Chapter 35
Aster
“Worse,” I rasp the word, my voice awful and grating with disuse.
“You have to understand, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.
I was just so terrified, I’d just escaped and I felt like I wasn’t going to make it.
I’d already put the gag on myself and I was too drained to lift it, so I’d lost my only defence and—”
Reva’s staring at me like she doesn’t know me as my world crumbles.
“It was a defence mechanism,” I hurry to explain.
“Not how magic’s supposed to work at all.
It should always be intentional, but I suppose if you’re at death’s door then it can act out for you.
And that’s what happened. I didn’t say any words or cast a spell or make a potion but still the magic tied you to me.
You were like sunshine in this never-ending darkness, and my magic reached out to you. ”
“With the mate bond.”
“With a bond,” I gently correct her, squeezing my eyes shut. “I didn’t know it was a mate bond until Kit showed us what one looked like in that book. I’d never even heard of them. But I suppose that my magic decided that if we were connected, you wouldn’t kill me.”
“You would have thought,” she says in a low, distant tone. “It would have already done that for you with the sorceress. Since it sounds like she was far more of a risk to you than either me or Kit.”
“I wasn’t in a good state when you found me,” I say. “I was so desperate to get away from her, and I suppose my magic just... reacted.”
“In desperation.”
Fuck. I’m not making any of this better. In fact, the more I talk, the worse it seems to get. I can both see and feel her slipping further away from me.
“You said that you gagged yourself.” She glances at me and then immediately away again, her fingers flexing at her sides.
“I should have explained all of this weeks ago. I know that. But after a while our bond felt so real and I started second-guessing myself. What if it were real, and I told you it wasn’t? I was so scared I’d—”
Lose her.
Have her look at me like I’m a stranger and a liar all rolled into one.
Just like she is now.
“I really messed up.”
She clears her throat. “Why did you gag yourself?”
“Because she realised she could use me in other ways beyond just draining me of my magic. If she touched me, she could force me to do whatever she wanted.” I swallow through the lump in my throat, wishing that I could sink to the floor as my legs don’t feel strong enough to hold me up.
I’m not going to give in to the urge though; I’m already pathetic enough.
“I was always more powerful than she was, and I think she recognised that straight away. She used me to... do things, controlling people and I couldn’t go along with it.
Didn’t want to watch anyone else hurting.
Even if it got me out of the basement for longer and meant I got a proper meal, it wasn’t worth it. ”
Reva clears her throat, eyeing the door. “And now that we’re about to see her again and you’ve ungagged yourself, how do you think that’s going to go?”
“I—” I have no idea. “Maybe I can try to reset the gag. It was too powerful last time. I should have included a failsafe, so I didn’t get stuck like that.”
Reva gestures to the spectacles still clutched in my hand. “I guess we can’t use those either, since it feels like whatever bond I had with Kit and Torin is gone too.”
My chest pangs with regret. There’s a question in her eye and it’s one I can’t answer.
“That made no sense to me, either,” I tell her. “Maybe my magic wanted to make sure you were protected too.”
“If you’d touched Kit first, or Frannie, would you have formed the bond with them?”
That’s a big cause of the hurt in her eye, I think. The accidental, desperate, and entirely mindless nature of my magic seeking anyone that might help me.
“I don’t know.”
She rubs her chest. “It stings.”
“I know.”
I take a step closer, even though I know I’m not a welcome presence anywhere near her. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I never wanted to hurt you.”
She barely reacts, her gaze locked on the wall at absolutely nothing, seeming lost inside her head. “It’s not something I can even begin to deal with right now,” she says. “We need to keep going.”
The ceiling vibrates, sending a flurry of dust into the air. Reva frowns up at it before turning back to the door in front of us.
“Kit must be just through there,” she says.
Then, straightening her shoulders, she takes a shuddering breath and seems to shove every ounce of emotion away behind a thick wall.
As she reaches for the handle, she hesitates and turns back to me with a speculative look. “I’m not so sure you should come.”
My insides go haywire. “No.” I shake my head violently. “You can’t go in there alone.”
