Chapter 17 #2
The woman’s head popped up as they pulled her past Tyche’s cell, and their eyes locked.
The panic in her stark, wide-eyed gaze was a palpable thing, like a hand wrapping around Tyche’s throat and squeezing until he couldn’t draw in a single breath.
Icy cold swept along his arms, sharp as knives.
She was already cracking. He could feel it stirring in the air, an ill wind spinning and twirling in dark eddies.
As the door banged shut, cutting him off from Yesuntei, Tyche raced to his bunk and dug out the fortune sticks he’d carved from chicken bones.
His fingers trembled as he gathered them together and raced to the wall.
He kneeled at the corner of the cell that put him as close to Yesuntei’s cell as possible.
“Ty? What’s going on?” Shawn’s voice had hardened to steel.
“Give me a minute.” He couldn’t talk to Shawn right now.
All his energy had to be concentrated on this.
He held the bones between his two cupped hands and shook them while opening the gateway to his powers a crack to infuse the bones with magic.
At that moment, he couldn’t care about the fact that Shawn could hear the noise he was making. It was the least of his problems.
He threw the bones at the wall and floor, letting them noisily clatter together before they settled.
Very bad.
Very bad.
Very bad.
“Fuck you,” he snarled at the bones as he scooped them up with trembling fingers, but the reading was exactly as he expected. He lifted his cupped hands to his lips and whispered to the bones. “Listen to me. She can do this. I know she can. What are her chances of surviving right now?”
If he could have threatened the dead chickens that made these sticks, he would have. He lowered his hands and shook the bones. He threw and begged silently for luck.
Very bad.
Very bad.
Very bad.
“Fuck!”
He scraped them up, fingers tightening on them to the point of almost snapping them.
Fear and panic were almost choking him. Cold sweat covered his skin, leaving his shirt sticking to his back.
“What if…” He started, lifting the bones.
“What if I…act…right now?” The question was awkward, but he was too aware of Shawn hanging on his every word.
Not a sound came from the cell next to his.
The man wasn’t even breathing as he strained to hear what Tyche was doing.
He threw again.
Very bad.
Very bad.
Very bad.
“Fuck!” But this one was almost a choked sob. He shifted from sitting on his heels to his ass. His head dropped back to stare at the bright lights that were now blurry and streaking. He swallowed hard, trying to gather the shreds of his self-control.
“Ty? Talk to me. What’s going on?”
Shawn. Or whatever his real name was. Regardless of what happened, he was still Tyche’s ticket out of that miserable hellhole. That hadn’t changed. He didn’t even need to throw the bones for that one. But he did need to pull his shit together and give him some kind of warning. They needed a plan.
“Teitei…” Tyche lowered his head and licked his lips, struggling to gather his shredded thoughts together into some semblance of order while pushing down all his panic. “Teitei is fragile. There’s a good chance bad things are going to happen.”
“Is there any way you could be more specific? What kind of bad things?”
He opened his eyes and snatched up the bones.
As he climbed to his feet, he shoved them into his pocket.
“I-I can’t. I’m sorry, but I really can’t.
You’re gonna have to trust me on this.” Tyche leaned against the white stone wall that separated them and squeezed his eyes shut.
He rested his hand on the stones, wishing that the wall wasn’t there and he could actually touch the man, reassure him in some small way.
There was no reason for Shawn to trust him.
Tyche didn’t even trust Shawn—at least no further than using each other to escape.
“Okay.”
Tyche’s eyes popped open, and he stared blankly ahead for several heartbeats.
Had he imagined that? Had he agreed to trust Tyche?
It felt like he’d soared from the darkest depths of despair to flying high above the sharpest peaks.
It almost felt as if he could do anything.
He clung to it because it was all he had.
“No matter what, we have to get out of here after they bring her back,” Tyche stated, trying to organize his thoughts into a workable plan.
“What if she’s in no shape to be moved?”
He knew she wouldn’t be. They’d be lucky if she were still breathing. “I don’t care. I can carry her. It’ll be your job to protect us.”
“Got it.”
Tyche exhaled. No jokes. No arguments. Shawn was willing to trust him.
“We’ll follow our escape plan as closely as possible. We need to get Teitei away from them. Okay? I promise…I’ll try to explain more when we get free. Just not now.”
Shawn snorted. “Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
A ghost of a smile drifted across Tyche’s dry lips. If Shawn got them out of this alive, he was almost willing to answer any and all of Shawn’s questions. He might even tell the truth at least half the time.
“Should we make a move now? Try to save her?”
It was tempting.
“No, we might not find her in time.”
A bleak wave was building. He could feel it pressing against him, clawing at his consciousness. Shawn probably couldn’t feel it. Might not even realize what was happening.
“Besides, it’s already too late.” Tyche rested his head on the cool stone and cursed these bastards once again for ever capturing him.
“What’s too late?”
“Bad things are coming.” He didn’t mean to be so cryptic, but he just had no idea what form Shawn’s personal bad things were going to take.
Tyche slid down the wall to sit on the floor and closed his eyes.
He wasn’t giving up the fight yet, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold out for too long.
“Shawn?”
“Tyche? What the fuck is happening?”
He ignored his sharp-edged question. “I need you to remember something. Tyche claims the sky is green.”
“What the fuck?”
“Say it.”
“Why?”
“Just say it. Hurry.”
“Tyche claims the sky is green.”
“Again. Louder.”
Shawn sucked in a deep breath and belted it out. “Tyche claims the sky—”
But he never finished. The bad things had him.