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Along with this strange, borrowed fury, the world itself was sharper, clearer, than she’d ever seen. Seren, the mage moon, had risen, casting a brilliant silver light over the golden prairie that threw every blade of grass into stark relief.
Drugged… The meridian must have drugged her, somehow. Or used his bizarre magic. Verve slid her gaze to the Legion sentinel commander to tell them, but received a blow to the jaw instead.
“Answer me!”
“I’m trying,” she managed. “Calm…down.”
Another blow, this one strong enough to send even the sentinels holding her stumbling backward. Pain bloomed at her temple and her head spun. Dimly, she could hear the sentinels arguing amongst themselves as they searched Celidon’s body and the sparse campsite.
The Legion commander grabbed her face, wrenched her head to look at the meridian’s body. “What happened? How did he escape?”
A pang of loss cut Verve to her marrow. Images flooded her mind: Celidon, laughing at some silly joke; Celidon, gazing at the expanse of open ocean; Celidon, leaning his head against Karel’s shoulder.
Their faces, their very spirits, were as familiar to Verve as her own. And they were dead. She’d destroyed them both.
A killer. The thought was hers, but not. Foreign, yet familiar. A monster. That’s all you are. And now I’m trapped here, too.
“What are you talking about?” she slurred.
The Legion commander kicked her shin. Something cracked, then heat flooded her leg. “Sodding useless dreg,” the soldier snarled. “I knew dealing with that bitch of a priest was a mistake. Now we’ve wasted an entire day on this filth.”
The commander must have given a signal, for the sentinels holding Verve dropped her without warning. She blinked up at the night sky. Stars pin-pricked the void, but her gaze stuck on the indigo-velvet space between the distant lights; what secrets lay hidden in the ether?
“Your orders, ser?”
Another blow, this one at her side. The stars danced before Verve’s eyes as the commander said, “She’s as useless to that Freehold priest as she is to us. Kill her, but make her suffer first.”
The sentinels closed in around Verve. The air stung with their eagerness, with the violence in their hearts. Blows fell upon her, at first like rain, then like pounding hail. Boots slammed into her legs, her sides, her head. Her vision went white and spotty; she tasted copper on her tongue. Pain blocked out everything else, but each time she started to sink into oblivion, something shoved her back to consciousness. And that unfamiliar voice in her mind snarled, No. You won’t escape any longer.
The sentinels stomped on her fingers, snapping bones like twigs. Someone snatched her hair to pull her up, and her scalp exploded with fire. They held her fast, while another two—or maybe more—drove armored fists into her stomach, her throat. They laughed and jeered and called her every ugly name they knew.
And through it all, she could not move, let alone fight back, and that foreign but familiar voice sneered, This is your reward for a job well done.
At last they tired of their sport. One sentinel sank his blade deep into her stomach, then they picked her up and slung her body into a section of tall grass they had not trampled. They rode away, taking the fleet deer too.
Verve inhaled and tasted dirt. She’d landed face-down. With every ounce of effort she could manage, she rolled on her back so she could see the night sky again, the stars and the inky spaces between them, all filled with possibility. How foolish she had been to hide from the night.
All warmth seeped from her body, and she could not take a proper breath. Cold… She was so cold, like she’d never been warm, never even seen fire, let alone felt the kiss of sunlight on her cheeks.
Alem, she thought, marveling at the sky despite the ice in her limbs and the searing fire in her gut. How clearly she could see now. Everything was better when he was at her side.
Alem, I’m sorry.
