Chapter 17
seventeen
. . .
Aten
“Crim, you’re hurt. And we can’t see, so for the love of Aslendrix, stop using your speed. It’s not getting us anywhere.”
“You know, Ten. You don’t get to tell me what to do here. Nobody does.” Her voice echoes back along the trail she’s decided to follow.
“Do you really think they’re going to lock us in a mountain-side cave if there’s a way out on the other side?” I call.
The narrow tunnel of the cell balloons out into a series of tunnels that run deeper into the mountain. The air is thick and dense, as if it’s grown weary and heavy from surviving in the dark for so long, but there is a cooler breeze coming from somewhere.
I keep stalling and pushing my power out, casting a web to sense for anyone or anything around us, but I’m only met with a chilly sensation that wants to invade and burrow down to my bones.
There’s no light. The dark is so absolute, and it’s pretty fucking terrifying. The light at the mouth only offered so much before the walls pulled in and shut it out, and now I’m left fumbling through.
“Crimson?” I shout this time, but my voice dies, as if absorbed by the rock around us.
“Hey!” A gust of dusty breeze follows Crimson as she stops in front of me. “It’s just another dead-end. It’s like a maze in here,” she sighs.
“Why don’t we—” I lift her arm.
Crimson’s sharp intake of breath makes me freeze. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. You’re hurt. You need to rest.”
“We need to get out of here, Ten.” An edge of panic creeps into her voice.
“Let’s go back. Re-trace our steps. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” I offer the only optimism I can muster. I concentrate on her and sense a pulse of fear that’s so at odds with everything else about Crimson. She’s afraid of nothing.
Her footsteps are faint on the dirt as she walks past me, and I let her go, following a few paces behind.
After a few wrong turns, I finally see a sliver of light now it’s dusk, though the inky light is a welcome reprieve from the darkness we were searching in.
The silhouette of the guard outside is there. Vigilant. And out of reach.
“Hey, hey!” I march to the gate. “She needs a healer. Her wrist is broken.” But he doesn’t say anything. “Come on, you must have a healer. Plenty of Naturals were sent out to Estereah and beyond.”
“Plenty of weak Naturals were sent out to Estereah and beyond. Tossed away and forgotten about,” he sneers back.
Okay. I wasn’t counting on an answer. “Are you a Natural?”
Nothing. Back to silence.
It’s there, at the tip of my fingers, just to reach out and get the answer to the question myself, to use my power and influence him to let us out. We are prisoners, shouldn’t I do everything in my power to fight?
The web of magic is getting easier to cast, even if it responds differently here. But I don’t pick up any sense of feeling or emotion from him. He’s a stone wall, like the walls of the mountain. If I weren’t staring at him, I’d have guessed there was nobody out there.
“A healer? Please?” I try again.
“Leave it, Ten. I won’t beg.”
“Are you going to feed us, or are we prisoners you intend to starve?” I shout as I wrap my hands around the bars. “Zuns!”
I turn back and see Crimson sitting with her legs crossed, leaning against the rough stone. Her eyes are closed, her arm resting in her lap.
“Ever?” Crimson might not beg, but I can’t sit and not do everything I can to help my friend. “Ever?”
“You’re back? Safe?” Her voice is faint inside my mind.
“We are. But Crimson needs a healer for her wrist.”
There’s a pause. “Is she okay?”
“She’s being brave.”
“I’m not sure I have much sway here. But I’ll ask in the morning.”
“Morning?” It’s not late, and I wonder what position she’s in back in the camp.
“I’m in my own cell. Seems Fenix doesn’t trust me. Rightly so. But still.”
“Have you spoken with Kalan?”
Another pause, but this time it’s longer, and I’m hit with that ripple of sorrow again, though not as strong as earlier.
“There’s so much I need to tell you. Everything that happened from the moment Fenix turned up in my cell and killed Micah.
All the taunts, all the threats. Everything he wants…
I just wish you weren’t in a cell.” Her misery seeps into me with every one of her words, as if, as she tells me, she’s sharing a part of her pain with me.
And I’ll gladly take it all if it lessens the burden she’s carrying.
“You can tell me when we’re out. When we’re together.”
“Fenix is cunning. He’s been planning this for a long time. They stole books and records from the library at The Court. He’s got his own battle office on his ship, like your father’s. I just can’t put it all together.”
“Show me.” The idea hits, and I know it’s risky, but it’s something to give us an advantage. Maybe.
“What?”
“Show me what you saw. Like we did when I showed you the conversation I had with my father.” I knew what I needed to show her then.
