“I love you, too, Ry,” I shouted, just as the first Dansiians reached me and grabbed my arms, pulling me back from the cave-in. “Now go!”
A whole swarm of hooded men rushed toward me, but they parted as Rafe walked through their midst, his one eye trained on me with pure, undefiled hatred burning in its green depths. I quickly looked away.
He strode up to me until he was close enough to grab my jaw and yank my head forward. I squeezed my eyes shut. “You will pay for this. And I look forward to it eagerly.”
And then he hit me in the head with the hilt of his sword, just as Rylan had done to Akio. The darkness swooped up to claim me, and I fell forward into my enemy’s waiting arms.
When I woke, my head pounded and my arms ached. I slowly realized I was sitting on a hard surface with my arms stretched out to either side of me, chained to a wall at my wrists. My legs were bound as well. Only my head was free to move. Part of me didn’t want to wake, didn’t want to face the reality that Eljin was gone. That Rylan had escaped but was severely injured and probably had very little chance of surviving, let alone making it back to warn Damian in time. But it wasn’t in me to quit, to give up. Instead, I lifted my chin, blinking away the grasping darkness and the terrible, pulsing pain behind my eyes.
But what I saw made me long for the oblivion of the darkness once more.
I was in The Summoner’s lair again.
To my right was the row of cots, just like the one I was chained to, that held the other subjects, moaning and thrashing on their beds. To my left were the sacrificial altars the black sorcerers used. The smell of burned flesh and blood mixed with vomit was nearly overwhelming. I breathed slowly through my mouth — to calm my heart and my heaving stomach.
“Ah, she awakens.”
I looked up to see The Summoner walking toward me, his silver eyes unwavering on mine until I looked down at my legs, all too aware of what his brother, Manu, had been able to do to me in the dungeons when I’d interrogated him. I didn’t know if they had the same abilities, but I wasn’t keen on finding out.
Because I was looking down I was unprepared for him to stab me in the arm.
My body jerked, but I swallowed my scream of pain, refusing to give him the satisfaction. He’d shoved one of the sharp, narrow devices into the bend of my elbow, into the thick blue vein that pulsed beneath the thin layer of my skin. My blood began to run into a bottle that he held beneath the strange metal dagger. The sight of my life flowing out of my arm, into that glass jar, made my head swim. Instinct urged me to yank my arm away, to force him to stop, but I couldn’t do anything except struggle against the manacles that held me to the wall.
“The king ordered me to wait until you were conscious before taking the first sample. He wanted you to watch us using your blood to strengthen my creations.”
“They’re not your creations,” I mumbled, my mouth horribly dry. My tongue felt engorged, as though it had swelled to twice its normal size, filling my whole mouth. Had I been drugged? Or was I just severely dehydrated?
“They were nothing before me. Sorcerers — nothing more. Armando didn’t do anything. I did. I am the one who summoned the power necessary to create all of this.”
That explained his name, then. I wondered if he’d given it to himself.
When the bottle was halfway full and spots had begun to dance in front of my eyes, he ripped the blade out of my arm, letting my blood run freely for a moment. I’d seen blood many times before — I’d been the cause of death more times than I cared to count. But this was something entirely different. To take blood from subjects willfully, to use it in horrific and disgusting ways … If there had been anything in my stomach I probably would have vomited all over him, adding to the smell in the room. Finally, he took a scrap of fabric and pressed it to the wound, stanching the flow.
“Do you know what Manu de Reich os Deos means?” he asked me suddenly, his voice soft but threatening, like silk sliding over the sharp edge of a blade.
I shook my head, turning my face away from him and the arm he’d tied a strip of fabric around to stop the bleeding.
“In your language it means ‘The Right Hand of God.’ That’s what he was. I gave him his name because he was at my right side, helping me create sorcerers strong enough to take what is rightfully ours. I am as the Gods, turning their creations into something even greater, making them stronger and better than they could ever have been alone.”
