by K. Ferrin
“What did you do to me?” She tried to say the words, but her tongue was so bloated that it filled her mouth, and her lips might as well of been made of wood.
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
“You’re killing me?” Evelyn tried to shape the words, but only a breathy wheezing sound came from her spasming throat. Nevertheless, Fariss answered as if he could read her mind.
“You are not alive, so you cannot die. I’m simply taking you apart so I can learn how to put you back together.”
Her wrists, ankles, and neck were tightly bound, but that didn’t stop her body from shaking violently as her muscles clenched and shuddered erratically. She vomited, spraying thick green liquid and chunks of her guts across the floor in front of her. Evelyn felt like she was being taken apart and stitched back together all at the same time.
Sharup and Fariss watched, Sharup with eager anticipation and Fariss with cold calculation. Evelyn tried to speak, but her tongue disconnected from her mouth and fell to the ground. She lurched to the left and felt her right arm detach from her shoulder. Her insides felt like they were melting, and a thick warmth oozed down her legs.
I’m dying, she thought. For the second time that day, she felt a deep hollowness at the thought that she would never see her family or friends again. A high-pitched keening filled the air as she wept. It was a sound she barely recognized as coming from her own body.
A flash of heat lit up her body from the inside. She began shaking even more violently. She looked down at her chest, her legs, and watched in amazement as her skin shifted from brilliant reds to burnt oranges to deep purples in erratic patterns of color. She vomited again, more thick green liquid that she was certain had moments before been her innards. Steam began rolling off of her as she heaved, vomiting again and again until only clear liquid came out of her. Whatever was left inside of her boiled madly.
“Get out!” Fariss shouted. She watched distantly as Sharup, eyes wide in shock, fled the room. Fariss collapsed into a pile on the floor, his lips moved frantically as he chanted something she couldn’t hear. Her body felt like it was on fire, and she thought she could see the bright light of her body glinting off the purple stone in Fariss’s chin. He huddled there, eyes narrowed and intent as he watched her. She screamed as her body ignited.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The silence is what terrified her the most. She could have dealt with the shackles, the darkness, even being alone in a strange place wondering if her family was alive or dead, if only there were sounds around her. There was meaning in sound. Without it, she felt adrift, detached, outside of the world and everything she’d ever known.
She had opened her eyes expecting to see the faint rays of early morning sun on the first day of summer. She had expected to be in her bed. Instead she had woken to find metal shackles at her neck, wrists, and ankles, and this relentless silence.
The air around her was cold and dank, and it smelled like a vile combination of slaughterhouse offal, vomit, and fear-soaked sweat. There was something else, too. Something similar to the scent left lingering in the air after a lightning strike. It made her stomach roil.
She had screamed, cried, threatened every sort of revenge she could imagine, hurled curses into the darkness, and had eventually fallen to mindless incoherent babbling. She hadn’t heard anything except the echo of her own terror bouncing back at her. That echo made the room seem large, but she couldn’t see more than a few feet around her in the dim light.
Eventually, she was able to pull a tattered spider web of sense together. She focused on her breath, the one thing that always seemed to help when she was afraid. She inhaled deeply, ignoring the pungent smells that pummeled her as she did so. She held her breath to the count of five, tracing the shape of a five-pointed star in her mind, then pushed it out equally slowly. She didn’t know why she was here or how she’d gotten here, but she had to hold it together. If you panic, you’ll die. A lesson her father had taught her very early in life. Someone would eventually come for her, and she had to be ready when that time came.
As she breathed, she became aware of an odd doubling of breath. Breathing that lined up almost perfectly with her own, but not quite. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been so intently focused on her own breathing, but she was certain it was there. Almost like an echo, a breath starting an instant after her own. The hairs on her arms prickled as she realized she was not alone.
She choked off her breath sharply and heard someone else finish their exhale in a long, loud, and exasperated manner. A soft chuckle broke the silence. The sound was like a wash of cool river water over feverish skin, but it came with a spike of fear.
