Retribution, p.49
Retribution, page 49
“Promise me,” I said urgently. “That you’ll help her. Promise.”
“Sure, sure, I promise. On my honor as Sovereign,” he said, lapsing into an amused smile. “Just hurry up and release me.”
Working quickly, I forced open the manacles. Kiros squirmed as the spike inside his wrist shifted, and I shot him a warning look to be still. Slowly, I eased the rune-covered spike free of his wrist. As I did—interposing my body between Kiros and what I was doing—I very quickly but carefully stabbed one of my newly created artifacts into the same wound before it could heal over.
“Damn, careful what you’re doing. That hurts,” Kiros moaned.
The artifact was slightly smaller in both length and thickness than the spike, and as soon as it had been inserted and the spike fully removed, the flesh of Kiros’s wrist began to knit back together.
With the second artifact hidden in the palm of my hand, I moved around him and repeated the process on the other side, then much more quickly released the manacles around his ankles.
After releasing the last of the chains, I stepped back.
Kiros groaned, stretching his back and rolling his shoulders. Then, with an almost lazy motion, he backhanded me across the chest, sending me hurtling down the hallway. I felt myself bounce off one of the other shielded cells, then crumpled into a heap on the floor. My vision went in and out for a moment, the hallway wobbling violently around Kiros’s muddled form as he stalked in my direction.
In the distance behind me, a silvery halo of blurry hair peered around the corner…
“Pathetic creatures,” Kiros mused under his breath as he stared down at me. “Why the High Sovereign has such a perverse interest in—”
Kiros spun around, facing Cecilia, who had lifted up off the floor and was flying toward us.
“Perhaps if I take Lord Indrath your heads, I’ll be allowed back into Epheotus!” Kiros shouted at her, his hands coming up as if to wrap around the handle of a weapon. Mana seethed and boiled around him, condensing into a shapeless mass in his fists, then bursting apart again, crashing like a tsunami through the hallway.
I groaned as the force slammed me down into the floor, and lights swam in front of my eyes.
Kiros snarled as even he was struck with enough force to be driven back into the wall by his own failed magic. He stared down at his hands in shock, but he had very little time to wonder what had just happened before Cecilia was on him. Even weakened by imprisonment and limited mana, he was far superior to Cecilia physically, and his huge hands balled into fists as he crouched and prepared to meet her head on.
Every cell barrier in the hallway blinked out at once, and dozens of sets of chains struck at him, looking like nothing less than metal vipers snapping and lunging to wrap around his arms, legs, throat, and waist, wherever they could find purchase.
“No, release me, I command you!” he shouted, his voice cracking.
Cecilia landed before him, leaning slightly to the side to see around him to me. I only stared back from where I lay awkwardly splayed across the floor, giving no indication if I was alive or dead, although I felt certain she would sense my mana well enough to know I wasn’t fatally wounded. The angrier she was, however, the higher likelihood of success we had.
Mana surged around Kiros again, spilling out of him and choking the breath from me, but Cecilia was unphased. His control over mana was too imprecise with my artifacts implanted directly into his wrists. Every muscle of his towering form flexed against the chains, and a couple even broke with the sound of shearing metal, sending a spray of sharp steel pinging off the walls and ceiling, but for every one that shattered, two more snapped out to bind him.
“What were you thinking, Nico?” Cecilia snapped, again glancing past Kiros to me. I didn’t respond, and so her attention moved back to the struggling Vritra. “You shouldn’t have attacked him. I bore you no ill will, Sovereign Kiros, I was even sorry to see what Agrona was putting you through. So why?”
“A…mistake,” he choked out around the chains, which were imbued with so much mana that they were beginning to glow like metal left in a hot forge. “I can…see that…now. Release me, and I’ll…help you kill him.”
I held my breath. Everything hinged on this moment.
Cecilia’s expression crashed down into a confused scowl. “What?”