“Aster.” She reaches out as if to touch my arm, only pulling back right at the last moment with a look of betrayal at her own hand. “You don’t need to do this. Surely she’ll recognise you? What if she tries to use you again, or worse?”
“I don’t care. We need to get Kit back, and maybe I can distract her or something while you focus on him.”
She gives me a long look, and I can see the different emotions battling it out just behind those hazel eyes. “You’re sure?”
Not even slightly, but there’s no going back now. “I am.”
“All right then.” Reva takes another deep breath as she turns the handle. I mutter a spell for distraction under my breath, hoping I have at least enough magic for that to work.
Then I reach out to tug on Reva’s arm so that I can step through first, but she slips away from me, and I’m forced to follow behind, catching the door before it swings shut in my face.
Reva
WE STEP INTO ANOTHER office. This one has all the desks pushed up against one wall and the chairs pushed against another, with random cabinets thrown in all over the place.
Right in the middle of the room, there’s a dark-haired woman sitting with her head bowed.
She’s muttering something to herself and doesn’t seem to be aware of anything else in the room.
“That’s her,” Aster whispers in my ear. I suppress an unwelcome shiver and nod to show I’ve heard him. “It seems like the distraction spell is working on her, at least.”
The sorceress, Araminta Stone. She doesn’t look like the wolf-eyed seductress we were told about back at the Dry Dock.
Maybe Aster’s magic burned through even more glamours than we realised.
My gut twists at the reminder and I shove all my feelings deep into a bag that I tie up tight to be tossed into the ocean later.
Now’s not the time to be distracted, even though it feels like my entire chest is one giant bruise.
I peer around, stepping forward on silent feet and then sucking in a gasp. On the left side of the room, surrounded by ugly chairs, there’s a man sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head down.
Kit.
He’s here.
He shifts as though sensing our presence and lifts his head, and the air fills with the sound of clinking chains. His wrists are bound. Manacled, just like Aster when we found him.
His eyes widen as he takes us in, blinking furiously as though he can’t believe his eyes.
I can’t either. He looks better than I expected, dressed in different clothes from when I last saw him. I wish Frannie was here for many reasons, not least because her ability to manipulate fire would come in handy right about now.
Now that we’ve found them, I’m quickly realising I don’t exactly have a plan in place. Nothing is going as it should be. Jack was supposed to be here, Torin and Captain Finch were meant to lure her out so that we could focus on extracting Kit.
But they’re not here to do their part, so I’m going to have to follow the habit of a lifetime and think on my feet.
We need to work with what we’ve got. A witch with unknown abilities and a possibly empty store of magic, a manacled cursebreaker, and me.
Reaching out to brush my fingers over Aster’s wrist, he startles, his eyes snapping up to meet mine, and my chest gives a wayward pang. “Can you keep the distraction spell going and try to free Kit?”
He gives a jerky nod. “What are you going to do?”
I glance around, looking for inspiration. Maybe I’ll throw a desk at her head. That might buy us a couple of seconds.
Nowhere near long enough.
But then my eyes lock onto her lap and what she’s cradling there. She’s surrounded by bottles filled with a black liquid that she’s using to coat her hands. Nestled on top of her lap is a familiar wooden box that’s lying open.
The one containing my skin.
A shudder of revulsion runs through me. She hasn’t actually touched it yet, but it looks like that is her intention. And there is no fucking way I’m letting her have her grubby hands on Noush.
I remember I’ve got the Captain’s whittling knife in my pocket, just in case, and I grip its handle.
Beside me, Aster creeps to the left toward Kit while I advance on the sorceress.
Even weakened after missing my skin for so long, I’m still stronger and faster than a human, even one who has stolen magic.
If I can get behind her or keep out of her eyeline, I’ll have a better chance of taking her by surprise.
My current plan doesn’t really extend beyond tackling her and stabbing the knife into her neck. But simple plans are often the best, and we don’t have a lot of options right now.
