Chapter 28
Rowan
ai is injured. We’ve been captured. There is no way out. The reality of
our situation keeps repeating itself in my head over and over as the
mercenaries grab Kai and me, strip away our weapons and escort us
from the rooftops under guard.
I search the shadows for any sign of Logan, but don’t see the man
anywhere. I didn’t even see him make his escape. One moment he was there
on the roof with Kai and me, and the next he was gone. At least his
perfected disappearing act is working in our favor for once.
Kai is injured.
We’ve been captured.
There is no way out
Fury pounds through my veins, its heat filling my body. Keeping me
warm. Keeping me from collapsing in on myself, because the alternative to
fury is terror.
None of this is right. Mercenaries hired to attack cadets? Auric steel
weapons stolen and turned against us? My stupid body and its dizzy spells
throwing my team into harm’s way?
None of these things should ever have been permitted to happen. I
should never have been permitted to happen, not as a cadet, not as anything
but a backroom apothecary, with neither rank nor privilege. Collin was
right. I’m nothing but a liability. And I’ve just gotten Kai and me sentenced
to hell.
My fingers roll into fists, nails biting into my palms. The sting grounds
me, focusing the anger into a sharp point that lets me put one foot in front
of the other. This is wrong. It’s all unfair.
“They are not looking to kill us.” Kai says from beside me, his gaze
surveying every inch of the wet alley around us. Probably memorizing each
stone, and turn and person. He sounds calm and strong, but I know that’s a
lie because he is limping so badly that he is likely to fall on his face soon.
Not that he’ll let me put my arm around his waist and help him along. He’d
actually growled at me when I tried. Idiot. Stubborn idiot. Kai stretches his
shoulders. “We are worth infinitely more alive.”
“He isn’t wrong, girl,” says one of our escorts, a hulking man with a
craggy face marred by a network of scars. I think his name is Mercer. “Play
along with the game and everybody gets what they need. Cooperation is in
everyone’s benefit.”
That is decidedly not what I remember of the exercise rules, but I don’t
argue the point as Mercer rips my tag from around my neck, then does the
same to Kai. I know what’s coming next. Interrogation. So that they can sell
us along with our codewords back to the Spire. If that happens, I don’t think
either of us will live to graduation.
This can’t be how it all ends, at the hands of mercenaries and a war
game. Our lives have to have more meaning than that, don’t they?
“You weren’t here earlier in the day,” Kai says casually to Mercer, like
the two are on a stroll. Or a debrief. “I scouted. Unless I am so bad that I
missed a whole regiment?”
Mercer grunts, but answers a few steps later. “Only arrived closer to
nightfall. Take one more step toward her, and I’ll knock you unconscious.”
His voice hardens with the threat.
Kai stops inching toward me and holds his palms up, as if he’d gotten
caught going for a cookie jar and not in the middle of pissing off the people
who intend to torture us. The rain has matted his hair to his head and the
wet clothes clinging to his muscled body make him look like a god when
lightning strikes overhead. Which it does regularly.
Mercer, who looks like a hulking brute beside Kai, scowls.
I scowl too. Because if Kai had let me put my arm around him at the
start, staying close to each other wouldn’t have been suspicious. And
because Kai’s limp seems to be getting worse with each step.
“Not so pretty or smart now, are ya?” a man hollers drunkenly from an
open second story balcony of a rundown building.
I blink, hanging on to hope that the joy in the man’s voice isn’t really
directed at two drenched cadets, one of them obviously injured. The hope
dies with the next shout.
“Ey, merc-man, that one looks like he’s about to bolt,” a woman calls
toward Mercer. “Mayhap you should give him a good smack or two. Don’t
worry, these Spire heads are too thick to be damaged.”
Hoots and laughter follows. Despite the night and rain, the Doverly
residents are following our progress with cheers from windows and open
doorways. It’s as if they are watching a racehorse they’d bet on pulling into
the lead.
I suppose that’s exactly what our lives are to them. A gamble with a
promising payday. And I’d handed it to them.
My chest twists with irony when the four men escorting Kai and me
turn us toward the Wishing Well Inn. Instead of allowing us through the
main entrance, where multiple voices can be heard, Mercer opens a slanted
ground-level cellar door on the side of the building. The rusted metal hinges
creak their protest, but unveil a set of slick stone steps descending into
darkness. The dank, musty smell of mildew wafts up from below.
Mercer gives me a shove and I nearly fall into the darkness, except for
Kai catching my elbow before I can tumble.
“You are alright. Just take one step at a time,” despite his ragged
breathing, his touch is preternaturally steady. For now. “I’m right behind
you.”
I trail my hand along the rough stone wall for balance as I descend into
the darkness, the only light coming from a single flickering torch one of the
mercenaries carries. There is another door at the bottom. Mercer shoves it
open with his boot, revealing a dimly lit cellar. The ceiling is low, supported
by rough-hewn wooden beams. Crates and barrels line the damp stone
walls, keeping company to sacks of old root vegetables. This must be the
cellar I’d heard the mercs mention earlier, but it’s empty now.
