Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark #1)(85)

“So you still haven’t taken Eijeh’s currentgift,” I said, hoping to stall him. I didn’t know what there was to gain from stalling him, just that I wanted time, as much time as I could get before I had to face what had happened to Akos and the renegades.

“I will remedy that soon enough,” Ryzek said, smiling. “I have been proceeding with caution, a concept you have never quite understood.”

Well, he had me there.

“Why didn’t my blood work in the gene lock?” I said.

Ryzek only continued to smile.

Then he said, “I should have mentioned this earlier, but we caught one of your renegade friends, Tos. He told us, with some encouragement, that you were participating in an attempt on my life. He’s dead now. I’m afraid I got a little carried away.” Ryzek smiled still wider, but his eyes were a little unfocused, like he was on hushflower. As much as Ryzek acted like he was callous, I knew what had really happened: He had killed Tos because he believed it was necessary, but he had not been able to stand it. He had taken hushflower to calm himself down afterward.

“What,” I said flatly, finding it difficult to breathe, “have you done with Akos?”

“You don’t seem to have any regret,” Ryzek continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Perhaps if you had begged for forgiveness, I would have been lenient with you. Or with him, if you chose. And yet . . . here we are.”

He straightened as the door at the end of the cell block opened. Vas marched in first, his cheek bruised from where I had struck him with my elbow. Eijeh came in next, hoisting a sagging man at his side. I recognized the hanging head, the long, lean body that tripped beside him. Eijeh dropped Akos to the floor in the hallway, and he went down easily, spitting blood on the ground.

I thought I saw a flicker of sympathy on Eijeh’s face as he looked down at his brother, but a moment later, it was gone.

“Ryzek.” I felt wild. Desperate. “Ryzek, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Please don’t bring him into this—he didn’t know, he didn’t know anything—”

Ryzek laughed. “I know he doesn’t know anything about the renegades, Cyra. Haven’t we been over this? It is what he knows about his chancellor that I am interested in.”

Both of my hands pressed to the glass, I sank to my knees. Ryzek crouched in front of me.

“This,” he said, “is why you should avoid entanglements. I can use you to find out what he knows about the chancellor, and him to find out what you know about the renegades. Very neat, very simple, don’t you think?”

I backed up, body pulsing with my heartbeat, until my spine touched the far wall. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t escape, but I didn’t have to make this easy for them.

“Get her out,” Ryzek said, typing in the code so the cell door opened. “Let’s see if Kereseth is weak enough for this to work yet.”

I pushed off the wall, throwing myself as hard as I could at Vas as soon as he entered the cell. I slammed my shoulder into his gut, knocking him flat. He had grabbed my shoulders, but my arms were still mobile enough for me to claw at his face, drawing blood from the skin just under his eye. Ryzek stepped in, hitting me in the jaw, and I fell to the side, dizzy.

Vas dragged me over to Akos, so we knelt across from each other, barely an arm’s length of space between us.

“I’m sorry” was all I could think to say to him. That he was here was my fault, after all. If I hadn’t fallen in with the renegades . . . but it was too late for thoughts like that.

Everything inside me slowed as his eyes met mine, like I had stopped time. I looked him over carefully, like a caress, his tousled brown hair, the dusting of freckles on his nose, and his gray eyes, unguarded for the first time I could remember. I didn’t see the bruises or the blood that marked him. I listened to his breaths. I had heard them in my ear just after I kissed him, every exhale bursting a little, like he didn’t want to let it go.

“I always thought my fate meant I would die a traitor to my country.” Akos’s voice was rough, like he had worn away at it by screaming. “But you made it so I won’t.”

He gave me a small, wild smile.

I knew, then, that Akos wouldn’t give up information about his chancellor no matter what happened. I had never realized how deeply he felt his fate. Dying for the Noavek family had been a curse to him, as surely as falling to the Benesit family was to Ryzek. But because I had sided against my brother, if Akos died for me now, it meant he had never betrayed his home. So maybe it was all right that I had cost us both our lives by helping the renegades. Maybe it still meant something.

With that thought, it was very simple. We would be in pain, and then we would die. I settled into the inevitability of it.

“Let me be clear about what I want to happen here.” Ryzek crouched beside us, balancing his elbows on his knees. His shoes were polished—he had taken time to polish his shoes before torturing his sister?

I swallowed a weird little laugh.

“Both of you are going to suffer. If you give in first, Kereseth, you will tell me what you know about the fated chancellor of Thuv-he. And if you give in first, Cyra, you will tell me what you know about the renegades, and their connections to the exile colony.” Ryzek glanced at Vas. “Go ahead.”

I braced myself for a blow, but it didn’t come. Instead, Vas grabbed my wrist, and forced my hand toward Akos. At first I let it happen, sure my touch wouldn’t affect him. But then I remembered—Ryzek had said to see if Akos was “weak enough.” That meant they had been starving him for the days I had been in the prison; they had weakened his body, and his gift.