Poe bandaged my arm and tipped some liquid into my mouth. The bitter tang of it numbed my tongue, making my insides feel as though they were stuffed full of clumps of raw wool. My Sight faded into nothingness until my eyes were as ordinary as any mortal’s. By the time Nismae’s soldier returned to the room, I couldn’t even sense the second soul of his manifest in his body. I was blind.
“Put her up top by herself in one of the one-way chambers,” Nismae said. She pulled a loop of keys out of her pocket and unhooked an ornate one with a green stone mounted in the center of the bow. “Bring this back to me after you leave her.”
The large warrior took the key, slung me over his shoulder, and headed for the door through which Ina had come in. I tried to claw at him, to fight, to do something to get him to let me go. It took mere seconds for me to realize the futility of it. I couldn’t move the fingers on my left hand. The knife must have severed tendons. Without my magic, I had nothing.
The warrior carried me up flights and flights of stairs. My arm throbbed with every step he took, and I fell deeper into shock. When I thought we could surely ascend no farther without reaching a level of the building the same height as the top of the cliff we’d come down, the warrior inserted the key into a lock in the wall and then stepped through into a tiny turret room. It had only one notable feature—an empty archway that opened to the outside. The room stood so high that I could see the far side of the canyon. We’d risen above the fog. Night had begun to fall in halos of peach and purple that cut through the sky from the west like broken promises.
He set me on top of a ratty straw-stuffed pad through which I could feel every uneven spot on the stone floor, then manifested into a red-tailed hawk and winged out into the dying light. I lay on my side, staring through the archway with tears blurring my vision. When night finally fell, the stars glittered like vicious sparks in the velvet dark, reminding me that everything that had happened tonight was just like them—unchangeable and true.
CHAPTER 21
DAYS PASSED IN A HAZY STRING AS THE NIGHTSWIFTS let me heal. They took me to bathe often, no doubt to reduce the chances of infection in my wound. Meager portions of food were delivered twice each day, accompanied by tea that was syrupy with peaceroot and a substance that dulled my pain and left me too exhausted to do anything but sleep. I tried to avoid the tea, but they offered me no other liquid. Those who delivered it were never familiar and always left through the window by manifest as birds. My pleas to see Hal and questions about what they were doing with my blood were met with silence. Eventually I gave up speaking.
Wind eddied in the tower room, leaving me always cold. During my wakeful moments alone, which were few, my head pounded from the peaceroot and anxiety prevailed. I feared Nismae would come back for more blood, or worse, with a way to make me write the future for her. I searched every crevice of the room one-handed for some sign of the door through which we had come in. No evidence of it existed. The room was completely empty except for the chamber pot in the corner. They’d taken my satchel and cloak, leaving me with nothing but the clothes I’d come in wearing—and Veric’s letter, still tucked between my bodice and skin.
My arm slowly healed but brought no function back to my hand. I mourned its loss, and in my coherent moments raged that if I’d been free, I might have been able to do something about it. There were stronger poultices for the wounds. Fire-flower tinctures that would have better dulled the pain.
The few times I was awake at sundown, I sang vespers to try and calm myself. If Hal was anywhere nearby, he had to hear them. At first I thought the songs might lead him to my prison, but it was a foolish hope.
Sometimes I dreamed of him. In those dreams he had golden wings, and we flew away from the tower, from everyone, all the way to the end of the earth. There I no longer had to worry about Atheon, the Fatestone, royal vendettas, or stolen blood. At the end of the world we lay on a bed of stardust in the empty black of the sky. He surrounded me with the light and magic of those golden wings and held me close, telling me this had all been a mistake, a bad dream, and he would never leave me again.
I woke up hating him for the lies my own mind told me, and angry with myself for longing for a fantasy that could never come true. The more time passed, the more furious I became. Why hadn’t he tried to listen from afar to discern Nismae’s latest plans instead of walking me right into the arms of the enemy? Perhaps he’d known all along what she was going to do or how quickly she’d turn on me if she saw a way to use me. I tried to fight the way the anger twisted my insides, begging me to turn into something as dark and vengeful as everyone who had hurt or abandoned me.
Some days the anger lost. Some days it won.
One morning in the pale light of dawn, I stood in the archway with my toes hanging over the edge. The scent of green and growing things came in on the breeze, and I knew spring had come without me. Below, the brume lay soft and white as a blanket. It almost looked as though it wouldn’t hurt to fall. I spent several long minutes there, weighing whether it would be better to let Nismae take more of my blood, or to jump. I didn’t want to die, but the thought of her using me as a weapon was worse. All life is precious, Miriel used to say. In the end, I went back to my pallet, turning to face the wall. My abilities were the only hope to change the mistake that had begun this story—the fall of Amalska. If I died, all hope of that would be lost.
When Nismae finally came, it was only to check on my wound and to declare me healed enough for her to take more blood. When she examined me, I struck at her with my other hand, succeeding only in leaving a long scratch down the soft flesh on the underside of her arm.
“I see what Hal appreciates in you,” she said.
Anger flared in my breast.
“You’re making a mistake,” I told her.
