Afterlife

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Another guard grabbed for me, but I weaved to the side, nimbler than he was in his heavy armor. I sliced across the backs of his knees, severing his tendons, then moved onto the next two attackers when he dropped to the floor. I had no idea how long such injuries would last here . . . no clue how long these asshats would stay down.

  Not that long, it turned out. Broadsword guy was already back on his feet, and he was coming at me again.

  On the far side of the fray, I could see Mari fending off a couple guardsmen, two others lying on the floor around her, unmoving. Together, we could dispatch maybe a dozen before they started to get back up—but this many? We didn’t stand a chance.

  “Mars!” I shouted, backing away from the mob of guardsmen closing in on me. They were spreading out, trying to surround me. “Fall back!”

  I turned and slipped through the space between two guardsmen before they had me completely surrounded. Once I was past them, I ran up the steps to the dais, then behind the throne, intending to follow Carson.

  But I only had a few seconds to examine the stone wall behind the throne before the guards were on me again. And this time, they really did have me surrounded.

  I turned to face them, my back to the wall. In my peripheral vision, I could just make out Mari running toward the half-open door, a couple of the guards close on her heels. The rest, it seemed, were converging in on me. Two men was nothing. Mari would be fine. It was me I was worried about.

  “Alright,” I said, slowly sheathing Mercy and holding my hands up in surrender. “You got me,” I told the guards. “You win.”

  Broadsword guy reached out, grabbing my arm none too gently and yanking me closer to him. For the first time, I got a good look at his face.

  My eyes widened in surprise. I recognized him.

  Because I’d killed him. Or maybe Mari had. I honestly couldn’t remember. But his name was Jared—it was tattooed on my forearm, among the list of names belonging to all of the people I’d killed—and he’d been a real piece of shit in life. Didn’t look like much had changed in death.

  Now that my brain was clued in to the situation, I recognized other faces among the guardsmen—among Carson’s followers. Other Nejerets I’d killed when in service to the Senate. Others whose names were tattooed on my forearm in At ink. Others who would gleefully take revenge on the one who had sent them to Aaru.

  As I stared around at all of those familiar faces, as I registered the hate darkening their stares, a single thought flitted through my mind: I am so fucked.

  Jared released my arm suddenly, crying out in pain. An onyx throwing dagger had sprouted from his bicep.

  Not a second later, another guardsman shouted in pain. And another.

  I stood behind the throne, stunned as Carson’s lackeys ducked and bobbed, dodging the storm of blades hurtling their way. At the moment, nobody was paying me any attention. They were too worried about their own well-being.

  I peeked around the throne, a broad grin spreading my lips when I spotted Mari striding across the vast, empty space before the dais, flinging throwing daggers with both hands as quickly as she could make them. As one hurtled toward me, I ducked behind the throne. The knife whooshed past my face, slicing off a few flyaway hairs, and lodged in the space between two stones in the wall behind me.

  Heart beating in my throat, I stared at the dagger for a few seconds, then looked away. And then I took a second glance.

  The dagger should have bounced off the wall, but there was no mortar in that particular spot, allowing the dagger to sink into the crack between stones nearly to the hilt.

  I stepped closer to the wall, all but invisible in the chaos Mari was creating. The stone to the right of the dagger was surrounded by nothing but a thin strip of shadowed emptiness. No mortar. Nothing to hold it in place.

  I narrowed my eyes, and then I rushed to the wall, slamming my palm against the seemingly freestanding stone.

  It resisted, but slowly gave under the pressure. And with the grind and groan of stone on stone, part of the wall sunk inward.

  I sidestepped, intending to slip in through the opening before anyone noticed what I was doing.

  My boot was in the opening when a hand closed around the back of my neck. I only had a moment to yelp in surprise before the side of my head slammed into the wall.

  I felt a sharp burst of pain in my skull, and then the lights went out.

  15

  When I woke, my shoulders burned with a pain so raw and intense it temporarily drowned out the full-body ache caused by bonding withdrawals. I’d been in a lot of painful situations before—most involving sharp blades or broken bones—but this was up there with the worst. It was so bad that I was half convinced my arms had been torn clean off.