I swallowed hard, refusing to respond to him.
“You killed him” — he leaned forward to hiss in my ear — “and you will pay for it. I will bleed you slowly, until you writhe in pain, until every last drop of your life belongs to me.” I flinched when he ran a finger down my cheek, past my jaw, and down my neck. “Whether the king is right about your blood or not, I will use you and I will make you suffer for taking away the greatest creation I ever achieved, besides myself.”
“Whatever you did to make yourself like this, it is no achievement,” I spat back at him. “You will pay for what you have done, mark my words. I don’t know why you aren’t Dish yet, but you will be. That or worse. You will die a thousand horrible deaths for the horrors you’ve brought into our world.”
His fingers curled to encircle my neck, slowly choking me. “How do you know that word? How do you know anything about such sacred knowledge?” His hand pressed against my throat, crushing my windpipe, rendering me unable to respond.
“Evocon, stop at once!”
The king’s shout startled us both. The Summoner pushed his hand into my throat harder for a split second, but then he released me and stood up straight, turning to face King Armando. I gasped for air, my breathing reduced to a harsh, choking cough.
The king strode toward us, wearing all black as usual, his long robe tied with a sash of gold. The jewels in his crown flashed in the firelight of the burning altars, where two men in black robes bent over their work, wisps of smoke curling around their heads and rising to the ceiling high above us in the cavernous room.
“You killed my men.” The king stopped next to the cot I sat on, reaching past The Summoner to pick up the sharp tube he’d taken my blood with. “You broke your word to me, and you helped prisoners to escape.”
The icy talons of fear scraped down my spine at the cold fury in his eyes when he looked up at me. “And yet, you survived. You always do. You kill those far more powerful than you, and you always survive.” He turned the device over so that the sharp point, still wet with my blood, was pressed into his fingertip. “Perhaps your blood will make me invincible, too.” He pushed it harder, until his skin broke and his blood mingled with mine. A terrifying smile turned his lips up as he stared down at the crimson fluid dripping down his finger, a malicious expression that reminded me all too much of his brother, Hector.
“I’m not invincible. I’ve just been lucky,” I replied.
His eyes snapped to mine and he lunged forward, shoving the sharp device beneath my jaw, into the bend of my throat where my blood pounded a drumbeat of terror against my skin, despite my attempts to seem unaffected by their torture and cruelty.
“Too bad the same luck didn’t extend to your friend. Do you know what we did to his body?” The king’s hot breath on my face made my stomach turn. “We dragged it outside the palace and left it to rot in the sun. We fed him to the bitrius — the birds who pecked at his flesh, tearing him away in bits and pieces until there was nothing left but bones.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, turning my head away from King Armando, refusing to let him see the tears that burned for release. My chest heaved as I tried to control my breathing, to not let myself imagine Eljin’s poor body defiled in such a horrific way.
But he hadn’t said anything about Rylan — and that made me wonder if he’d managed to get away.
Suddenly, the king straightened, pulling the blade away from my throat. “We need more of her blood.”
“I already bled her today, Your Majesty,” The Summoner responded.
r /> “We are marching out tomorrow. I need her blood now.”
“Tomorrow, Your Majesty?” The Summoner sounded as shocked as I felt at this announcement. What did that mean — was he marching on Antion? Was he going to fight Damian? Why the sudden urgency?
A horrible, grasping panic had seized my body, making my breath come harder and harder. My limbs felt as though I’d been running for hours, weak and trembling, and my heart raced.
“Get as much of her blood as you can without killing her. Then prepare to leave. She comes with us.”
I opened my eyes to see the king drop the device on the cot beside me, and turning on his heel, he strode away.
Despite my best intentions to stay alert, my head swam from blood loss and dehydration, and I had to fight to remain awake as I lay on the sandy ground where they’d tied me for the night — the first night after marching out of the palace earlier that morning. The ropes that were tied around my arms and torso were almost tight enough to cut off my circulation — assuming I had much blood left at this point — and then wound around the tent pole behind me.
