disgusting burnt meat and then shove my plate away, downing the single pitcher of water that was left for me. Toreon was right about one thing—having company is a distraction, one I welcome.
“Sable,” Medley starts, her voice softer as she addresses me.
“How do you know my name?”
She chews on her bottom lip, and when her lavender wings move, my gaze hooks onto something behind her. My eyes widen. “What...what is that?” I breathe, my voice shaky.
Medley looks over her shoulder, her eyes falling on the weapon I can’t take my gaze off of. It’s double-sided, a long staff of dark wood and metal bands, and two curved blades on either end, and even from here, I can tell they’re very sharp.
“That’s my scythe,” she says, and there’s a forlorn tone to her voice as she looks at it. I hear more than see Toreon go stiff as he straightens up to peer around us.
Call to your scythe, Sable. The memory of Morax’s order circles in my mind, and I swallow hard.
“How...why…” I shake my head, not even knowing what to address first. “Morax has been trying to get me to call a scythe. He thinks...I don’t know what he thinks,” I admit, combing my hand through my tangled, greasy black hair. “But you have one,” I say. The pieces are there, but I can’t fit this all together. “I don’t understand. And why is it in your cell with you?”
“Let me guess…” Toreon says. “Compulsion?”
Medley nods, anger and frustration clear on her face. A face that I can’t quit looking at, because there’s just something about it. “I can’t even reach for it,” she admits glumly. To demonstrate, she lifts her hand, but it’s like she gets blocked by an invisible wall, and she can’t move any closer. “See?”
“So it’s true?” I ask. “When he talks funny like that, he’s doing something to control people?”
“Yep,” Toreon replies, his eyes snagging onto me before he spreads out on his back, his arms stretching up as he rests his head on his hands. “But you...for some reason, you’re able to fight it.”
I look away from him, unsure if I should deny that fact or not. Hedging his observant revelation, I speak to Medley before she can ask me to confirm what Toreon just said. “But why did he leave your weapon in there with you?”
“Morax likes mind games,” Toreon says, once again answering me.
“Why does he have you?” I ask him pointedly, because maybe if I can figure that out, I can figure out how I fit into all of this.
But of course, he doesn’t reply. Figures. The prick only answers when he feels like it.
“Sable, how long have you been here?” Medley questions, her body as close to the bars that separate us as she can possibly be.
“I don’t know. Maybe a week?”
For some strange reason, her eyes flood with tears, and then they’re dropping down her cheeks, and I find myself staring at her gray gaze again.
“I’m so sorry, Sable.”
My brows pull together, but at that exact moment, a sharp, quick pain rips down my back, and my dark purple wings suddenly appear again. I flinch for a second as the appendages pull at me, weighing me down. “Why are...you sorry?” I ask, my teeth gritted as the echoes of pain wear off just as quickly as they came.
She watches my winged transformation with a wince, like she’s sympathetic to the pain they cause when they appear. “Because this is all our fault. We tried lookin’ for you and…” She shakes her head and brushes the tears away from her face. “We didn’t find you in time, and I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t understand. How could you even know to look for me?” I ask, brushing my hair—that’s now dark purple—out of my face. “Who are you?”
Her watery eyes lift to me, but that familiar nagging sensation suddenly snaps into place at exactly the same moment that she replies. “I’m your sister.”
6
I stare at her blankly as her words look for a perch in my mind, but stuff in my head is entirely too messy for something like I’m your sister to find an easy place to land. I study her gray eyes, the shape of her mouth, her cheeks, and the way her nose turns up slightly in a hauntingly familiar way.
I’m learning down here that there’s no point making friends with denial, because as enticing as it is to simply say to myself no way, I’m painfully aware that