  It took my mind a few seconds to process the pain, then a few more to register the lesser pain in my wrists, and a few more seconds to recognize the source of my current agony.

  I was hanging by my arms, my wrists restrained in what felt like metal shackles over my head. Gritting my teeth and groaning loudly, I managed to get my boots under my sagging body, allowing my legs to take the burden of my weight off my arms. As I stood up, chains clanged overhead, drowning out my pained whimpers. Moving hurt almost as bad as hanging had.

  “You’re awake,” Carson said, his voice echoing all around me. “Wonderful.”

  My head snapped up, and I glared in the direction of his voice.

  The bastard stood maybe ten feet away off to my right, on the other side of a wall of iron bars. The floor was stone, as were the walls behind me and to my left. Directly across from me, there was another wall of iron bars, but whatever lay beyond them was enshrouded in darkness. The air was dank and tasted faintly metallic.

  Looked like I was in another prison cell, old-school-dungeon style this time. Gods, but this had been happening way too often lately.

  Carson gripped two of the bars and leaned in. “How are you feeling?”

  “Go fuck yourself,” I spat.

  “Hmmm . . .” Carson tilted his head to the side, brow scrunching like he was genuinely considering my suggestion. “Or,” he said, brightening, “I could go capture the rest of your little friends and torture them. I think that sounds like more fun.”

  I became very, very still. What did he mean by the rest of my friends? Did he already have some of them? Which ones? I hated to admit that it mattered to me, but it did.

  “You see,” Carson said, “I know that the mist floating around my halls isn’t the real mist.” He leaned away from the bars, stretching his arms. “Once we figured that out, it made tracking down your friends almost too easy. There’s just one straggler out there, but he won’t evade us for long . . .”

  The straggler was Dom; it had to be. He was the best at this kind of thing. Which meant there was a highly probable chance that I wouldn’t remain in these chains or in this cell for much longer. If anyone could pull a dungeon jailbreak, it was my big half-brother.

  “Anyway,” Carson said, pulling himself closer to the bars, then releasing them. “I’ll leave you to your . . . well, that,” he said, gesturing to me with one hand.

  Two guards armed in chainmail marched into view, armor rattling with each step. One was the behemoth, Jared, the other a shrewd-eyed guy I vaguely recognized.

  “Jared and Ben will keep an eye on you for me,” Carson said. “I’ll be back when Mari wakes up, and then the real fun will begin.” He grinned, and the gleam in his baby blues spoke of excitement and cruelty.

  At the mention of Mari’s name, an oil lamp flickered to life in the adjacent cell, the dull light cutting through the shadows. Sure enough, there Mari was on the other side of that wall of iron bars. She was chained to a stone wall, just like me. She was still unconscious, her body limp and head hanging. I felt a momentary twang of pity; she was in for a world of hurt when she woke. And it was all my fault. All because I hadn’t been able to rein in my lust for revenge.

  I felt like such an asshole.

&nb
sp; Carson started to walk away, but he paused in the shadows just within sight. “I always liked her better, you know,” he said. “Though this new, aggressive you is intriguing.” He scanned me from the boots up, gaze admiring. “Much more interesting than the whiny teenager I knew . . .”

  I spat in his general direction, then looked away from him. What a fucking pig.

  Internally, I was beating myself up for the umpteenth time for ever having liked this waste of a ba. There’s no accounting for a teenager’s taste, apparently. Especially when it comes to first loves. Ugh . . . even thinking about how I used to moon over him made me want to gag.

  Carson chuckled softly, and I listened to his receding footsteps until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

  Once I felt certain he was gone, I turned my attention up to my shackles. There was a heavy iron padlock with a keyhole, and I felt a surge of giddiness as I thought a key into existence. Carson, the idiot, had forgotten about the basic rules of Aaru—he could lock me up all he wanted, but all I would have to do to escape would be to imagine a key, and then I would be free.

