Her hands twitched, longing to throttle him, but she stifled their movements. “You’re not taking meanywhere.”
The heavy-eyed man grinned, tipping his head back to his comrades. “I love it when they say that to me.”
He lunged, only to reel back when Lux’s perfectly pointed nails raked along his face. With a roar, he brought his hands to the dripping mess. “You clawed out my eye!”
“As I said.” She crossed her arms to hide their shake. The men behind him had yet to offer assistance, their gazes traveling from her to the blood splattering the ground and back again.
A guttural growl spewed from his lips. “If you don’t help me in this, I’ll throw you both behind bars myself.”
His uninjured eye hadn’t left hers, but Lux knew whom he’d addressed.
She ran.
She had barely made it partway back the way she’d come before the air was knocked from her lungs. Lux collapsed to her knees and then her stomach, feeling as if her back were cracked in two. She tracked the iron ball as it rolled from her side, thechain clanging against stone, another trailing in its wake. She couldn’t breathe. It hurt too much.
With a cry escaping her lips, she was hauled into unfamiliar arms, her own trapped behind her back. The pain sent spots raining down from the skies. Hazy features moved before her then, a blood-soaked smile stretching his face.
Lux gagged as the taste of iron swept across her tongue, dirtied fingers prying her lips apart. She felt them crack. Lashing out with her boots, she connected with a shin. Whose it belonged to, she wasn’t sure, but a hiss resounded from somewhere.
“Goodnight, Necromancer.”
Bitter liquid rolled down her throat, pitching her into darkness.
Chapter twenty-six
Stone scraped. Chains clanged.A rasping cry filled the mildewed air.
Darkness.
Lux pushed herself to her elbows, a hammer relentlessly pounding against her skull. Had that Shield felt like this, a side effect of the potion? Or had they beaten her for the scratched eye and bruised shin?
Her throat was parched, her back sent painful spasms of molten heat through her core with every breath, yet she forced herself to sit, resting gingerly against the crumbling stone.
She couldn’t see anything. Perhaps a faint outline of her hand in front of her face? She wasn’t sure. It hurt to open her eyes anyway and she let them slide closed as she focused on the rest of her body instead.
Aside from her back and head, the only thing that irritated her now were her cracked and swollen lips. Lux fantasized of a cooldrink of water, imagined it sliding past them, down her aching throat.
What was he thinking? Doing this to her? She glared beneath closed lids. She would demand to speak with the mayor. Pound on the door until they obeyed. Though first, she would have to find the door. No—first she would have to convince her muscles to support her. They didn’t appear in a very amiable mood right now.
Lux unclenched her fists, her chest tightening instead with a familiar ache. “Help me.” The whisper didn’t leave her side, blanketed by stagnant air.
A key scraped and clicked within a lock from somewhere in the distance, and she opened one eye as yellow light crawled through the widening crack. It flooded the space, the door pushed wide, only to be shuttered behind the form of a man.
“Sleep well?”
The familiar voice sent ice skittering over her skin. She shut him out, retreating once more into the dark. She couldn’t fight him. She could barely move.
“I didn’t take you for the type to give up so easily. I’m disappointed. I like the ones that fight the best.” The voice was closer now and her eyelids twitched. A rough hand cupped her cheek, a cold finger running across her bloodied lip. “Pity.”
His hands moved beneath her arms as he hauled her up. Her legs buckled, but when he held fast, she felt her muscles begin to obey. At last, they ceased their spasms and supported her weight.
“If you can’t walk, I’ll throw you over my shoulder. Your choice.” The voice slid into her ear, and she staggered forward. His oily laugh echoed against stone walls, and he let her go.
Lux squinted against the lantern shining through the narrow doorway, but she didn’t look away. One. Two. Three. She counted her steps. Just one more. Just one more after that. Herback screamed at her to fall to the filthy ground and cease these repetitive, worthless movements, but she couldn’t heed it.
Not when she could feel the beast’s breath against her neck.
Triumphant light caressed her skin at the same moment a gloved hand clamped down on her arm, forcing her to follow its ascent to hardened features, reddened gouges along one cheek. He smiled beneath a bandaged eye.
