Chapter 42
Every musclein my body is stretched taut as I hold myself in place while Astorian and Clio have their moment. A few breaths—I can grant them that before I lose my patience. We need to get him and Silas to safety before figuring out if there is anything left of Royad to save.
My chest hurts at the thought of being too late. Two hours of torture is a lifetime of pain. Two hours without intending to let the person survive is what I imagine Hel’s realm to look like if he decides to toss you into his punishing fires.
“The bars are still painted in that bitch of a drug.” Astorian nods at the steel separating him from his mate, his hands firmly wrapping hers despite the sword in her grasp. Even in this most heart-wrenching of moments, she hasn’t let go of her weapon, that’s how much of a warrior she is.
I bite back a curse, debating the options we have. “So, we can’t rip them out with our hands.”
“Not that you’d ever be strong enough, Crow,” Astorian retorts, but there’s no contempt in his eyes now. All I see is the gratitude of a male not to be forgotten and left to die. “But I’d suggest you not give up that magic of yours in a feeble attempt at breaking those bars.”
I search the cell for a weakness as I notice Ayna scan the room and draw a string of water from the bucket in the corner of my empty cell where it sits just out of reach for Astorian as if to taunt him. They never gave me a full bucket like that—not to drink or to wash. Just the bare minimum to survive and that was laced with the drug. Damn those humans.
It’s almost too late when I realize what Ayna intends to do by slinging the water around a bar, and my hand lands on her shoulder, my magic flinging out to cut off the water from her reach a beat before it touches the bars. “You don’t know if the touch of your magic might have the same results as your physical touch.” Who knows what unholy ways Ephegos and Erina invented to render our powers useless? We haven’t learned nearly enough about it and have too much to lose to simply risk it.
Ayna’s wide eyes inform me she didn’t think through the potential consequences of throwing our magic at bars treated with a drug that takes said magic away.
“We can’t afford to lose our magic.” It’s Kaira who agrees first, even when her own powers are minuscule compared to the vastness of Clio’s and my own untested ocean of power that I have yet to fully get under control. And definitely not Ayna’s. It’s all that stands between her and freedom once I send her out of here with Silas and Astorian.
“You need to focus on what surrounds the bars.” Astorian drags his hands back through the fence, reluctantly stepping away from his mate and knocking on the wall at the edge of his cell.
By Shaelak, he is about to fall over if he doesn’t get healed. But first, we need to get him out.
“I could melt the rocks around the bars if I had my powers. Wouldn’t be the first time.” He exchanges a look with Clio that’s so full of history that my chest aches all over again.
“Maybe I could wash them out with water,” Ayna offers, her magic grasping the water that’s now a puddle on the floor and forming it into a string once more.
Or I could simply blast the wall out altogether, but I don’t say that since it won’t help our secrecy, and if that’s gone, they might not prolong Royad’s suffering and shove him right to Hel’s doorstep instead. My hands are shaking as I watch Ayna pit her magic against the side of the stone, etching little grooves into the surface with the water she wields, but it’s too slow, and every time the water comes close to touching a bar, my heart stops all over again.
“Let me help.” It’s the most diplomatic way I can manage to break it to her that she’s not strong enough to get him out—not yet. She will once she figures out what she can do with those Crow powers that should set in at some point if Shaelak was truly gracious to her.
My mate isn’t too proud to acknowledge that she’s not making enough progress, and she drops her magic, saving her strength for now while I send out my senses to feel the stone and every last bit of energy in it.
When I find a place that feels more hollow than the rest, I direct a single blow of my power right there, praying that I wasn’t too bold and it will hit the side of the bars.
I don’t. The stone crumbles where my power connected, opening a hole big enough for Astorian to squeeze through.
“Don’t come in,” the male hisses as Clio dives for the gap. “I can make it on my own. We need your magic.”