“You heard me breathing.”
The voice was feminine, with a smooth tone that sent shivers up her spine. It had come from behind her, just out of her view.
“Yes,” Evelyn whispered. She held herself rigid, ready for whatever might come next.
“I’m impressed, Ling,” the woman said. Her voice was gentle, kind, not the voice of someone who would hold a person against their will, shackled to a frame in a dark, silent place. “That’s a remarkable amount of emotional control considering where you are and what you’ve been through.”
What I’ve been through? Evelyn had no idea what the woman was talking about, but she bit her lip against the questions battering the inside of her skull. A kind voice didn’t mean this woman wasn’t her enemy. The fact that she wandered free gave every indication she was Evelyn’s captor.
A pale halo of yellow hair and two pools of the deepest sapphire blue came into view. Evelyn felt warm hands touch her neck, and she jerked back as far as the shackle would allow as a spike of terror threatened to overwhelm her fragile self-control.
“Don’t touch me!” she shouted. “Let me out of here! When my parents find you—”
“I am not here to hurt you, Ling.” The woman’s warm hands settled on the clamp at her neck and moved gently along it before they shifted to a wrist.
Why does she keep calling me Ling?
“Why are you holding me here?” Evelyn asked, struggling to keep anger, not fear, in her voice.
If you panic, you’ll die.
She clamped onto the memory of her father’s voice, his soft touch as he helped keep her head just above the surface of the water while she practiced pushing through it with hands and feet. She could feel her cheek twitching, her lips trembling.
“I am not the one holding you here. We would never do such a thing. We never have, even to one of them,” the woman said, her voice colored with disgust. “Though they deserve it for what they’ve done. Vile monsters, they are.” Her soft sapphire eyes had gone flinty, but they softened once again as she turned her gaze back to Evelyn’s face.
“I am here to help you. To get you out of this cursed house and away from Fariss.” The woman brushed a hand along Evelyn’s forehead, brushing hair out of her face.
Evelyn’s panic abated a little, and tension leaked out of her battered body. She studied the woman, but she had no memory of her. Her pale skin and light, fluffy hair meant Evelyn would remember if they had met. Such things would stand out among the dark skinned and dark haired people of Meuse. But even more noteworthy was the glinting of fine blue scaling on the woman’s cheeks.
“Why would you help me?” Evelyn wanted to believe the woman’s words with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t. They didn’t make any sense. Why would someone who had never even met her want to help her? Not to mention the question of how she got into this place. All evidence pointed toward the woman being her captor. But that didn’t feel right either. A tiny flame of hope kindled in her chest.
“I know it’s hard to believe right now, but I am a friend.” The woman moved her hands over the shackles around Evelyn’s neck once again. “These restraints are enchanted with vile Tovenveran magic. I can barely stand the touch of it, but I can break it, I think.” The woman stroked Evelyn’s face gently, a comforting touch, and E
velyn felt a sob bubble in her chest.
I am going to get out of here. At the thought, all the feelings of loss and terror she’d been holding at bay surged inside her, and she wept.
“Please help me. Please get these things off me,” she blubbered at the other woman.
“This is going to hurt. I’m sorry, I know of no other way. I’ll keep it as brief as I can. Are you ready?”
Evelyn nodded. She didn’t care how much it hurt, she wanted out of the shackles and out of this place, wherever it was. She wanted to go home, to see her parents again. She wanted to see whoever had done this to her punished.
The woman settled both her hands at Evelyn’s right wrist and looked directly at Evelyn. “This might look and feel very strange, Ling. And as I said, it will hurt. But I’m getting you out of here. Okay? I’m getting you out.”
Evelyn nodded as much as she could with a metal brace around her neck. She turned her eyes upward to where the roof of the room vanished into the darkness above. Where am I?
The woman spoke softly, and words Evelyn could not understand stabbed at her ears like narrow little knives. The sound of them made her squirm. They were wrong somehow, not normal words, not a normal language. They thrummed with a strange sort of power, and with a shock, Evelyn realized they must be magic.
