Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(61)

Tears dripped down the sides of my face, both from the stabbing pain in my back and for the horrible realization that I wasn’t going to get out of here. Not with Aaru unconscious. Not with the fire of hot noorestones slicing through me.

While I struggled to breathe through the pain, I stayed absolutely motionless, in spite of the body on top of mine. He grew heavier and heavier, it seemed like, defying all the natural laws I’d once thought I’d understood. Or maybe it was just that my back hurt.

Sound returned more steadily than light, but it wasn’t very useful. Fragmented noises came from everywhere and nowhere, and it was too hard to tell what was in my head and what was real. But I needed to place the others. I needed to know what I was up against and if maybe there was a chance of getting out of here—

Dim illumination pulsed through the room in time with Aaru’s heartbeat.

No, that couldn’t be right. But when I slid my hand down his chest again, the thump of his heart came at the same moment as the light flared.

Then I understood.

Aaru had done this. Aaru had caused this darkness, this soundlessness. My sad, silent neighbor.

For seven of his heartbeats, I waited, hoping the light and beat would fall out of synchronization, but even as Aaru’s heart rate increased to a normal speed, so did the pulses of light. It was Aaru. There was no question.

Far away, I heard magic-muffled shouts. Crunches. Orders: “Secure the girl” and “Fetch more doctors.”

With all my strength, I shoved Aaru until he rolled off me. His body hit the floor with faint thumps. Once his weight was gone, the noorestone shards gouging my back eased. Hopefully Aaru hadn’t fallen onto a particularly sharp fragment, too. Maybe since he’d just rolled, he wouldn’t get stabbed the same way I had. It seemed especially awful for him to get stabbed just after enduring torture and then . . .

Magic.

My body screamed as I forced my way up to my knees, but I did it.

The light was steady now, released from Aaru’s hold, and it grew brighter. It came from the twenty noorestones shining in their sconces, but also from shards and dust spread across the floor. Beneath me, the debris was wet and dark with my blood.

Altan appeared in the fractured light. Five guards followed him, all with their weapons drawn.

“Stay down!” The warrior’s order sounded faraway on the first word, and then leaped into normal volume for the second word. “Stay down!” he shouted again as he stopped just three paces away. Two pairs of boots crunched over the ground behind me and halted.

At least six people surrounded Aaru and me. There was no escape.

Altan stormed toward us with fire in his eyes. His baton was drawn, and as he thundered through the room so loudly that I began to regret the return of sound, a wild growl tore out of him. He rushed beyond me.

The other guards were no longer advancing. With agony slicing through my back, I glanced over my shoulder.

Bodies. Three of them.

Two were the trainees who’d been assisting. The other was Rosa.

She was facedown in a pool of blood, illuminated by noorestone shards. Fourteen pierced her motionless body, brightening the puncture wounds with their eerie blue glow. Blood almost looked purple as it flooded around her.

All three were dead.

“How did this happen?” Altan asked.

“Three noorestones exploded.” The guard’s tone was deadly calm, like a dagger dripping with poison. “The ones in the basins.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”

But I knew.

Aaru stirred under my hands. I bent toward him, keeping my voice soft and under the rumble of discussion. “Can you hear me?”

He looked at me, but his eyes were unfocused, like he was dizzy, or not quite awake, or still in shock. Dark circles hung down to his cheekbones, and even his blinking was erratic. “Oh, Aaru,” I breathed.

When he opened his mouth and made the shape of my name, nothing came out. He frowned, swallowed, and tried again. Still, nothing.

He’d lost his voice screaming. Even through our small hole in the wall, I so rarely heard him speak. The screaming was probably a year’s worth of voice for him. Maybe more. “Are you—” Not all right, because he wasn’t.

In the background, Altan said, “Maybe someone tampered with the noorestones.”

Aaru blinked five more times, still trying to focus. Again, his mouth shaped my name, but only silence emerged.

Shame burned through my veins, igniting the edges of panic. He was hurt because of me. My ally. My . . . friend, maybe.

He struggled to push himself into a sitting position. My shaking hands slid off his sweat-slicked skin as I tried to help. But in spite of our disoriented fumbling, he made it up and tugged the jacket tighter around his shoulders. Shivers racked through him. The sudden absence of the noorestones’ fire seemed to leech all the warmth from his skin.

Before I could think better of it, I drew him toward me and wrapped my arms around him, like I could take some of the cold from him. Pain rippled through me as the noorestone shards in my back shifted, but I dismissed it. This was only a fraction of what Aaru had endured.

He leaned against me, shuddering as his cheek rested on my shoulder.

“Is it possible to sabotage noorestones?” someone asked.

“Anything can be sabotaged.” Altan’s voice was like gravel. “Find whoever did it. Notify the trainees’ commanding officers. I want this taken care of immediately.”