Chapter Six
Child, what have you done?”
I blink my eyes open slowly. My bleary gaze lands on the Royal Star and my favorite crone sitting on the edge of my bed. “Vena?” I croak. “Where have you been?”
“My duties have kept me away,” she says. “Are you well?”
I shake my head, my mind feeling oddly fuzzy. “No. Everything is going wrong. Roshan doesn’t trust me. I’ve become a killer. I feel lost.”
“Then you must find yourself.”
My head throbs. Gods, this is not the time to decipher Vena’s ramblings. “Trust me, if it were that easy, I would have. I don’t know what to do.”
For a moment, she looks sad. “Perhaps I was wrong about the fluid bonds of akasha, about your destiny being chosen and not already written.”
The words ring faintly familiar—she’d said something like that to me after I’d died, when she’d waxed poetic about me having a possible soul-fated. “What do you mean?”
“Your destiny lies elsewhere,” she murmurs as my visions swims, and she starts to waver.
“Wait, Vena. Where?”
But she’s gone . . . and I’m left alone and more confused than ever.
Head pounding, I stare blankly at the ceiling.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, a sour taste lingering in my throat.
I swallow what feels like a mouthful of sawdust and sit up, my memory patchy.
Dizzily, I blink and push to my elbows. My chamber is dark with no light coming in from the windows or the balcony doors.
Breathing through my nose, I fist my aching temples. My mouth tastes suspiciously like the sour-sweet aftertaste of Jade, a dangerously addictive hallucinogenic drug made from jādū. Ashes below, have I been drugged?
A hazy feeling invades my brain on a cloud of fluffy endorphins.
Maker above, it’s definitely Jade.
I let out a curse. Clearing my mind as Aran had taught me, I will my magic to heal my impaired nervous system and purge the poison from my system. It takes several tries, and when it’s all gone, I should feel better, but instead, I feel curiously numb.
Blank . . . as if an integral part of me is missing.
Something’s not right.
“Vena?” I call out, but there’s no response. I wonder if I imagined her in the first place.
Before this, I’d been under the influence of Jade twice, each time without my consent. Once when I infiltrated a Scav den, and again when their leader, General Vogon, attempted to weaken me with a magical runic web. He’d failed. I’d been able to purge the poison both times.
But this dearth in the middle of my chest feels nothing like that.
This happened after I’d visited the azdaha. Razulek.
The thought of the poor creature is like an explosion of blinding light, piercing through my unnatural brain fog, and all the recent events rush back in horrifying clarity. The azdaha. Roshan. Aran. The standoff. The king’s ruthlessness. The portal to Coban that never materialized.
An awful feeling invades my blood, paralyzing my racing thoughts.
No . . . he wouldn’t have.
But I rub my nape just below my ear, recalling Clem’s remorseful words as the Jade sank its hooks into my bloodstream, and then Roshan’s cold expression fills my mind. She wouldn’t have done a thing without his order.
Hyperventilating—none of this could be real even though it clearly is—I take stock of myself. I’m still wearing my own clothes. But then my curious gaze hitches on the unfamiliar bracelets on my wrists, like wide molded metal cuffs. Where did those come from?
I lift one high, frowning. The steel is smelted with the memorable shimmer of jādū.
I should know—I’ve forged enough magical weapons myself.
Runic script envelops the circumference of the metal.
I don’t recognize all the arcane symbols and runes, but I do know the ones for control and submission.
Because I’ve seen them before . . . on the azdaha.
I stare in shock at the gleaming jādū bands, remember my words to Roshan. What will you do . . . fit me with a jādū collar like his?
My skin starts to heat as magic fills my veins.
In breathless panic, I run a finger around the edges of the cuffs, but there’s no seam or lock to remove them, and they’re fastened tight.
The bracers glow brightly but don’t crack or melt when I command them to.
The magic inside of me works just fine. I can’t seem to make it do anything.
Oh, no, no, no . . .
“Roshan!” I scream. I launch up from the bed on legs that feel like jelly and hobble to the door. But the handle doesn’t release the latch. I frown and yank on it harder, belatedly noticing that there’s no key in the keyhole. Is the cursed thing locked? Why is it locked?
I press my ear to the wood and hear noises on the other side.
Someone’s there. “Hello? Open this door right now! I can hear you!” I yell, banging hard for the guards I know have to be posted on the outside.