  Except when I tried the key in the lock, it didn’t work. Because I didn’t know what the inside of the lock looked like. I ground my teeth together in annoyance. I could create a million keys, but none of them would be the right key.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I whispered, dropping the key. It landed on the stone floor with a sharp clang. I shifted my focus to Mari; two minds were better than one, especially when hers was one of the two minds. “Mars,” I called out, voice barely more than a whisper.

  The guards snickered.

  “Mars,” I repeated, louder this time. It didn’t matter if dumb-ass and dumber-ass overheard.

  The faintest moan escaped from Mari, drifting across our conjoined cells to my ears.

  I stepped forward and my chains tightened, causing the ache in my shoulders and wrists to flare up, momentarily whiting out my world with pain. I eased back, just a bit. “Mari! Wake up, damn it!”

  Mari sucked in a breath, then groaned deeply. “Oh, fuck,” she moaned as she slowly shifted her weight to her feet.

  She craned her neck, blowing her hair out of her face, and assessed her restraints before scanning her cell. Even imprisoned and in severe pain, Mari was all about gathering data and making a plan. There wasn’t a single person alive—or dead—I would rather be down here with. If Dom couldn’t break us out from the outside, Mari still had a good shot at figuring out a way to do it from within.

  After her slow assessment of our situation, Mari looked at me. “Well, this sucks balls,” she said dryly.

  I snorted a laugh. I couldn’t help it.

  Her eyes left mine, flicking to the guards standing just outside our cells. I could see the moment a lightbulb went off in her mind, the change in her features barely perceptible. She returned her attention to me, giving me a pointed look, then glanced back at Ben, the guard by her cell. Specifically, to the ring of keys attached to his belt. She switched her focus to Jared, posted by my cell, his back to me, then raised her eyebrows and looked at me. She was asking if he had a visible key ring, too.

  I backed closer to the wall to get a better angle at my guard’s belt. No keys—at least, not any that I could see.

  I met Mari’s stare and shook my head minutely.

  Mari straightened a little, twisting her wrists so she could grip the chains above her restraints with her hands. Metal rattled and clanged as she hopped up and down, kicking out her feet to limber up. She stretched her neck first one way, then the other, doing a pretty damn epic job of ignoring the pain that had to be shooting through her shoulders and wrists with each tiny movement.

  “Hey!” Ben said, turning to look into Mari’s cell. “What are you doing?”

  Jared turned partway to see what all the commotion was too.

  “MYOB, Ben,” Mari said in her snarkiest tone.

  He bristled, and I settled back against the cool stone wall to enjoy the show.

  A wicked grin curved Mari’s lips. “I remember you, you know,” she told him. “I slit your throat with a letter opener.”

  “Shut up!” Ben said, face reddening.

  Mari paused, snickering. “I mean, how could I not—it was the only way to stop your blubbering.”

  “You shut your mouth!”

  “Please,” Mari said, face transforming into a mask of desperation, voice mocking, “please, don’t kill me. Please . . .”

  “Shut your mouth, bitch!” Ben repeated. His face was beet red now. “Or I’ll shut it for you!”

  Mari stared at the guard, mouth twisted into a sneer. “Like you could,” she said, finishing with another snickering laugh.

  “Fucking bitch whore,” Ben muttered as his fingers fumbled with the key ring attached to his belt. “I’ll show you . . .” He detached the ring and sorted through the keys. “Make you beg . . .” He fit an old-fashioned iron key into the lock and twisted, then pushed the cell door open.

  Jared turned around to watch as the door swung inward with the creak and groan of rusty hinges.

  In an instant, Mari’s entire demeanor shifted from haughty and cruel to meek and afraid. It was an act—and a damn good one, at that—but our guards didn’t know that.

  Ben shut the cell door, then stalked toward Mari. His rage must’ve blinded him, because he didn’t suspect a thing. Or maybe he was really just as stupid as he looked.

  I suppressed a smirk.

  In the blink of an eye, Mari attacked. She pulled herself up by her chains and wrapped her legs around Ben’s neck, grunting as she torqued her whole body to one side.

  Ben shouted as he flipped over. His head smashed into the wall, and his entire body was limp by the time it hit the ground.

