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“I would die by a thousand cuts first.”
“That’s oddly specific,” Ben observed, looking him up and down.
“You look like you’re suffering exactly that—dying by a thousand cuts. Even though I can’t see physical proof on your person.”
Sai took a shaky breath that rippled throughout his frame in a full-bodied shudder.
For a while, he stood there with his head bowed, fists clenched, the horses and unicorns forgotten.
Ben wondered what was going through his mind. He seemed to be fighting an internal war. Ben didn’t know whether he was winning or losing.
“My body is healed,” he finally said quietly.
“But my mind…” he trailed off.
Ben waited for Sai to continue. He had a horrible feeling where this was going.
“My mind is back in that lightless salt pit,” Sai ground out in a guttural moan.
“My physical shell is whole, but I feel every puncture, every festering wound I have accumulated across the millennia of my imprisonment as if they are freshly made. I cannot escape the Master. I cannot escape my prison. At the end of the fortnight, I will be returned to them, one way or another.”
Ben didn’t argue. He went into full problem-solving mode.
“You can return to the seas when we get to Inverness. Wouldn’t you be free then? Wouldn’t the ocean make you strong enough to escape?”
Sai spared him a bloodshot gaze.
“I will not abandon Brigid. The Master will come for her soon. I will fight to the end to prevent her from falling into their clutches.”
“What if I promise you that Annie and I will help Brigid however we can? We are not without powers here. I’m pretty wicked with blades, as you’ve seen. I think…knowing what I know about the love between Mates, what I’ve seen from my parents, Tal and Ishtar, Ere and Sorin…I think Brigid would suffer more if you were imprisoned again. I think she’d want you to be free.”
“I won’t leave her,” Sai rumbled resolutely, the dragon’s resonant thunder underlining his words.
Ben stayed silent for a time, calculating all the angles of this particular problem.
“Then, you should tell her what’s going on with you,” he said.
“If she doesn’t know already, that is. Women, especially the ones who love you, have a sixth sense about these things. I think she would want to share your burden.”
Sai stubbornly shook his head, clamping his lips together to indicate that he would speak no more.
“You won’t leave her,” Ben mused, more to himself than his stubborn friend. “And I can guarantee that she won’t let you go. Well, there’s nothing for it then. Annie and I will fight alongside you.”
“Whoever this Master is, they will have to contend with all of us.”
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
“It is raining outside,” Brigid said, peering out of their small square bedroom window at the inn.
“Do you hear it? I have always loved the sound of rain.”
Sai couldn’t. Not with the endless droning in his ears.
The sound had grown louder, sharper and ever more insistent the farther into Scotland they traveled.
His head felt like it was splitting apart. Veins bulged beneath his skin at his temples from the endless pounding and that shrill screech trapped within his skull.
He didn’t complain. Instead, he focused on Brigid’s lovely face, her wistful smile, and deepened his breaths to push the pain down. To swallow back the acid that rose in his gorge.
