Page 18 of By the Flames of Her Fury

“Hired him for what?”

“To create new experiments. New ways to torture us.” I took a breath. “Sometimes I think this is what they do for fun, and sometimes I think…they’re looking for something.”

“Like what?”

“A way to control magic, maybe. I don’t know. They just keep trying potions and running tests to figure out how it all works. To try and make us do things.”

I’d seen Mortep mix strange serums straight into people’s veins, over and over until something happened, while he took notes the whole time. They often ended in seizures, blood pouring from their eyes and mouths, or bodies going still on the floor. He forced us to fight each other with and without the chemicals in our bodies, just to see if they made a difference. One time, he locked me and others in a freezing cell for hours, then in a room of fire to measure how our magic reacted.

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Our lives are just some twisted game to them, aren’t they? They think they can do whatever they want to us.”

The passion in her voice tugged my lips upward. She was younger than me, but still, she had the conviction of someone who had been fighting for a while. I wondered what her story was. I was about to ask, when she spoke again. “How long have you been down here?”

I looked at my feet, where rows and rows of tiny lines were carved into the ground. I always marked another line after “dinner” with a small rock I kept hidden. One line for every day I’d been here.

One thousand, five hundred and eighty one.

“A little over four years,” I said. I could still picture the streets of Iluze. The palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze, the sand stuck between my toes even when I was miles from the shore, the salt and humidity permanently crusted in my skin.

That scent had disappeared a long time ago. Now, it was just bitter stone and iron.

“What happened?” she asked, quieter this time. “If—if you want to talk about it. You don’t have to.”

“No, it’s fine.” I licked my lips. “My parents died from an epidemic in Iluze four years ago when I was thirteen. I had to live on the streets. Scarven’s men found me a little bit after that.”

I remembered being so young, so naive. His men had offered me food and a place to stay. They’d picked up several of us orphans, all survivors of the epidemic. They wanted to take us somewhere the sickness couldn’t reach us, where we could be healthy and strong.

I should’ve known. If something sounded too good to be true, it probably was.

Scarven’s idea of “strength” meant putting us through test after test. The experiments got more disturbing when Mortep entered the scene. There was one older man who used to be in Songbird’s cell who Mortep cast a spell on that made his illusions come to life, but he lost control. He conjured a bear, and it ate him alive in that very cell. And then Mortep had blinded another girl to figure out how to make her illusions work without the power of sight.

Every time he came into my cell, every time he took me back to his laboratory, I wondered if it would be the last time.

“Iluze,” she repeated, drawing me back to the present. “So you’re an Illusionist, then.”

“Nothing gets past you,” I replied. “What about you? What’s your story?”

“Actually, I—I kind of grew up here.” There was a pause. “In Scarven’s mansion.”

“As in, one of his servants?”

She didn’t answer immediately. “Something like that.”

“How did you end up in a cell, then?”

“It’s a long story. I don’t want to talk about it.” She sounded tired, so much softer than the girl who tried to blast her way out of the cuffs a few hours ago.

“Okay, we don’t have to. We can talk about anything.” I wasn’t sure what made me say it, other than I just…I didn’t want her to stop. Her voice was nice to listen to, much better than the groans we could hear in the distance.

“Anything?” she asked.

I settled against the wall, staying as close to the hole as I could. “Anything. It’s not like we have anywhere to be.”

She was quiet for a minute, and then she said, “I’ve never left the manor. Will you tell me about Iluze?”

She had never even left this house? What kind of a servant was she? I shoved away my questions and instead asked, “What do you want to know?”

“What does it look like?” She cleared her throat, then the words poured from her. “What are the beaches like? Is it true that the ocean never ends and you can’t even see the bottom?”