“Get me the king this minute! I know you’re out there.
Or let me out so I can find him myself.”
As I suspected, I hear more rustling and low voices. “His Majesty is attending his war council, my lady,” a male voice replies uneasily.
“Then open this starsdamned door,” I yell.
“We have orders not to,” the voice says.
Orders, my ass.
Gathering my strength, I focus on the door and summon the rune to incinerate.
My magic is slower to flare, but the scrolling runes on my skin are unmistakable.
I push, forcing my starlight into the wood until the glare makes me squint.
A bone-splintering shock slams into me like a lightning bolt, and I yelp in pain, bile rushing to my throat.
But I grit my teeth and try again, only to be struck twice as hard.
Just like Razulek had been . . .
With a furious sob, I raise my wrists, the cuffs blurring through my tears.
I scour my nails against the bracers, digging into the tender flesh of my wrists so hard that blood drips.
The sharp bite of pain barely registers on top of the lingering agony of the shocks, but the sight of the blood makes me queasy and I start to feel faint.
Nauseated, I stumble back in the direction of the bed, my legs giving out as I stare at the manacles now covered in garish streaks of crimson.
Panic is quick to follow as my simurgh gets wilder and angrier at being held captive.
It’s no secret we both hate being restrained.
Short of cutting off my hands to escape, I’m trapped.
We’re trapped.
Swaying on shaky feet, I crash into a small table with a vase that makes an ungodly noise as it smashes into the floor, and I drop to my knees. I don’t even notice the porcelain shards from the broken vase slashing into my skin. The door cracks open and I see a face peering in at me.
“Fuck, get help!” the guard yells to someone else.
Light floods the bedchamber as lamps come to life when Aran enters, his eyes widening at the sight of the mess along with the blood spattered all over me and the floor. “Gods, Sura, what have you done?”
“Can you get these off?” I wheeze, wincing. “Hurts.”
When he makes no move to approach me, I peer weakly at him through heavy eyelids. “I . . . can’t,” he says. “Don’t use magic or you’ll get hurt again.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, feeling sweat start to roll down my nape. “Where’s the king? Does he know I’m here? Is he safe? What’s going on? Aran, I need these off!”
“You need to calm down or the suppression rune will make you lose consciousness,” he says, eyes rounding with alarm when I start tearing at the stained cuffs again, my magic crashing like an angry tide within me. “Roshan is fine. He’ll be here soon.”
But I barely hear him as my spine bows when another violent shock blasts through my body. Shaking uncontrollably, I push my wrists toward him. “You’re a magi. Take them off. Please.”
Aran stares at me in silence, his face wreathed in guilt. Why would he be looking at me like that?
The answer is all too obvious when the guards clear a path for the king, whose face doesn’t show a single ounce of surprise as he enters our chambers. That earlier fearful feeling returns as I lift my wrists. “Roshan, tell him to remove these.”
“He can’t take them off,” he says, then glances at his guards crowding the doorway. “Wait outside.” The silence is ominous after they retreat, as the king’s inscrutable gaze meets mine. I pick at them again. “You can’t remove them, Suraya, so stop fighting.”
The panic resumes, matching my elevated pulse. “Why?”
Regret glimmers in the king’s gaze for a scant second before his jaw hardens, that cold haze I’ve come to hate taking over his expression. “It’s for your own good.”
Those damning words fall like hammers on my heart, and still the meaning doesn’t penetrate fully for a handful of breaths. Until it does . . .
He’s responsible for this.
“What have you done?” I cry, lurching from my prone position on the floor toward him, but only managing a few steps before pitching unsteadily.
“Tell me you didn’t do this to me, please.
Tell me you didn’t collar me like an animal.
” The sobs wrench out of me, the blow of his betrayal too much to bear. “I trusted you!”
His mouth tightens. “This is only a means to an end, Suraya. I have to make my authority clear, or the houses will run roughshod over us.”
“There is no us, there’s only you.” My bitter words are barely audible as I sink to the floor.
“Don’t say that. All of this, everything I’m doing, is for us.”
He swallows, his throat bobbing and those beautiful, treacherous eyes glistening with emotion that makes me sick. The cold, dead stare from earlier is gone. But which is the real version of him? I can’t tell anymore.
“I don’t believe you,” I whisper.