Chapter Thirty-Seven Blood Song
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
BLOOD SONG
The screaming had stopped. Now there were at least fifteen more doors to choose from. Hefting her sword and dagger, she kicked the first one in, and it hit the wall with a thwack.
The chamber was empty, save for two tables, one long and narrow with leather straps, and the other piled with tomes, glass jars, and vials filled with liquids and powders. The scent of sulfur was thick in the air.
She kicked down the next door. Empty. But with a nearly identical setup. This table had been recently used, judging by the glistening blue stains seeping into the wood. What the rotting hell were the Rhiterrans doing down here?
Reya flipped open one of the leather-bound books to a random page.
It was dated several months ago and appeared to be a sort of register.
The handwriting was so dastardly, she could hardly make out the scrawl.
There were notes in the margins, too, some illegible and others in Old Rhiterran.
But it appeared to be instructions for a blood tonic.
She turned a page, then another, finding the same list with different dates, each one slightly altered.
The ingredients were changing.
Was this it? Was this the toxin the king was so desperate to hide?
A way to destroy magic—using the model of a blood tonic.
It was an interesting theory. Regardless of whether the king had perfected the formula, this was decades of research.
Which she didn’t have time to read. If they simply destroyed it, they would never learn whether he’d been successful or how he’d done it.
Maybe that was a good thing. But there could be other records, possibly even ones outside the prison, a threat to which they might be totally blind without these pages.
Not to mention, it was a revelation countless players would kill for.
A toxin that could remove magic would be its own sort of God Power, a weapon to defy the will of the All-Gods.
Or perhaps something far more pivotal. Perhaps it could offer someone the choice—of whether or not to be magic-born.
It would be more valuable than Earth Stars and Kraken blood and all the Etellinian steel on the continent.
And valuable things could be used as leverage. Leverage she might need.
If Lennox were here, he’d have already taken the entire book.
Unfortunately, it was too heavy and she had nothing to carry it in.
Reya flipped to the most recent entry and, before she could second-guess herself, ripped the page along the spine, folded it into a small square, and tucked it into the fabric of her undergarments.
Reya backed away and sprinted toward the next chamber.
This one wasn’t empty.
Except it wasn’t a magic-born strapped to the table—it was a human.
A man, built like a soldier. Or so she was almost certain.
He could have been a demi-Sage. She’d have to cut him to be sure, but she wasn’t about to go anywhere near the body.
Reya covered her mouth and nose, trying not to breathe too deeply.
He’d died no more than a few hours ago, though a putrid scent had already started to permeate the room.
Everything about this was wrong.
The room had a lit burner on the table and a ring of keys dangling from a nail on the inside wall, as if someone had planned to come right back. Reya looped it over her wrist like a bracelet before moving on.
Finally, she saw a faint light under one of the doorways. Reya inched closer and pressed her ear to the wood, hearing heartbeats and uneven, rasping breaths. She kicked it down like all the others.
A man in the common livery of a priest of the Church of the First whirled toward her. His blue velvet cap was adorned with precious stones, and blood was splattered on his white robes.
Thance hung from a saltire cross in the corner, his blond hair caked with blue blood.
The priest had a poker buried in Thance’s side, and blood trailed from the wound and into a glass vial. Every muscle in her body went taut.
“What in Una’s name are you doing out of your cell?” the priest demanded. “Guards! In here!”
Eyes wet with tears, Reya hurled her dagger at the holy man with a strangled cry. It struck his forehead so hard his whole body jerked, and he stumbled back into the examination table before he hit the ground. The glass vial shattered, and Thance’s blood splattered across the stones.
She dropped her sword and rushed across the room. Thance’s body recoiled from her touch.
“It’s Reya,” she said over and over, softly as she could. She wanted to tell him it was safe, but it wasn’t, and she knew he would feel the lie.
Thance blinked like she was an apparition he had conjured many times before. Then his nostrils flared. The relief on his face threatened to buckle her knees. He’d scented the truth of her.
“Reya,” he panted.
“Stars, what did they do to you?”
Whatever they had given Thance to wear, if they had given him anything at all, the priest had removed it, so there was nothing to hide the puncture wounds up and down his sides and legs.