“Together…we can kill…Agrona…”
Teeth bared, Cecilia reared back and slashed with her hand. A scythe of cutting wind and white fire bit into the basilisk’s neck and chest, spinning his body half around. The wound had barely left a scratch.
Cecilia pulled the chains tight, but Kiros let out a low, dangerous laugh. Without attempting to channel mana again, he flexed against the chains, and another broke, then another.
“You may be strong enough to drain the life from the shriveled remains of a long-imprisoned phoenix, girl, but I am of the Vritra, a Sovereign of this land, this world. Your strength is as of yet nothing next to—”
Kiros cut off with a choked gasp. Mana was pouring from him, streaming free like water through a ruptured dam.
Cecilia was taking it.
I did everything I could not to let my smile show through.
Kiros tried to speak, but he couldn’t. The chains around him grew continually tighter as his body diminished, shrinking in on itself, the mana that kept it strong and full of vitality no longer present.
Standing, I maneuvered carefully around the web of chains that bound him until I stood at Cecilia’s side. Her entire body trembled, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of her eye like a scarlet teardrop. Although I couldn’t see mana particles like she could, I was very aware of the way her physical body seemed to strain against the ocean of basilisk mana. Her core had no room for it, and so it filled every muscle, bone, and organ. Mana was bleeding from her veins into the atmosphere, but even that she grabbed and pulled back. Then, with a gasp, she had finished.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. “Cecil, are you—”
Suddenly her body was limp and falling. I grabbed her in my arms and eased her to the ground, wiping the blood off her cheek. She was unconscious, but her breath continued steadily, even though her heart was pounding like she’d been running for days on end.
As I stared down at her, hoping this had been the right course of action, another ping warned me of someone else approaching just as I felt the sudden swell of his mana grasping like claws at the entire level.
Spinning, I conjured blood iron spikes from the chains, focusing my entire mind, all my will and mana, on the task. What remained of Kiros’s body nearly exploded with them, dozens on dozens rending his withered flesh, pulling him apart into an unrecognizable, bloody mess. I felt a few of the spikes shearing into the fragile artifacts in his wrists, releasing a slow trickle of Kiros’s captured mana.
Just like the last vestiges of mana leaving a dead mage’s body.
Then, with terrifying suddenness, I was immobile, entirely frozen, my mind and body no longer connected.
“What is the meaning of this!” Agrona snarled from behind me, his uncontained rage threatening to flay the skin from my bones.
My body spun around to face him, and his scarlet eyes burrowed into mine. I could feel the probing of his magic worming into my brain.
“What happened?” he asked, only slightly calmer.
I swallowed heavily as my facilities were partially returned to me. Not enough that I could move, but I was at least able to blink and speak. “I was talking to Kiros when Cecilia came to find me. She overheard him speaking of treason, and in her rage, she attacked him. His magic overwhelmed her, and she fell unconscious, but he was weak enough that I managed to destroy him before he could do any more harm.”
The tendrils in my mind shifted about, poking and prodding each statement to verify its truth. I held that idea very carefully, confirming to myself that every word I’d just said was true.
“But what were you doing down here?” Agrona asked after a long pause, and the tendrils dug deeper. “Why did you threaten those assigned to this level?”
I was suddenly grateful that my body wasn’t my own, as I felt the overwhelming urge to squirm with discomfort under Agrona’s unblinking gaze. “I was afraid. I wanted to know…I had to ask, if she could really do it. Do the things you expect of her, defeat the other asura clans.”
Agrona’s thin brows rose in surprise. Then his gaze shifted to the ruined corpse behind me. “Well? Do you have your answer?”
I tried to nod but couldn’t. “I—I do, High Sovereign.”
I sagged in on myself, my body seeming simultaneously very light and very heavy, but it was mine again. I rubbed my chest where Kiros’s backhand had caught me.
