This Dark Descent, page 29
Be fearless, my love.
Ari choked on a sob, unable to stop the feeling of utter helplessness that descended over her.
You deserve this, she thought. All of this.
But another one rose above it. You are magnificent, Arielle Kadar.
A door opened down the hall. She recoiled, but there was nowhere to go. She turned away from a sudden glaring light, but not before she caught a glimpse of a face. Older, with thinning auburn hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
Not Kyvin.
Someone worse?
The door swung open, revealing an exhausted man with pale skin and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his sharp nose.
There was something familiar about him.
He winced when he saw Ari and set his enchanted lantern on the ground. “I’ve come to help you.”
Gently, he lowered her to the ground. First her toes, then the pads of her feet, then the weight of her body upon her knees—they buckled immediately, striking stone. She barely felt the resounding impact.
As her arms fell before her, the muscles screaming at the slightest movement, she swayed dangerously, but the man was already there, careful of her wounds as he held her upright. He pulled a bottle from his pocket and uncorked it, pressing it to her lips.
“Drink,” he said. “This will help with the pain.”
She turned her face away.
“Please.” He sounded desperate. “I’m a friend. My name is Keirian Rusel. You know my daughter, Mikira.”
He could be telling the truth, but Rezek would know that too. The thought sent a shiver through her. Surely, he wouldn’t create this elaborate ploy just to get her to drink something he could easily force down her throat.
She allowed Keirian to tip the liquid into her mouth. It tasted of honey and began to work almost immediately, the sharp edges of her pain dulling into something manageable. When he helped her to her feet, she could stand, though she felt weak and disconnected.
“I can take you as far as the nearest exit,” he said as they proceeded painstakingly from the cell and down the corridor. The enchanted lantern swung from one of his wrists. “But I mustn’t be seen you with at any cost. I’m sorry I can’t do more. My daughter—” His voice choked into silence.
She mourned the loss of it. Hearing it made her feel real again. It made her feel safe.
“I know you’re working with her to win the Illinir,” Keirian continued as they approached the end of the hall. “Thank you.”
It was all Ari could do to remember to breathe, but she managed a small nod.
As they neared the door, something in the last cell moved. Ari flinched, then peered closer. The creature inside seemed neither man nor animal. With piercing blue eyes and shaggy yellow fur, it huddled over itself, its ribs pressing against thin, sallow skin. It lifted its head, revealing a mouth crowded with sharp teeth. Then they were through the threshold and into a small room, and Ari struggled to hold on to the image.
Keirian turned left, and Ari fell into the rhythm of her steps. Left, right. Left, right—then a sound. They both stopped. There was nowhere to hide as another light curved around ahead of them. A Kelbra guard filled the hallway holding an enchanted lantern. His other hand dropped to the revolver at his waist.
Inside, Ari screamed. She would not go back to that cell. She would not—the guard’s eyes went wide, and he crumpled. A small dart stuck out from the back of his neck, and behind him stood Reid wearing a Kelbra uniform.
“Shit,” the boy cursed as his eyes took her in. “Hells. Damien’s going to kill Rezek. I’m going to kill him.”
“A friend of yours?” Keirian asked warily.
She forced a breathy laugh and nodded. They’d come for her.
Reid slipped under her other side, and together they helped her to a propped-open door. Crickets sung a chirping song outside, carried in on a fresh night breeze. She breathed it deep. Then she stumbled, nearly taking both men down with her. Her body felt like stone. She could barely lift her head. Reid cursed again.
“Verillion,” she rasped. She might not have the strength to enchant the stone, but just having the magic inside her would help.
“There’s a field outside to the left,” Keirian said. “This is where I leave you. Can you manage her alone?”
Reid took all her weight across his shoulders. She could feel him straining to hold her. “That guard won’t remember anything,” he said.
Keirian released a relieved breath. “Tell Mikira to read the journal,” he said to Ari. “I left it on my desk. She’ll know what I mean. And tell her I love her. Now, go!”
