Page 97 of Under the Iron Sky

Noreen’s lips thinned. “Why not?”

Young Soraya swallowed thickly. Her eyes started to glisten. “Because … he’s just standing there. He hasn’t done anything.” And he couldn’t even if he’d wanted to, for those bands of yellowish Light binding his wrists together were Links, burning away whatever power he might’ve had thrumming in his veins.

Noreen’s answering scoff had both Sorayas flinching. “Oh, and you think it’s that simple, do you? You think that just because it hasn’t struck yet, that it would let you live if the roles were reversed? That it wouldn’t cut out your throat the moment it’s given the chance? They’re all the same, Soraya. And it’s time you learned that.”

Noreen marched toward the man. With the push of a few buttons, the Links around his wrists fell away. Magic hummed through the air, cold power that he was now free to use without them choking it—but he didn’t get a chance before Noreen summoned a scythe from her bracer and sliced his left leg off in one clean swipe.

He collapsed with a blood-curdling shriek. Theron jumped back in terror while young Soraya just stood there, utter horror carved onto every line of her face. The gun started to tremble in her hand.

“Shoot it,” Noreen commanded again.

Soraya watched her younger self shake her head, her braid almost vibrating with the quick movement. A tear slid down her cheek. “I … can’t.”

Noreen came to stand behind her just as the man began to crawl, not away, but toward Soraya.

Her younger version tried to flee, but Noreen already had her arms wrapped around Soraya’s body, forcing her to point the gun at the man steadily creeping toward them.

“If you don’t shoot it, it will kill you,” Noreen spat. “Then Theron, then me. Is that what you want?”

“No!” Young Soraya began pawing at her mother, desperately trying to claw free, but Noreen’s grip was too firm. “I can’t … He … He …”

“It, Soraya, not he! And that does not matter! They’re all monsters! You saw what they did to your father! To Bertok! This is what they do! What they love to do!”

“I can’t!” The words were barely audible over her strangled sobs. “Please, don’t make me!”

The man kept crawling closer. And her screams did little to drown out the snarls and curses pouring from his blood-filled mouth.

Beside Soraya, Ikarus had gone very still. “How old are you here?”

Soraya’s answer was hoarse. “Twelve.”

Still snarling, still dragging himself over the rough stone, the man raised a hand to attack, for help, little Soraya hadn’t known—only that he was getting closer and she couldn’t escape her mother’s grip and Gods, there was such terror in her eyes now.

Her boots were sliding across the rough stone below, unable to escape Noreen’s hold. The man clutched her legs, attempting to pull himself up, and she noticed Ikarus’s eyes, slightly widened as though he was just as horrified by the scene in front of him as she was, flicker to her as she rubbed the top of her right thigh, where this man’s sharpened claws had grabbed her so tightly she’d been bruised for days afterward.

Screaming. Screaming. Screaming.

And Soraya couldn’t help but flinch away when the loud crack of a gun going off tore through the air. Couldn’t help but squeeze her eyes closed at the wet thunk that followed, or stop the tear that slipped down her face at the utter silence left in its wake.

“There,” Noreen eventually said, her voice dripping with cold triumph. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Soraya listened to her mother retreat, and as the memory started to fade, she cracked an eye open and caught one glimpse of a young Theron pressed against the stone wall, and her younger self trapped beneath the body of that Dar’rak man, screaming as smoke drifted from the hole she’d put in his chest, before everything faded to black.

Soraya slammed into the hard stone of their burrow floor. She gasped, lungs burning, head throbbing, all normal after their sessions.

Pain splintered across her scalp, so much worse than it usually was, like dozens of needles were scraping across the inside of her skull. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the ground, the near-freezing stone welcome against her overheated skin. Even grounded like this, the room was spinning.

She drew a deep breath. Another. Another. Using the subtle tingling of the vapor spreading across her lungs to steady her. She was all right. It was gone now. Nothing more than a memory.

The world had just about righted itself when an icy hand cupped her jaw and her eyes snapped open.

Ikarus was much closer than she’d expected. He was kneeling in front of her, and her chest flushed when he tilted her face back.

He stared into her eyes, searching for something, as he often did after their sessions, but he seemed … distracted now, his eyes darting to her cheek again and again, as though pulled there without his permission.

Until he swiped his thumb across it and pulled back. Wet.

“Why are you crying?”