Page 93 of Under the Iron Sky

Ikarus watched her face very carefully, his cool gray eyes flickering between both of hers as though he could read every thought running wild inside her head.

Soraya played his game. Made the brief flash of horror that slid across her features look like a fragile chink in her armor that she quickly masked. “You’re wasting your time. It’s not in there.”

His expression didn’t soften. “Am I? Then why would your commander waste all that Light keeping the shields activated? It takes an awful lot of power to activate those shields, doesn’t it? I suspect that’s why you never used it as a base before—because it drains so much Light so quickly. Light that you have in short supply.”

Light that Noreen herself had created countless procedures and policies to preserve, that she carefully siphoned and diverted and diluted from every source that wasn’t absolutely essential in a bid to make it last.

Noreen wouldn’t waste power like that. Not unless …

Soraya turned back to the tower, her stomach threatening to empty. A piece of the Arch really was in there then, wasn’t it?

Ikarus came to stand beside her. “It’s a good place to store one, I’ll give you that, given that the metal plates currently protecting it are charged with Light so telekinetics like me can’t tear it apart.”

And he couldn’t phase in either.

Light, when in the right form, was a powerful foe of magic. While shots from guns and sunrifles were designed for quick, powerful bursts to scorch through armor and bone, they burned out to nothing not long after they’d left the barrel of whatever they’d been fired from. Other forms of Light, like scythes, were great for severing limbs, but if a Dar’rak was stabbed with one and the blade left embedded, it blocked out their magic like a torch shone into a dark room—hence why Ikarus had been unable to pull out the one she’d stabbed him with in the metal graveyard. Links were quite handy too, thin bands of metal that, when activated, pulsed with ropes of Light that acted as handcuffs to douse magical powers completely.

The way Raina explained it, magic couldn’t pass through Light, so while weapons and machines like fighter jets and familiars weren’t invulnerable to Dar’rak abilities as long as the magic only brushed the outer metal shell and didn’t touch the Light directly, they could still be burned or crushed with a wave of a hand.

And any building could effectively be rendered impenetrable to things like phasing when fitted with the right equipment, but because keeping a barrier of Light constantly active like that drained resources scarily fast, it was never used.

Until now.

Until there was something so, so precious that needed to be kept out of enemy hands that it was deemed worthy of sacrificing everything.

Soraya couldn’t let him know that, though. Forcing a laugh, she let her eyes slide to the side to settle on him. She pushed his chest, needing to do something with her hands. “Bye then. You’ve dropped me off in my new cell. Go to your own room and leave me be.”

“I am in my room.”

Soraya’s heart fell into her stomach. He could not be serious right now. They were barely able to be in the same room together for more than a few minutes without one of them erupting. If they had to share a room? One of them would surely be dead within a few days.

Seeming to sense exactly where her thoughts had gone, Ikarus rolled his tongue on the inside of his cheek, his jaw set. “I do not like this any more than you do, but after last week, I don’t intend on letting you out of my sight any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“Aren’t you worried about me trying to strangle you in your sleep?”

“Not really.” His expression didn’t so much as flicker as bands of his magic curled around her wrists and dragged her backwards until she was pinned against a wall of stone.

Soraya hissed, fighting against the wisps of his power. It did no good. She glared up at him, anger coiling through her blood. Oh, if only she had a gun right fucking now … “Coward! I’d sleep with one eye open if I were you.”

Ikarus smiled at that. “Oh, I plan to.” And speared into Soraya’s mind.

There wasn’t much to see. Today’s door held the first time she’d sat in a training classroom in one of the old safe houses, when her mother had made her stand in the hallway for disrupting the class with her “constant sniveling” despite them only burying her father a week prior. It’d crushed Soraya at the time. They’d watched Theron comfort her afterward with a small chocolate cake he’d swiped from the kitchens, and Soraya couldn’t help but feel sorry for her younger version, knowing this was only the start of Noreen’s shift into the icy commander she was nowadays.

When it was over, Ikarus turned away without a word and slid into the armchair and shut his eyes.

Soraya didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. She doubted he did either.

And as she lay in the only bed and stared up at the ceiling, drawing blueprints and battle plans along the cracks in the stone, she wished she’d appreciated the solace of the dungeon more when she’d had the chance.

30

The next three days were strange.

Soraya would wake to Golla placing her breakfast on the edge of the bed—he’d arrived the morning after she and Ikarus had and, as far as she could tell, the little beastie had no intention of going back to the castle anytime soon.

Each morning, he’d sit beside her on the balcony while she ate. She’d listen to him go through all the different ways he planned on cooking potatoes for her meals that week now that he knew she liked them, then disappear with her empty tray and cutlery. Sometimes he wouldn’t return until lunch. Sometimes he’d stay while she meditated or exercised or tried to find a way out of her new cage.

So far, she hadn’t found anything.