Captive Of The Warg, (Wargs of the Outland #2)

The Privy

The wargrex's private chamber wasn't much of a reprieve from the music and feasting and the awful yellow gazes cutting her to ribbons. Not when a niggling ache was stirring in her bladder. Not when her stomach was threatening to eat itself.

She sighed. She was a solitary creature. Being alone was nothing new—it's what she'd have been doing tonight in her tent anyway, while her cohort drank around the bonfire. Or maybe it was morning already. There would be no sun for weeks. No way to tell midnight from midday. At least not leashed under a mountain to a bedpost as she was. His bed.

The room was large, the ceiling vaulted with sharp ribs of white rock. And the muffled thunder of lively drumbeats gave her to think she was in the belly of a monster.

In the center of the monstrous chamber, the intricately carved headboard flush against the far wall, was a bed the size of a ship. Next to it, a small coffer secured with an iron padlock.

It seemed to Reia that the room had been carved into the heart of the mountain, a chamber so cold and stark that it permeated her bones and set her teeth rambling. She was freezing. The lamp in the alcove offered no warmth and very little comfort.

She scanned the room with a meticulous glare, having little else to do. It kept her from agonizing over the state of her bladder. The chamber was stark and masculine, one wall opposite the bed recessed with shelves and nooks, all filled with books. Huh, she thought curiously, the brute knows how to read. There was a large chest against the adjacent wall, and further along there was what looked like a hearth. Unlike the open hearths in the great hall, this one was sunk into the wall. The white rock above it was stained black from use. On iron hooks to the side of the hearth hung the fire tools. Of course, it was cold now. She was just a lowly human that didn't warrant any of the precious firewood stacked nearby.

On another stretch of wall hung a leathern tapestry that looked to be a map of the outland. She'd been memorizing that map for hours now. So many warg territories.

Her mind wondered to the far west, her head tilting as she tried to probe a section of West Gate. Tried to read the Wargish runes of a settlement near that gate. She thought it read Carthyrk, but she couldn't be sure. She could understand their language better than she could read it. Anyway, the room was too dim and her eyes too tired to focus long.

She'd been there once, to West Gate, whilst on a tour of the kingdom during the last of her military training. She remembered hearing the story of a girl (whose name she couldn't recall)—the daughter of a High Lady. A human who'd been sacrificed to a wargrex. It'd been decades since anyone had seen her. Presumed long dead. There was a High Lord in that territory now. She'd met Lord Marwort once and when she'd asked about the story, his demeanor had soured and the conversation had withered to silence. No wonder the forsaken girl's name was lost to history.

She continued her scan of the room, endeavoring to notice something she hadn't before. But it was sparsely furnished. The main entrance to the room was covered by a thick drape, but on the opposite side of the chamber there was a solid wooden door pitted with iron. Most of the cold radiated from that end of the room, so she could only assume that door lead directly outside somehow. What she was really trying to discover was the location of the chamber pot, but it was nowhere to be seen.

She dragged a sharp breath into her lungs, shivering as the cold spread through her body from the inside. A subtle animal musk spiced the bed furs, and it lingered in her nose with every breath she took. Her nostrils flared against her will, sampling his scent again. She decided she hated it.

Her wrists burned, the ropes cutting raw marks in her exposed flesh, but at least they'd ungagged her to eat. Not that she had. Her belly roared with long denied hunger. The tray, and the food that'd been left for her, lay bestrewn across the floor thanks to her earlier flare of temper.