Chapter 12 Lyra #2
I use the opportunity to inspect myself for injuries.
Mainly bruising, already various deep shades of blue and purple against my skin, which should fade quickly.
Eres’s lattice still holds, and I avoid the edges, unwilling to risk tearing or disturbing it.
Dropping the rag, I look down at my hands, grimacing. “Do you have clean bandages I can use?”
I look up, catching his throat working. Without a word, Duskbane reaches down to his shirt, and I blink as he rips a strip from the bottom with little effort, and then another. “Interesting healing technique.”
“I didn’t bring any.” He holds the cream linen strip out, still refusing to look at me. “This is clean. Far cleaner than yours currently are, I’d wager. If you want them, take them. Eres will want to change them later in any case.”
Slowly, I reach for them. “Thank you.”
He blows out a slow breath. “If you want me to bind them for you, put some damn clothes on.”
I expected him to look. To at least glance. I’m not shy about my body. Far too many have inspected me for that over the years, criticizing and judging. All in readiness for this male who refuses to even look.
And of course, there was Cindral, and his training.
When I step closer, he tenses. “Get away from me, witch.”
“You can look,” I murmur. “Most would. I wouldn’t be able to stop you.”
I have to fight a flinch as the words leave my mouth.
His eyes flicker, and I wonder if he noticed it.
If something gave me away, some instinctive movement in the corner of his vision.
“Nobody is going to touch you. Perhaps Lightbringers treat their female prisoners differently, but here, we don’t assault women.
Nor do we accept sex as a bribe. Now put your fucking clothes on, or I will wrap you in shadow and you can wear nothing but my erevas. Your decision.”
My cheeks burn as I step back. I feel… scolded. Dirty, somehow. He says nothing when I return silently to the basin, scrubbing once more before pulling on the dress.
When I’m dressed, he finally drops his gaze. “Knew you’d get there eventually.”
“Have you always been a sanctimonious prick, or does it come with age?”
He pauses, assessing. “You’re not much younger than me.”
In truth, I’m nine months younger almost to the day of his birth, although he would have no way of knowing. “It’s considered rude to ask a lady her age.”
“I see no ladies here.” He almost looks amused as he steps inside, reaching for my hand. I let him unwrap the bandage, yanking the carefully tucked end free until it unravels. He sucks in a breath, and I feel his eyes on my face. “Does it hurt?”
I have to force myself to look. The wound looks a little scabbed, but still violently fresh. Enough that my stomach churns at the reminder that I might not be able to cast. “My palms, yes. But I can’t feel much in my fingers.”
My palms itch in that aggravating way that tells me they’re healing, even if it’s slower without one of my own healers here to assist. But my fingers… “I might lose them.”
“Eres is an excellent healer.”
“But not a Lightbringer healer.”
Whatever he can do with his erevas, it may be limited. Limited enough that if nothing changes within the next day or two, I will lose them.
“No,” Duskbane says finally. His fingers are careful as he wraps my right palm back up, tying off the end in a surprisingly neat knot before he gestures for my left. “But Eres will do everything he can before it comes to… that.”
He sounds so certain that for a moment, I almost feel reassured. Almost. “Are you going to tell me anything about this Binding? What do I need to do?”
He drops my hand and gestures pointedly at my hair, waiting until I’ve loosened the braid to speak. “It will take place at the river. Eres will arrive first. When we get there, approach him, and he’ll guide you.”
I eye him, waiting for more, but his mouth presses into a thin line instead. “You are simply a fountain of information. I feel so well informed.”
Any neutrality in his face wipes away. He takes a step toward me, and then another.
The shadows do not creep from his hands. They erupt, an endless dark mist that sweeps around me, pinning me in place. My arm is pinned against my neck, my hair still in my hands, but it holds me so fully that I can’t move even an inch as Duskbane crowds me, pushing his face close to mine.
“A Binding is a gift,” he hisses. “And you do not deserve one, but he has offered it to you anyway. I will be watching you, witch. If you do anything to put him at risk—if you breathe wrong or even look in the wrong direction—I will kill you myself before allowing any harm to come to him.”
I would answer, but the tendril of shadow wrapped around my neck prevents it.
Only a faint wheeze makes its way from my throat as I attempt to struggle, to push him back.