Once everyone is past the door, Mercer grabs a set of manacles from a
box he must have staged for this very purpose and tosses them at my feet.
They clatter, making me flinch.
“Put these on him,” Mercer grunts.
I hesitate, looking at Kai’s leg. Blood is still seeping steadily from the
wound beneath the torn fabric. “He’s—”
Mercer’s hand flies up, readying to strike and I brace myself.
“Do as you are ordered,” Kai tells me harshly, lowering himself on an
overturned crate. I obey, my cold fingers fumbling with the metal before
securing it on Kai. His whole goes taught at my touch, as if I’m prodding
him with a branding iron. I may not be a trained healer like Collin, but even
I know that something is very wrong. The bastards got—and wasted—auric
steel arrows. Did they put poison on them too?
I’m careful to keep my thoughts to myself as Mercer orders me to
shackle my own legs in turn, watching intently until the mechanism shuts
with a dull click and hobbles me to a distance of about eighteen inches.
“Mercer,” one of the mercs calls gruffly and looks pointedly at the door.
The others are shifting in their spots as well, all looking anxious to get back
outside and hunt. I can’t blame them. They just got here and don’t want to
give up the element of surprise. Once word gets out that the mercs are here,
no one will go anywhere near Doverly.
Mercer lingers for a beat longer, but quickly grunts his assent to the
men. With a final order to lock the door, he leads his hunting party back to
the prowling grounds, leaving us alone. For now.
The moment the cellar door slams shut, leaving only a torch against the
darkness, Kai is up and shuffling to the door.
“They locked it,” I say into his back.
He tests it anyway, then checks the other one we’d come through, nearly
falling on his way back.
I carefully shuffle over to the torch, bringing the light closer to the
overturned crate. “Let me check your leg,” I say, securing the torch.
“I’m fine.”
“And I’m a mystical fae warrior who eats human children for
amusement.”
“Hilarious.” Kai moves around the room, picking out some odds and
ends. I’d be grateful for his fighting attitude if he didn’t look a step away
from collapsing. The hand he keeps on the wall for balance isn’t fooling
me. “The mercs are going to stay busy for a bit. They’ll want to make the
most of the element of surprise and the darkness to see who else they can
capture. That gives us time. Us and Logan.”
Logan. “Where did he go?” I ask.
“Down the side of the building.”
“I don’t remember seeing that. One moment he was there and then…
then he wasn’t.”
Kai gives me a small irritated sigh. “Because he wasn’t there. He left.
I’m happy to go with your Logan dissolved into thin air theory, so long as
the rest of this can stay grounded in physics. Point being, I trust Logan to
work out where we’ve been taken and help get us out. But we are going to
have to survive until then. Do you understand?”
“Do I understand?” I cross my arms, that anger from the alley boiling
up again. Or maybe that’s fear. I can’t tell. “I am not the one trying to kill
myself, Grayson.”
“I’m—”
“If you say you are fine, then I’m going to punch you in the face. And
given how you are wobbling, that may actually be a genuine threat.” I rub
my face with my hands. Kai may be lethal, and gorgeous, and in command
of our entire fusion year, but he was also a stubborn asshole. And I’ve
already learned my lesson about trusting him blindly. About trusting any of
the triad.
“I was going to say that I am as I am. There is nothing you can do.” He
leans his back against the wall, the faint light from the flickering torch
casting long, ominous shadows over his features. “The bleeding isn’t life
threatening. You try to pull the arrowhead out, and it might become so.
Basic battlefield medicine.” He spits the last few words out aggressively.
I cross my arms over my chest. “That’s auric steel in your leg. Or did
that detail slip your mind?”
“Auric steel affects fae, not humans. Unless you think that’s what I am?
Because then we’ve bigger problems than a piece of steel in my calf.”
That heated anger roils through me again, driving up my pulse. “I was
going to tell you to quit being condescending, but that would mean
attributing to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.” I take a step
toward him, forgetting that I’m shackled and promptly trip.
Kai shoves away from the wall, somehow managing to catch me. A
grunt of pain escapes from his throat and he drops to one knee, breathing
deeply.
“Right. You are fine,” I mutter. “You are as fine as I am coordinated.”
I pull away from his grasp. “First off, auric steel isn’t something that’s
just laying around. Someone with enough connections and money to get
auric steel weapons is not beyond dipping them in other things. And from
the way you are deteriorating, there is something on that arrowhead that is
wreaking havoc with your body. And second,” I poke my finger into his
chest, finding it rock hard beneath his wet tunic. “I’m an alchemist. That’s
my steel in there. I can get it out. So stop being an ass, shut up, sit down
and give me your gods’ damn leg before you are unconscious and I’m left
here all alone to deal with whatever Mercer has up his sleeve next.”
I don’t realize that I’m crying until a tear slips down my cheek and
lands on the floor.
I wipe it angrily from my face. “Sit the fuck down Grayson,” I order.
And this time, he does.
