I weakly turned my gaze to Poe.
“Let me die,” I whispered to her. If I bled enough, I could die like a regular mortal. In this state I would never be able to fight my way free of them. If they had enough peaceroot, they could keep me captive for a long time. They wouldn’t care about the vicious headaches caused by use of the herb. They could drain me as many times as they wanted. Perhaps they could even figure out a way to use my own blood and potions to force me to write for them. I prayed they wouldn’t use enough peaceroot to cause me to suffer the worst effects—necrosis of the fingers and toes.
Poe ducked her head and kept stitching, refusing to meet my eyes.
Nismae came over and crouched beside me.
“I wouldn’t dream of letting you die.” She brushed a lock of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear as gently as a lover. “This is just the beginning.”
I shuddered, and a tear traced its way down my cheek.
“This is the least you can offer after the way you lied to me,” Ina cut in. “Your gift is what got us into this situation in the first place. Now it will make me queen.” The iciness of her voice froze me to the bone.
Poe bandaged my arm and tipped some liquid into my mouth. The bitter tang of it numbed my tongue, making my insides feel as though they were stuffed full of clumps of raw wool. My Sight faded into nothingness until my eyes were as ordinary as any mortal’s. By the time Nismae’s soldier returned to the room, I couldn’t even sense the second soul of his manifest in his body. I was blind.
“Put her up top by herself in one of the one-way chambers,” Nismae said. She pulled a loop of keys out of her pocket and unhooked an ornate one with a green stone mounted in the center of the bow. “Bring this back to me after you leave her.”
The large warrior took the key, slung me over his shoulder, and headed for the door through which Ina had come in. I tried to claw at him, to fight, to do something to get him to let me go. It took mere seconds for me to realize the futility of it. I couldn’t move the fingers on my left hand. The knife must have severed tendons. Without my magic, I had nothing.
The warrior carried me up flights and flights of stairs. My arm throbbed with every step he took, and I fell deeper into shock. When I thought we could surely ascend no farther without reaching a level of the building the same height as the top of the cliff we’d come down, the warrior inserted the key into a lock in the wall and then stepped through into a tiny turret room. It had only one notable feature—an empty archway that opened to the outside. The room stood so high that I could see the far side of the canyon. We’d risen above the fog. Night had begun to fall in halos of peach and purple that cut through the sky from the west like broken promises.
He set me on top of a ratty straw-stuffed pad through which I could feel every uneven spot on the stone floor, then manifested into a red-tailed hawk and winged out into the dying light. I lay on my side, staring through the archway with tears blurring my vision. When night finally fell, the stars glittered like vicious sparks in the velvet dark, reminding me that everything that had happened tonight was just like them—unchangeable and true.
CHAPTER 21
DAYS PASSED IN A HAZY STRING AS THE NIGHTSWIFTS let me heal. They took me to bathe often, no doubt to reduce the chances of infection in my wound. Meager portions of food were delivered twice each day, accompanied by tea that was syrupy with peaceroot and a substance that dulled my pain and left me too exhausted to do anything but sleep. I tried to avoid the tea, but they offered me no other liquid. Those who delivered it were never familiar and always left through the window by manifest as birds. My pleas to see Hal and questions about what they were doing with my blood were met with silence. Eventually I gave up speaking.
Wind eddied in the tower room, leaving me always cold. During my wakeful moments alone, which were few, my head pounded from the peaceroot and anxiety prevailed. I feared Nismae would come back for more blood, or worse, with a way to make me write the future for her. I searched every crevice of the room one-handed for some sign of the door through which we had come in. No evidence of it existed. The room was completely empty except for the chamber pot in the corner. They’d taken my satchel and cloak, leaving me with nothing but the clothes I’d come in wearing—and Veric’s letter, still tucked between my bodice and skin.
My arm slowly healed but brought no function back to my hand. I mourned its loss, and in my coherent moments raged that if I’d been free, I might have been able to do something about it. There were stronger poultices for the wounds. Fire-flower tinctures that would have better dulled the pain.
The few times I was awake at sundown, I sang vespers to try and calm myself. If Hal was anywhere nearby, he had to hear them. At first I thought the songs might lead him to my prison, but it was a foolish hope.
Sometimes I dreamed of him. In those dreams he had golden wings, and we flew away from the tower, from everyone, all the way to the end of the earth. There I no longer had to worry about Atheon, the Fatestone, royal vendettas, or stolen blood. At the end of the world we lay on a bed of stardust in the empty black of the sky. He surrounded me with the light and magic of those golden wings and held me close, telling me this had all been a mistake, a bad dream, and he would never leave me again.
I woke up hating him for the lies my own mind told me, and angry with myself for longing for a fantasy that could never come true. The more time passed, the more furious I became. Why hadn’t he tried to listen from afar to discern Nismae’s latest plans instead of walking me right into the arms of the enemy? Perhaps he’d known all along what she was going to do or how quickly she’d turn on me if she saw a way to use me. I tried to fight the way the anger twisted my insides, begging me to turn into something as dark and vengeful as everyone who had hurt or abandoned me.
Some days the anger lost. Some days it won.
One morning in the pale light of dawn, I stood in the archway with my toes hanging over the edge. The scent of green and growing things came in on the breeze, and I knew spring had come without me. Below, the brume lay soft and white as a blanket. It almost looked as though it wouldn’t hurt to fall. I spent several long minutes there, weighing whether it would be better to let Nismae take more of my blood, or to jump. I didn’t want to die, but the thought of her using me as a weapon was worse. All life is precious, Miriel used to say. In the end, I went back to my pallet, turning to face the wall. My abilities were the only hope to change the mistake that had begun this story—the fall of Amalska. If I died, all hope of that would be lost.
When Nismae finally came, it was only to check on my wound and to declare me healed enough for her to take more blood. When she examined me, I struck at her with my other hand, succeeding only in leaving a long scratch down the soft flesh on the underside of her arm.
“I see what Hal appreciates in you,” she said.
Anger flared in my breast.
“You’re making a mistake,” I told her.
“No, I’m getting what I want and what this kingdom needs. You’ll be free to go as soon as my goal is achieved. Hal doesn’t seem to think you’ll be inclined to stay nearby.”
So Hal was on her side, was he? Why had I ever trusted him? Nismae stood up, indicating for the man accompanying her to bind my hands and feet so that I wouldn’t be able to attack when they returned for my blood.