His eyes look more black than silver, as if the erevas he wields fills him from his boots to the top of his head.
My eyes trace the jagged marks that spread over his cheek, down his neck.
“Look at me,” he snarls. I raise my eyes, attempting to convey that I can’t fucking breathe, although I doubt he would care. “Tell me you understand.”
The smothering sensation around my mouth ebbs enough for me to suck in a lungful of air before I choke out the words. “I’ve done nothing to you, wielder.”
If anything, he swells further. I can’t see anything but him as he looms over me, so close that our breathing mingles.
Duskbane drags his gaze over my face, his own creasing in disgust. “You stole my father, witch. My uncles, my friends. My fucking people. You have taken everything and left us with ghosts and broken souls, but you will not have him.”
“And what of you?” I counter in a rasp before he can pull back.
“How many of mine have you slaughtered? Two brothers, a sister, all dead before they could truly live. They tell tales of you in Solvandyr, you know. They say that you are feral, that you slaughter without mercy. Hundreds, if not thousands, dead by your hand, yet you judge me?”
“Then let it be a warning.” Not a flicker of reaction. He could be made of stone. Beautiful, but so cold. “Do not cross me.”
I stare at him, my breathing ragged. “I lost my entire life to you, and you were not worth it.”
He leans in further, lips almost brushing mine. “Tell me something. If you are indeed the orphan you claim to be, abandoned at the temple, how do you have brothers and sisters, witch?”
My mouth opens as I stare at him, blinking. Once. Twice. And he smiles, as if he has won some kind of victory between us. “Liar.”
Fuck. Fuck. I swallow. “Siblings are more than blood.”
One side of his mouth lifts, even as the rest of his face remains unearthly still. “Common enough here. But not in Solvandyr. To claim a sibling without a true familial connection would cause great offense to the bloodline.”
Damn him. I drop my eyes. “I have never been a very good Lightbringer.”
He surveys me, before stepping back. “They might be the first honest words you’ve said, witch.”
***
I pull the now-damp folds of the cloak closer around me, attempting to chase away the chill. The barely-existent single sun of Umbraxis is dipping below the horizon ahead of us as I follow Duskbane down a narrow, winding path.
He turns, as if to make sure I’m still following. I hold up my bound hands in silent response, staring my annoyance into his broad back as he turns away again. The shadows holding me tug, and I almost stumble for the fifth, or maybe the sixth, time.
Holding in a sigh, I take note of my surroundings.
I had expected us to leave through the main gates to the castle, but Duskbane had led me to a small, unassuming door in the outer stone walls, set close to the entrance to my cell, and unlocked it using a set of heavy-looking metal keys now hidden in his pockets.
I eye them, considering how I might be able to access them in the event I need to get away.
Although I have nowhere to go. My father’s orders were clear—I am not to return to Solvandyr. The poison I carried has vanished, thanks to Eres’s care, but I find I have less inclination to end myself at his orders.
Perhaps there is somewhere beyond Umbraxis, if I could get away.
On our side, Solvandyr is self-contained—a city set within the expanse of a desert, shadowed only by the Glass Dunes.
Beyond that, there is… nothing. Only endless, punishing heat, and death through thirst and hunger awaits those who try to leave.
The ground is damp with mud and small, spiky rocks that dig into the soles of my feet. Duskbane didn’t see fit to give me my boots back, and my feet sink deeper into the muck as we walk. I look over my shoulder to the walls of Umbraxis behind us, and then out across the landscape.
It looks much the same as the path beneath me.
A vast expanse of brown, mud-covered ground, empty of any sign of life, stretches far beyond my line of sight.
The sky above us is a maelstrom of color—not the vivid, clearly-defined sunsets offered by the Solvandyr suns, but a chaotic mix of gray, vivid purple, deep blues and greens that cover the world above us in a strangely beautiful array of light and grows deeper as the sun dips further. “How much longer?”
Duskbane doesn’t respond to my called question. I narrow my eyes, but he vanishes over a crest before I can ask again, tugging on my bonds to pull me along with him.
As I step over the edge, a river comes into view.
Hidden by the mound we now make our way down, it stretches out ahead of us.
Turning, I follow the curve of the water to where it winds around the castle and vanishes into the distance.
It’s not as wide as I assumed from my studies.
In fact, it’s surprisingly narrow. A slow, steady flow.