I’m just creeping alongside her when Kit’s chains jangle. Then there’s a deafening boom from somewhere above us. The entire room shakes, and I stumble slightly. Aster’s concentration must break as the next thing I know, her head is jerking up to look at me.
I tackle her.
“Reva!” Kit yells.
But I don’t listen, throwing my whole body at her and kicking away the box with Noush inside. The bottles around her go skittering across the floor, and a couple shatter as I bare my teeth in a feral grin, the knife at her throat.
“You took two very important things from me. You locked people up, starved them, drained them, and for what?”
Her eyes widen, and she fights back, attempting to knee me in the stomach. I’m straddling her, my hand gripping her wrist while I dig the knife blade in. Pure rage surges through me, clouding my head.
—and then I’m flying through the air, slamming onto the wall hard enough to knock all the air from my lungs.
I hang suspended by invisible cords of magic, entirely immobile.
Ah, damn. Somehow I’d forgotten that she’s a collector of stolen magic.
“Why do people keep interrupting me?” She gets to her feet, dabbing at the shallow cut I left on her neck before I had the chance to do any actual damage. She then casts a frustrated look around at the scattered bottles and spilled liquid.
“I saw you, you know?” she continues casually, as if we’re having a cosy chat.
“Saw you traipsing about like you were on a day trip, but I thought the cursed rooms would see to you before you got this far.” She smears yet more of the black stuff on her hands, dipping low and swiping her hands through the mess on the floor without seeming to notice the glittering shards of glass.
“Who was it that sent you? Silus? Those damn Laithes? No, it’ll have been Morton. He never had my vision, but he always was a jealous little toad.”
She doesn’t seem to notice or care that I can’t reply, since my jaw is frozen shut. But at least she has her attention split between me and the goop on the floor and not on Aster, who is still muttering away to himself, tugging at Kit’s chains.
The wall behind my back shudders again, this time even more violently than before, and there’s a dull thump that sounds barely feet from my head.
Kit’s chains clink, and that’s all it takes for the sorceress to lose interest in me.
No. No. No.
The magic holding me releases, along with her attention. The next thing I know, I’m dropping like a stone. I twist my body at the last minute so my legs and spine don’t bear the full brunt of the impact.
Splat.
All the air gets knocked out of me, and I can’t seem to fill my lungs again. It feels like something heavy is sitting on me as I fight to take a breath.
“Now, now, now, that’s not nice, is it?” the sorceress’s voice floats across the room.
“Oh, just stop,” Kit replies hoarsely.
The funny thing is, she does shut up, and I relax my body enough to take a full breath and struggle to push myself into a seated position.
“Another minute of her complaining about her business and how no one respects her, and I’d lose my entire damn mind,” Kit rasps.
Pushing my hair out of my face, I use the wall to help me get to my feet. The sorceress is now clutching her throat, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water before her face twists into a mask of fury.
Raising her hands, she grabs one of the bottles of black sludge and raises it to her lips before swallowing down the liquid.
“You think you can do anything against me?” she crows, panting with a feral gleam in her eyes. “You can’t do a single thing when I have pure, liquid power.”
Now that I’ve got air back in my lungs, I’m ready for a second attempt at tackling her.
I grab my sealskin from the box and wrap it around my shoulders, waiting for the familiar warmth of transforming into Noush.
We’re surprisingly quick on land and Noush also has the benefit of a strong jaw and razor-sharp teeth.
... but nothing happens.
And then for the second time in minutes, all the air gets sucked from my lungs. I grasp at my throat as a horrible choking sound fills the air.
Across the room, Aster and Kit are both scrabbling around with their eyes bulging as they struggle to breathe.
She’s choking us.
I sink back to the floor in panic, trying desperately to suck in oxygen. My vision’s already going spotty at the edges as I crawl toward Kit and Aster, the fear on their faces matching my own.
All the strength seems to go out of me as I clutch my skin closer to me and my legs collapse. I’m vaguely aware of the prickling pain in my limbs, but it feels very far away. A rumbling starts up beneath me, and I use the last of my energy to look up just as the wall explodes.