A faint smile touched Madden’s mouth. “It’s time, Jane. Divine for me. Tell me something from my future.”
He was still testing me.
“I need a glass with your blood to drink,” I said.
Madden arched one brow, then nodded once to Angus.
Without warning, the helmet pressed into my temples, and pain slammed into my skull. I shut my eyes against the pressure, reaching for my head, but someone shoved me back against the gurney, restraining my wrists.
“The helmet is one of Angus’s finest creations,” Madden said. “The gemstone you see is indeed sanguinite. It helps draw your access only where we need it. But you missed something far more important.” His gaze flicked to my forehead. “The filaments along the crown, the ones that are touching your skin, are made of pure bloodbane. Do you know what that is?”
It was cleaving my head in two.
“They are minerals that form as stalagmites. We grind them down into a fine powder and weave it into the filaments. It suppresses wielding almost entirely, while the sanguinite allows access only where we require it. Difficult to mine, but fascinating. A little painful when rubbed against the skin though.”
The pressure began to fade, leaving a residual pounding in my temples. When I blinked, the overhead light burned into my eyes.
Madden watched me. “Your kin once used it on us. They called it witchbane. These days, it is mostly reserved for prisons.”
A terrible inkling coursed through my mind. That I should have run, that I should never have come here.
My wrists were bound to the metal frame.
“Lie to me, and you’ll feel that again,” Madden threatened. “Is that clear?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to see him despite the blinding light.
Before I could brace for it, a forearm pressed against my mouth. My spine locked as numbness crept through my legs. Copper flooded my tongue, and I coughed.
His blood. It mixed with the bile burning the back of my throat.
This was what they did. They humiliated, they harmed, and given the chance, they killed.
“You’ll tell me the truth,” Madden compelled.
When I’d used my foresight with Reagan, it had been instinct. The eagle had followed a thread that smelled of him. That was all I remembered.
Now Madden’s blood stirred the eagle again. A single thread hovered over a black abyss. Others swarmed around it, none as clear as the one I followed. Leading into nothing.
Return, child, a sinewy voice whispered.
My breath whooshed out of me, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Something deep inside told me not to fear it. It wouldn’t harm me. Yet a single whisper of its will could annihilate everything.
It made me acutely aware of every word I spoke.
I turned in the darkness, recognising the presence even though I’d never faced it fully. There was nothing.
Return,the Chantress whispered.You do not heed him.
Please,I asked.
My breath fogged in front of me.
She wouldn’t let me divine for Reagan; his threads had been shifted. It dawned on me that she would likely refuse the same for the one who had moved them.
We could destroy him. Stop him from touching the threads again, I said in my head.
I existed in two places at once. The version in the back of my mind saw only the thread of Madden’s fate ahead. The otherlay in the mansion’s room, hearing muffled sounds of the man speaking.