“Ten, that was when we were together. Touching. How…”
“Try. We’ve been told to practice. To train. Well, why don’t we?” We’d only done this once, and even then, it was excruciating.
“We don’t know what will happen…” she trails off, and I know she’s worried about the consequences. But maybe, without touch, we won’t need to worry about the pain and will be able to focus on what she might have seen.
“I’ll tell Crimson. Have her watch me, like Calix did.”
“But—” I can almost hear the rest of her protest: that our connection is for us, between us.
Not for anyone else. Something that binds us in a way that nobody can break.
Crimson knowing our secret won’t change that, but it does shift something between us.
“Fine. But only because I don’t trust what this might do to you.
Understand that, Aten Ciro. And she better not put a hand on you. ”
I snigger.
“What?” Crimson opens her eyes and looks to me.
“She won’t. Okay. I’ll explain, and then we can do this,” I reassure Ever. “Crim, I need to tell you something. About me and Ever.”
“Oh, you know, I don’t need to hear this.” She fidgets and turns her head away.
“You do. Because I need to do something, and I need you to have my back.”
That gets her attention, her eyes opening on me again. “Go on.”
“I can talk with Ever. Mind to mind. We don’t need physical touch.”
“You can mind-read?” Her spine stiffens.
“No. I can sense emotions, as we’ve practised. But with Ever, it’s different. We can talk to each other, but Ever can, maybe, see glimpses of memories or futures. We’re not sure—”
“So, what she did to Ascella wasn’t a lie. She showed her the future?”
“It’s complicated.” I refuse to believe that we’ll see that fate play out because if it does, that might mean everything else that we’ve seen will too. “Ever has information, and I need it. So, can you just put your shit aside and pull me out if it’s too much?”
“Pull you out of what? And don’t you dare question if I have your back. I’m here, aren’t I?”
I take a breath. It’s not Crim I’m mad at. “You are. And I can never tell you how grateful I am, but you need to trust me. And trust Ever,” I plead.
“Tell her to get us the fuck out of here.”
“She’s in a cell of her own. This isn’t her fault,” I defend.
“Her brother broke my wrist. Stars, Aten!”
“Just, hit me over the head if it looks—”
“Like when you touch her, and she cripples you, yeah, got it.” She stands and collects a rock from deeper within the cave. I wasn’t expecting a literal rock over my head, but I’m not arguing with Crimson.
“Okay, Ever. We’re ready.”
“Ten, I’m—”
I’m blasted with a sense of dread along the connection as I focus on Ever and hear her fear. “You can do this, Ever. You’re more powerful than you know. This is just the next step, and I’ll be fine. Just concentrate on everything you saw, anything specific you want me to see.”
It’s the truth, but I don’t tell her how terrifying that is to me. It’s only matched by the fear that we won’t get out of here, or we won’t be free of the secrets weighing us down. Right now, she needs me, and I’m sick of her brother holding all the cards.
After a few moments, I feel an instinctual pull towards her, as if our invisible connection is tugging me closer to her.
Closing my eyes, I hone all my energy on it, using that stream of connection between us as if it were a physical line to touch her.
My power swells and seeks her, as if it knows what we need and is just as anxious to get to her as I am.
“Can you feel it?” The heat that would usually ignite with our touch is there, as if a fire’s sparked and burning through me. “Concentrate on the memory. Just like we did before, show me what you want, Ever. You can do this.”
A ship’s cabin. A table, with papers and books piled on it. And a map. It’s a little fuzzy, but the images emerge, as if I’m watching through a looking glass.
“Stay there, Ever. Keep looking at the map.”
“I didn’t recognise anything.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I look at the hazy image and take in the information and the funny scribbles that annotate it.
But it’s as if the map is in code. It doesn’t match any significant landmarks or coasts that I’m familiar with.
The flag markings and the different-sized shapes could be troop numbers, or supplies…
If they are mounting an attack, we’d need this.
There’s no obvious sign of Novandia or Sunatora, no sigil or flag of either kingdom.
As I pore over the image, the heat of our connection intensifies, as if there’s a raging fire now, burning behind the image in my mind.
“Can you show me anything else?”
The image skips and her brother’s form appears in the vision, then changes, skipping again, and they start to jumble up, flashing from one to another, faster and faster. “Ever!”
The images don’t stop, and they hurtle out of control.
It’s too late.
A lightning strike of pain explodes inside my head, and I dig my fingers into my skull in defence, but I can’t even feel them.
“Ten. Fuck! Can you hear me?”