“Not if there’s no one left to take,” he growled back, then looked at me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He looked up at me, the blue of his eyes snapping as if sparks were literally dropping from his eyes.
“We don’t just free the eunuchs. We freeallthe Mageia in the Legion.”
My heart pounded in my ears. We’d been looking for some significant way to strike at Alexandria, something that would prove to Greece and Nova Roma that Illyria wasn’t yet beaten, but this…
“How many Mageia are in the Legion right now?” I asked.
“Over four hundred,” Maia responded immediately. “If you include all the cadets and Hoplites.”
“Can we fit that many people on theChrysalis?” I said. “How do we get them out?”
“It will take some finagling, but I think we can make it work,” he finally said.
***
Elex, Maia and I retraced our steps to the top of the building. We systematically began moving through the building, killing the guards and Elusians and freeing the Mageians we found. We stripped the dead of weapons and armor and used those to clothe and arm the Mageia we rescued.
As a leader and healer I would normally have been against the wholesale slaughter of non-combatants, but I’d seen the wounds on the Mageians we’d freed. I’d also been the one to find a room on the first floor that was filled with the naked corpses of at least ten children, all of them with horrifying injuries on display.
One tiny little hand stuck out from underneath pile of bodies, fingernails painted a powder blue, and fingers that twisted and bent unnaturally. That was the scene that got me. I barely made it to a trash can before I lost what little I’d eaten in the afternoon.
“You okay?” my Bonded asked, handing me a canteen. I swished and spit to get the taste out of my mouth, then took another sip.
I just nodded. These assholes would get what they deserved.
My new healing powers were being put to the test as I worked to save the Mageians we freed. The injuries they bore were sickening: broken bones, whip marks, lacerations and contusions on all parts of their bodies. Some were missing digits on hands or feet. One girl we got to too late had had her arm amputated. I wasn’t able to save her. I worked rapidly on all of them, trying to get them mobile as quickly as possible.
In one room we found a young red-haired boy who had almost been too far gone for me to save. When we’d found him, he had been bound to a torture rack and being beaten. His ribs were broken, and they had lacerated one lung; it took all my skill to save his life.
“They’re sendingkidsto the Houses now?” Elex had demanded furiously of Maia when he saw the child.
“They’ve amped up Machis to every month instead of quarterly. They sent a fifteen-year-old boy to the Machi a few weeks ago,” she responded grimly as she pulled the injured boy’s arm over her shoulder to help him stand up.
“Roni here is only thirteen. He was sent here because he pissed off a guard because he tried to protect one of the little ones. They want to break us. We’ve heard whispers that they’re running out of Mageia to support the war effort. Especially Fire and Earth Mageia. After you left, they started sending anyone they suspected of showing leadership potential here to the House of Eros to breakthem,” Maia told us as we went floor to floor. She pulled a t-shirt stripped from one of the guards over her head and I heard a small gasp as the fabric rubbed against her open wounds.
I felt Elex’s guilt weighing him down like a stone.
“This isnotyour fault,” I whispered urgently to him as I worked on the boy.
“It kinda is,” he said bleakly, his eyes roaming over the growing group of Mageia. “I didn’t think about what might happen to the people we left in the Legion.”
Maia surprised me by stepping forward and grabbing Elex’s chin, forcing him to look at her, her bloody fingers pinching his skin.
“The only ones who caused this are Aurelius and the King,” she hissed. “It’s been going on for years before you and I were even born, Kat. I mean, Elex, sorry. The only thing you’ve done is give us hope, and for that, I thank you.”
The Mageia around us murmured in assent. She held his gaze until he finally nodded once, then she let him go. I still felt the turmoil within him, but some of the guilt had faded.
I had healed her as much as I could, her awe at my ability disconcerting. As strong as my gift was, though, there were times it wasn’t enough. We had freed almost a dozen Mageians, but two more died before we could get to the bottom floor, their blood seeping beneath my fingernails as I struggled to pull them back from death.
“Every member of our cross trained cohort has been either transferred, killed, or sent to Eros,” she said. I didn’t think Elex’s face could look any grimmer, but somehow it did. I knew he had been working with Luke and Maia to train the Mageia to work together.
Elex kept his eyes forward, the rage building like a blue fire in his eyes.
When we finally reached the basement of the building, I was surprised to see that, even here, there were spyholes. We took the opportunity to peer through only to see row after row of sleeping slaves and servants. Each of the slaves was shackled to their bed frame, which was then bolted to the floor. The servants weren’tshackled, but the door to the sleeping room was shut and possibly locked.