The nervous fidgeting Clio performs should get its own name, for I’ve never seen tension shift a person as much as it does when Clio watches her mate brace his back against the sharp rocks and push himself through the narrow opening without loosing the scream of pain I know is building in his throat.
He’s barely made it to our side of the fence when Clio darts for his hand, pulling him the last few inches and catching him as he collapses into her arms.
“Fucking Erina,” she hisses as she notices the rivers of blood gushing from the freshly opened wounds on his back. “I will freeze his eyes last so he can watch every bit of his body turn lifeless before he dies.”
“I’ve always loved you for your thirst for blood,” Astorian jokes, but I’m certain part of him means it. And I can understand. I’ve spent enough time with Cliophera by now to see nothing less than the relentless female she is. Loving, fierce, and relentless for the ones she wants to protect. Thank Shaelak, I’m on her good side—for now.
It’s Ayna’s fierceness that pushed past my defenses long before I ever fell in love with her, and it’s the part of her that probably saved her when I’d long given up.
“Save the cheesiness for later,” Kaira chimes, her tone slipping as she lays proper eyes on Astorian’s state, the way his flesh is peeling back from his shoulder blade. “Is anyone going to heal him, or do I need to pull out the bandages first?”
“No bandages.” Astorian coughs. “They will mess with my badass reputation.”
“Nothing messes with your badass reputation, Tori.” Clio kisses his brow, the only part of his face that isn’t bruised or swollen. Gods, I don’t want to think of what the three males have been going through since Herinor so heroically pulled me out of Ephegos’s torture chamber.
Which reminds me…
“Here—” I step closer, placing my fingers on the edge of Astorian’s biggest wound on his back and letting some of my power siphon into him. The result is instant. Flesh and skin layer back into place, smoothing into angry, red swells rather than open cuts and tears. Astorian sighs with relief as I repeat the procedure on the next cut, and the next, seeing to it that his back is mostly patched up before I move on to his arm and his chest, shoving a disgruntled Clio aside to gain better access to the crisscross of scabbed lines that is his torso.
Ayna’s soft gasp as she monitors every movement and every little wound close is like a balm to my soul. She’s alive. Healed. And more powerful than ever.
“You shouldn’t waste your magic on an old fairy like me,” Astorian grumbles, but his voice sounds so much better now that the strain of constant pain is relieved. “You still need to get Silas out.”
“And Royad,” Ayna reminds him, her face falling when Astorian shakes his head.
“I wouldn’t keep my hopes up for the polite one. He was already half dead when Katrijanov had him dragged to the chamber.”
My stomach fucking plummets to the blood-soaked ground. “Not an option. We won’t leave him behind. Not unless he’s a splatter on the wall.”
I don’t allow myself to think how close Silas is to being exactly that. How close Astorian had come.
How close I had come before Herinor got me out.
Gods. Silas was right. We’re fucked.
As is Astorian. Instead of continuing to heal his bruises, I turn and lead the way back to the cell where Silas still hasn’t moved.
“I’ll get you out of here,” I whisper before I search the wall for the best place to punch a hole with my magic.
It’s some sort of mercy that Royad isn’t in his cell because his is wedged between the ones bordering the walls, and there wouldn’t have been any rock to blast out of the way, just magic-draining bars. I heave a breath, focusing on the weakest piece of stone, and release my power in a well-focused blow.
Rubble flies, hitting the metal in an ear-splitting rain, and I duck, grabbing Ayna with my magic and yanking her into me as I drop to the ground, careful not to touch the bars and risk either of our magic.
“Fucking Crows,” Astorian notes. “Your magic is the worst.”
He’s observed my power since the day we teamed up in the forest, but he’s never commented before.
Ayna groans something unintelligible, the sound running through my body and putting my entire system on alert. When I slide off her, an apology on my lips, I notice that the rubble might not have hurt her, but I did. On her forehead, a fresh crimson streak runs straight to her brow, the scent of her blood overpowering everything else for a painstaking moment.
And I’ve never hated myself more.