Chapter 309

It seemed like she would melt if he just touched her with his hands. It must be a dream. Isha stared at her, bewildered.

“Wake up!” She shouted, her clear voice piercing his stupor instantly.

Isha shuddered, awakening from his cloudy half-consciousness. The girl was looking at him with her lips tightened in dismay. There were no words for the horror of his condition. His emaciated body was streaked with dried blood, and several wounds were festering.

“Oh, my God…” The girl breathed. She was shocked that he was alive at all. Clambering down the ladder to the bottom of the hole, she slipped the gag from his mouth and then pulled out a ring of keys to remove his chains.

The pain as the chains pulled tight around his skin was wrenching. Isha gritted his teeth, but a suppressed moan still escaped him.

“Aghh…”

It had been such a long time since he made a sound, his parched throat burned with the exertion. Quickly, the girl lifted a small bottle of water to his mouth, tilting it so the sweet water flowed slowly over his tongue. Once he had emptied the bottle, he looked at the girl again, licking his lips.

Who is she?

As his mind cleared, doubts rose. This girl was in a place that belonged to slave traders. Had she been captured as a slave? She was…beautiful.

He couldn’t believe that she had suddenly come to save him. And she wasn’t a Kurkan, either.

“I’m Leah De Estia,” she said, as if she had seen the distrust in his eyes. The motion of her small lips caught his eyes. “I belong to the Estian royal family.”

Her identity was as surprising as her presence here in the first place. Even Isha had heard that members of the royal family of Estia had silver hair; it was an extremely unusual color on the continent. His eyes went to those silver strands.

“Can you move?” She asked gently.

That wasn’t easy to answer. He had been bound for so long, he couldn’t even move the tips of his fingers. Just trying made pain lance through his body, all of his numbed senses screeching awake.

He was sick of hurting, fed up with his own weakness. Isha sank his teeth into his lower lip as the girl watched him anxiously, clearly wanting to help him while at the same time trying to spare his pride. Isha wanted to do it on his own.

Swallowing the pain, he rose with a massive effort.

“Oh…” The girl let out a soft exclamation, watching him move. He looked so awful and had starved so long, it was amazing that he could move at all. She would assume it was because he was a Kurkan, but even a Kurkan couldn’t have endured this. It was only possible because of Ishakan’s inhuman vitality.

He was of that ancient species, which meant he could not even die…

But the time when he had wished for death was past. All his emotions were flooding back with the pain, but Isha set them aside to ask the most important question.

“The Kurkans…” He said hoarsely.

“I freed them all, don’t worry,” the girl answered calmly.

“……”

“They all told me about you, they said you were chained up in a hole,” she said, and explained that while others were helping the other Kurkan slaves to escape, she had come herself to free him.

It didn’t sound as if she were lying. Isha looked at her slender neck. Weak as he was, he thought he could have wrapped one hand around it and snapped it. If it were a trap, he would be able to overpower this little girl, if he had to.

“Follow me,” she said, turning to climb up the ladder. Isha followed her without a word, tiptoeing through the gloomy corridors. For a long time, there was only the soft sound of their footsteps, but soon enough there was the clash of weapons in the distance.

“So soon…” She whispered, and looked back at Isha with panic in her face. The instant their eyes met, they leapt together into a run. They didn’t even need to speak.

All too soon, their pursuers were catching up on them. Even in the dark, they could hear the growing noise of their pursuit.