Snow Like Ashes(86)
It’s Theron.
“Tell me everything,” Angra orders, stomping toward me, the black of his staff creating a cloud of shadow around his hand. “Or I’ll break every bone in your prince’s body.”
Theron sits back on his heels. Theron is here. In Spring.
A cut on his forehead trickles blood into his eye, and half of his mouth cocks to one side in a pathetic attempt to look happy to see me, even here. I fall to the ground in front of him, running my hands over his face, his arms, hesitating on his injuries. “How did you get here?”
Theron’s smile falls. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Angra’s staff slams into Theron’s head and sends him sprawling onto the floor. Theron lifts up onto his elbows, draws in a calming breath, and looks back at me.
“Don’t you want to tell her how you handed yourself over to me? Gallantly tried to sneak into Spring to save her, but ended up in the same situation?” Angra sneers at Theron, but his usual smugness is marred now, his control wavering in the face of my resistance to his magic. “Shall I show your prince how visitors are treated in Abril?”
I surge forward as Herod rushes to me, both of us colliding an arm’s length from Theron. “No!” I shout, the word echoing around me. I don’t have time for nausea or revulsion or Herod’s slow leer as he wraps his arms around my body and grunts when I kick against him.
“Do you know what happened to the last refugees we caught?” Herod’s breath brushes my hair, my neck, flowing over my body as he pulls me to him.
Angra steps over Theron and lowers the staff’s orb, pressing it against Theron’s spine. But Theron doesn’t flinch, his eyes on mine, his breathing labored and quick as he gathers determination for whatever might lie ahead. He doesn’t know about Angra’s Decay—he doesn’t know Angra’s magic can affect him—
The first rib snaps and Theron cries out, surprise shattering any chance he might have had at remaining stoic. True, unyielding fear washes away the color on his face as he gasps in the silence after the break, his eyes finding mine in a surge of unasked questions. I can’t explain anything, though, not as Herod presses his face against my ear, not as the second rib cracks in Theron’s chest, an echoing pop of bone grating against bone that makes my own body ache with memory.
“You do, don’t you?” Herod continues. “Because we let one of them go, so he could tell you what your fate would be. The one who died—R-16? She was a fighter, just like you. Determined to resist. But they always come around in the end.”
The third rib breaks and Theron releases a strangled cry into the floor that makes my heart seize. Angra’s eyes flick to mine. He’s smiling with a child’s delight, his hand twisting around the staff as he continues to break Theron’s ribs one by one. I can stop it. I can stop it if I just tell him who I am—
“I’ll make your prince watch,” Herod whispers.
He made Gregg watch. He kept him chained to a wall in his room while Crystalla was kept in a cage, a doll that Angra made Herod take out and play with at his bidding. Angra showed her a Winterian’s place in Spring by having Herod torture her to death in ways a body can’t fathom.
Theron groans from the floor as Angra finishes healing the ribs he shattered. Herod finally releases me and I fall on top of Theron like my body can shield him from Angra’s magic.
“Stop,” I mumble into Theron’s shoulder. “Stop. He’s not a part of this. This is between us, Season and Season. This isn’t Cordell’s war!”
Angra laughs. The sound pulls me up, my mistake ringing in my ears.
“No, you’re quite right.” He turns to Herod. “Go get 1-2072, 1-3218, and 1-3219. I promised R-19 that you could have them once you’re done with—”
“No!” My scream tears through the throne room so loud and so desperate I can feel the rocks tremble. All around me, the darkness of the obsidian seeps into my vision, painting everything I see and feel a startling black. Can I use the conduit magic to stop them, this, everything? What can my magic even do? I can only affect Winterians, give them strength or endurance or health—
I think Theron takes me into his arms. I think he whispers something in my ear, but I’m screaming now, lashing out as soldiers come in and haul us up. I can’t hear anything beyond the roar of blood in my head, the horrifying image of Herod sneering at me as he turns, pauses, smiles again. Walks down the throne room and leaves through the two heavy doors with such controlled grace. He’s going to get Nessa and her brothers. He’s going to kill them—
“Take them to Herod’s chamber,” Angra orders. “If she feels like talking, bring her to me instantly. No matter her state.”
I scream again, fingers tearing at the soldiers who drag us away. I will not let Nessa or Conall or Garrigan or myself or anyone die like this.
The soldiers don’t care. They pin my arms back and carry me up stairs, down halls, weaving through Angra’s obsidian palace. Everything is decorated with the same heart-achingly poetic spring-in-darkness motif, colorful etchings of vines and flowers dug into the black rock. The vines wrap around us like the words in Nessa’s memory cave.
Someday we will be more than words in the dark.
Bithai had a poem. A beautiful poem like the one Theron wrote. But Winter has no poem, just those words scrawled in the dark and that one sentence, that one desperate plea that shakes through my body with a frantic need.