Page 138 of Under the Iron Sky

And then she made a fist.

It was like a bomb had detonated inside him. His chest exploded from the inside out. Blood and gore sprayed up the walls, completely saturating Ikarus and Soraya and Morana.

The fog swept out of Soraya’s mind as quickly as it’d appeared, but she didn’t feel any warmer.

Because she’d just executed one of the very people sent here to rescue her.

With magic.

45

Someone was screaming. A woman, Soraya thought … She sounded awfully upset. And familiar too, although she couldn’t quite place where she’d heard her before …

Someone was holding her face.

She blinked, and gray eyes appeared in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” a man was whispering. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Sorry? Why was he sorry? He hadn’t … What hadn’t he done? Something, Soraya was sure. Something awful.

“I’m so fucking sorry.” The man’s voice shook almost as much as his hands. “I didn’t have a choice. I had to do it—you had to do it.”

Yes, she wanted to say, that’s all well and good, but that woman is still screaming. Why wasn’t anyone helping her? Soraya tried to ask, but she couldn’t find her voice.

“Please, human. You need to calm down.”

Calm down? Why? She was fine. She was … wet. And sticky. Why was she wet and sticky?

Something pressed against her forehead. There was a tingling sensation spreading across her skull, then everything went black.

The woman stopped screaming.

Soraya bolted upright into the never-ending blackness.

She panted, heart hammering violently enough to bruise her chest. Where was she? There was nothing here. There was …

The world reappeared slowly. First a wooden cabinet in the corner. Then a dark leather sofa, twin to the one she was lying on. A floor-length mirror propped against a wall beside a large fireplace, the stone over the mantel carved to look like two dragons flying side by side.

She’d seen this place in Ikarus’s memories.

Her eyes snapped to a spot on the floor where a decorative crimson rug now lay. His mother had died there.

A log popped in the fire, loud enough in the stark silence to make her bones nearly jump out of her skin.

Her hands flew to her thighs, reaching for a weapon—

A wool blanket had been draped over her. She gripped the frayed edge to rip it away, then froze.

Her hand was covered in blood. She looked at her other hand, her body plunging into cold dread when she saw that it was just as saturated as the first. Where had it all come from?

“Are you all right?”

Pulse skittering, Soraya’s eyes snapped toward Ikarus’s voice on the other side of the room. He was standing on the darkened side of the protruding hearth, half veiled in shadows.

His face and hair were clean but his clothes … He looked like someone had splashed him with a bucket of blood.

“What happened?” Gods, was that really her voice? She’d never heard it sound like that before. So raw and hoarse. So … meek.