“Get her out,” Ryzek said, typing in the code so the cell door opened. “Let’s see if Kereseth is weak enough for this to work yet.”
I pushed off the wall, throwing myself as hard as I could at Vas as soon as he entered the cell. I slammed my shoulder into his gut, knocking him flat. He had grabbed my shoulders, but my arms were still mobile enough for me to claw at his face, drawing blood from the skin just under his eye. Ryzek stepped in, hitting me in the jaw, and I fell to the side, dizzy.
Vas dragged me over to Akos, so we knelt across from each other, barely an arm’s length of space between us.
“I’m sorry” was all I could think to say to him. That he was here was my fault, after all. If I hadn’t fallen in with the renegades . . . but it was too late for thoughts like that.
Everything inside me slowed as his eyes met mine, like I had stopped time. I looked him over carefully, like a caress, his tousled brown hair, the dusting of freckles on his nose, and his gray eyes, unguarded for the first time I could remember. I didn’t see the bruises or the blood that marked him. I listened to his breaths. I had heard them in my ear just after I kissed him, every exhale bursting a little, like he didn’t want to let it go.
“I always thought my fate meant I would die a traitor to my country.” Akos’s voice was rough, like he had worn away at it by screaming. “But you made it so I won’t.”
He gave me a small, wild smile.
I knew, then, that Akos wouldn’t give up information about his chancellor no matter what happened. I had never realized how deeply he felt his fate. Dying for the Noavek family had been a curse to him, as surely as falling to the Benesit family was to Ryzek. But because I had sided against my brother, if Akos died for me now, it meant he had never betrayed his home. So maybe it was all right that I had cost us both our lives by helping the renegades. Maybe it still meant something.
With that thought, it was very simple. We would be in pain, and then we would die. I settled into the inevitability of it.
“Let me be clear about what I want to happen here.” Ryzek crouched beside us, balancing his elbows on his knees. His shoes were polished—he had taken time to polish his shoes before torturing his sister?
I swallowed a weird little laugh.
“Both of you are going to suffer. If you give in first, Kereseth, you will tell me what you know about the fated chancellor of Thuv-he. And if you give in first, Cyra, you will tell me what you know about the renegades, and their connections to the exile colony.” Ryzek glanced at Vas. “Go ahead.”
I braced myself for a blow, but it didn’t come. Instead, Vas grabbed my wrist, and forced my hand toward Akos. At first I let it happen, sure my touch wouldn’t affect him. But then I remembered—Ryzek had said to see if Akos was “weak enough.” That meant they had been starving him for the days I had been in the prison; they had weakened his body, and his gift.
I strained against Vas’s vise-hand, but I wasn’t strong enough. My knuckles brushed Akos’s face. The shadows crept toward him, even as I silently begged them not to move. But I was not their master. I never had been. Akos moaned, his own brother holding him in place as he tried to flinch away.
“Excellent. It worked,” Ryzek said, coming to his feet. “The chancellor of Thuvhe, Kereseth. Tell me about her.”
I pulled my elbow back as hard as I could, twisting and thrashing in Vas’s grip. The shadows grew richer and more numerous the more I struggled, like they were mocking me. Vas was strong, and there was nothing I could do to him now; he held me steady with one hand and pushed my palm forward with the other, so it lay flat against Akos’s throat.
I could imagine nothing more horrible than this, Ryzek’s Scourge turned against Akos Kereseth.
I felt the heat of him. The pain inside me was desperate to be shared; it moved into him, but instead of diminishing in my own body the way it usually did, it only multiplied in us both. My arm shook from the effort of trying to pull away. Akos screamed, and so did I, so did I. I was dark with the current, the center of a black hole, a shred of the starless fringe of the galaxy. Every inch of me burned, ached, begged for relief.
Akos’s voice and mine met like two clasped hands. I closed my eyes.
In front of me was a wooden desk, marked with circles from water glasses. A pile of notebooks was scattered across it, and all of them bore my name, Cyra Noavek, Cyra Noavek, Cyra Noavek. I recognized this place. It was Dr. Fadlan’s office.