Reid pushed out the door, and the cool air washed over her in welcome relief. A moment later he was lowering her in the middle of a field. Gold light pressed against her heavy lids, and she heard the snapping of stalks and felt the press of a plant at her lips.
It took effort to open her mouth and chew the verillion. She swallowed it and a current of power rushed through her so warm and strong, she nearly wept. Gradually, her vision cleared, and she found Reid staring down at her like she’d just used his favorite shirt to clean up spilled tea.
“You better not die,” he said.
Her lips twitched. “I never knew you cared.”
“I don’t. I’d just prefer not to die with you.”
Her smile faded. “Damien?”
“He’ll be fine. Right now what matters is getting you home.”
A shadow moved over his shoulder. “Reid!” Her warning came too late. A guard wrapped a thick arm around Reid’s neck, while another drove a fist into his stomach. Reid wheezed, prying uselessly at his throat.
Ari tried to stand, but her body struggled even with the verillion. “Just let him go,” she rasped. “I won’t fight you.”
“I don’t think so. Lord Kelbra will want to speak with him,” said the second guard. She smirked down at Ari. “Right after Kyvin has another nice, long conversation with you.”
The name alone sent a wave of nausea through her. Panic erupted like a flare, and she reached desperately for the verillion inside her as the guard approached. Her body resisted the draw of the magic, wanting to keep it inside, but she forced it through the emerald ring, muttering a binding.
The guard chuckled. “Praying won’t save you, witch.” She reached for Ari’s arm.
Crush them, roared the voice.
Power snapped into place inside her. She seized the guard’s hand and bent it back, breaking her wrist. The guard howled. Using her as an anchor, Ari pulled herself to her feet and drove her knee into the woman’s stomach. Ribs cracked and she staggered, crumpling into a heap.
“What in the hells—” began the other guard. But she’d already ripped his arm away from Reid’s neck. She drove her elbow into the guard’s jaw, and he hit the ground hard, unmoving.
Reid stared up at her from his knees, one hand massaging his red throat. “I take back every insult I ever said.”
She smiled. Then the verillion ran out, and she collapsed.
* * *
ARI WOKE SLOWLY. Everything hurt. Everything was dark.
She started upright. Rezek’s men had found her. She was back in the cell—no. She was in a bed, not hanging from the ceiling. As her heart slowed, her eyes caught up to her surroundings. She took in the curtained windows of Damien’s room, where soft rays of afternoon sunlight trickled in. The familiar scent of gunpowder and aged paper worked its way through her like a balm, and for a few moments, all she did was breathe.
Then the pain of her sudden movements came crashing down upon her. Her body ached as though she’d been battered like a shirt left on the clothesline in a storm. Yet it didn’t hurt as badly as she’d expected.
She pulled away one of the many bandages Reid must have applied to her forearm, expecting stitches. Instead, she found scabbed skin and a little dried blood from where movement had pulled at the newly formed layer.
Carefully, she undid the rest of the bandages along her body. A couple of the wounds still leaked a little blood, but the majority of them were through the worst of it.
What is happening? she thought.
This is your power, Arielle Kadar, said the voice. Embrace it.
Climbing carefully to her feet, she walked slowly to the bedroom door and pulled it open. The sitting room was empty. A note sat on the nearest end table beside a bowl of glowing chopped verillion. She opened the letter, revealing Reid’s mechanically neat script:
Went to tell Damien you’re not dead. Though you’re less dead than you should be. One of the perks of having magic no one else does, I suppose. Test it out for me? Try the verillion. A little to start, then more—I expect it’ll correspond to the rate at which you heal. Don’t actually die while I’m gone. The final race is tomorrow.
—Reid
PS. I’ll give Mikira her father’s message.
She rolled her eyes. Only Reid would turn a near-death experience into an experiment. Setting the letter back on the table, she ate a few pieces of verillion. Magic flowed through her in a gentle rush. The scabbing on her forearm began to itch, the skin beneath it feeling tight. She scratched at the scab, scraping it away to reveal healthy skin beneath.
