Chapter 35
Quinn
I was collared. Metal at my throat stole my breath, looping my magic back into me like a cruel snare. It wasn’t pain, it was absence. My pulse ran wild with nowhere to go. Useless Majekah. No teleporting. I was helpless again.
I’d cried myself empty hours ago. The sun had risen and set again while Horax and Matt made their escape. My one peek at the world didn’t show me any familiar landmarks before our captors dumped us into a long, thin room.
“Eat. Drink. If you die, you’re worthless.” Horax toed my bare feet with Matt looming at his back.
His light-purple magic glowed, and the ropes holding me fell away. I wrenched the gag out of my mouth and drank. Warm water slid down my throat. I almost finished the bottle before I remembered Brit, whose still body lay just inside the door.
Horax laughed. “If you keep the pit fighter alive, I’ll let you keep her, maybe.
” He stepped back, reaching for a handle.
The hall behind him was so dark I could barely make it out, and my captors vanished into it.
A lock clicked into place. The colors of the rainbow lit up like a lightsaber around the door, trapping me in a silent psychedelic rave.
I crawled to Brit. Her chest rose and fell.
I forced a bit of water between her lips, but didn’t know how to make her swallow.
I knew nothing. Desperately, I searched the little space I found myself in.
Soft carpet brushed my bare legs. Off-white walls reflected the rainbow lights on every side of me.
A long, thin bed took up about a third of the back wall, while a toilet and small sink sat off to one side.
A sink meant water.
I stood and confirmed it worked before finishing the water myself. For God knows what reason, the sink grounded me. I’d lived believing magic wasn’t real my entire life. I couldn’t panic now just because it was gone.
The collar didn’t choke me, fear did. That impossible blue lingered behind my eyes, pulsing in memory, and a voice echoed… or maybe I only imagined it. It didn’t return. None of it made sense, but confusion had become familiar ground.
I drew a slow breath and held tight to what little I knew, thin scraps of certainty, before collapsing next to Brit and breaking.
Just hours ago, I’d been twirling under glowing lights, drunk on laughter and kisses.
Now, I was trapped, dirty, and powerless.
It wasn’t a fall; it was a free fall back into the nightmare I’d barely escaped.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time to finally pull myself together. I shoved my despair and fear deep down until I could breathe without screaming. I had friends looking for me right now. I couldn’t give up. I was better than that.
I trickled water past her lips, praying her throat remembered how to swallow, and stuck my fingers on her neck and my own, comparing the two. Hers was a little slower, but they both felt strong and steady.
A small victory, but mine.
Baby steps. I couldn’t lose hope.
Brit still lay awkwardly exactly where Matt dumped her. I couldn’t lift her, but I did what I could to make her more comfortable. Bruising bloomed on her side, which matched my own, but other than the little hole from the dart in her neck, she looked okay.
I leaned against the wall and let my head thump back.
I’d lost so much I didn’t know how to mourn more.
My hand came to rest on the collar, which wasn’t cold.
I jerked in surprise before feeling it all over.
No burning or ice remained from when it first clicked into place.
The lingering chill I vividly remembered from my time in the body snatchers’ cellar didn’t grip me.
I traced my fingers across the smooth metal, wiggling them under the scant space between it and my skin.
The collar was the same temperature as I was.
I tried to create the band I’d bolted myself down with on The Mile. Nothing happened.
I froze. What if Horax took my belly button ring?
Please don’t let trauma come for my jewelry too.
Terrified to find it missing, I slowly pushed against my stomach. The teardrop stabbed into my navel. A loose strand glittered, mocking my fear.
I let out a panicked noise that could have been a chuckle or a terrified scream and scrubbed my face. If I could get rid of this collar, I could blow this entire place up. I might be struggling with control, but losing it wasn’t a problem.
I paused. My magic was still trapped in a loop, cut off from the world. Moreover, my Majekah had failed to break the collar. Except it did something. Otherwise, it would still be cold.
“Right, Brit?” I asked.
Brit’s unconscious body didn’t answer me. I looked at the dart hole again. What if Brit had something keeping her asleep—like what Brody had done to me? If I touched her with my Majekah, would that cleanse it out?
My gaze dropped to her knees before studying the scarring on her face. Magic fixed everything here. And she was young, just a few years older than me.
My memory of the park ranger’s destroyed knees hit me. I swallowed. What were the chances she had anything unnatural in her body?
Before I lost my nerve, I set my hands on Brit’s chest and called on my Majekah.
An unexpected tug, like a small dog at the end of a leash, made me move my hands from her chest to her abdomen before my lower spine tingled with coolness, and my Majekah sank into everything that was Brit.
Her dirty, blood-spattered dress disintegrated into a million fibers.