Agrona bent low and eased Cecilia’s prone form from the floor, cradling her like a child. As he turned his back on me, he asked, “Did she drink from Kiros’s mana, Nico?”
I stared through him, past him, into the distance, completely out of this world. I imagined I was looking into a new world, a different one. In that alternative version of this world, she hadn’t. I could see it. So clearly. I made myself believe what I was seeing with every fiber of my being. “No, High Sovereign.”
Agrona hummed softly as he carried Cecilia down the hall. Before turning the corner, he glanced behind him and past me to the corpse, where he no doubt saw the last bits of Kiros’s mana trailing off into nothing.
413
FALSE MEMORIES
CECILIA
My entire body quaked with convulsions that I couldn’t suppress as the power within me clawed and hammered its way out. Beneath me, the small bed I’d finally come to accept as my own rattled against the floorboard, the wooden frame crackling like pine needles in a fire. My eyes wouldn’t close, instead staring wide-eyed around the unadorned room, the line of their gaze determined more by wherever my head bucked and bounced than any intention of mine.
There was a furious punching sensation against the inside of my chest, and for a wild moment, I was certain the power was trying to rip its way out of me. Then I heard voices behind the heavy iron door of my room, and I realized the sensation was only my heartbeat as it gave a sickening lurch.
I wanted to shout out, tell them to go away, that there was no way they could approach. It was too much this time. I could see the ki in the air, cutting in every direction.
But the door was opening, and I could not push air through my constricted throat.
Framed within the opening, I could just make out Headmaster Wilbeck and a couple of others. Randall, the big man who helped clean up after all of us children, was leaning forward, one hand up to shield his eyes from the energy whipping around inside my room. He hesitated, and just before he forged forward, a much smaller figure darted into the room in front of him.
Nico, I thought, my heart seizing with equal parts fear and gratitude.
Nico dodged a blast of ki that hit Randall in the chest, lifting the big man up and throwing him back into the wall.
“You can’t!” I said, the words finally grinding out between my clenched teeth. “You’ll get h-hurt.”
But something was wrong. Whether caused by the storm of ki destroying the room or my own weakening sense of perception, Nico was beginning to blur—or rather, Nico stayed brightly, vibrantly clear, the clearest thing in the room, while a blurry halo surrounded him. I tried to focus, but staring at the halo made my head ache terribly.
Nico was crawling toward me, reaching out for me. I couldn’t look right at him, and so turned away, but I could still see him out of the corner of my eye. The crystal clear image of Nico and the fuzzy halo separated into two individual images.
One was Nico, clean and clear, his face set in a heroic grimace as he powered through the onslaught of ki my fit was unleashing.
The other, the blurry image, was a boy our age, sweat pouring down a face twisted in desperation as ki swelled within him.
The bed came apart, the feathers and fabric and chunks of wooden frame swirling up into the air and spiraling around me like they were trapped in a miniature tornado. I felt myself being lifted up. The two boys were as well, Nico pulled to one side, the blurry boy to the other. Every few seconds, they would overlap, becoming one figure, then burst apart again, tumbling end over end.
Then the room was coming apart, then the orphanage, as the storm of my ki grew and grew, peeling away layer after layer of the world and leaving it all bare.
Nico and the blurred boy suddenly split into dozens of copies of themselves, each slightly different, like light through a kaleidoscope. They began to fall like snowflakes, drifting down into as many overlapping scenes, pictures of my life—memories—each one played side by side, Nico—still crisp and visible—going through the same motions as the blur that moved like a shadow just behind him.
My eyes snapped open.
Leaning over, I released the pressure that had been building within me. An attendant shoved a bucket under my face just in time to catch the contents of my stomach, and someone patted my hair and cooed soft comforting noises.
“Tell the High Sovereign she’s awake,” a disembodied voice said quietly from nearby.
Now that the dream was over, my waking mind could feel the gaps between the dual memories—places in my brain where Agrona had replaced my original memories with manufactured ones. But even acknowledging them was like sticking a finger into an open wound, triggering another wave of vomiting that made my mind go blank.