“No, I’m getting what I want and what this kingdom needs. You’ll be free to go as soon as my goal is achieved. Hal doesn’t seem to think you’ll be inclined to stay nearby.”
So Hal was on her side, was he? Why had I ever trusted him? Nismae stood up, indicating for the man accompanying her to bind my hands and feet so that I wouldn’t be able to attack when they returned for my blood.
No apology came for what she was doing to me.
With my meal the next morning, I received water instead of the drugged tea. With no use of my hands, I was forced to lap it from the cup like an animal. Over the course of the day my headache receded and my magic began to come back to me again, but so high in the tower and surrounded by stone, I couldn’t reach anything other than my own power. I only once made the mistake of trying to pull apart the enchantment concealing the door, but something made the threads of magic too slippery to hang on to. I tried everything I could think of until I had thoroughly exhausted myself—everything but pulling the life force out of the people who came to deliver my second meal. Even now, I couldn’t sink that low.
Poe was the one who came to take the second batch of blood. She took it more gently than last time, using a thin slit on my already wounded wrist, carefully delivered where it wouldn’t do any damage. Still, I trembled in the hands of the two warriors who held me—but this time it was with fury, not pain. How could these three look me in the eyes after I’d spent nearly a week before being imprisoned learning their names, hearing their stories, sharing with them pieces of my past? How could their loyalty to Nismae be stronger than empathy for someone who had never done them any harm?
By the time Poe moved to the fourth vial, my head had begun to swim. “Why are you taking so much?” I slurred.
“Nismae’s orders,” Poe said, her voice shaky.
“What is she doing with it?” I asked.
Poe shrugged, unable to meet my eyes. “Giving gifts to Invasya,” she murmured.
By the time I woke up, I was alone and unbound again, and then the next morning I was served another batch of tea thick with tranquilizers. I drank it, grateful for the oblivion. I didn’t want to remember Ina. I didn’t want to think ab
out where I was or what would come next.
Nismae looked happier the next time she visited me several days later. “We’re so close,” she told me. “You’re going to be the reason for change in this kingdom.”
Resentment burned in my breast as I stared at her, wishing I could tear her apart the way I had Leozoar. But her iron cuffs blocked my ability to steal her life force, and so instead she left me with a cup of water and a stronger urge than ever to walk out the open window.
Later that night, someone whispered my name in my ear.
It sounded like Hal. Another dream. Another betrayal. Another lost hope.
“Go away,” I mumbled to the dream phantom.
“Wake up, Asra!” Hal said more insistently.
“Leave me alone!” I struck out with my good arm, and my fist connected with solid flesh.
“Gods!” Scuffling followed, along with several more curses.
I cracked an eye open. Hal stood silhouetted against the moonlight streaming in through the window. Even after all these hours, days, weeks, I still recognized the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jawline, the way he moved.
“I suppose I deserved that, but you could at least warn a person,” he said.
“Why are you here?” I asked. I wasn’t in the mood to be teased. The rescue I had dreamed of was too good to be true.
“To get you out. I’m so sorry, Asra. I didn’t know where she had put you. I could Hear you, but I couldn’t find you. There’s some kind of enchantment on this room.”
I wanted so badly to believe him.
“How did you find me?”
“I eavesdropped on Poe, since I knew she’d be helping Nis,” he admitted. “I never would have found you otherwise.”
I sat up on my pallet, my injured arm burning and prickling in the way that had become familiar as it healed. I didn’t trust him. He was part of the reason I was here.
“You let her do this to me,” I accused him. “You led me straight to her, knowing she might be dangerous. I thought we were friends.” I never would have let anyone hurt him.
“We are friends,” he said. “But Ina could have killed me. Would have if Nis hadn’t stopped her. I saw it in her eyes. What use would I have been to you then?”
I didn’t want to believe that it was true, but I had seen it, too.
I hated her.
I touched my bandaged wrist where Ina’s courting bracelet had once lain. For the first time, I wondered if things would truly be better or different if I rewrote the past. Had Ina ever loved me? I thought she had, but the moment everything had fallen apart, she left. The moment I had confessed to her, she admitted to betrayal. The only person who kept coming back for me was Hal . . . and I didn’t know if I could trust him either.
“I’m sorry for hitting you. I didn’t think you were real,” I said.
“It’s all right. Like I said, I deserved it. How is your arm?” The sadness in his question was as palpable as the lumpy mat I sat on.
“My hand doesn’t work the same way anymore,” I said. “They’ve kept the bandages clean and changed, no doubt because they don’t want to risk me getting a case of blood poisoning. Might inhibit them from draining me again.”
“Yes, they’re planning to do it again tomorrow.” His voice took on new urgency. “That’s why I need to get you out tonight. There’s more—but I’d rather talk about it somewhere else.” For once he didn’t sound like he was joking.
I stood up and brushed the straw and dust from my rumpled clothes. He didn’t have golden wings like in my dreams, but any place was better than here.
“Lead the way,” I said.
He walked over to the window and beckoned me to the edge. We faced each other, feet no more than a hand’s width from the edge. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t, but it wasn’t as if I had any choice. I could always take off on my own after I regained some strength and got far enough away from Nismae to disappear. I didn’t have to trust him to do that.