The size of the army King Armando had assembled was beyond comprehension. From my vantage point, tied to one of the smaller mares behind The Summoner’s much larger mount, I hadn’t been able to see the beginning or the end of the line of soldiers, horses, sorcerers, and other animals and people who were marching toward Antion — toward Damian and the only people left in the world whom I loved. There had been crowds of women and children outside the palace, lining the stone street that wound through the city made up of buildings the color of the sand with what looked like some sort of clay tiles for roofs. The only color in the city was in the curtains and blankets that hung from windows and doors, dyed in vibrant hues, and the clothes the citizens wore. The women and children all dressed in the longer robes Dansiians seemed to favor, some in brightly woven colors, with silken scarves wrapped around their heads to protect them from the relentless sun, while others wore more drab colors, with plainer, rough-looking fabric wrapped over their heads. The rich and the poor came to see off their men, led by the mad king who ruled over them.
But once we’d passed through the city and left the river behind, with its verdant banks, there was only the sand and strange, straggly looking plants and bushes. Some even had spikes. I wished someone could have told me what they all were, but no one dared come close to me, let alone speak to me.
I was already woozy from blood loss when the trek through Dansii began, but as the day wore on and the sun continued to beat down upon us without relief, I actually grew nervous that I might faint. I couldn’t even use my hands to lift my hair from where it stuck to my sweaty neck, because they were tied to the saddle. No one had given me a covering for my head, or any way to protect my face from the sun.
When the caravan stopped for a small break and some food, a sorcerer pulled me off my horse and forced me to sit on the ground, but no one brought me anything to eat, nor any water. Even the horses were given small bowls of water to lap up. It didn’t look like nearly enough to me, but what did I know about Dansiian horses and their ability to withstand the dry heat?
“How do you intend to keep taking my blood if I die before you even reach Antion?” I dared ask The Summoner, my tongue swollen and my mouth as dry as the sand we sat upon, as he tilted a flagon of water to his lips.
He drank deeply before answering, the bump in his throat moving up and down as the water poured out of the flagon and into his mouth. Once he’d wiped his lips and closed the cap once more, he finally looked at me with his unnatural silver eyes, his pupils still abnormally large even in the sunlight. “Perhaps we’ve already gotten what we need out of you,” he said.
“Then you wouldn’t have made the effort to bring me,” I retorted.
He was silent after that, standing and then turning away from me to await the signal to keep moving.
When the whistle blew, a familiar robed sorcerer was the one who came over to put me back on my horse and retie my bindings to the thin saddles they used in Dansii.
I didn’t say anything when he pulled me to stand, gritting my teeth to keep my legs from swaying or flat-out buckling beneath the diminished weight of my body.
His eyes met mine when he lifted me up into the saddle, but then my gaze strayed to the side — to the dark bruise on his temple.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Akio stood beside my horse for a moment longer, tightening the ropes on my wrists, making sure they were securely fastened to the metal ring on the saddle. Then he turned and walked away without a word.
I didn’t blame him for being mad at me. He’d risked his life to bring me food, and I’d repaid him by knocking him unconscious. I could only hope that he realized I’d appreciated his kindness — that he was still alive because I did.
As the afternoon wore on, I grew dizzier and weaker. The heat in Antion was oppressive, but at least we had an abundance of water and vegetation — there was life thriving in every corner of my kingdom. The very air hung heavy with moisture. But here, the air was as dry as the bones of a corpse, all life sucked out by the relentless sun. There were hardly any plants, let alone wildlife, and water was the rarest treasure of all. When the wind kicked up, the sand pummeled our faces, stinging our skin.
Since no one would talk to me, I had nothing but my own thoughts to occupy me; my fears about Damian, the images of Eljin lying dead on the stairs, and Rylan separated from me in the dark tunnels, injured and frightened. I tried not to think of what had become of both of them, but it was impossible not to worry about Rylan or to think of the horrible way the king had dishonored Eljin’s body.
