And just like that, all of the control was sapped from every thread of my thought, every line that connected
me to my muscles. Like a wall jumped up from the ground, slamming me behind glass.
I tried to move my hand, tried desperately… Nothing. Not a twitch.
“I still find it so strange,” my lips said. My eyes still roamed across Max’s face. A face that was so still, so pale. “Seeing you out here. You are so soft and mortal.”
My hand pressed the broken stick harder against his throat, coaxing forth a single drop of blood.
His fingers dug into my shoulders, but he didn’t move. He was so rigid that he could have been carved from stone. Within my mind, my fingers clawed at that glass wall.
Panic rose and rose and rose.
Let me back in.
{You have had your fun. Now I have mine.}
My left hand — the one not occupied with the stake — traveled up Max’s body, trailing my fingertips across his chest, then shoulder, then throat with curious, feather-light touches. “I did not understand at first,” my voice mused. “The nature of her interest in you. But now I see. It is a sex thing. Humans are obsessed with sex. I find it very strange,
now, though perhaps there was a time when I did not.” My head tilted. “I find myself curious. Do you think of her the way she thinks of you?”
I felt that curiosity — that genuine question — ripple through my mind. But I was too consumed with my suffocating paralysis to be embarrassed. I clawed at the force that trapped me. With every meaningless impact, I felt myself begin to question whether I existed at all.
Max’s eyes bore into me with frigid fire. “I see you, Tisaanah,” he said, quietly, deliberately. “I see you still. You’re still there.”
I clung to that brief reassurance even as my lips curled, letting out a wordless snarl.
“You speak only to me now.”
“I speak to the only person here that matters.”
A hiss. Another drop of blood. “You abandoned me, and you address me with such cruelty?”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“I am showing you how I felt when you locked me away. What it was to be cast out.” My knuckles were white around the wood, the muscles of my arm trembling. “What it is to be powerless.”
I threw myself against the glass again, inhaled a terrible lungful of frantic panic —
A scoff. “Powerless? At a piece of broken wood?”
Powerless. Something clicked. I forced myself to calm.
I had spent my life being powerless. I knew how to find power where there was none.
And so, instead of reaching out to Reshaye with another strike, I reached out with a caress.
I see your wounds. I see how his betrayal hurt you.
No lies. It would know if I lied. Only the most carefully chosen of truths.
Its attention turned to me.
{I have indeed suffered many terrible things.} I know you have.
It paused. And for one brief moment, I felt it cede to me, brush against my thoughts in an intimacy that made me force myself not to recoil—
In a sudden shock, a slice of terror shot through me, eyes blinded in a memory of white white white—
And then that was consumed by a burst of Reshaye’s fury.
“Do you know what they did to me? Locked me up in a broken mind and a broken body. Nothing but white for so many days, so many days.” My teeth gritted, lip curled. “You had no one left but me, and you still threw me away. Why would you do that?”
Power throbbed in my veins. Magic.
The lights in the room dimmed, growing hazy and dark like the red dusk before a sunset storm. The fingers that braced against Max’s shoulder tingled, and a wince of pain flitted over his nose.
Slowly, so slowly, Max’s left hand slid down my shoulder. Down my arm. “Find a foothold,” he murmured, never taking his eyes off mine. “Find something you can grab and don’t let go, Tisaanah.”
“You speak to me!” I felt a wrinkle slice my nose. “Answer a question for me, Maxantarius. I know your body. I know what it is capable of. You could have her thrown across the room by now. You laughed at my broken piece of wood. But we are still here.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
A laugh scraped my throat. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is no question at all. I have, after all, always seen all of your weaknesses.”
My fingers burned, sizzled over his skin. And a terrible smell coated my nostrils. Max jaw strained, fighting back a wince. His hand curled around my wrist. And I knew he was waiting, waiting until the last possible moment—
The room grew darker and darker. My eyes, beneath Reshaye’s control, flicked to Il’Sahaj.
No.
I fought back my own panic.
What would you gain by killing him?
A silent laugh snaked through my thoughts like a terrible shudder. {Retribution.}
But you say you love him. And if he is dead, you will never have him. And I’ll tell you a hard truth, Reshaye – If you kill him, if you hurt him, you will never have me, either.
{And why would I want you?}
Because you wish to be loved, and I have loved many monsters.
Max’s fingers tightened.