  His ring of keys clambered to the ground at Mari’s feet. I wasn’t sure if it was pure dumb luck or if Mari really was that good.

  After a moment of shock, Jared rushed to Mari’s cell door and pushed on the bars, but the door had relocked when Ben shut it. Good thing Jared didn’t have any keys; it would give Mari the time she needed to break out of her restraints.

  Mari reached out with one foot and dragged the key ring closer with the sole of her shoe.

  My eyes drifted back to Jared as he lifted the bottom hem of his chainmail and reached into a pocket in his leather pants. I straightened and pushed away from the wall, heart plummeting. My eyes were glued to his hand.

  He pulled out a second ring of keys.

  “Shit,” I hissed. I stepped forward, pulling my chains taut but ignoring the flare of pain. “Hurry up, Mars,” I urged. “He’s got keys!”

  A second later, Mari hooked the key ring around the toe of her shoe, not even sparing a glance for the newest threat. The tip of her tongue poked out from between her lips, and her face was a mask of concentration.

  Outside her cell, Jared was grumbling as he worked his way through at least a dozen keys. With each failed attempt, the odds that the next key would be the right one increased, and my heart rate increased right along with it. This was one of the most stressful situations I’d ever been in—ever—and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help.

  Mari took a deep breath, drawing my attention back to her. She flicked her foot upward, launching the keys almost straight up.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Mari’s fingertips grazed the key ring, but she couldn’t get a solid grasp.

  The keys slipped free and started to drop.

  Mari bobbed her head to the side, jutting out her chin and opening her mouth wide. And somehow, miraculously, she managed to snag the iron ring with her teeth.

  I blew out a breath, then glanced at Jared.

  He was on the third key, or maybe the fourth. It wouldn’t be long until he was in Mari’s cell.

  “Hurry, Mars . . .”

  “That’s not helping,” Mari sang around the key ring as she stood on tiptoes and lifted her face. Straining against the chains, she reached for the keys with the fingers of her right han
d. She snagged the iron ring with her pinky and shimmied the keys higher with the rest of her fingers. Once she had a solid grasp on the key ring, she started trying keys in the lock on her left manacle.

  Luck must have been on our side, because the lock clicked with the second key, and one of Mari’s hands was suddenly free.

  It was working. I couldn’t believe it. Mari’s crazy, Hail Mary plan was actually working. She was going to get us out of here.

  She’d just fit the key into the lock on her right manacle when an explosive crack echoed throughout the dungeon, making my ears ring.

  A bright spot of blood appeared on Mari’s ivory blouse, just over her heart. Her eyes widened, and then her hand fell away from the manacle, leaving the keys lodged in the lock. She went completely limp, hanging from that single shackle like a rag doll.

  All I could do was gape. We’d been so close, and now Mari was . . . not dead. She couldn’t be dead, not here. But she was out, and there was no saying for how long.

  Jared stopped working on the lock to Mari’s cell and backed away a couple steps.

  Eyes narrowing to a glare, I slowly turned my head. I couldn’t see whoever had shot Mari, but I had a pretty good idea who it was.

  He started clapping, slow and dramatic, and stepped into view. It was Carson, of course. “Nice try,” he said, tucking an antique musket into a holster on his hip. “Close . . .” He held up a hand, thumb and first two fingers held close together, and a cigar appeared. “But no cigar.”

  “Punny,” I said, making no attempt to hide my disdain.

  Carson grinned. “I thought you’d like that.” He strode closer to my cell, tutting as his gaze lingered on his fallen guard. “Get him out of there,” he ordered, glancing at Jared. “And bring in the table.” He pointed to Mari with his chin. “Get that one strapped in while she’s out.”

  A short stool appeared on the other side of my cell door, and Carson eased down, resting his elbows on his knees and interlocking his fingers. “So tell me, Kat, why are you here? Because much as I might like to think it’s to visit little old me, I don’t think that’s the case.” He studied my face for a long moment, and when I didn’t respond, he leaned forward, an unsettling gleam in his eye. “Is it the First? Do you know how to wake him?”