16. Chapter 16 #3
But Maxine only drops down onto one knee, her pupils blown wide as she blinks up at me.
“I can’t feel my hands,” she murmurs, holding them out like they belong to someone else.
“Why can’t I feel my hands? Wait. She stole them, didn’t she?
” She spins toward Bella and points an accusatory finger in her face.
“You’re not really Bella, are you? You’re one of them.
Admit it, or I’ll slice open your neck, you traitorous bitch! ”
“Maxine, stop this at once! That is Bella!” I say, inserting myself between them.
“Prove it,” Maxine snarls as she plucks up a set of throwing stars and aims them at Bella’s neck.
“Bella, say something to prove it’s really you!” I plea, only to become distracted by the horrifying realization that I’ve lost a couple of my fingers during this conversation. Where have they run off to?
“The poison… it’s in the air,” Bella whispers, hardly taking notice of Maxine’s throwing stars, which are clocked up against the side of her neck.
“In their purest forms, the toxins prove fatal,” she continues.
“Diluted and vaporized, however, they become hallucinogenics. It seems that Master Flint is trying to inoculate us.”
Bella exhales deeply, shoving Maxine’s weapons aside with a gentle brush of her hand.
Maxine drops the weapons at her waist and then falters backward as Bella continues, “Our bodies are currently building up a resistance against the poisons. He’s priming us for the instance when we’re poisoned for real so that we won’t suffer the ill-intended side effects of… ”
“Of what?” I ask, my jaw going slack.
“Death,” Bella finishes her thought.
Maxine tosses her weapons aside with a heavy clunk. “You’re right,” she groans. “That really is Bella. Still boring as sin.”
I sigh with relief. “Great. Now that that’s all settled, we need to get out of here.
” A small part of me imagines that somewhere beyond whatever this is, Master Flint is watching.
Likely in cahoots with Regent, if I had to guess.
In fact, I bet the two of them are doubled over in laughter somewhere, wildly entertained by all our suffering.
It would be a shame if someone were to lodge a throwing star into each of their temporal lobes…
. which is exactly what I intend to do once I find them.
There will be no mercy.
I begin my pursuit of them by clutching onto the wobbly wall for support, only after waving my hands around in an effort to locate all my missing fingers.
But as I trudge forward through the mist, I suddenly realize that I must be losing my goddamn mind, because I manage to trip over something that’s not even there. Oh shit, actually…
I think that was Lily.
“OUCH, watch where you’re going!” Lily calls out, shoving me away. “You’re going to poke someone’s eye out with those things!” she adds, motioning to the throwing stars in my hands. I stare at them in astonishment as my fingers come into focus again. I hadn’t even realized I was holding weapons.
“See, Grandmama,” Lily sighs, “I told you my new friends are absolute heathens. They have no self-awareness whatsoever.” Her gaze shifts back to the statue of the gargoyle before she adds, “Did you see that one swinging her weapons around like a maniac? She was trying to lob my head off.”
Oh gods, this is worse than I thought.
I have to find Master Flint. Or at the very least, Regent. Perhaps I can talk some sense into him and convince him to stop this madness at once.
But as I peer through the mist in search of them, all I find instead is the back wall of the courtyard splitting wide-open like a cracked egg, creating a makeshift ravine that wasn’t there before.
One that spills straight into the Leviathan Sea and reveals a streak of undulating sunlight through the smog.
It hits the surface of the water just right, creating a shimmering ribbon of gold across the black sea.
The ribbon reaches out to me, as if it’s winding itself around me, enticing me to escape.
I lunge forward to catch it, half-stumbling, half-running, my boots scraping against the tile as a burning sensation creeps up my throat.
A way out.
“Guys!” I cry over my shoulder. "Guys, I’ve found a way out!”
But instead of finding freedom, I run smack-dab into a solid brick wall. Or perhaps that was the goddamn statue of the gargoyle, considering how Lily is now berating me for tackling her dear grandmama.
“It’s one thing to master the art of a motionless target,” Flint’s voice spins all around us, more irritating than the grating drone of death. “But it’s another thing entirely to hit a moving one.”
“WHERE ARE YOU, FLINT?” I push the mist away from my face, unsure of what he’s alluding to.
But the mist comes curling back to me in waves.
Frustrated, I try to peer through it instead, my gaze fixating on a group of three silhouettes being dragged into the courtyard in chains, all of whom are led by two soldiers of the Divine Army.
“This isn’t real,” I say to myself with a little shudder, wishing desperately that I could believe my own words. “This is just a side effect of the poison. A wild hallucination meant to scramble my brain.”
But Sunshine’s cries seem to say otherwise.
She’s here. She’s really here. And she’s leering at one of the undead guards who elbows her in the gut, causing her to sail straight to the ground where her chains rattle like loose bones.
Amber moves to intervene, only for another guard to grab her.
She swings at his jaw, her fist making impact against his helmet with a sickening crunch.
Shaking with anger, he smacks her across the cheek with an open-handed crack that bleeds into my very soul.
Amber crumples on the ground, her cheek blooming a deep shade of cherry red, her body curling inward as she tends to her newly-minted bruise.
I adjust my throwing stars in my hands, clenching them so tightly they begin to form blisters on my palms. “If this is a test, Flint, you’ve lost your goddamned mind!” I cry out, my breath creating a current of strength that demands a reply.
But Flint doesn’t respond. Instead, he lets Amber fill the bleak silence between us with a roll of endless coughs that are now disparaging blood.
Snow and Sunshine lean down to check on her, but the guards intervene, flinging them both backward against the wall.
I clench my throwing stars tighter, hardly noticing that they’re digging into my palms so hard, they’re coaxing out droplets of silver blood.
This can’t be real. This can’t be real. This can’t be real.
You’re being drugged.
This is a hallucination.
You must stay focused, Shadow.
“Lesson three,” Flint says from someplace far away, “eliminate the enemy.”
“They aren’t the enemy!” I shout, my wobbly knees collapsing beneath me. “They sew gowns, they apply makeup, they dry hair.” And they even keep secrets, like not revealing the matter of my raven spellmark to anyone. “They’re far from the enemy!”
“Then explain why this one attempted to poison Lily’s blueberry muffin with arsenic at breakfast,” Flint inquires lazily.
His silhouette re-emerges through the mist just in time for me to witness him nudging Sunshine with the tip of his boot, as if he’s inspecting her like she’s a piece of dirt on the bottom of his shoe.