Mirage (Mirage #1)(73)

My heart jumped, and I walked forward, one hand outstretched.

“This,” Nadine said, “is a live feed.”

And then the image pulled out.

My mother and father and two brothers.

Husnain, I thought. Alive and unharmed from the night in the kasbah. My joy died as quickly as it came.

All four of them were on their knees, with the Imperial Garda behind them. Both of my brothers had taken beatings to their faces—Aziz with a split lip, and Husnain with a cut over his brow and an eye that was swollen shut.

My throat closed up. I’d wondered what new form of punishment Nadine would devise for me. But there was no need to devise a new method when a tried one would do just as well. Take the family of a dissident and hurt them until the dissident broke or the family died. Whichever came first. I couldn’t move from where I stood.

“I am loathe to strike you. I fear I would not stop and then your injuries would be beyond repair.” Nadine said from behind me. “But I have no need of a family from a backwater moon that can barely farm enough to keep themselves alive. A family that you, however, love and cherish.”

I couldn’t look away from the image on the screen. I’d dreamt of them, prayed for them—but I’d never imagined that this would be how I saw them again.

There was a beat of silence, then Nadine said, “The woman.”

One of the Garda moved on screen, and slammed the butt of his gun against the back of her head. My mother was silent, though her face contorted into a grimace. I cried out, and rushed forward, one hand outstretched, as though I could catch her.

“The younger boy,” Nadine said.

I had forgotten the most important lesson I’d learned in the Ziyaana: there was no end to fear. You could not become hard enough to escape it. Terror swept through me as one of the Garda pulled out a knife. The ground seemed to tilt underneath me. It was an image straight from my nightmares, so much worse than anything that had come before. Husnain.

“Please!” I said.

I hated myself in that moment. Hated my voice, hated my shaking, hated that I could still be victim to Nadine’s cruelty, even after everything I’d survived. “Whatever you want—”

Her lip curled. “You know what I want, girl.”

The knife pressed against my brother’s throat.

“I will never do anything like that again,” I said, frantic as the knife pressed and a drop of blood welled up. “I know—I know the cost. Never. I swear it.”

The knife continued to press and my heart beat frantically, choking up my lungs. “Please! I swear on my brother’s life.”

“Release him,” she said derisively, and the knife left my brother’s throat.

I collapsed to my knees, breathing hard. My brother couldn’t see me. None of my family could. But my mother made a choked sound when the Garda moved away, a sound I echoed. I reached out for the screen. My hands were shaking.

Nadine walked around me, and caught me by the chin.

“Remember,” she said, voice harsh, “what it is I hold over you. You have many family members and there are many, many ways to inflict pain. Understand?”

“Yes,” I choked out. “Yes, my lady.”

She released me with a snarl of disgust.

“You may remain here until I feel like looking at you again,” she said.

After a moment, I heard the door groan shut.

There was no window in the room, nowhere to look but at the screen before me. Just as I grew used to the horror of that last frozen image of my family, it all started again—they’d recorded it, I realized. They were playing it back for me to watch, again and again. I measured the time by the start of the recording—my family, sitting down to dinner. The door being kicked down. Aziz and then my mother being hit. I could not forget the sounds. I could not breathe through the sounds. Over and over, there was the sound of flesh being struck and then a voice crying out. It all blurred together.

At the end, they were alive. At the end, the Garda marched out, and my mother rose, swaying, to her feet, and cried out.

“Where is she?” she said, and took hold of a Garda’s arm. “Where is my daughter?”

She was struck a final time, so hard she fell sideways and her shoulder hit the floor with a resounding crack. My family was left to nurse their wounds with more questions unanswered and new fears to entertain in the dark.

Every family lived under constant threat of the Vath. But now my parents and brothers would fear the Vath and what the Vath was doing to me. What new thing had I done to incur their wrath? What horrible things did I suffer, or how badly had I angered them that now they suffered alongside me? My mother had searched for her siblings for years before realizing they were dead—and now she would wonder every night if I were alive or dead. Or if I was suffering something much worse.

I shook myself to exhaustion at the thought of my family living under such terror.

It could have been worse, I told myself.

For whatever reason, Maram had kept my secret. Nadine still believed I was useful, that I was still necessary to ensure Maram’s safety. But there was nothing stopping Maram from revealing my secret, from sentencing me and my family to death or worse. And the Vath could always do worse.

My family would always be in danger now. Because I had dared to dream of a world without the Vath. Because I’d dared to put that dream into action.