Chapter 47
KIT
NEXARIUM
“You should simply face the truth now, Ms. Hart. Nobody is going to save you.” Draven’s voice is cool, verging on bored, as he watches her from the overlarge chair he’s strapped into.
She wonders how he knew she was thinking about it — about the fact that her brother, Nevis, the entire Polaris must know she’s gone now.
And that nobody has shown up. Draven has voiced her deepest fears.
That she’ll be stuck here forever, fed on like livestock, living out the rest of her days in a cell deep in the bowels of Xaria.
They’re in a dark room on what she thinks is the lower level of Xaria, near the infirmary but separate.
Private enough that their activities can be kept under wraps.
There are no windows, just dimly lit sconces hovering on the walls, a leather chair in the center of the room with an IV pole and tubes attached to it, a Prism screen displaying Draven’s vitals on the wall next to it.
“I’m well aware,” she says, glaring up at him from where she’s collapsed on her knees onto the hard, stone floor, even while still daring to hope that someone will help her.
Pain and emptiness course through her veins, and she grits her teeth as Alexander Caden, the Siphon who’d been aboard the Polaris with them, moves towards her again.
He grips her arms tightly as she struggles, trying to squirm away from him.
It’s been like this for the last week. A miserable existence between her cell and this room on the ground floor of Xaria, where she’s drained of her magic so that it can be pumped into Draven. A glorified battery.
He already looks healthier, his skin plumper and the shadows under his eyes diminishing.
Kit feels anything but. She doesn’t know enough about her power and how it works, but the emptiness is growing inside of her.
Since she’d discovered her magic, it’s felt like a ball of light inside of her chest, but now, she feels drained.
Empty. Devoid of something essential. She wonders if it will come to a point where she’ll never get it back.
Every time she’s brought to Draven Dormius, she tries to fight the siphoning of her magic. Every time, she fails. But it doesn’t stop her from trying.
“Stop struggling,” Draven demands. “You’re only making it harder for yourself.”
She feels a lick of cold where Alexander’s palms rest on her, and then, another bit is gone.
A tendril of magic pulled from her and deposited into Draven, a searing pain where the thread was stolen from.
The sessions usually take an hour, and they’ve been bringing her twice a day.
She wonders if the cadence will let up, once Draven is stronger.
She doesn’t mean to, but she casts a glance at the door, where Task stands still as a statue, his face impassive as Alexander pulls threads of magic from her. They’d tried to force her to do it directly first, to funnel life force from one of the prisoners of Xaria into Draven. She’d refused.
Her feelings about her power aren’t straightforward.
It’s both a blessing and a curse. She will not use it to take the life of an innocent person with a story and a family and an entire history that she knows nothing about.
At least, not again. The last time she did it, she did it without thinking to save the man she loved, who now looks at her, but doesn’t see her.
His eyes seem to look through her as Alexander spools more magic out of her, and she feels herself becoming dizzy, the edges of her vision clouding until everything turns black.
Task
He hears his uncle say those words to Kit, turns them over in his mind, the tear in his soul ripping clean in half as he looks at her, catatonic on the floor in front of him.
Draven is doing her a service, really. He’s right to snuff out the hope she might have, lay it out for her exactly as it is.
As it was for her mother, before she escaped.
But even so, the second she cast her eyes toward him before she collapsed, he felt it.
Something rearing its head inside of him, angry and dark, threatening to explode from him if he didn’t keep it under control.
His power has always caused him pain, but this is distinct.
He could have made a different choice. Disobeyed Draven.
Saved her. Maybe he should have, with what he knew about Draven withholding information from him, but after Caelinus’ death, he’d somehow managed to convince himself this was the right thing.
The planet over her. The governorship over her. His inheritance over her.
He’d made sure she’d at least left her research behind with Nevis, and allowed her to have a last evening with her brother. And then he’d plunged a syringe into her neck and watched the woman he loved collapse into his arms.
He feels helpless, watching Alexander Caden wrap his hands around her arms. He wants to step away from where he guards the door, intervene and carry her away.
But he can’t make his feet move, not when Draven appears to be improving.
This is what they wanted. This will ensure the continued reign of Nexarium.
So instead, he swallows heavily and tries to build a wall between his head and his heart, so that eventually he isn’t staring at Kit, but simply at a woman who possesses a resource essential to the continuity of the Consortium.
Suddenly, she stills in Alexander’s arms, and Draven swears loudly. It breaks Task from the cocoon he’d wrapped himself in, and he runs to her without thinking, pushing Alexander out of the way as he calls her name, leans over her and brushes her hair from her brow.
“Task!” Draven is shouting at him, but the sound doesn’t seem to make it to his ears. “Step back. Let me get the healer in here.”
Task won’t let go of her, scooping her into his arms and cradling her, whispering her name as he tries to wake her. He feels the pain of the Siphoning radiating from her body and he absorbs it, hoping it will bring her back to consciousness.
He sends his uncle a cutting glare. “You took too much.” Task’s voice is hard.
“It’s what she’s there for,” Draven replies, glaring back. “You know this is how it works.”
“You’re being greedy,” Task says, still holding her in his arms as a heavyset healer — Yana, he thinks her name is — with graying hair bustles in, dropping to her knees next to them.
“Oh my,” Yana says, under her breath. Her hands hover over Kit as she tries to make sense of what’s happened.
“She’s near empty.” She shoots a glance at Draven, at Alexander hovering next to him. “You must be more careful. I told you, once you feel her starting to fade, you stop and let her rest. She needs to recharge.”
Yana presses her hands to Kit, and thank Odite, she’s opening her eyes, coughing, trying to bring her world back into focus.
He thinks he sees what looks like relief pass through her, and she relaxes into his arms, her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks as she blinks, hard.
And then he can see it — the moment it all comes crashing back to her and she realizes who it is that holds her.
The light in her eyes dims and she pushes away from him, struggling to free herself from his grasp, even as Yana tells her to be careful and take it easy. “Get him off me,” Kit hisses, attempting to remove his hands from her.
He doesn’t want to let her go, but Yana raises her brows at him, as if to say, you heard her.
He lets his hands fall from her body and he stays incredibly still as she crawls away from him, her eyes flashing as she looks between him and Draven as though they are evil incarnate. Maybe they are.
“Come,” Yana says, offering Kit her hand and helping her to her feet. “We’re done for today. Depending on how she is tomorrow, you can have her back then.”
He’s thankful the healer has put an end to this session, as he’s not certain Draven would have stopped himself.
He’s so focused on being back at full power that he seems incapable of rational thought.
He worries for the healer, though. Those that dare defy Draven often wind up in the cells below Xaria, or dead at the hands of Task himself.
She shoots a final look at Draven and guides Kit out of the room by her elbow, the door sliding shut behind them.
His heart wrenches in his chest, and he wonders again at the path that brought him here.