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“He’s lying,” Bekter snarled. “Look at him, he’s pathetic, he’s protecting them even now—”
“Enough,” said the Sorqan Sira. “I’ll have the truth for myself.”
Again, she grasped the sides of Rin’s face. “Look at me.”
Her eyes seemed different this time. They had become dark and hollow expanses, windows into an abyss that Rin did not want to see. Rin let out an involuntary whine, but the Sorqan Sira’s fingers tightened under her jaws. “Look.”
Rin felt herself pitching forward into that darkness. The Sorqan Sira wasn’t forcing a vision into her mind, she was forcing Rin to dredge one up herself. Memories loomed before her, haphazard and jagged fragments of visions that she’d done her best to bury. She was wrought in a sea of fire, she was pitching backward into black water, she was kneeling at Altan’s feet, blood pooling in her mouth.
The Seal loomed over her.
It had grown. It was thrice as large as she had last seen it, an expanded and hypnotic array of colors, swirling and pulsing like a heartbeat, arranged like a character she still could not recognize.
Rin could feel Daji’s presence inside it—sickening, addictive, seductive. Whispers sounded all about her, as if Daji were murmuring into her ear, promising her wonderful things.
I’ll take you away from this. I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted. I’ll give him back to you.
You only have to give in.
“What is this?” the Sorqan Sira murmured.
Rin couldn’t answer.
The Sorqan Sira let go of her face.
Rin dropped to her knees, hands splayed against solid ground. The sun spun in circles above her.
It took her a moment to realize the Sorqan Sira was laughing.
“She’s afraid of you,” the Sorqan Sira whispered. “Su Daji is afraid of you.”
“I don’t understand,” Rin said.
“This changes everything.” The Sorqan Sira barked a command. The riders standing nearest Rin seized her by the arms and hoisted her to her feet.
“What are you doing?” Rin struggled against their grip. “You can’t kill me, you still need me—”
“Oh, child. We are not going to kill you.” The Sorqan Sira reached out and stroked the backs of her fingers down Rin’s cheek. “We are going to fix you.”
Chapter 22
The Ketreyids tied Rin against a tree, though this time they were considerably gentler. They placed her bound wrists in her lap instead of twisting them painfully behind her back, and they left her legs untied once the extent of her ankle injury became obvious.
She couldn’t have run far even without a sprained ankle. Her limbs tingled from fatigue, her head was swimming, and her vision had started going fuzzy. She slouched back against the tree, eyes closed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything.
“What are they doing?” Kitay asked.
Rin focused with difficulty on the clearing. The Ketreyids were arranging wooden poles to create a latticed dome-like structure, just large enough to accommodate two people. When the dome was finished, they draped thick blankets over its top until it was completely covered.
The Ketreyids had also added logs to their measly campfire. It was a roaring bonfire now, flames leaping higher than the Sorqan Sira’s head. Two riders carried a pile of rocks in from the shore, all at least the size of Rin’s head, and placed them over the flames one by one.
“They’re preparing for a sweat,” Chaghan explained. “That’s what the rocks are for. You’ll go inside that yurt with the Sorqan Sira. They’ll put the rocks inside one by one and pour water over them while they’re hot. That fills the yurt with steam and drives the temperatures up to just under what will kill you.”
“They’re going to steam me like a fish,” Rin said.
“It’s risky. But that’s the only way to draw something like the Seal out. What Daji’s left inside you is like a venom. Over time it will keep festering in your subconscious and corrupt your mind.”
She blinked in alarm. “You could have told me that!”
“I didn’t think it was worth scaring you when I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“You weren’t going to tell me I was going mad?”
“You would have noticed eventually.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“Calm down. The sweat will extract the venom from your mind.” Chaghan paused. “Well. It’ll give you a better chance than anything else. It doesn’t always work.”
“That’s optimistic,” Kitay said.
Chaghan shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, the Sorqan Sira will put you out of your misery.”
“That’s nice of her,” Rin mumbled.
“She’d do it swiftly,” Qara assured her. “Quick slice to the arteries, so clean you’ll barely even feel it. She’s done it before.”
“Can you walk?” asked the Sorqan Sira.
Rin jerked awake. She didn’t remember dozing off. She was still exhausted; her body felt like it was weighted down with rocks.
She blinked the sleep from her eyes and glanced around. She was lying curled on the ground. Thankfully, someone had untied her arms. She pulled herself to a sitting position and stretched the cricks out of her back.
“Can you walk?” the Sorqan Sira repeated.
Rin flexed her ankle. Pain shot up her leg. “I don’t think so.”
The Sorqan Sira raised her voice. “Bekter. Lift her.”
Bekter glanced down at Rin with a look of distaste.
“I hate you, too,” she told him.
She was sure that he would lash out. But the Sorqan Sira’s command must truly have been law, because he simply knelt down, pulled her into his arms, and carried her to the yurt. He made no effort to be gentle. She jostled uncomfortably in his arms, and her sprained ankle smashed against the yurt’s entrance when he deposited her inside.
She bit back a cry of pain to deny him the pleasure of hearing it. He shut the tent flap on her without another word.
The yurt’s interior was pitch-black. The Ketreyids had padded its lattice sides with so many layers of blankets that not a single ray of light could penetrate the exterior.
The air inside was cold, silent, and peaceful, like the belly of a cave. If Rin didn’t know where she was, she would have thought the walls were made of stone. She exhaled slowly, listening as her breath filled the empty space.
Light flooded the yurt as the Sorqan Sira entered through the flap. She carried a bucket of water in one hand and a ladle in the other.
“Lie down,” she told Rin. “Get as close as you can to the walls.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t fall onto the rocks when you faint.”
Rin curled into the corner, back braced against the taut cloth, and pressed her cheek to the cool dirt. The tent flap closed. Rin heard the Sorqan Sira crawling across the yurt to sit right beside her.
“Are you ready?” the Sorqan Sira asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No. But you should prepare your mind. This will go badly if you are frightened.” The Sorqan Sira called to the riders outside, “First stone.”
