The pain hit him just as he dozed and footsteps echoed down the dungeon.
It came while his body was drifting toward something resembling sleep, a low burn that started in his chest and spread outward through his ribs and down his arms and into his fingers.
A heat that had no source and no logic and sat behind his sternum.
His eyes opened. "What the..."
The dungeon ceiling was black stone. The chains on his wrists clinked when he moved, iron scraping iron, and the sound bounced off the walls of a room built to make men feel small.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Measured. Unhurried. The walk of a man who owned the ground beneath his boots and wanted the listener to know it.
"I really was hoping for a better fight from you, little brother."
Kael's voice arrived before his shadow did. The torchlight from the corridor carved his silhouette against the far wall, and Maddox watched it grow larger without lifting his head.
He did not answer.
