Brenna grabbed her and carried her some distance from the wagon. Kelsea tried to stay limp, but Brenna tickled her ribs, and Kelsea could not keep herself from an involuntary twitch.
“Don’t bother, True Queen,” Brenna muttered. “I know you have been awake for some time now. Feigning unconsciousness will not serve you.”
“What do you mean to do?” Kelsea asked.
Brenna did not reply, but the next flash of lightning revealed a wide, bestial grin. She looked different, younger, but Kelsea could not assess the change before the light faded again. A few more steps and the rain stopped pelting her face and body; they were in a shelter of some sort. Brenna dumped her without ceremony on a hard stone floor, and Kelsea yelped as she landed on her elbow.
“Wait here, little queen. I will not forget you.”
Kelsea gritted her teeth and tried to pull herself upright. With her hands tied behind her back, the best she could do was to wriggle on the floor. In desperation, she looked down at her chest and found the sapphire peeking out from her shirt. But no, it was the wrong sapphire, not the one she needed. Tear’s sapphire was not for inflicting wounds. Finn’s sapphire would have helped her here, but she had given it back to the Red Queen. Why had she done that? She could barely remember, and her mind gave her nothing but a flash of Arlen Thorne’s face.
After another minute Brenna returned, her grating footsteps tramping across the stone floor. With a thud and a sharp cry, the Red Queen landed beside Kelsea, and then Brenna moved away.
“Who is it?” the Red Queen whispered.
“Brenna. Arlen Thorne’s witch.”
“Witch indeed. I can’t find her at all.”
Kelsea nodded agreement. Brenna was like Row Finn; she had never existed clearly within Kelsea’s mind, as other people seemed to. So many children born after the Crossing, born with oddities that had filtered down to the present-day Tearling in such unpredictable ways. Magic was all over the Tear, if one took the trouble to look, and so much of it seemed to trace back to that one moment, the ships gliding through the hole in the horizon. But was the Crossing really at root, or was it Tear’s sapphire, the sapphire that ran underground all through the Tearling?
What has it done to us? Kelsea wondered, momentarily distracted. What has it done to all of us?
A match flared, and she saw Brenna’s silhouette across the room, crouching over a pile of sticks. They were in some sort of stone building without windows. Kelsea could hear rain pounding on the wooden roof. The place itself seemed long abandoned; a few chunks of wood in the corner were all that remained of furniture.
Brenna straightened, clapping her hands together to clear them of ash, and Kelsea saw that she’d been right: Brenna looked different. Her formerly white hair was honey-blonde, and her cheeks were bright with color.
“You’re no longer albino?” Kelsea asked.
“I never was. People are quick to believe the first foolish glance of their eyes.”
“What are you, then?” the Red Queen asked. Kelsea sensed her playing for time, but what good would that do them out here? Even if Mace and Pen had somehow managed to track them from Demesne, they would never find this place. Brenna had not stumbled upon an old abandoned house in the desert by accident. This place had been chosen.
“Mort Queen! My master spoke of you often.” Brenna glanced at the fire, which had strengthened, casting flickering shadows on the walls. “We will wait for the fire to build a bit, so we can all see well. Otherwise, this will not be nearly such good fun.”
“What are you?” Kelsea asked, following the Red Queen’s lead. Delay was better than nothing.
“I am a tool. My master’s useful tool.”
“What sort of tool?”
“You will not distract me, bitch. But I will tell you, as it pertains to the show.” Brenna said the final word with relish, and Kelsea shuddered. She smelled torture here, in one form or another. The woman’s excitement was too pronounced for anything less.
“Before I could even walk, our handlers in the Creche realized that I had a curious talent,” Brenna continued. “I absorb pain. Not physical pain, but pain of the mind, the heart. I could take a man’s worst memories, the most terrible things he had done or had done to him, and absorb them into myself. For the hour they paid for, my clients could be free of care.”
“I suppose people paid a high price for that.”
“Oh, they did.” Brenna squatted down and checked Kelsea’s bonds. “But the relief was only temporary. At the end of the hour, they had to take their pain back.”
“Ah,” Kelsea murmured, seeing Brenna’s strange value now. To certain parties, she would be worth a lifetime’s supply of morphia. “And what about Thorne?”
Brenna slammed the side of Kelsea’s face into the floor. Kelsea tasted blood in her mouth.
“You don’t say his name. I saw what you did. I saw—” Brenna fell silent. In that moment, she seemed distracted, but Kelsea could make no use of her distraction. The Red Queen was struggling to sit up, but she was having no more success than Kelsea. Playing for time was all they had left.