Before She Ignites (Fallen Isles Trilogy #1)(94)

Altan hit me.

The baton whipped out of his belt and came flying at me so fast I couldn’t move out of the way.

Metal struck my shoulder and numbness rang through my arm.

I screamed and staggered back, clutching my shoulder. Hot pain surged up and blinded me. For a heartbeat, my whole body seemed out of my control, and when my vision cleared, I was on the floor. My knees ached where they’d hit the stone, and one of my ankles throbbed where it was twisted beneath me.

I’d fainted. It had just been a moment, but even that much was terrifying, especially since Altan loomed over me, his baton drawn back.

But he didn’t bring it down. Not again.

Not yet.

“You will not speak to me that way.” His voice was deadly cool, his eyes hard and narrowed. “Never forget that you are a prisoner here, and I control your fate.”

Everyone thought they controlled me. My parents. The Luminary Council. The Twilight Senate. The warriors. But I was done being used. If my trip to Bopha had taught me anything, it was that I was in control of me. No matter how much others insisted, they did not direct my arms and legs. They did not determine what words came out of my mouth. The only reason they’d succeeded for so long was because I’d let them—because I’d never realized that I had the strength to stop them.

I knew better now.

“You’re a worm,” I said. “Utterly deplorable. You grab for power because you have none of your own. Because you’ve let yours be taken from you.”

The baton came down, aimed for my head, but I blocked it with my arm—the one with the hurt shoulder. My bones shuddered under the impact and I wanted to curl into a ball and hide. But this was the moment. I had to seize it now.

“You hurt others because you are hurt. Because even with all your training, you haven’t gotten what you wanted, and you think you can just take it from others.” My whole body shook with adrenaline, as if the memory of noorestone energy remained in this room and flooded into me.

“You don’t know anything about me.” Altan raised the baton to hit again, but I rolled out of the way and—miraculously—found my feet.

“I know you desperately want to be important.” I gripped the table with my good hand, leaning hard against the smooth wood. With my aching knees and my twisted ankle, standing was much harder than it had been two minutes ago. “But you were second to Gerel as a trainee, and you are nothing now.”

Even as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I knew I should at least consider watching my tongue. But all my life, I’d been speaking other people’s words at their convenience, and not nearly enough of my own. These words—right or wrong, brave or foolish—were mine. I owned them.

Altan roared and ran at me with his baton lifted high.

I gathered my strength and stepped aside, struggling to keep my feet through the throbbing pain. “Are you going to club me to death?” I rasped. “Is that your great plan to win me to your side?”

His knuckles paled around the baton. “I don’t need you on my side. The offer was courtesy only.”

“Courtesy for a prisoner?” I scoffed, drawing on every time I’d needed to be haughty and aloof at a party. “No, you wouldn’t have offered if you didn’t still need me. If you didn’t think there was something I could give to you.”

One side of his mouth pulled up into a deadly smile. “I said the offer was courtesy. I didn’t say you had a choice.”

The darkness in his expression gave me pause.

My friends.

He still had them.

“You’ll help me whether you want to or not,” he said. “If I’ve discovered one thing about you, it’s that you cannot stand to see people get hurt. And I have everyone you care about right here. Your best friend. Your protector. The girl who hates you. The girl who pretends to like you. The girl who ignores you. And that boy you admire so much. Do you think he admires you too?”

No.

“You should have seen your face when you realized he saw your cheek. You looked so upset. I almost felt bad.” He advanced on me.

There was nowhere to go. He was between the door and me, and he was not limping on two sore knees and a twisted ankle.

“But you should have been more worried about what I’d do to him than what he’d think about your face. I don’t know how the noorestones exploded before, but I know that one of you must be behind it. If you think I’ve forgotten about you murdering three people, you’re wrong.”

“You brought the noorestones in,” I said. “You called for more. You’re the only one responsible for what happened.”

Altan drew back the baton, but I wasn’t done.

“You’re the one who decided to torture Aaru. You’re the one who brought him in here in the first place.” I stopped myself before revealing too much—that it was Aaru who’d silenced the room, shattering the noorestones in the process. “There was no reason to bring him here. You only took him, too, because you’re a terrible person who enjoys watching people get hurt.”

“Just prisoners like you.” The baton crashed into the chair I’d been occupying. One of the legs snapped off and clattered across the floor. “And like that boy. You both deserve the pain I inflict.”

Common sense told me to retreat, but to where? He blocked the only exit, and there was nothing in here but one table, one broken chair, one whole chair, and twenty noorestones.