She stared at the woman, wondering who she was and where she had come from. No one in Meuse could do magic. No one in all of Brielle could. Such a thing was forbidden even for those traveling through. Not even Witch, who had come from across the border to settle just outside of Meuse, could do it. She stared at the fine scaling on the woman’s cheeks. Surely it was fake. Face-painting like that though…it made sense at a fair, but it made no sense here in this place.
She felt an intense pressure against her wrist, and she cried out in pain as the fine bones there flexed and strained against it. Trying to ignore the pain, she did her best to focus on the question of where she was. She had known she wasn’t in Meuse—none of the buildings there were very big, so the large echoing space she was in was proof enough of that. But she still had no idea where she was or how she’d gotten here. She had to have been drugged—it was the only explanation. Drugged and transported, but for what purpose?
The cuff popped, and Evelyn’s hand was free. The woman moved quickly to the other side of the table. Again, the woman mumbled softly, and this time Evelyn groaned as her bones bent beneath the weight of whatever the woman was doing. She wondered if she was going to die after all. Her parents had warned her about those who practiced magic. They could not be trusted. They were lazy. They were criminals of the worst kind. The second shackle popped open.
The woman clamped her hand around Evelyn’s and leaned over to look into her eyes. Her blue gaze was calm, reassuring. “This one is going to be bad, Ling. But you will be okay, I promise,” the woman said. “Are you ready?”
Evelyn had never agreed with the stories the people of Meuse had told about magic, instead believing that their mistrust of magic grew out of fear of something they knew nothing of. Nonetheless, in this moment she was terrified. She wondered feverishly where her parents were, whether they were close. She wished they were here with her now, reassuring her that everything was going to be ok. An image of them lying dead at the hands of whoever had taken her flashed into her mind.
With effort, she shoved that image aside and pulled up one of her father, strong, tall, and smiling that easy smile of his. Don’t panic, Evelyn. She felt the cool water of the Lisse River lapping against her skin and felt her body buoyed by the love and confidence in her father’s smile.
Keeping that image in her mind, she nodded. Her breath was choked off as pressure mounted against her neck. The warm Lisse River of her memory vanished, and cold water closed over her head. She struggled, whether against the water or the crushing power of magic, she wasn’t sure. She felt her eyes bulging from their sockets as her lungs bucked and heaved in her chest. She slapped violently, but she didn’t know if she aimed at her father or the woman hovering above her.
“Easy now. I’m almost there.” The woman grunted in frustration and uttered another commanding word.
If you panic, you’ll die.
She tried to pull up her father’s easy smile once again, but all she could see was his lifeless body, empty eyes staring upward. The pressure on her neck doubled for an instant, and Evelyn screamed, the shackle and pressure at her throat choking off the sound. Then the cuff burst, sending bits of metal pinging around the room.
The feeling of drowning fell away from her. Evelyn draped her hands protectively at her throat.
If you panic, you’ll die.
“I know you are scared. I’m almost done, Ling. You are almost free.” The woman moved to her feet and uttered more unintelligible words. Evelyn bit her lip against the pain and then suddenly she was free. She shook so hard, she could hear her teeth clacking against one another. It felt as though her muscles had liquefied in the shell of her skin, and she could not move.
The woman leaned over her once again, touching either side of her face. “Can you sit up?” she asked. “Look at me. Ling. Look here.” Evelyn slowly focused her eyes on the woman’s sapphire blues. “You are okay now. You’re fine.”
“Where are my parents?” Evelyn could hardly get the words out. Her lips shook and her tongue refused to do her bidding.
“Sit up, Ling. Here.” The woman pulled her into a sitting position, pushing her legs till they dangled over the side of the platform. She wrapped her arms around Evelyn and held her tight. “I know you have questions, and I will answer them all, but we need to leave, Ling. We can’t stay here.” She pulled back, rubbing briskly at Evelyn’s arms. “Can you walk?”
