Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(57)

I couldn’t read Aaru’s expression anymore. His throat remained silent against his voice; so was his face against his feelings.

“Why don’t you sit?” Altan didn’t make it sound like an invitation as he motioned me toward a small table and chairs near the wall.

My hands shook too badly for me to move my chair out. Altan laughed and did it for me, a knowing smirk on his face. Then, he pulled off his jacket, as though settling in, and draped it over the back of the other chair. I didn’t like this helpful, casual Altan. I didn’t trust him.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to think about why you kept a secret from me, and what that secret is actually worth. While you consider, we’re both going to test that Idrisi boy. What does it take to make him sing?”

The thought of Aaru singing would have made me laugh if I didn’t know Altan meant something else. “Why?” I whispered.

“Do you really need me to tell you?” Altan looked disappointed. “I thought you were cleverer than that.”

“I’m being punished.”

He nodded.

“Because I kept secrets from you.”

Again, he nodded.

I looked up at Aaru, now fully strapped to the chair. After the isolation incident, when Altan had been scolded for nearly killing me, his leaders must have forbidden him from physically hurting me again. That left one option: hurt me by hurting others.

And they’d chosen Aaru. The two guards with him stepped aside as three new figures came into the room: one was Rosa, the Daminan doctor who’d given me the coconut water treatment, and the other two were warrior trainees, each carrying a large iron basin. They positioned them in front of Aaru, scraping the stone floor.

Inside each basin rested a noorestone the size of a fist.

If Aaru was worried, he didn’t show it.

“I’m sure you’ve heard,” Altan said, “that we are moving toward new uses for noorestones.”

A terrible sinking feeling overwhelmed me.

Across the room, Rosa muttered to her assistants, too low for me to hear. One of them dripped a dark concoction onto each of the noorestones, making the room stink of sulfur and . . . something else. Something familiar, but too distant to identify.

“It’s taken some effort to find the best type of noorestones for this treatment,” Altan went on. “We lost over twenty prisoners during the testing phase, but eventually we found that small, old crystals are the most effective.”

Anxiety wrenched inside my chest.

“Noorestones aren’t normally hot to the touch,” Altan said, as if I needed reminding. “But these—well, I wouldn’t risk it.”

As the trainees slid one of the basins under Aaru’s left foot, my silent neighbor gasped and jerked his leg, but it was too tightly bound.

“What’s happening?”

“A heat transfer.” Altan cocked his head. “Have you ever had a fever, Fancy?”

I could only nod. Once, I’d been truly ill. I didn’t remember much from the days I’d lain in bed, just sweat and chills and Doctor Chilikoba ordering me to drink more and more water when I only wanted to sleep. The days felt long and the nights felt longer. Strange how fever could manipulate time.

“Think of this the same way,” Altan said. “Heat from the noorestone is moving through his skin and spreading throughout his body. It won’t cause burn marks, but if we leave him like this long enough, his blood could boil. Isn’t that fascinating?”

Aaru bore it with grim determination, but already sweat trickled down his temple, cutting a path through the dirt. Then, without ceremony, Rosa signaled the assistants again, who moved the second basin under his right foot. Suddenly, his hands clenched and he strained against the bindings.

I surged to my feet; my chair screeched against the floor behind me. “Stop this.”

Altan grabbed my forearm—hard—and dragged me back to my chair. “I’m making a point to you. Your silent friend will endure this until you’ve learned your lesson.”

“Why?” The word scraped out of me.

“I want you to see the consequences for defiance.”

I cut my gaze toward Aaru. He was breathing heavily. Gasping. Shaking. Under the bright noorestones, the whites of his eyes shone all around his irises. His face gleamed with sweat.

“Make it stop.” I turned back to Altan. “I promise I’ll be good. You know I will. I’m a good prisoner.”

He produced a stack of papers and a pencil and placed them in front of me. “There’s only one way to make it stop.”

“Write it down?” Why? Why not just ask for the information out loud, like before?

The room’s other occupants?

Aaru closed his eyes, and he clenched his jaw against the agony of fire. Tendons stood sharp on his neck. Rosa spoke to the trainees, though her words were too low for me to hear. And the other two guards stood at the doorway, hands on their batons.

He didn’t want them to know.

He couldn’t be sure what the information was, but he knew he wanted it and he knew he would do anything to get it.

“Every moment you delay is another moment he suffers.” Altan leaned onto the table, casting a wide shadow. “Just write what you know and this can stop.”