
    Sven tested the organic bars of their cage for what felt like the fortieth time, walking the circuit of the cage. Forty paces around the small area, stepping carefully over the knobs and divots in the ground. He had tried sleeping, but the ground was too uneven. Nothing like the soft bed of his home. The murmur of the oroc camp was a stark contrast. He was used to the comforting sounds of his parents in the other room, opposite their small Heart room. What sleep he got was fitful, sundered by nightmares.
    He paced to keep the memories at bay. If he thought too long about them, he would cry—just like the younger children. He looked down at one as he stepped carefully over them. They had wailed past the point of exhaustion. Their pitiful sobs had enraged the guard oroc until he had bashed his club against the sides of their cage, leering at them with its face full of sharp white teeth. Before tonight, he had never seen an oroc, never particularly feared them. Everyone knew the orocs were a peaceful race that lived deep in the forested green of the Rocmire. The king had a treaty with them, didn’t’ he? What had caused all of this? Nothing made sense.
    The oroc guard followed his movements with his dark green eyes. His eyes didn’t have whites like humans did, only dark green orbs with gold and black speckled irises. Was it a male? Sven wasn’t sure. They all looked the same to him; they all frightened him. Nevertheless, he studied them, trying to figure out why they had taken him and the other children.
    All he remembered from that night dissolved into a nightmare of flames, smoke, and screams—interspersed with the cries of battle. The orocs’ strange, ululating cries of battle haunted his dreams. Memories cloaked as nightmare made him start from muddled nightmares where he wasn’t sure what was real.
    He had woken to that sound, crawling from his bed to find his house engulfed in smoke. His mother’s scream drew him running into the Heart room, where his father drunkenly fended off a pair of orocs with a chair leg.
    The floor had split, and a stone spike had impaled his father, who had given off a final, gurgling cry of defiance as he tried to rush forward at them. His mother tried to use her magic, but she was too weak. What she intended as a gale wind to push the attackers out was only a light breeze. She had always been too weak, even to stop the drunken beatings Sven’s father gave him