Page 36 of Under the Iron Sky

Oh, he had some nerve, this Ikarus. Soraya was going to enjoy smacking it out of him when her head stopped throbbing.

And she could see straight.

And the ground wasn’t moving like she was on a merry-go-round that was just spinning, spinning, spinning.

Ugh. Soraya heaved again, the insides of her stomach screaming that it really was empty. She may not have understood how Ikarus was able to phase them here, but she could understand why he’d done it. She was completely useless, disoriented like this. She could barely stand, never mind swing a weapon into his face.

Her blood was burning too. Whatever dark magic Ramapheal had used to bind her to Ikarus made each thump of her heart feel like it was sending lava streaming from the top of her head to her toes. It was excruciating, and yet a small part of her welcomed the discomfort.

She deserved it, didn’t she? Why should she get to walk away unscathed when so many of her teammates had been burned or crushed beyond recognition in the skies earlier? She’d failed them. She deserved to burn too.

Without warning, Ikarus grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her toward the castle a few hundred yards away that was made of the same black stone as everything else down here. Unlike the other buildings she’d seen, though, it was completely isolated, a fortress of red crystal and black stone built in the middle of nowhere.

Soraya counted four stories, each with more tall, curving windows than she was capable of counting right now that glowed with faint crimson light, and what she vaguely thought were sculptures of reptiles curving beneath stone balconies.

The inside was just as stark as the exterior, each hallway made of the same macabre black stone as though that was the only material available here. The red smoke was here too, slithering between the stones in the floor and walls like blood-colored serpents.

Soraya tried to take it all in, to mark each window they passed, how many sets of stairs she was dragged up, but it was so hard to do anything with the never-ending thump, thump, thump in her head.

Up, up, up they went, and just as Soraya was sure her legs were going to give out, Ikarus opened another door and shoved her forward.

The restraints around her wrists vanished. The world spun, and she was just quick enough to catch herself on the nearest stone wall before she bit the ground.

Soraya whirled, her eyes quickly darting around the space.

He’d brought her to a dungeon.

She was in the middle of three cells, separated from one another by thick iron bars and caged in by a solid stone wall at her back. There was no bed, only a dirty mattress, a frayed blanket, what she assumed was a stone privy in the far corner, then a metal chain hanging from the ceiling nearby.

Ikarus stood on the other side of the door. It was still open. Soraya charged forward, pulse hammering in her throat—

It swung closed just before she could step through, the tired iron locking with a scream that was so like the one ringing in Soraya’s head.

The Demon took one last look at her, the obsidian plates of his armor seeming to absorb the torchlight rather than reflect it, and vanished into nothing.

Soraya slumped against the bars, air whooshing out of her lungs. She closed her eyes, allowing herself one breath, two, three, then turned around and broke into a run.

Luckily she’d been thrown into the only cell with a window, so she quickly scrambled onto the thick stone ledge beneath and peered out. Well, down. She must’ve been on the top story given the fortyish-foot drop that stretched out below. It’d be a challenge, but if the stones in the outer wall were as uneven as the ones in here, she might be able to climb down with some very careful maneuvering.

She had to try.

No glass obstructed the frame, but when Soraya tried to climb out, her knee slammed into some invisible wall. Frowning, she reached out a hand, and the air rippled with a near-iridescent red sheen where her fingers met whatever barrier had been put in place to keep her here. It was cold to the touch, like stroking a familiar that’d been left outside all night in the rain.

She’d seen this red glow before, shielding the dragon during their fight, then again just before her fighter jet had crashed.

Ikarus’s magic.

He’d protected her when she’d crashed, then. Which made sense, she supposed. She was no use to him or his master as a bloody pulp, and how else could she explain how she’d managed to fall out of the sky and walk away with only a few bruises and a battered ego?

If he could do all that, though, her chances of breaking this thing with her bare hands were practically zero. Less than zero, probably.

Soraya slammed her fist against it nonetheless, watching the crimson fan out like red ink dropped into a glass of water before disappearing. She did it again.

The shield stayed strong.

Cursing, Soraya jumped from the ledge and hurried across the cell to flip the mattress. There was nothing underneath. She searched the walls next, then the bars, checking and rechecking every shadowed corner.

There had to be something. A loose brick she could pry open, a rusting bar she could kick into submission. Something even that monster that’d brought her here had missed.