CHAPTER 6 ADRIA #3
glass in my chambers, delivering meals I have no desire to eat. By now, I expected he’d have adjusted to my temper. But it seems not. Fair enough.
Sometimes the stubborn, wriggling rage in my chest catches even me by surprise. I don’t remember a time before it crouched there, like a dragon in its lair, always in wait.
“Thaane,” I say, before Zalel can interrupt me, “was not assigned to the task.”
Zalel swallows the lump in his throat. “He volunteered, my liege.”
Another curse slips, unbidden, from my mouth. I want to throw something, and I’m at once both grateful and furious with past Adria for breaking nearly everything in sight and having Zalel remove the fragile remainder from my sleeping quarters. “This will not stand.”
“I will file a report with his legion commander. He will be swiftly—”
“Take me to them.”
Zalel nods stiffly. I follow him into the hall.
Still terribly young, he has to think harder than most about the fortress’s layout, visibly second-guessing each turn the instant before he takes it, but I leash my frustration.
Better to save it for Thaane. God help him if he’s broken my best lead on the rebellion beyond repair.
By the time we enter the interrogation chamber, I’ve assembled a short list of things to possibly expect.
The prisoner, battered by Thaane’s own claws or torn to shreds by his four wings.
Burned, perhaps, by a blast of demanding radioactive power.
Having her own life threatened, or even hearing a bluff regarding the lives of those she loves. But what I see is none of those things.
The rebel cowers, like a lost child, in the chamber’s center.
The table and restraints for questioning are empty, abandoned, but she remains caked with dirt, dust, and gravel.
Blood has dried along the arch of her throat, which I threatened with my teeth before taking her prisoner last night.
But otherwise, she shows no signs of injury.
Not by weapons. Not by energy. Not even by Thaane’s own three-fingered clawed hands.
She rattles like ice beginning to splinter, teeth chattering.
Outside of her obstinate armor, her own mutations are now visible.
A sweep of scales along her spine. Spikes tearing through her skin all over, clearly designed to protect, but they’ve all been bent back, many broken, by the force of wearing armor over them.
I wonder why she seems to cringe into the floor, rather than away from me. Then I realize she’s covered her eyes with her hands, nails digging into the skin of her own face.
Thaane looms behind and above her, not one of his four arms raised, but jagged teeth glinting in a bestial smile.
“What in the hell—?” I start.
Thaane raises a singular claw and points up.
The breath whooshes out of my lungs. Thaane’s gift from the Diakópsei is displayed in glittering, horrible glory before me. Thaane’s energy manipulation turns stone into glass. Something he can bend. Something he can shatter.
The entire domed ceiling has become a hectic clash of mirrors, all angled toward the captured rebel. Even the walls are glass now. As I step over the threshold and into the room, I realize the floor, too, is now reflective. Bile rises in my throat; I swallow it down. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“She thinks she’s better than us,” Thaane says, smirking.
“She thinks she can bury what she is, what we all are, under some cheap armor and platitudes.” He gestures broadly to the spiked, scaled, shuddering woman at his feet.
“Before she leaves this place to whatever punishment you decree, little princess, I’ll ensure she knows herself to be wrong. ”
My tongue feels too swollen for my mouth. “This isn’t what I ordered,” I breathe, glancing sidelong at Zalel. “This isn’t procedure for interrogations. What have we even learned—?”
“You’re asking the wrong question. Think what she has learned.” Thaane drops to one knee, tilting the prisoner’s chin up with a freshly sharpened claw. “Look at me, girl,” he says, his stormy-gray eyes holding
hers fast. “Are we so different, you and I? Is it worth all this trouble, to dethrone a leader who acknowledges what we are?”
My voice spears from my throat, so fierce I half expect a blast of energy to involuntarily follow it. “I’m nothing like you. We’re nothing like you. What are you accomplishing here? What has been gained but your own sick pleasure at watching someone else suffer—?”
“You seemed rather pleased with yourself in the last battle,” Thaane says, “when you tore out her fellow combatant’s throat with your teeth. Or when you put an end to your father, your mother, not so long ago. Remember that, Adria? The thrill of unleashed potential?”
Zalel reaches to catch my arm, to hold me back. Too late. I’m already between Thaane and his charge, who’s become a quivering mass of spikes and skin behind me. My wingspan is broad enough to swallow her up; it casts her into total shadow.
“Why yes, Thaane,” I say, his name falling like a curse from my tongue.
“I am a monster.” I plunge one clawed hand into his chest. His mouth hangs open with surprise, blood and foam bubbling on his lips.
“I revel in my strength,” I say, twisting my claws for good measure as he gasps, writhes.
“I exult in the power bestowed upon us.”
The light flickers, threatening to leave Thaane’s eyes entirely. I lean close. I ensure he is looking at me.
“But I—am not—an animal.” I yank my hand back, coated with blood. Thaane collapses to the ground, both hands clawing at his ruined chest, the whites of his eyes wide as moons. “Zalel.” I nod in the healer’s direction. “Attend to him, please. He will stand trial for war crimes, as the law dictates.”
“War crimes?” Thaane spits on Zalel as the latter kneels, one healing hand extended. Where I am built to break, Zalel is built to mend. “This chamber you authorized is rife with implements of pain.”
Thaane isn’t wrong. I quickly scan the wall of blades and manacles, some showing signs of dried blood. “Bodies are always broken in war. A soldier’s spirit is sacred, even in captivity. This thing you’ve done—” I
don’t understand why phantom tears, unshed, threaten to swallow my voice. “You think she doesn’t know that she’s exactly what she fears, what she’s fighting? You think it doesn’t haunt her every day?”
Of all the things I’ve broken in my quarters, overcome by rage since my unspeakable parricide, so many of them have been mirrors.
Behind me, barely audible, the prisoner sobs.
“Blood dries. Scars fade. Flesh knits itself back together. What you’ve done to this prisoner will follow her as far as she could ever run.
” I turn to the shuddering girl, lift her by the shoulders so that we’re both on our feet.
“You threatened my fortress. You fired upon your queen. There are punishments for that sort of insubordination, but this—this is not one of them.”
She blinks at me, rapidly, eyes open and shut, open and shut. Her quivering mouth cuts off her words.
I ask, “What is your name?”
At that, her rapid blinking slows into a wide, haunted stare that holds my own. Her eyes are watery, red-rimmed, the pupils broad black discs in her pallid face. “Eridian,” she says.
“Zalel,” I say without turning around. My voice is nearly a growl. “Release her back into the Shadowlands.”
Zalel, bless him, doesn’t choose this moment to question my authority. He simply nods and takes the prisoner by the hand, wincing when one of her rogue spines digs into his shoulder. She glances rapidly between Zalel and the door, tense as a bowstring, before turning to meet my gaze one final time.
“Now heed my words, Eridian. This is no small mercy after your defiance of the crown. Follow my servant. Keep your eyes fixed ahead. If you look back even once, my soldiers will strike you down for good where you stand.”
She nods stiffly, her mouth forming words but no sounds coming out, and Zalel leads her into the maze. Out of the fortress.
Thaane’s wound is healed. Yet he clutches at it, grimacing from phantom pain. He spits on the ground. “Your father would be ashamed of you.”
“Then it’s a blessing he isn’t here. Now get on your feet, you bastard.” I seize a pair of handcuffs from the wall, originally intended for Eridian. “We owe the Shadow Court an explanation for this—and if we stay here much longer, Thaane, I’m afraid I’ll be delivering you in pieces.”