Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,153

Silence rang in the hall, deep as centuries. The world holding its breath.

And then the weaver clenched her fists.

The blow was white-hot flame and rusted razors. Lemon and salt rubbed into a fresh and bleeding wound, torn in four ragged strips across her back and peeling her lips back from her teeth in a silent scream.

Every muscle seized tight. Her back tore like paper. Mia bucked against the stone, her grip on Tric’s fingers tightened as fear rushed in to the empty void after the whiplash faded. Great, freezing tidal waves of it, crashing over her head and dragging her down. Every second bleeding into forever. Every moment spent waiting for the next blow to fall was its own agony. She found herself praying for it, just so the pause would end. And then it fell, tearing across her back in four lines of perfect pain.

She threw back her head. Mouth open but refusing to scream. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Jessamine and Diamo. Solis. She could feel their stares. Taste their smiles. The blood flowed warm and thick down her back, pooled on the empty shadow at her feet. The Weaver struck again, the sound of invisible whips cracking across the air, the pain incandescent. Still she hung on to Tric’s hand, clung to that single, burning thought; that no matter how much it hurt

(crack)

no matter how much she wanted to

(crack)

she would never

(crack)

let them

(crack)

hear

(crack)

her

(crack)

scream.

But by the tenth strike, she’d lost her grip on Tric’s hand. By the twelfth, she’d lost her grip on her terror, and the cry spilled from her lips, long and thin and trembling. She could feel Tric’s hand groping for hers, but she curled her fingers into a fist. Lowered her chin and pressed her forehead to the stone. No crutches. No passengers. No one beside her. No one inside her. Just she (crack) and the pain (crack) and the fear (crack). All of them one.

Light-headed now. Drifting but still awake. Held somewhere between consciousness and oblivion by the sorcerii and their magiks. A brief respite dawned after the twentieth scourge, the warmth flowing back up her legs, reentering her severed veins and sundered arteries, ending the winter threatening to overwhelm her. She heard Tric’s whisper from somewhere far away

“Mia take him back…”

grinding her forehead upon the stone, blood in her eyes

“Mia please…”

The dark loomed before her now. The nightmare lurking behind the wall of sleep. And as the weaver struck again, the agony flaring anew and ripped in a wordless howl from her throat, the wall began to crumble. No waking state to hold them in check, here on the edge of oblivion. No shadowcat perched above the bed, watching with his not-eyes for the nightmares to come calling. Just she. Little Mia Corvere. Alone in the dark as it swelled ever deeper, fear rushing faster, madness creeping closer. And there in the paper-thin black, so little left between them and her and her and them, she finally saw the things that had haunted her sleep all these years with her waking eyes.

(crack)

Not phantoms.

(crack)

Not nightmares.

(crack)

(crack)

(crack)

Memories.

CHAPTER 27

TRUEDARK

Don’t look.

Mia stole through the hallways of bloody stone, wrapped in a darkness so deep she could barely see. Bodies. Everywhere. Men choked and stabbed. Beaten to death with their own chains and bludgeoned to death with their own limbs. The sound of murder ringing all around, the stink of offal thick in the air. Vague shapes running past her, tangling and screaming on the floor. The cries ringing somewhere far away, somewhere the dark wouldn’t let her hear.

She slipped inside the Philosopher’s Stone like a knife between ribs. This prison. This abattoir. Down past the open cells to the quieter places, where the doors were still sealed, where the prisoners who didn’t wish to try their luck in the Descent were still locked, thin and starving. She threw the shadowcloak aside so she could see better, peering through the bars at the stick-thin scarecrows, the hollow-eyed ghosts. She could see why folks would try their luck in the Senate’s horrid gambit. Better to die fighting than linger here in the dark and starve. Better to stand and fall than kneel and live.

Unless, of course, you had a four-year-old son locked in here with you …

The scarecrows cried out to her, thinking her some Hearthless wraith come to torment them. She ran the length and breadth of the cell block, eyes wide. Desperation now. Fear, despite the cat in her shadow. They must be here somewhere? Surely the