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I wiped a few tears from my eyes, gaze wandering to the drain hole. “What about her?”
“She’s been here even longer than us.” Harlen released my face and sighed. “I doubt she can still shift.”
But what if she could, this girl behind the hole who’d told me stories of home, offering a sliver of light in this endless dark? I couldn’t just leave her. That was not right.
“Lorn?” I inched closer, peeking through the hole. “Lorn? Can you hear me? Talk to me.”
Something shuffled in the darkness until two bloodied, trembling fingertips poked through the gap in the stone. “Malyr…”
My shoulders tensed. Her voice sounded so different now, empty and depleted. Void of life.
“Harlen and I will escape.” I stroked my fingertips over hers, sensing the slippery blood from whatever wounds they’d left on her this time. “Can you still shift into your ravens?”
She swallowed her little cries the way she always did after the men left, trying to give them no voice. “I… I cannot.”
“What if you focus very hard—”
“Malyr… Icannotshift anymore without help.”
I looked up at Harlen.
He shook his head. “It’s been a while since you managed a conscious shift. I think neither of us is still strong enough to do it on our own, Malyr. We’ll have to hold hands once we make it out of here and pray ourprimalsdo the rest, and that only works in pairs of two.”
“We cannot leave her behind.”
Harlen tortured his upper lip. “This might very well be our last chance at escape, Malyr. We cannot jeopardize it for this girl.”
“But—”
“Malyr,” Lorn’s voice came through the hole as her fingers slipped away from beneath mine. “Go. There’s nothing left of me worth saving. Just promise me you will, should you ever come back and find my body, burn me so my ashes can drift forever on the wind.”
Tears once more collected behind my eyes, running salty down my throat. “I give you that promise.”
“I can hear a key turning in the door up there.” Harlen rose, making his way to the iron bars. “He left it open, I’m certain. I hear the wind howling through the gap. The goddess is giving us this chance! He’s coming back down here. Malyr, cower in the corner and don’t look at him. Don’t do anything until he starts beating me. I’ll tell you when.”
Heart beating fast, I did as I was told, focusing on the shadows that writhed within me. They lashed at my insides, each crack a demand for violence, bloodshed, death. What if they killed Harlen? Lorn?
Hinges once more creaked as the jailor stepped inside, a heavyset man with no neck but arms as big as oak branches, his brown hair cropped short. He made a show of how slowly he closed the iron door, a flogging whip tied to the left of his belt, the bloody cane dangling on the other side.
“Ah, lads, the things four months with only scat and rats for meals do to your lot. Where are your birds now, hmm?” The door fell into its lock, sending a strike of dread through me. “Lord Brisden is a… merciful man. All he wants are those damn shadows gone around that cursed city of yours, and the two princes can die old between some whore’s legs in exile.”
Harlen tried to spit at the man, only for the little he managed to produce to cling to his bottom lip instead. “You’ll never get Valtaris!”
The man lifted his arm and struck Harlen straight across the face, making him wobble back on his twiggy legs and crash with his back against the stone wall. He pulled the whip from his belt, letting the strikes pelt down on my brother’s chest until it shredded his shirt and welted his stomach.
Harlen grunted in pain as he collapsed forward to the ground, but three words made it through his tortured groans in Old Vhaer.“Gran den skygga…”
Free your shadows.
My heart pounded as I rose onto my shaky legs, communing with myanoa.Black tendrils rummaged through my innards, squeezing the blood from them. They snaked around my ribcage, stringing my bones tight until they ached, threatening to crack into a million pieces and me right along with it.
It was too much. Too much.
“Malyr…” Harlen groaned where he clawed at the ground while the jailor kept pelting his strikes wherever they may land.“Skygga!”
Sweat broke across my forehead, running down along my temples in the same way my shadows veined across the ground toward the jailor. Or Harlen?
Memories of Mother ambushed my focus. How her jaws had gaped wide open. How my shadows had crept into her mouth, silencing her scream. The same shadows that flicked their black offshoots toward my brother.
