Laurence went first, and his last words were in a language I didn’t know, the rhythm of Estrel’s name between unfamiliar words all I recognized.
I stared at Estrel. There was a sound like ice cracking. Estrel flinched.
I did what she asked.
I didn’t watch.
“See what happens when you move against Demeine?” the guard asked.
He turned my head to see, and I closed my eyes. Safe in the dark.
They put the hood back on me, and they carted me back down the stairs, into the depths of Serre until I didn’t know where I had come from or where I was going, and only knew that I was in the dark and the dark was in me. They sent no one else to me. Days slipped away.
Alone, in the dark of the hood and cell, I stayed. Estrel’s shoes were too big, but I kept them on my feet. They were soft and simple, thin leather that knotted around the ankles, and I didn’t tie them. I couldn’t with my hands shackled behind me. Whatever deal she had made had saved me.
“I have to get out of here.” Yvonne might have been in danger. There was no telling what His Majesty would do to Coline. What if they had caught Isabelle? The war with Kalthorne wasn’t over. We, the country kids who became soldiers and hacks and varlets because we had no other way to survive, would die in a war we’d no business being in. The crown wore us down like magic—surely, slowly, till death. “I have to get out of here.”
The hood scratched my lips, fabric catching on the tears, and I walked the walls of the cell. Three of stones, one of bars, none of them more than three paces. What would Estrel do?
Die.
I shuddered. I couldn’t be sad. I couldn’t give in.
She was dead. She was dead. She was dead.
“They’re underestimating you.” Estrel’s voice was a distant whisper, broken, stuttering, but hers nonetheless, and the midnight arts trembled as she spoke. “What do we do to the people who underestimate us?”
“You’re dead,” I whispered.
She laughed. “You’re not. So do something.”
The hood was easy. I dragged my face down the wall, ripping it off. The shackles were sharp in my skin, the edges tight, and I stared at Estrel’s shoes, the magic in me gathering. It was night, the magic in the air too weak for what I wanted to do, so I channeled it until my nose bled and clotted, till my skin stung, till it hurt even to turn my head. Everything, I pushed into the shackles.
They shattered.
Power, unchecked, corrupted.
I yanked Estrel’s shoes from my feet and clutched them to my chest.
See what happens when you move against Demeine?
I set her shoes in front of me. In the left, in blood, was one word, and in the right was a time.
Scry. 4 morn.
I laughed. Of course she wouldn’t leave me alone, not like this. All I needed was a surface, a reflection, and I could see her again. I reached up and tore the spectacles from my eyes, yanking out hair and bits of pinched skin with them, and the thick, dark yellow lenses glinted in the dim light from my one narrow window.
I held the spectacles up to the light, metal arms gold, and carefully channeled as much power as I could bear into the metal.
“Well, this is fitting.” It was Estrel’s voice, but the vision was blurred, slanted like light in rippling water. I pulled more power and refocused. Her familiar hands curled around the bars of a cell like mine. Her knuckles were bloody and bruised. Two fingers were broken. “If he still thinks we’re the biggest threats and the Laurels are weak without us, he has another think coming.”
“What else was there for us to do?” a deep voice raspy with exhaustion asked. “Let them die so we could carry on? What is a country and its leader if they let children die?”
“Let us not have our last conversation be about philosophy.” Estrel pulled herself up until she was on her knees and leaning against the bars. Her red hair hung in knots stuck to her freckled face with sweat and blood, and one eye was completely swollen shut. She licked her lips. “Laurence, can you move?”
A hand, equally as broken and shackled as Estrel’s, covered hers. “I can. The real question is will my broken ribs pierce anything important when I do?”
“I know we left out the don’t-torture-us part on purpose