Shadows and Light by Cari Z.

save him, and Ehvin twisted his son’s mind so that it would fear the light and crave the darkness. Erran burrowed deep into the earth, into the darkest place he could find, but even there the light was too strong. He was too bloated with spirit to die, too bound by darkness to think.
    “Erran lay there alone, mad and blind and immortal, for eons. The wounds he dealt himself in his violent fits bled, and the blood welled up through the hole he had dug and spilled out onto the earth, powerful light twisted with darkness. A people found this wellspring and drank of it, and the blood of the demigod gifted them with eternal youth, while at the same time cursing them to live in barren darkness or be destroyed by the light. This is the story of our power, of the acolytes of Erran, blasphemers that cheat the gods by living off the blood of their most beloved son.” Xian’s voice shifted back into a more normal register. “Perhaps the gods are sadists, leaving Erran to suffer for all eternity. Or perhaps they’re simply biding their time.” Suddenly the hood was gone, and Rafael’s vivid mental picture of the demigod’s eternal anguish was splintered by the reality of Xian’s face in front of him. “You’ll have water and two hours’ rest.”
    “Why let me rest?” Rafael asked, not really expecting an answer. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get one. He drank briefly but thirstily from a bowl, then his ankles were released and he was pushed unceremoniously to the ground. The ankle cuffs were rebound to the floor in his new prone position, and the rope was unwound from his torso and legs. Rafael groaned and quivered as each coil and knot was pried out of his flesh, and he was left gasping alone on the cold marble floor as Xian walked out of his line of sight. He wanted to turn to follow his movements, but every twitch was agony after so long bound in one position and his body, more practical than his mind, sent him to sleep instead.
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    Rafael woke up alone in the great chamber a little while later, and when he realized he was alone, his mouth twisted bitterly. So much for his former master’s promise to shadow him. He pushed awkwardly onto his hands and knees, groaning as his shoulders and elbows cracked in complaint. It wasn’t as painful as it might have been, though. The blood he’d taken from his last kill was still aiding him somewhat, then. That and Xian’s baffling allowances were making his experience so far something he could endure. But what was the point? Rafael looked around the room, trying to distract his mind from questions it had no hope of answering.
    The round chamber was set up just as he remembered, with curving tables covered with various weapons, ropes and grapples, locks and lockpicks by the wall farthest from the door. The chest beside the tables was probably still filled with alchemical supplies. Attached to the high ceiling were two separate lengths of chain about ten feet apart in the middle of the room. Rafael was kneeling beneath one of them now, attached to the ankle locks that made for a much more inflexible means of restraint when used with the chain. There was a wide metal cross on one wall, cold and rigid and totally unlike Feysal’s. Rafael looked at it and shuddered against the memories that crowded into his mind. He was intimately acquainted with every apparatus in this room.
    The physical skills he had learned, the weapons and fighting and tracking and evasion, had all happened in other places, other rooms. This chamber had been more about mental discipline than physical. The ability to subsume pain, to control fear, to retreat behind solid walls of willpower when faced with torture… A spy could be bought. An assassin, once he accepted a contract, had to either fulfill it or die trying. If Rafael had been caught at his work, his mark could have freely destroyed him. It was only fair. The identity of an employer was sacred, though, and not to