Grey, I realized, the context of the memories bleeding through the haze obscuring my mind’s eye. So much Grey in my life…so many empty holes filled in or paved over with Nico…
Feeling a surge of nauseous panic that triggered another wave of vomiting, I tried to search my memories for the parts much later in our relationship, times I’d never fully come to terms with when seen through this body, terrified of what I would find.
But…those were intact. That was real. Our love was real.
As the nausea eased from my tired aching body, I leaned back and closed my eyes, catching only a glimpse of the dark-haired attendant who reached out with a rag to clean my lips and chin.
“There now, love, you just relax,” she said with a hint of Vechorian lilt.
I had no sense of the passage of time and lost all coherence as my thoughts drifted through the inner landscape of my consciousness. I could feel the fault lines between real and manufactured memories in the same way one’s tongue feels the gap of a missing tooth. Without any direct guidance, my mind seemed to rush from memory to memory, exploring the inner depths of itself, mapping out and making sense of the shift in my awareness.
Whether a minute or an hour later, a stifling presence appeared at my side, pushing everything else away to make room for itself.
My eyes fluttered open. Agrona was at my bedside, gazing down at me with a slight frown that communicated both worry and concern.
“How do you feel?” he asked, his scarlet eyes locked onto mine. “My best doctors and healers have been to see you, and they say that, physically, you are unharmed.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him, the words feeling scratching in my throat. When the horns spreading above his head tilted slightly, I said, “Honestly. He didn’t hurt me.”
Agrona, whose hands were clasped behind his back, was entirely motionless as he asked, “Cecilia, can you tell me what you were doing in that cell block?”
I furrowed my brows, putting on a frustrated frown, and looked at my feet. “Forgive me, Agrona. I know I shouldn’t have been, but…” I trailed off as I felt the tendrils of Agrona’s magic probe my mind. Like fingers kneading the soft tissue of my consciousness, they searched out my thoughts, hunting for both truth and untruth. But…
“Go on,” he said, still motionless.
“Nico’s attendant, Draneeve, came to me…said that Nico was acting strangely, that he was obsessed with the idea that Sovereign Kiros had information we needed, something he was afraid to ask you. Draneeve said that Nico had snuck down to interrogate the Sovereign, and so I followed.”
As I spoke, I kept half my mind on the probing magic. It traced along the pathway of my thoughts and caressed the words as they formed in my head, even before they reached my tongue. I’d felt this same sensation a hundred times before, but something was different just then.
“I should have come to you and told you straight away,” I admitted, letting my eyes drift shut. “Kiros tried to kill me.”
Strong fingers gripped my chin and turned my head slightly. When I opened my eyes, I was staring up into Agrona’s face. “Yes, you should have. Nico was foolish not to ask me his questions directly, and you were foolish for chasing him down to save him. That is a weakness, one easily exploited by those out to do you harm, even right here in Taegrin Caelum. If you truly wish to win me my war and return to your original lives, you need to keep him safe.” Agrona’s nose wrinkled slightly in distaste. “Especially from himself. Which may mean shortening his leash.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said noncommittally.
I always found it difficult to discuss these kinds of things with Agrona. He made it sound so simple, when in reality it was anything but. Nico was sensitive, self-conscious, and prone to heroics. I knew he felt increasingly sidelined by my increasing power, something he found very difficult to manage. Not because he wanted to be the strongest or most important, but because he wanted to keep me safe.
“Where is he?” I asked, suddenly realizing that Nico hadn’t been present when I’d woken up, and what that might mean. “Nico?”
Agrona gave me an understanding smile and reached out to brush his fingers over my hair. “He’s been temporarily confined until I could gain a more complete understanding of the events with Kiros. I will see that he is released to come see you immediately. Now that I know you are unharmed, though, I’ll leave you to rest.”