Her vision blurred with her wrath, and the God Power rumbled. Every breath with which she didn’t blow the prison wide open was a testament to the control she’d spent weeks building with Caelan. Innocents, she reminded herself. There were innocents in this hell.
Averting her eyes, she fumbled for a linen on the table and pressed it firmly to the fresh cut to staunch the bleeding.
“I’m going to get you down from here,” she said, waiting for his nod before unbuckling the leather straps with her free hand.
The moment Thance was free, he pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her, completely uncaring of his injuries. She let her tears fall in earnest then.
“I’m so sorry,” she said into his shoulder. He only gripped her tighter.
“Caelan is going to tear this place down to the foundations when he sees you in here,” Thance said. She shivered, and he pulled back to meet her eyes. “Omira?”
“We’ll find her.” None of the keys on her ring fit the collar around his neck, which was no surprise given that the collars were not intended to be removed. At least not while the wearer was alive. Reya inserted the bloody snake’s tail and pin into the lock. “Hold still.”
When it clicked open and fell away, Thance groaned, and his Ire flared a brighter blue. He touched the raw skin where the stone band had rested, rubbing lightly. She knew it itched.
“Come on,” she said, passing him the sword she’d taken off the guard.
They checked the next several chambers, all of which were empty, before they came to another intersection.
Peering around the corner, Reya spotted two guards finishing a lap at the end of the next hall on the right, just before another door that was faintly lit beneath. Ire vanishing into her skin, Reya signaled Thance to wait. He gave her a look but didn’t argue.
She moved like a wraith, ducking into the alcoves on silent footsteps whenever the guards glanced down the hall. One man didn’t realize she was behind him until she yanked back on his hair and slid the dagger across his throat.
“Hey!” That was all his partner said before Reya drove her blade into the side of his neck.
Her eyes landed on the sword at his waist. The lack of regalia on his armor told her he was just a foot soldier.
But the blade he bore was timeworn and pale gold, with all the hallmarks of a family heirloom.
The cross guard and hilt were ostentatiously engraved, and the pommel held a square cut emerald.
Maybe it was time she traded up from rubies.
She took the scabbard and belt as well, strapping the sword tightly across her own back. By the time Thance was halfway down the hall, she’d unpinned one of the guard’s cloaks and removed his trousers. She tossed both to him.
“Put these on.”
When he wasn’t looking, she slipped the tonic formula into the sheath of her sword.
The pants were tight on him—so tight the drawstrings had been pulled flat around his waist—and the cloak barely reached below his knees. But it was better than nothing.
Thance’s nostrils flared.
Suddenly, he was yanking on the door handle. Realizing it was locked, Thance lifted a hand and sent the door flying off its hinges and into the room with a crash.
Thance went first, and she dragged the bodies of the guards in behind him. But the room was empty. Or so it appeared. They both heard the faint heartbeat inside.
That’s when Reya saw the iron-enforced box in the corner.
“Help me,” Thance said, rushing to unbolt the hinges on each side.
They’d locked her in a rotting box.
Reya would never forget waking up inside the trunk Lennox had fashioned for her. The panic, the total loss of control. Never again. Together, they yanked out the iron bars, slid the lid to one side, and lowered it to the floor.
Omira was curled on her side, face toward the bottom, cringing from those she was expecting to see.
Thance reached in, and Omira’s shackled hands flailed for the weak points of a human man.
She continued to fight even as Thance began whispering to her in the First Language softly and lovingly.
He lifted her out, stroking her unbound hair as he held her tight to his chest.
The sight of Omira sobbing into her brother’s shoulder as they sank to the ground like a single soul made Reya’s chest strain to the point of cleaving.
It was several precious minutes before Thance nodded that it was okay to approach. Gently as she could, Reya turned the collar around Omira’s neck so the lock was facing her while Thance murmured comfort.
Every time Omira flinched beneath her touch, Reya had to start over. But neither of them said a thing about it. At last, the collar opened, and Omira’s breathing steadied.
“We have to hurry,” Reya said, handing her the least bloody cloak. Like Thance, Omira seemed to think it was all some kind of hallucination. But with a faint flare of her nostrils, the tension in her shoulders eased.