Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(67)

She didn’t feel well, either. This wasn’t the drug still coursing through her system; that had very specific uses and triggers. No, she had just poured a great deal of power out, and in a manner that her body was no longer capable of replacing in the way that Pyotr could. The drug and the collar didn’t shut her down, because what she was doing was in no way an aggressive use . . . but at the same time, her own body had a way of punishing her.

She felt the hollow darkness inside, and a growing desperation. I’m empty. I need . . . I need fuel. But not food, not rest, nothing that innocent.

She held out her hand to Annis and noted the faint dark lines forming beneath her flesh. “Take me up,” she said. “To the garden.” Because the alternatives were impossible. She hadn’t extended herself so far before, not since coming here, and the Iron Tower’s walls muted her ability to draw from outside. Out in the world, she could have taken a little from a lot of things around her, and none would have been the wiser. But here . . . there were few things she could reach to drain.

And all of them would notice.

Annis led her quickly out of their rooms and to the lifting chamber, which swept them upward level after level, past the rooms she’d once had, past another floor where her friends had been imprisoned. As she passed it, she felt a dark surge of need overtake her, and it was all she could do not to reach for Annis’s hand again.

Instead, she shrank into the corner, shivering, and when the doors opened, she plunged out into the rich foliage of the greenhouse.

There were people here. No, no, no . . . She stumbled away to a secluded alcove veiled by ferns and flowering bushes and sank down on the ground. The earth here went deep, and when she blinked, she could see the life pulsing through the stalks of the flowers, the plants, the leaves, the roots.

“Get back,” she said to Annis. “Leave!”

Annis flinched and pulled back, and Morgan couldn’t control her need any longer. She plunged her fingers into the loose black soil . . .

. . . and killed.

The flowers near her wilted first, all their color fading. But she couldn’t stop there. She pulled life from the stalks, the leaves, down to the roots. Then one thick shrub. Then the next. Then a willow tree. Worms boiled to the surface, and she ripped life from their writhing bodies.

She heard Annis gasp in horror and told herself to stop, stop, before it was too late . . . and somehow, with all the strength in her, she pulled her hands out of the now-sterile soil and crawled backward. Dry branches rattled. Dead petals and leaves rained down, dry and desiccated.

She blinked back tears of relief and rage and horror and saw what she’d done. A portion of the garden ten feet all around her had turned brown and brittle.

It would never grow anything again.

Annis backed away from her, hands at her mouth, as Morgan wearily rose. Tears glittered in her pale blue eyes. “What are you?” Annis asked. It was barely a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Morgan said, and she meant it. “I’m hoping Eskander can tell me.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE




It must have been a crisis for Annis, but Morgan hardly noticed; she was too busy fighting the enormous need to keep drinking in the life buzzing and hissing and pulsing around her. The bright sparks of flying insects. The hum of a beehive. The warning call of birds, fleeing to the farthest branches.

The bright blurs of Obscurists. They were blinding to her, and desperately burning with just the energy she needed.

She shut her eyes and concentrated on deep, steady breaths until the emptiness inside began to recede. The howling vortex slowed and then stopped. I am not empty. I’m not.

When she opened her eyes again, she felt better. More herself. And realized that she was stumbling along, half-dragged by Annis; just as she realized it, Annis got her out of the lifting chamber, and Morgan foggily realized she was now on their residence floor.

“I’m all right,” she told Annis, and pulled free. She had to brace herself against the wall, but she would be all right. No matter what. Annis seemed glad to let go, because she moved a sharp three steps away and watched her carefully. “I’m not a mad dog, Annis. Not yet.”

“You destroyed things,” Annis said. “I’ve never in my life seen an Obscurist do that. We channel life. We don’t destroy it.”

“Not here,” Morgan said, and forced herself into a normal walk, with only a slight pressure of fingertips on the wall to keep herself upright. Once they were back in the room, she saw that Pyotr was gone but the crystals remained, humming and gently glittering along their faults.

Annis still left a good distance between them. Morgan looked down at her hands and spread her fingers. The dark streaks were gone. And she felt almost herself again.

“Silencio. Now,” Annis said. “Explain.”

“It . . . it’s difficult. I used too much power, too quickly, when I was too weak; I didn’t have a choice: I was trying to save lives by making things grow faster . . .” Her voice faded out. It sounded like a threadbare defense, even to herself. “It all went wrong. The plants died. Insects. Animals. Everything. I was told that if I rested, took good care, I might improve again. But it would never be the same for me. The connection I had to power . . . it’s distorted. Twisted. And sometimes I need . . .” She gestured helplessly upward. “You saw.”