Chapter 4
Four
Ivy
My head throbs harder with every stumbling step. Liquid trickles down the side of my face—a metallic flavor seeps between my lips.
Blood; it must be blood.
Everything but the ache feels so far away.
A hand is clamped around my upper arm, yanking me faster. I just want to stop and lie down, make the pounding in my skull stop, but my legs keep lurching onward.
A voice grates out from beside me. “Can’t you get her running?”
Another voice, wobbly: “I’m sorry, Master Lothar. I’m doing my best. It’s harder when she’s injured.”
My drooping head sways. The surface I’m staggering over blurs and wavers before my unfocused eyes.
“Wretched riven sorcerer,” the man hauling me along snarls. “Not even good enough to get a job this simple done. You don’t deserve one fucking shred of that magic.”
We burst out a door into a gust of cool air. Droplets of blood splat onto the pale cobblestones in my wake.
My mind recoils from the sight. There was more blood—blood all over marble tiles—blood splattered across a golden crown—
My stomach flips over. Was that me? Did I slaughter someone in that vast audience room despite my best attempt at resistance?
Lothar—yes, that’s who’s jerking me along so forcefully—he’s angry. I made things more difficult for him.
But that doesn’t mean he didn’t get the basics of what he wanted in the end.
Yells and clangs ring out and fade in rippling waves. I can’t tell if any of them are real and not just hallucinations.
I stumble, and a sharper pulse of pain jabs through my skull to shatter my few coherent thoughts. I reel in a wave of dizziness.
My sense of the world around me completely fizzles out. I fade in and out of awareness.
I’m slumped against the wall of a jostling carriage—
Lothar is snapping something at his companions—
Someone presses something against my temple, maybe intending to bandage my wound but so roughly I’d flinch if the magic controlling me would allow it—
Then we’re spilling out into the dark chill of the night, our feet thumping onto a packed dirt lane. Lothar yanks me on toward a looming stone house.
As we march inside, I catch enough glimpses through the muddled haze to recognize that it’s the same summer estate home he brought me to before. There’s a stumble behind me.
“What’s the matter now?” Lothar demands.
Zaneta’s voice has become outright ragged. “I—I’m doing my best, but the strain—Keeping her totally in my hold for so long is draining me—”
The magic advisor spits out a few curse words and shoves me through a doorway. “Fine. I suppose you should get some rest before we mop up this mess.”
He raises his voice. “Biani! Where’s the lossum you picked up for us?”
The term penetrates the ache in my head. Lossum—that’s a common sedative.
Despite my careening thoughts, a fragment of understanding clicks into place. Drugging the riven is the typical strategy for ensuring they can’t use their powers.
They’re going to knock me out so Zaneta can rest without worrying about what I’ll do.
I’m going to be free from her scourge sorcery… but not conscious to take advantage of that fact.
Her hold must be weakening more. If I can wrench myself away now—
But I’m drained too, and I can’t gather my focus through the pain still radiating from my forehead. All I manage is to suck in a deeper breath, and then my body is tossing itself onto its back on a low bed.
A vial lifts to my face. Bitter liquid coats my tongue.
My head lolls as I try to summon the control to gag and spit it out, but I simply roll onto my side.
An even thicker, darker haze rolls over me, and I don’t know anything at all.
Well, my wayward rogue, you do have a knack for getting yourself into the most contorted sorts of trouble, don’t you?
The voice echoes through the fog I’m floating in as if from all around me.
I know it. I’ve heard it before.
It’s important.
I open my mouth, but I can’t find the wherewithal to respond. My mind is so fuzzy…
You need to wake up, the voice says. Now!
The last word hits me like a punch, and the eyes I didn’t know were closed pop open.
The room around me is hazy too, just a hint of the dawn’s glow seeping through a window beyond the foot of the bed. I’m lying on my side on top of the covers—no one bothered to so much as drape a blanket over me. My limbs feel cold and achy.
My head throbs too, but with a duller pulsing than the previous sharp pangs.
I have the urge to shift and stretch, but at the same moment a large figure adjusts his position where he’s leaning against a side table near the door. A bulky man with his mouth set in a bored scowl.
He’s going to realize I woke up—he’s going to hurt me. I have to hit him first, before—
I yank back my mind from those frantic thoughts. The quavering panic of them is horribly familiar.
