A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes #2) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,106

already have a name?”

“I don’t have a name.”

I lean against the wall, biting back a grimace as the boy splints my hand. “You’re smart,” I say. “Fast. What about Tas? In Sadhese, it means swift.”

“Tas.” He tries the name out. There is the hint of a smile on his face. “Tas.” He nods. “And you—you are not just Elias. You are Elias Veturius. The guards talk about you when they think no one is listening. They say you were a Mask once.”

“I took the mask off.”

Tas wants to ask a question—I can see him working himself up to it. But whatever it is, he chokes it back when voices sound outside the cell and Drusius enters.

The child rises quickly, gathering his things, but he’s not fast enough.

“Hurry up, filth.” Drusius closes the distance in two strides, aiming a vicious kick at Tas’s stomach. The boy yelps. Drusius laughs and kicks him again.

A roaring fills my mind, like water rushing up against a dam. I think of Blackcliff’s Centurions, their casual, daily beatings that ate away at us when we were Yearlings. I think of the Skulls who terrorized us, who never saw us as human, only as victims for the sadism bred into them, layer by layer, year by year, like complexity builds so slowly into wine.

And suddenly, I am leaping for Drusius, who has, to his detriment, gotten too close. I snarl liked a crazed animal.

“He’s a child.” I use my right hand to punch the Mask in the jaw, and he drops. The rage within breaks free, and I don’t even feel the chains as I rain down blows. He’s a child who you treat like garbage, and you think he doesn’t feel it, but he does. And he’ll feel it until he’s dead, all because you’re too sick to see what it is you do.

Hands tear at my back. Boots thunder, and two Masks veer into the cell. I hear the whistle of a truncheon and dodge it. But a punch to the gut takes the wind out of me, and I know that any moment I’ll be knocked into unconsciousness.

“Enough.” The dispassionate tone of the Warden cuts through the chaos. Immediately, the Masks back away from me. Drusius snarls and rises to his feet. My breath comes heavy, and I glare at the Warden, letting all my hate for him, for the Empire, fill my gaze.

“The poor little boy getting vengeance for his lost youth. Pathetic, Elias.” The Warden shakes his head, disappointed. “Do you not understand how irrational such thoughts are? How useless? I shall have to punish the boy now, of course. Drusius,” he says crisply, “bring a parchment and a quill. I will take the child next door. You will record Veturius’s responses.”

Drusius wipes the blood from his mouth, jackal eyes shining. “With pleasure, sir.”

The Warden grabs the Scholar child—Tas—cowering in the corner and pitches him out of the cell. The boy lands with a sickening thump.

“You’re a monster,” I snarl at the old man.

“Nature weeds out those who are lesser,” the Warden says. “Dominicus again. A great man. Perhaps it is good that he did not live to see how sometimes the weak are left alive to totter about, sniveling and puling. I am no monster, Elias. I am Nature’s assistant. A gardener of sorts. And I’m very handy with shears.”

I strain against my chains, though I know it will do no good. “Damn you to the hells!”

But the Warden is already gone. Drusius takes his place, leering. He records my every expression while beyond the locked door, Tas screams.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Laia

The feeling in my bones when I awake in the cellar safe house cannot be regret. But it is not happiness either. I wish I could understand it. I know it will only eat at me until I do, and with so many miles yet to travel, I cannot afford for my focus to erode. Distraction leads to mistakes. And I’ve made enough of those.

Though I don’t want to think that what happened earlier between Keenan and me is one of those mistakes. It was heady. Intoxicating. And filled with a depth of emotion that I did not expect. Love. I love him.

Don’t I?

When Keenan’s back is turned, I swallow the concotion of herbs that Pop taught me about—one that slows a girl’s moon cycle so that she cannot get with child.

I look to Keenan, quietly changing into warmer clothing in preparation for the next leg of our journey. He senses my