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“And that’s why he did the, you know.” Rowan points at the empty cavity of his eye socket. “He smiled as he did it, the sadistic fuck. And he said he’d take the other one if I tried again.”
Rowan’s voice fades, and the space between us fills with the echoing drip of distant water. I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight and too dry.
“Voids below,” I whisper.
Rowan tilts his head toward the ceiling. The golden light of my little sun illusion washes over the contours of his face, dancing across jagged ripples of dried blood and the pool of shadows that was once my brother’s shining blue eye.
“I’m gonna try again,” he says, in a voice so low it’s almost inaudible.
“Rowan,” I snap. “Stars above, you are not!”
My brother jolts like I’ve smacked him, then stares at me. His cocky grin and sarcastic sneer are gone, and for a heartbeat, he looks just like himself again.
Or, no, he looks like he used to be, small and scared and staring up at me with wide eyes, waiting to hear how his big brother would make everything right again. Waiting for me to take care of us both.
I force myself to breathe. “Okay,” I say. “What exactly is it they want you to do?”
Rowan leans forward, and then he tells me everything.
Chapter33
Alindra
SHE’S NOBODY
I’m trapped.
Something holds me. It’s long and cold and wrapped around me so tightly I can’t move. I can’t open my eyes. I can barely breathe. Panic surges inside of me, blinding and red, pulsing at the edges of my new prison.
Magic pulses back, cold and hard and all around me. It’s old magic, masterfully woven, smooth as polished stone. Loops and bands of magic slide over my body, pulling tight as they slither across my skin. Blood fills the back of my mouth, and my lungs ache. Magic? I can’t fight magic. I don’t have any magic!
Vulture, King Grathgore whispers from the back of my mind. Parasite, burying my head in someone else’s warm, living magic. Sucking someone else’s talent away, twisting it into something new. My eyes sting inside the tight bands of magic paralyzing my body. Stealing magic. Because I don’t have magic of my own.
Someone else’s magic. My breath catches in the back of my throat, then hisses through my lips as the bands of magic force my body to remain alive. I’m trapped in a spell, another magician’s tightly woven prison, and every move I make only pulls the bands of magic tighter around my body and mind.
Magic. I let my body breathe. The spell forces my lungs to make shallow little panting gasps, just enough to keep me alive and flooded with simmering panic. I try to let the panic go, to open my palms and release the little creature of feathers and rage that’s trapped inside my chest.
My breathing slows. I stop moving, stop pushing back against the spell trapping me. Cold, slick bands of magic weave around my body, low and tight, moving like a series of interlocking circles. Like a puzzle. I watch them click and hiss and pull, feel the slight variations in their texture, the occasional burr or rasp against my face, and the taste of metal and cold water on my tongue.
Someone else’s magic. It’s beautiful, this spell, with layers of detail I’m not sure I could master, not without years of study.
But ultimately, it’s just magic. And I’m a magician.
I wait until the slippery spell trembles against my arm as one of the strange irregularities in the pattern draws a slow arc over my body. Most of the spell is smooth as steel, impossible to break or even touch. But these burrs are little cracks in the magic. The crack slides over my skin. I wait until it crosses my palm.
And then I do what magicians do.
I take the magic.
It burns as I drag it into my body, oily and thick, simmering with resentment. It’s all I can do to keep breathing as stolen magic unwinds inside my lungs, my mouth, my nose, and then forces its way into my chest, and it’s only the memory of the old god’s magic burning inside of me that keeps me from screaming as I trap this dark spell inside the cage of my own ribs.
“Mine,” I growl.
The sound of harsh, ragged panting scrapes across my ears. My muscles scream in protest. My legs are pulled up tight against my chest, my arms ache, and my body tilts back and forth in a strange way, like the ground beneath me is heaving in great rolling waves. I’m shivering. Maybe I’m wet? Maybe underwater? A jolt of panic rustles the magic inside of me and forces my eyes open. Darkness. Nothing but darkness, and a strange hissing sound by my head. And… whispers?
I hold my breath. The hissing by my head continues. My body rocks forward and backward. The world slowly resolves itself. Thin blue light filters down from above and gleams off oily bars set in wood.
“So who in the nine hells is she?” someone whispers behind me.
