Chapter 10

Three years later, in the hottest and most remote penal mine in Kembala, the temperature climbed past a hundred and twenty degrees.

Damian's face was covered in infected sores, and nearly all his hair had fallen out.

Heavy shackles hung off his ankles.

With bleeding hands and no fingernails left, he clawed at the rock.

Nearby, Gordon and my mother had gone skeletal and looked thirty years older.

The overseer's barbed whip tore across their backs.

The wounds opened again and again.

At meal