She might be fucked, but she wasn’t dying just yet.
Two bolts chained her to the wall—one around her right wrist, and one between her ankles. The chains had some slack, but not very much; she couldn’t crawl farther than halfway across the room.
She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced her back onto the floor. Her thoughts moved in slow, confused strains. She tried without hope to call the fire. Nothing happened.
Of course they’d drugged her.
Slowly, her tired mind worked through what had happened. She’d been so stupid, she wanted to kick herself. She’d been this close to getting out, until she’d caved to sentiment.
She’d known Vaisra was a manipulator. She’d known the Hesperians would come after her. But never had she dreamed that Nezha might hurt her. She should have incapacitated him in the barracks and snuck out of Arlong before anyone saw. Instead, she’d hoped they could have one last night together before they parted forever.
Fool, she thought. You loved him and you trusted him, and you walked straight into his trap.
After Altan, she should have known better.
She glanced around the room. She was alone. She didn’t want to be alone—if she was a prisoner then she needed to at least know what was coming for her. Minutes passed and no one entered the room, so she screamed. Then she screamed again and kept screaming, on and on until her throat burned.
The door slammed open. Lady Yin Saikhara walked into the room. She carried a whip in her right hand.
Fuck, Rin thought sluggishly, just before the whip lashed across her left shoulder to the right side of her hip. For a moment Rin lay frozen, the crack ringing in her ears. Then the pain sank in, so fierce and white-hot that it brought her to her knees. The whip came down again. Right shoulder this time. Rin couldn’t bite back her screams.
Saikhara lowered the whip. Rin could just see the barest tremble in her hands, but otherwise the Lady of Arlong stood stiff, imperious, pale with that raw hate that Rin had never understood.
“You were supposed to tell them,” Saikhara said. Her hair was loose and disheveled, her voice a tremulous snarl. “You were supposed to help them fix him.”
Rin crawled toward the far corner of the room, trying to get out of Saikhara’s striking range. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You creature of Chaos,” Saikhara hissed. “You snake-tongued deceiver, you pawn of the greatest evil, this is all your fault . . .”
Rin realized for the first time that the Lady of Arlong might not be entirely sane.
She raised her hands over her head and crouched against the back corner in case Saikhara decided to bring the whip down again. “What do you think is my fault?”
Saikhara’s eyes looked wide and unfocused; she spoke staring at a point a yard to Rin’s left. “They were going to fix him. Vaisra promised. But they came back from the campaign and they said they’ve come no closer to knowing the truth, and you’re still here, you dirty little thing—”
“Wait,” Rin said. Puzzle pieces fitted slowly together in her mind; she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen this connection before. “Fix who?”
Saikhara only glared.
“Did they say they’d fix Nezha?” Rin demanded. “Did the Hesperians say they could cure his dragon mark?”
Saikhara blinked. A mask froze over her features, the same mask her son and husband were so adept at.
But she didn’t have to say anything. Rin understood the truth now; it was lying so obviously before her.
“You promised,” Saikhara had hissed at Vaisra. “You swore to me. You said you’d make this right, that if I brought them back they’d find a way to fix him.”
Sister Petra had promised Saikhara a cure for her son’s affliction—this was the entire reason Saikhara had fought so hard to bring the Gray Company to the Empire. Which meant Vaisra and Saikhara had both known Nezha was a shaman all this time.
But they hadn’t traded him to the Hesperians.
No, they’d only jeopardized every other shaman in the empire. They’d handed her to Petra to repeat what Shiro had put her through, just for some hope of saving their boy.
“I don’t know what you think they’ll learn,” Rin said quietly. “But hurting me can’t fix your son.”
No, Nezha was likely going to suffer the dragon’s curse until he died. That curse had to be beyond Hesperian knowledge. That thought gave her some small, vicious satisfaction.