“I need you to for just a few minutes, because we’re going to fly,” he said. “My life will be in your hands as much as yours will be in mine.”
“All right,” I said. Nervousness fluttered in my stomach.
“Put this on,” he said, grabbing something off the floor that looked like a cross between a vest and a harness. He helped me secure the buckles in the back, then unhooked a bundle of lines from somewhere outside the window and clipped half of them to me and the rest to himself.
“Stand behind me as close to the edge as you can get. Once we get moving, keep your legs straight out behind you and follow the motion of my body if you can. If you can’t, just try to stay steady and straight.” He waved his hand and called a gust of wind. A winged contraption in the shape of a wide inverted triangle dropped from the tower wall to hover before the window. It was made of pale blue fabric stretched taut over a frame made of some material I didn’t recognize. A straight bar hung from the middle of it.
“What is that thing?” I asked. I had never seen or heard of anything like it.
“Meet the Moth, one of the few things I helped Nismae craft,” he said. “She’s made of fabric and dragon bones, and she’s our way out of here.”
“How did you get it from her?” I asked.
“She sent me out on a mission with it tonight. I came here instead. They won’t look for it—or me—until morning,” Hal said. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, not sure how to respond to the knowledge that he’d betrayed her for me. I didn’t imagine Nismae reacted well to incomplete missions, much less her own brother turning on her.
Hal pulled me closer, the scent of him so clean and pure I felt as transported as I’d been in my dreams. In spite of my new uncertainties about him, the familiarity of his closeness brought such solace that I struggled not to cling to him, to bury my face in his back, to hold on and never let go.
“On the count of three, we jump,” he said.
“All right.” I held on to him one-handed, hoping it would be enough. I no longer had the ability to grip anything with the other, and likely never would again.
He stretched out both arms in front of him and counted to three. His muscles coiled before he sprang, and I moved intuitively with him so that we took the leap in perfect tandem. He caught the bar of the Moth, and it glided away from the tower.
For one perfect moment I felt nothing except the wind in my face and a heart-pounding surge of energy as we swooped through the sky. Was this how Ina felt when she flew? The cool night air whipped loose strands of my hair and slipped into the gaps in my clothing, but I barely noticed, too caught up in watching Hal manipulate the wind in my Sight. It was a little like dye being gently stirred into water, the way he pulled the thermals toward us to give us altitude. We glided left and then banked right as he shifted his weight, floating over the city in a serpentine pattern that allowed us to lift through the turns. After a few weeks of near blindness thanks to the peaceroot, having my Sight back made me feel alive again.
When we lost enough altitude to almost sink into the fog over the city, Hal called a more powerful gust to lift us closer to the dome of stars overhead. I never wanted to stop flying. No one could reach me here, and even without the bed of stardust, I felt as safe as I ever could have wished in my dreams.
Like all good things, it came to an end too soon, when the opposite side of the canyon came into view.
“We’re going to hit the ground hard,” Hal shouted. “Try to run with the momentum if you can.”
We barely cleared the far side of the canyon before our feet hit the ground. We ran, stumbling over the rocks and grass, coming to a crashing halt when the Moth slammed into the ground in front of us and pitched us both into the dirt. I barely muffled a cry as I caught some of my weight on my wounded arm.
Hal unhooked me from the Moth and helped me slip out of the harness. I lay on my back for a moment, trying to ignore the buzzing of damaged nerves in my injured ar
m. My heart still raced from the flight, and a swell of fierce gratitude made my breath catch. Never in my life had I been so thankful to feel earth and grass underneath me. I was free. Thank the Six, I was free.
Hal bundled up both our harnesses, tying them securely to the Moth’s navigation bar, then teased the contraption back into the air with conjured gusts of wind, sending it out across the canyon and over the fog to the south.
I sat up. “Why did you do that? Couldn’t we have flown farther?”
“The Moth is too difficult to travel with—my magic can only carry us so far, and if I were to exhaust myself in the air and lose consciousness . . . well.” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. “It will be more useful as a decoy to keep Nismae off our trail. She’ll notice me missing, and she has spies everywhere in this city. There isn’t anywhere safe to hide in Orzai. Might not be out here either,” he said grimly.
I sighed, brushing the fingers of my uninjured hand gently through the leaves of a dandelion. My satchel was gone, probably forever. Nismae had all my notes, precious years of Miriel’s work and mine, details about how to enchant my blood. I had no doubt she’d succeed in doing great things, or that she’d come after us as soon as she noticed our absence. Hope seemed very small and far away, but at least outside the confines of the tower, it existed.
“I need to sit down for a minute,” Hal said as soon as the Moth was out of sight.
“Help yourself,” I said, still sitting on the ground.
He collapsed beside me. “I know you’re probably angry with me, but you need to know what’s going on. Nismae read that journal of yours and figured out how to enchant your blood to give Ina some of your powers. The shielding. The magic draining. She saw you do both those things when trying to defend yourself from her, so it wasn’t hard for her to replicate. Now that she has another batch, she might be able to do more.”
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