“Tell me what you see,” Madden ordered, his gaze following the red tear slipping down from the inner corner of my eyes.
The helmet gripped my head so tightly that a distant part of me wondered if it had pierced my skin. The hard surface inside scraped over the bruised hollows of my forehead, needling every tender spot.
The vision came in a rush after that. Madden’s thread brought me along tunnels and shadow figures. I made sure to describe their faces and directions almost correctly, altering a few details that I thought wouldn’t raise suspicion.
The Chantress didn’t give me much to work with. The visions were unfocused, impressions layered over one another without order or time to sort through them.
I was drained, still hungry despite the soup that they’d provided before this, exhausted after walking beside the thread for so long. Yet I forced myself to sift through the half-formed images.
Dim corridors were flooded by the echo of boots striking marble, spells humming and crackling through the air. There was a bed. There was Madden’s silver hair.
I forced myself not to react, not to give away why my pulse quickened.
“You have to give me something,” I said, standing upon the marble floor in the vision, though I knew he could hear me perfectly well from the chamber of his mansion where my body lay. “I cannot focus.”
From the back of my mind, I saw him lean closer over the gurney, invading my space until the ghost of tobacco settled on my tongue.
“Tell me what you see,” he murmured. “Or you’re not useful.”
He’d said as much the day before, after hours of wrenching the visions from me once we returned from human territory.
Despite the threat, I’d woken alone in the padded room, unable to recall how I’d been brought back. I assumed he had drained me until I lost consciousness, which was a problem.
My plans with Reagan wouldn’t work if Madden didn’t let me stay awake.
But the Sight was giving me nothing new about him, which meant Madden kept me there. I wanted to give him something, anything, so he would be satisfied and leave me alone for a few precious hours with just enough strength.
I’d already counted the humans moving through the mansion, noted how many Scions frequented the place, listening to the corridors as I was dragged back here once more.
At least, the choker was gone, removed by Cahir, and I looked like myself again.
Madden shoved his bleeding forearm towards my mouth. I recoiled instinctively, then forced myself still. His blood filled my mouth, and I swallowed.
It had to work today.
With the essence from his blood, it became easier to focus on the thread.
“They’re outside a stone building,” I said. “Holding pickaxes.”
It was true. I could feel it branching outward into other places, other captives with reddened hands and laboured breaths. I told him about tunnels and gutters thick with the scent of rust and damp earth.
His attention fixed on the tunnels, on what lay buried within them. “What did they find? Tell me what they’re saying.”
I strained, pushing deeper. “The ones with pickaxes aren’t speaking.”
A curse spilled from him. “Look at the masters and what they are saying.”
The tunnel darkened, soil packed beneath my palms as I tapped along the wooden supports bracing the walls.
I didn’t tell him about the other visions in his thread, his fate. And if what I saw was true, he wouldn’t like what came next.
???
“Sleep now,” Cahir told me as I dragged myself along behind him in the corridor. “I’ll come back later with your food.”
“I need the washroom,” I said.
I had only been allowed to use it a handful of times. They barely gave me enough water to drink, and rationed food even less. But since yesterday, every visit to the washroom had been immensely helpful.