Ari grabbed the bowl of verillion and sat down on the chaise. She ate several more pieces before her weariness overtook her and she lay down. The magic might heal her physical wounds, but it took energy from her body when she burned it, and the fog of a lingering headache remained. She could only do so much at once. She fell asleep with the magic still humming inside her.
Dreams of darkness plagued her. Dreams of chains and pale faces, of silvery knives coated in blood, her screams echoing around her in an endless cacophony of agony. Twisted shapes writhed in the shadows. Inhuman groans coated the air. A beast with blue eyes whispered her name.
She woke gasping for air. It was several long moments before she remembered she was free of that cell, and several more before she was sure she wouldn’t retch.
Ari knew these sorts of dreams. Knew the way they dragged you under and held you there until you drowned. The way they crept into your waking moments, tainting them with fear. Like the imprint of hands against her throat, like the cold, quiet dread that pooled inside her when her Saba’s screaming stopped.
Unless she did something, these dreams would consume her like all the rest.
Do not let them make you afraid, whispered the voice.
I won’t, Ari thought.
This time, she was fighting back.
CHAPTER 36
ARIELLE
LOCATING KYVIN WAS easier than Ari expected. He’d made a name for himself as Rezek’s right-hand man, so when she asked after him in pubs off Ettinger Street in the Crown District, people knew him. She learned he was a distant Kelbra cousin, the son of a butcher, who had taken a job working in the castle dungeons before Rezek had enlisted his services.
She also learned where he liked to drink.
Night had fallen by the time she spotted Kyvin inside the Whispering Rose on Rathsborne Street. She found a quiet alley with a view of the tavern and waited, occasionally eating verillion to keep up the store of magic inside her. She’d healed enough that moving was stiff, but not painful, though she’d stopped burning magic to reserve energy. The humming calmed her, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of stalking a lion back to its den.
You are the lion, not him, said the voice, and Ari believed it.
Kyvin emerged from the Whispering Rose, his face flushed with drink. He turned down the street, whistling a low tune. It sent a spike of hot anger through her. He didn’t care at all about what he’d done to her. Her screams didn’t haunt him the way they haunted her.
Ari burned the verillion, pushing magic to the ring and muttering a binding. Strength flooded her body. She tracked Kyvin from a distance down the bustling street. People flocked from pub to pub, restaurant to shop, oblivious to her and her prey.
She dodged a pair of drunken women, and when she looked up, Kyvin had vanished. She hurried through the crowd, ducking to the edge to get around it better, but it was no use.
He was gone.
Hands seized her from the dark. She tried to scream, but one covered her mouth. In a blink, she’d been ripped from the street and thrust up against the wall of a dark alley. Kyvin’s dead eyes stared down at her, a cruel smile on his lips.
“My, my, little mouse.” He had a gravelly voice, so unlike Rezek’s rancid honeyed tones. “You’re supposed to be in your cage like a good pet.” His thumb stroked her jaw. “Now that you’re here, though, I suppose we can have a little fun. What Lord Kelbra doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He slid one hand down to her hip.
She drove her forehead into his. He stumbled back, and her fist cracked against the side of his head. He dropped.
For a moment she feared she’d killed him. Then she saw his chest move. She didn’t know what to make of the relief that swept through her. Shouldn’t she want him dead? Dead, he couldn’t hurt her again. Dead, her nightmares might die with him.
She shook the thought away and withdrew a length of rope from her satchel, using it to bind his wrists behind his back. Then she picked him up, threw him over her shoulder, and turned deeper into the alley.
* * *
KYVIN CAME TO slowly.
When he opened his eyes, his pupils were blown wide, making him resemble a startled animal. Ari fixed the image in her mind. The way he looked about her workshop like the walls were coated in blood, the sharp intake of breath when he found her sitting on a crate in front of him. She would remember those things.