I used a lot of magic last night. Possibly more than I know.
Now I’m having delusions of danger again.
Of course, I am in a lot of danger. But it’s not as immediate as my scattered sanity would have me believe.
The man is gazing toward the window, not toward me. I dip my eyelids so I’ll still look asleep if he glances my way.
Yes, I could knock him down with my magic. It’s already unfurling around my racing heart with my newly recovered consciousness.
But my guard is far from the only threat I’m facing. I have to be smart.
I study the man for a few moments through my eyelashes. I think I saw him around the house after Lothar brought me here the first time. One of his stooges, maybe a captured daimon.
Inside my mouth, I curl my tongue assessingly. The movement comes easily without any force obstructing it.
I’m still wearing my boots. I wiggle my toes inside them, where the man can’t see.
A jolt of hope shoots through my chest. The scourge sorcerer’s magic isn’t clamped around my body any longer. Zaneta must still be sleeping.
I can move myself through my own will.
More memories float up in fragments. Lothar brought me back here—he drugged me so that my puppet master could sleep.
But I’ve woken up sooner than he must have expected.
Because of the voice in my dream.
It was Kosmel. The trickster godlen hasn’t completely abandoned me after all.
How much time do I have before I lose the small advantage he’s given me?
My magic shoots farther through my abdomen, burning hotter with each passing second. These assholes kidnapped me, forced me to do their bidding—
Great God help me, I don’t know what I actually did last night. The deaths I do remember are awful enough.
A wallop of guilt and anguish hits me right in the sternum. I close my eyes tighter against the swell of emotion and clench my jaw.
I can’t get distracted by regret right now. What matters most is getting away from these monsters so they can’t turn me into even more of a fiend to serve their sick purposes.
After that… then I can worry about the crimes I’ve committed.
I don’t think the drug has completely worn off yet. When I try to focus on a plan, my thoughts drift sluggishly through my head.
I have to deal with my guard… get out of this room… tackle whatever’s waiting on the other side.
My magic squirms right up to my throat. I could hurl it out of me, smash through this entire building and everyone in it—
A starker smack of horror shatters the image that formed in my mind. I swallow thickly and clamp down on my power as tightly as I know how, picturing a vine wrapping close around me.
I can’t let the delusional panic take over. I was already going mad before Lothar took me prisoner. Gods only know how much the magic he made me use last night has addled my mind on top of it.
How much can I risk using to free myself? If the riven insanity takes over completely, I’ll be an even greater threat to the country than the conspirators I’m freeing myself from.
Everything I could do feels wrong.
The weight of the decisions ahead presses down on me. For a second, I can’t breathe.
I’m injured and weaponless and partly drugged, up against an unknown number of enemies.
But I have to get out of here. I can’t let myself be the scourge sorcerers’ tool for one more minute.
Whatever happens after… I’ll make sure I’m prepared. I’ll do whatever I need to do to ensure I don’t harm the kingdom any other way.
I peer surreptitiously around the room. I can’t see anything except the bed, the side table, and a low dresser near the window. Not a single object I could use to stab or even bludgeon.
I suppose I could try to smother my guard with the pillow under my head, but somehow I don’t think he’d sit quietly long enough for me to pull that off.
The moment I move, he might raise the alarm. And I doubt I can move all that fast in my current state.
There’s nothing for it. I have to rely on my magic this one final time.
At least since I’m in control and I have time to think, I can choose the backlash.
I focus on his neck and the brass handle on the table’s drawer. When I’m sure of my concentration, I let one thin stream of magic fly out toward the guard.
It rams into his throat and clenches his windpipe so swiftly he doesn’t have time to make a sound before I’ve crushed his source of breath. The drawer handle bulges, expanding to balance out what I constricted.
With his eyes bulging with terror and lack of oxygen, the big man slumps toward the floor. I whip out another sliver of magic to erase the sound of him hitting the boards—and project it to the farthest distance I can see beyond the window.
The man sprawls on the floor and stiffens into clay. The daimon that was trapped inside that sculpted body will be flying free.
My guilt lifts at seeing I didn’t really take a life, but only slightly. This is just the first step in my escape.
I ease upright, hesitating when my head spins. When I touch my temple, I find a hasty bandage fixed there with a thinner swath of fabric.
The cloth is crusted with blood, but I can’t find any wetness on my face now. The bleeding appears to have stopped.