As I lay in the tent that night, finally given the chance to rest after The Summoner had bled me again and then left me alone, taking my blood with him, I tried to think of some way to escape, to fight back, to do something. But I had almost no strength left. I wasn’t sure how many times they’d bled me yesterday in The Summoner’s cavern. I’d lost track after the fourth time. Or maybe I’d just lost consciousness. The last two times he’d taken a smaller amount, but it was still too much. And for what? I wondered. To have the sorcerers drink it? To sacrifice it on their altars? I didn’t understand how The Summoner and his brother had managed to make themselves into what they were — or how they’d convinced so many sorcerers to become black sorcerers, to risk becoming Dish. Why didn’t they suffer the same fate as the Blevonese sorcerers? I couldn’t figure out how their experiments could have created Rafe and Vera and who knew how many others like them, with terrifying abilities and powers.
Unable to think of any way to stop the horrific battle that lay ahead, my thoughts turned to Rylan, hopefully making his way through the tunnels, somehow surviving and reaching Damian in time to warn him. A physical pain, as though my heart were being crushed, seized my chest when I thought of Damian. The urge to cry hit me when I remembered him standing in his mother’s library, pressing his fist to his heart, watching me leave him and fearing that I would never return, but very little moisture actually filled my eyes because they were so dry.
He’d been right — over and over again. And now Eljin was dead because of my stubborn refusal to listen to him and stay at the palace. And Rylan probably was gone, too, if I was honest with myself. How could he have survived those tunnels, injured and in the dark?
I wasn’t ever going to see Damian again to tell him how sorry I was. I had failed him — I had failed Antion.
Though I racked my mind, I could think of no way to fight back, to escape. Not when I was so weakened, and so thoroughly imprisoned. I couldn’t even stand up on my own.
One lone tear finally leaked out when I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to sleep, to escape the horror and bleakness of my situation.
When I heard the flap of my tent lift, I forced myself to open my eyes once more, stiffening in preparation for being stabbed in the arm again.
But it wasn’t The Summoner.
Akio crouched in the darkness, his dark eyes on me.
“Shhh.” Akio pressed his finger to his lips when my eyes widened at the sight of him, his head tilted as though listening for something. In his hands, he clutched a flagon of water. “I can’t heal you completely, or they will notice. But I can do a little to help you regain your strength.”
I stared at him, shocked into speechlessness.
“Drink some of this, but not too much, or you won’t be able to keep it down.” His voice was so quiet I could barely make out his words. He silently moved toward me and helped lift my head, and then tilted the flagon so that tepid water leaked slowly into my mouth. When I swallowed the first mouthful, I had to choke back a sob of relief. “That’s enough for now. Lay back so that I can get to work. Quickly,” he urged, pulling the flagon away after I swallowed twice more. “There isn’t much time.”
“Why?” I whispered. The thought of him getting caught helping me made my stomach cramp on the little bit of water I’d managed to swallow.
He shook his head, falling silent, and lifted his hands above my body. I lay back and closed my eyes, letting him work. He whispered in Blevonese, not Dansiian. I recognized the characteristic lilt to his words, though I didn’t understand them. Who was this man — this Blevonese sorcerer — and how had he become part of the king of Dansii’s household?
Within a few minutes, a surge of energy trickled through my body. I felt like I could breathe more fully than I had in days. The constant aching in my muscles and bones diminished, and the incessant throbbing of the wounds in my arms receded slightly. His hands centered over my shoulder, which was hidden by my tunic, and after a few more minutes the pain from the unhealed burns I’d received in the dungeons from the sorcerer’s fire also disappeared.
There was a noise outside the tent, and my eyes flew open to see Akio grabbing the flagon and scrambling toward the fabric closest to me. He lifted it and rolled out of sight, just as the flap opened and The Summoner walked in. With him came the same chill I’d noticed in the dungeons in Antion with Manu.