He leaned forward, but the ropes held strong, one arm tied to each side of the chair. She’d stripped him of his shirt, baring pale white skin like a fresh canvas.
“What in the hells do you think you’re doing, girl?” He thrashed against his bonds in earnest now. “Release me!”
She gave herself a moment to enjoy his struggle, the lilt of fear in his voice. Then she lifted the gag she’d looped around his neck and tightened it between his teeth. He fought to get words out around the cloth as she faced her workbench.
Ari didn’t have the arrangement of knives Kyvin did, but she had plenty of sharp objects and a working knowledge of living things from months of shaping golems. Perhaps after this she’d ask Reid to teach her about the most sensitive nerves, or the places where the skin was shallowest above the bone.
For now, her fettling knives would have to do.
She pressed the point of one to Kyvin’s throat and said quietly, “Scream for me, little mouse.”
Kyvin did scream, though the gag muffled the worst of it. What little sound escaped her small room would go ignored, just like her cries had the day those men robbed her. She exacted her fear from Kyvin’s flesh. With each cut, she told herself he was just a man, and men could bleed. She could make them bleed.
A quiet piece inside her shuddered at the blood, but she shoved that part deep, deep down. This was about proving herself unafraid, about proving herself in control.
She was strong, said the knife as it cut.
She was safe, said the swelling rivulets of blood.
She was powerful, said the fear in his eyes.
You are magnificent, Arielle Kadar, said the voice.
By the time Kyvin fainted from the pain, Ari felt that constant, restless apprehension inside of her settle. She tossed the blade onto the workbench and stared down at her bloodstained hands. They were perfectly still. So still, they felt separate from her. These hands were not hers. They belonged to a monster.
The sound of scraping stone was all the warning she had before a chair struck her in the side, knocking her to the floor. Kyvin stood over her, one hand freed from the ropes, the other still bound to the chair.
“You think you can get away with this?” he snarled even as he swayed. Between blood loss and the pain, he could barely keep his feet. Yet he held the chair up like a bludgeon and swung it toward her. She rolled out of the way, and the chair snapped.
When Kyvin straightened, he had only a thin spike of wood still attached to his other arm. He grinned and pulled it free.
The shadow of her dreams reared back to life. She felt chains at her wrists again, a knife at her throat. Nausea choked her. Fear froze her.
He is just a man, said the voice.
And she—she was something more.
Burning verillion, she bound her magic as she clambered to her feet, strength coalescing inside her.
Kyvin struggled to keep his footing, using the workbench for support and wielding the wooden spike like a sword. He pushed off the bench, thrusting at her. She lurched away. The verillion might lend her strength, but it told her nothing of fighting. Kyvin on the other hand looked as comfortable with the spike as the scalpel he’d carved her with.
She backed up, seeking an opening. Kyvin followed like a rabid dog on the scent. His wide grin showed too many teeth, and blood flecked his lips.
Ari ripped one of the hanging baskets off the hook and threw it at him, forcing him to bat it away. In his moment of distraction, she leapt for him. They hit the ground hard, the tip of the stake slicing along her ribs.
Kyvin struck her in the face, then brought the spike around to gouge her in the side. She caught his wrist. He struggled against her unusual strength, but it wasn’t enough. Bit by bit, breath by breath, she turned the tip of the spike toward his chest. His grip shifted, trying to push the stake away, but she leaned over him, flaring her verillion, and slammed it into his heart.
His eyes went wide, and he coughed blood. It splattered against her cheek. She didn’t dare remove her hand to wipe it away.
She stayed that way, hovering over him, her hands tight around the splintered wood, until his eyes went dark.
* * *
ARI ALMOST DIDN’T notice the guards at the door to the Dark Horse pub, but they certainly noticed her. How could they not, stained with blood as she was? She’d followed the maze of back alleys that made up the Wrenith District to get here, some instinctual part of her remembering she shouldn’t be seen like this. That part felt very far away.
