Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a brutal, violent slamming of shutters. Pain was the first thing she knew. A deep, throbbing agony that started behind her right eye and radiated through her entire skull. The second was the cold. A damp, seeping chill that had sunk into her bones.
She was not in her cell.
Isadora forced her eyelids open. They felt heavy, swollen. She was lying on a rough, wet stone floor in a room devoid of any light save for a single, sputtering torch held by Jorrel. The brutish guard stood by a heavy wooden door, his arms crossed, a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
But he was not the one in charge here.
Seated on a simple stone bench across the small, windowless chamber was Varroque. He was dressed, as always, in impeccable, dark silks, looking utterly out of place in the grime and damp. He held a small, silver bell in his long, spider-like fingers, turning it over and over.
