Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(88)

His glare was all hot rage and hate. “I thought you cared about the dragons. I thought you’d been truthful with me.”

I swallowed hard. “I did tell you the truth.”

Slowly, he shook his head. His jaw clenched so hard I wondered if he might crush his own teeth. “If you thought your last visit was miserable, just wait. You haven’t seen how unpleasant I can be when I’m really angry.”

Fear coursed through me like fire. “I told you everything.”

“No.” He swung the bag of breakfast until it hit my door. One. Two. Three. The contents thumped on metal, bruising and destroying. “You tried to hold something back, which is why I took your silent friend. And now I know you lied about the dragons, too.”

I couldn’t speak.

“So you’ll tell me everything,” he said. “The truth this time. Or I will bury every one of your friends under hot noorestones while you watch.”

Bile raced up my throat, and my chest squeezed with anguish.

He’d already tortured Aaru. Now he wanted the rest of them?

Echoes of Aaru’s scream filled my head, and my fingers remembered the cold of his skin. My eyes recalled the sudden darkness, the desperate attempts to see through the nothing. And my ears knew the smothering, all-consuming silence cast across the room.

Altan would never move my friends to the second level. Never. I’d been a fool to even imagine it.

“What do you think?” Altan was still banging my breakfast on the bars of my cell. “I think it’s a fair offer. Don’t you?”

I couldn’t let him hurt my friends. Not again.

“All right.” The words were weak, shaky.

“What’s that?” Altan lifted his voice; he wanted to be heard, wanted it known he was the victor. “I couldn’t hear you.”

I drew a fractured breath and spoke loud enough that he might be pleased. “Don’t hurt my friends. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Very good.” Altan tossed my breakfast bag inside the cell, a look of triumph shining in his eyes. “I’ll see you in two hours.”

When he and the other guard left, the cellblock was absolutely quiet, and my legs buckled and I dropped to the floor, knees striking stone with sharp bursts of pain.

What had I done?





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE




FOR A LONG TIME AFTER ALTAN LEFT, I SAT ON MY bed, counting panicky heartbeats. One hundred fifty-three, one hundred fifty-four, one hundred fifty-five . . .

TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-THREE, two hundred seventy-four, two hundred seventy-five.

DEAR DAMYAN AND Darina, what was I supposed to do now?

I’D LONG AGO curled over until my forehead touched my knees. There was no farther for me to bend, not without crushing bones, but still I wanted to shrink down into nothing. Because I was nothing.

“Decide whether you’ll tell Altan your secret,” Gerel said, five hundred heartbeats later. “Lying isn’t one of your options. You’re clearly a terrible liar.”

“Don’t you think she knows that?” Ilina snapped. “Can’t you see that she feels awful enough without you telling her how badly she messed up?”

Hristo cleared his throat. “I’m not sure that helps.”

I tried a little harder to collapse into myself.

“Don’t bother to defend her,” Gerel said. “I told her decans ago that she needed to decide to tell Altan her secret or not. I told her to stick with whatever she decided, because Altan won’t give up his quest to learn it. Planting your feet and fending off attacks is the only thing you can do against him.”

Everything inside me shriveled.

How had my life come to this?

How could I fix this?

Maybe . . . Maybe just one person at a time.

I couldn’t bring myself to move for another hundred heartbeats, but at last I crawled under the bed. ::I’m sorry. There are so many things I should have told you from the start. Like who I am. Then you’d have known it’s not safe to be nice to me.::

It wasn’t a surprise when the only answer on the other side of the hole was silence.

::I want you to know that this was never my intention. Not that knowing helps you now. I was wrong. I should have been more careful, but I wanted to be your friend, even though I knew it wasn’t possible. Idris and Damina never got along.::

My chest expanded and dropped with a long sigh. I’d been so foolish. So na?ve.

::Nothing can make up for what happened to you,:: I went on. ::Especially nothing I can do. I know that. But I also know that I owe you, and I won’t forget it.::

I closed my eyes, but I saw him in the interrogation room again, strapped to the chair with noorestone heat pressing through him.

::You may not want my attempts at making amends,:: I said, ::and given what just happened, I wouldn’t blame you. Or if you never want to speak to me again. But if you’ll accept my efforts, I will help you however I can. Anything I can do. I want to start with getting you and the others out of the Pit.::

That hadn’t gone well so far, though.

::That’s all I’ve wanted since coming here—to get out.:: I closed my eyes. ::And I want to get you out. That’s why I came back. For you.::

Two long taps. One short. ::Me?:: Or maybe there wasn’t a question in that. Maybe it was simply a repeat: ::Me.::