One terrible second of silence, a wave of fury cresting, cresting…
{Then you could love one more.}
The room plunged into darkness, and Reshaye thrust out my hand to receive Il’Sahaj as it flew across the room.
No.
Max twisted my wrist, flipping me onto my back, sending spirals of agony up my arm and through the back of my head as it cracked against the floor. But Reshaye didn’t react, still ready for that blade—
Its gleeful rage tasted like blood on my tongue.
Stop! I threw myself one more time against the wall that separated me from my muscles —
And realized, all at once, that my mind was not a room.
No, I had forgotten: it was a web.
I was not contained. I could go up.
My fingers closed around Il’Sahaj’s hilt, straining as I raised it.
I crawled up the threads of my mind, inhaling them back into myself. I followed the paths that were dipped into darkness. Reshaye.
My arm lifted.
And just as my body had prepared to bring down Il’Sahaj’s blade across Max’s throat, I dropped a razor
across all of those infected threads of thought, severing Reshaye from my mind.
It let out a screech that clawed through my entire body, so consuming that it blinded me.
A crash.
My breath careened into my lungs as if I had fallen from a great height. And the light, which returned all at once, slapped me across the face.
I turned my head to see Max pushing himself up from the ground, Il’Sahaj on the floor beside him. My wrist was bent at a sickening angle, but I was grateful for the pain, grateful for the way it tethered me to my body.
“Tisaanah.” My name was a ragged sigh of relief on Max’s lips, so low it took me a moment to recognize it. He pressed his forehead against mine and said it again, as if he didn’t realize he was speaking aloud.
For a moment, the sheer horror of what I had almost done paralyzed me. Gods, I had almost— that blade had been so close, so close, to his neck.
We were both shaking. I braced my palm against his face with my good hand, then my eyes landed on his throat — the one trickle of blood beneath his jaw. And then, three odd, gruesome purple-black finger marks at his shoulder.
What was that? A burn? I pushed back the torn fabric of his shirt, prompting a sharp breath through his teeth.
No, not a burn, not quite…
A low whistle cut off whatever poor attempt I was about to make at words.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Max and I pulled apart. I used my intact hand to push myself upright. Zeryth leaned in the doorway, gazing at us with one curious eyebrow cocked.
“Last time I saw you two, the mood seemed a little gruesome for this sort of thing, but then again, I suppose the threat of mortality can have that effect on people.”
Before Max could let loose his inevitable snapping response, and before I could even begin to explain what had just happened, Nura appeared beside Zeryth. The somber look on her face froze the words in my throat.
“Get up. We don’t have time to mess around anymore.” Her voice hitched, ever-so-sightly, as she said, “The Capital has been attacked, so we need to get your contract underway. We leave for Threll at dawn.”
 |
I BARELY SPOKE, barely allowed myself to breathe as Max and I followed Nura and Zeryth down the static white hallways of the Tower of Midnight. My hands still shook, and I clasped them together to hide it. Even Max was uncharacteristically silent. Easy enough to pass off as shocked silence in response to what Nura was telling us. Which, to be fair, was deserving of it.
“Rebels, gathering from three houses that had been removed from power,” Nura was saying, as we strode through the halls. Her voice was strained. “Bold of them. But for the first time, they have real backing. Three powerful families. A few thousand solders. Nothing compared to the Guard, but…”
We rounded a corner, reaching the outer halls of the Tower and a sheet of glass windows. My breath died in my throat.
“Gods,” I breathed.
“Fuck,” Max whispered.
“Exactly,” Nura murmured.
The outskirts of the Capital, far in the distance, were bright with fire. As if the city was a living being, and a burning infection spread along its edges through flaming veins.
I stepped forward and pressed my fingers to the glass. If I looked closely enough, I could see torchlight rushing towards the outbreak of violence. Sudden darkness just beyond it, as those outside the fighting drew their shutters tight.
An old, old memory panged the back of my thoughts — an old memory of what was once Nyzerene falling into ash and flames, watching it with my face pressed against my mother’s shoulder as we fled.
“They’ll fall.” Nura’s voice was low, but firm. “Every damn one of them, the Guard will get. And then once we’re back…” She levied one final stare out across the city. Then met my gaze as she lapsed into silence.
A shiver ran up my spine. I cradled my broken wrist.
Just as quickly, Nura turned and gestured for us to follow. “Dawn, Tisaanah. Be ready to leave. The sooner we go, the sooner we come back.”