Evelyn didn’t know if she could walk. She didn’t know anything. But she could see the urgency in the other woman’s gaze, so she shifted her weight and allowed her body to slide slowly forward until her feet touched the ground.
The woman came with her, holding Evelyn tight against her chest. “You are safe now,” she murmured, stroking Evelyn’s back gently. “I am Fern, and I promise I will tell you everything. But we need to get out of Shadowhold before Fariss returns.”
She had no idea who Fariss was or what Shadowhold was, but she certainly wanted out of here. She stood shakily, Fern holding tightly to her side.
“This way.”
Evelyn followed Fern across the large room she had been shackled in. The walls were made of massive, dark stone, climbing higher than she could see in the low light. She could make out shelves lined with jars, baskets stacked everywhere, and large bottles with piping leading to other large jars. As they hurried across the room, they passed a massive mortar, so large Evelyn would have to stand to use it. A door clanged somewhere off in the distance.
Fern stopped, head tilted as she listened. After a moment she turned to Evelyn.
“We need to run, now. If they make it down here before we’re out we’ll never escape them.” She paused for a moment, letting the words sink in. She turned away, maintaining her grasp on Evelyn’s arm, and said, “Run!”
They sprinted across the flat expanse of floor to the door and launched up a narrow ramp. It circled around several times, ever upward. She heard no movement outside of their own, but she was in constant fear of encountering an angry face around every corner. They came to a door, and Fern shoved her through it, clicking it quietly closed behind her as she moved toward the center of the room.
It was a storage room of some sort. Unused baskets were piled up against the back wall. Shelving lined the walls to either side, mostly empty, but with random bottles and books scattered along the shelves. It was dusty, as if no one had been in the room for years.
Fern led her toward the back of the room and the collection of baskets. She pulled several of them aside, revealing a small hole where the wall met the floor. Fern slid through, motioning Evelyn to follow.
Evelyn dropped to her rear, poking both legs into the small hole. As she did, the sou
nd of voices and footsteps scuffing against stone reached her ears. Someone was passing right outside the door. She froze, holding her breath. Fern stared out of the darkness below. As the voices faded Evelyn released her held breath slowly and slithered through the hole until she stood beside Fern. She watched as Fern pulled the baskets back into place, hiding the hole that was their escape.
“This way, and hurry. They will waste no time when they discover you are gone. We need to be far enough away that they won’t find us when they find this hole.”
The thought of their escape route being discovered, of being captured once again, paralyzed Evelyn for the space of two breaths. Fern swung a pack up over her head, settling it against her back, and darted down a long dark passageway. Evelyn forced her legs to move and dashed after her.
She had so many questions, but no time to ask them. They ran forever, as far as Evelyn was concerned. They would stop briefly, Fern pausing to place her palms flat against the walls of the tunnel, eyes closed, breath slow and deep, before launching once again into a swift sprint.
Evelyn’s lungs burned, and her breathing became loud and harsh. They turned left, then right, then left again. The passages twisted chaotically, frequently branching off into the darkness. Evelyn had no idea how she did it, but Fern never hesitated, leading them forward with absolute confidence.
She seemed less confident of her choice to bring Evelyn along though. “You breathe like an animal. Like one of them. Stop, or they will hear you!” she said, her whisper clearly angry.
“If you want me to breathe less loudly, stop running!” Evelyn retorted.
“You don’t need to breathe at all, let alone like that.”
Evelyn had no idea what Fern meant by that, so she just focused on breathing as quietly as she could as she ran on.
At one point Fern stopped abruptly, and Evelyn, distracted by trying to control her breathing, ran right into her. The two of them stumbled into a wide open area, and Fern turned on her, deep blue eyes looming up out of the darkness, her face constricted in fear. She shoved Evelyn backward, knocking her onto her butt, then she spun, huddled against the wall, and waited. Evelyn remained where she was, sprawled on her back, hoping her lungs weren’t bleeding from the exertion.