Ink dripped out of a lower back tattoo I didn’t know she had.
A soft cry, so vulnerable and opposite from Brit’s battle roar, brought tears to my eyes.
Oily black fluid, gritty with ash and burned herbs, bled from her ears, eyes, and nose.
Brit sat up, almost crunching her face into mine, and I fell backward in disbelief. It worked. For the first time since the collar, I’d made something good happen. I started shaking. I wasn’t alone. The relief was so heavy it hurt, and I lunged forward, wrapping my arms around my friend.
“Oie,” Brit said weakly.
I laughed and sobbed at the same time. Despite not liking sympathy or hugs, she wrapped a single arm around me as well.
“Quinn, babes, there is a god-awful taste in my mouth and hugg’n ain’t getting us out of here,” Brit said.
I released her and scampered off to retrieve everything I thought could help her.
She gargled and spat out the water. “Location?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
She rubbed the oil on her face before touching the scabbed dart hole. “Ugh, what’s this shit? Skittle?”
“I don’t know what Skittle is, but once that oozed out of you, you woke up.”
Brit furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t remember being knifed. My back’s bleeding?” Brit touched her bare back. “I’m naked?”
Much calmer than I actually felt, I explained my Majekah in full. She took it all in while assessing her movement and strength. She could stand, but the side covered in bruises also had a spattering of broken bones. Her ribs and her right arm were the worst.
After a brief mourning of her three tattoos now staining the carpet, she opened her pocket-void and pulled out a small arsenal of weapons.
“It’s too bad you can’t heal,” Brit said, handing me a dagger.
“Yeah, tragic,” I responded. “I’m better at breaking things.”
Brit shrugged. “Enough people are after you, probably for the better you can’t. We don’t need to make you an even juicier target.”
I snorted before looking around the room. “We’re getting out of here, right?”
Brit cut a few holes in the blanket and created a short toga. “Yes.” She pulled me into a bear hug. “We breathe yet, and we’re together. I’ll get us out of this mess.”
I didn’t even get to finish my next breath. The door cracked open.
Two metal canisters clattered in, one spinning to a stop, the other rolling under the bed.
“Dow—”
Brit didn’t get the word out before both erupted with a deafening bang. Shards bit into my arm and cheek, hot blood spilling before pain caught up. The air turned to acid silk. Green, slow, heavy, and alive, it crawled up the floor like it wanted to smother us.
Brit yanked me down, throwing herself over me. The gas thinned near the carpet but still clawed my throat, scorching every breath. My eyes burned; tears streamed down my face in stinging trails.
The door yawned open wider. A shadow moved. Brit’s dagger flashed, a silver streak cutting the fog. A grunt answered from the hall.
I tried to crawl toward the door, but my limbs betrayed me, growing heavy, sluggish. Brit’s weight sagged over me. Her body went limp.
My lungs shrieked for air I couldn’t find. I grabbed my friend and shook her, chanting her name over and over. She couldn’t leave me again. Together we could get out of this, but alone…
Two figures stepped through the fog, gas masks hiding their faces, dark-brown coveralls blending into the haze. Horax’s squat outline was easy to recognize, while the taller one could be anyone.
Tears blurred everything but the narrowing path to the door. I clawed the carpet, dragging myself an arm’s length closer before my body quit entirely, useless and slack.
They loomed over me. The one who wasn’t Horax crouched, gloved fingers hooking under my chin and lifting my head.
“She’s real.” The man dropped my head.
I didn’t feel it hit the floor.
“We still struggle to understand your choice to sell her,” the man said slowly, his voice echoing oddly through the long gas mask.
“I’m old.” Horax rested a hand on his protruding stomach.
“My life was The Rooster. I don’t give a shit about her, and I want nothing to do with the fight to keep her.
I just wanted to hit that pompous would-be-king where it hurt.
” He grunted and made a fist, shaking it at the ceiling.
“The Architect’s a mentalist. I’m no fool. I need to hurt him and vanish.”
The second man nodded before dropping to the ground and sweeping Horax’s legs out from under him. Dark green runes burst from the man’s fingers, spinning, hissing as they tore the mask off Horax’s face.
Horax screamed.
The fog clung to his skin. His muscles seized. His eyes went wide.
One rune split from the others, twisting into a spike. It shot upward, straight into the soft underside of his chin.
The sound wasn’t human. A wet choke. A gurgle and Horax’s body joined mine on the floor. Warm, sticky blood snaked across the floor, oozing over my fingers.
I couldn’t pull my hand away. Couldn’t move at all.
The second man leaned down, and his mask filled my vision.
“Our Prophet waits,” he said.
Terror split me open.
Then darkness.
Then nothing.