Chapter 14
Iflexed my bare hands, bereft and aching in my chest where panic carved every last soft, vulnerable scrap into pieces.
I’d got used to it—being alone in my head, being safe from her commands, immune to her attacks.
Now, I tried to choke down the lump growing in my throat, but it only swelled bigger.
Enough self pity, I ordered myself, watching as the mausoleum overshadowed us, blocking out the light of the moon.
No one commented on the moon high in the sky despite it being no later than one in the afternoon.
The sky was silver, not the pitch black of midnight, but it certainly wasn’t the sunny blue we’d left behind in Lazankh.
This was a place where ordinary rules didn’t apply, a place that existed outside of laws and reality.
Yet, Cleodora could still reach me here.
Get the dagger from your pack. Kier saw me reach for it and moved it out of my grasp.
Slip that star from Xiona’s sheath. Xiona’s quick fingers snapped out and grabbed my wrist, moved it firmly away, although not bruising or grinding my bones the way she could have. Probably should have.
Maybe I was growing on her. Or worse, maybe she felt sorry for me.
Push the child into the water.
“Aerona,” I gasped, the only warning I could manage. I warred with the command gliding through my blood, my muscles, my bones. Copper coated my tongue, splashed the back of my throat—my punishment. Then I lunged at Aerona, my bound hands thrust out.
Cherish threw herself between us, magic flaring as one of her hawks leapt into existence, batting its vivid blue wings in warning. I shot her a thankful look but could say nothing. Cleodora took revenge by ordering me silent for the rest of the journey.
With every command, every twist of her sweet, silken voice through my head, she broke something inside me. I reached for a joke or snarky remark, anything to pierce the darkness gathering inside my soul, but found nothing. Just an empty, hollow pit.
An hour ago, I’d have said something about the glowing blue boat that carried us across the still lake, powered by the bright gleam of Hames’s rings and his seemingly endless power. Maybe I’d joke he was overcompensating. Right then, I didn’t have the energy.
“Oh, cheer up,” Rook said after a long, long period of silence. “No one died.”
I whipped my head around to glare at him and found the rest of my troupe doing the same.
No one died? There was a gaping hole where Zaugustus should be, and the only reason he died was because Cleodora sent her rebels to stir up tension.
She was the reason our friend was gone. The reason my sister was gone, too.
“Today,” Ryvan amended, his humour swallowed by black grief. I wished I’d laughed before.
I turned my hard stare to the mausoleum, clenching my jaw. Whatever Cleodora wanted in here, I would find it, and I’d use it to end her.
Scratch your own eyes out.
My breath hitched. I tried so hard to curl my hands into fists, but they refused to close.
They followed her command, not mine. My hands lifted, fingernails poised to scratch the delicate film off my own eyeballs, but Kier’s hands locked around my wrists, pushing them back into my lap and holding them there even as I struggled.
“We’re here,” Xiona said gravely.
I tensed, dreading my next command as Hames guided the blue boat up to the mausoleum steps. I almost wished Odele was here, because at least the spy had some compassion unlike the woman who grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the boat. On the plus side, it stopped me scratching my own eyes out.
“Dislocating my shoulder isn’t going to get rid of the compulsion,” I grumbled, trying and failing to massage the ache where Xiona almost ripped my arm free. “Killing me might do the job, but I’d rather you didn’t.”
She stared at me long enough to make me uncomfortable, the two of us blocking the steps so everyone else was forced to stay in the boat. Possibly by her design.
“I don’t want you dead,” Xiona said after a long moment, her lips pressing flat.
My hand whipped up without my permission, and my breathing ripped apart as my fingers encircled her throat.
“I’m not doing this,” I whispered, trying to pull back, to release her. Cleodora didn’t even whisper, not a single peep.
Cold bled into every part of me. Did she no longer need to speak? Had she sunk her claws in so deep she could now make me do whatever she wanted? I needed Odele and that flat disk thing she slapped to my chest to knock Cleodora out. “Xiona—”
“I know,” she bit out, her hands moving so fast I couldn’t track them, hitting my elbow, my wrists, my weak shoulder she’d nearly ripped from its socket. She didn’t need to knock my hand away; all the strength fled my arm, leaving it jellified and odd. “That’s why I don’t want you dead.”
“I need to get in there,” I said while I could still speak, my eyes on the dark archway into the mausoleum. “I need to find what she—” Blood filled my mouth and I choked. Lovely.
Light flared in Xiona’s golden eyes, her face sharpening. “Will it save you—whatever’s in here?”
I shrugged.
“Some of us are trying to leave the boat, you know,” Aerona drawled from the water, heavy on the attitude.
Xiona grabbed my shoulder—the aching one—and shoved me towards the dark entrance. “After you, princess.”
I wasn’t sure if the words were meant to be comforting or threatening, but either way I felt better with the warrior standing between me and everyone I loved.
I stepped through the arch into the dark.