“All right.” The words are gentle. “Rio will carry Celeste. And I’ll take—who is this?”
“Nyx.” I almost choke on her name.
All this time, they were here. Alive, and suffering something beyond imagining in this chamber that smells of blood and grief.
“Why would someone do this?” My throat is raw. “What was their intention?”
Pain, is all I can think as I stare at them. They stripped them, laid them out and tortured them. Not just once, but endlessly.
Ten years, it took me to get back. They told me to come back for them. They had known what was coming.
Callan is looking behind me.
I don’t turn around. But I hear it. A creaking, screeching noise.
Esme has her swords out, angled in front of her. Rio curses. “Smee. My hands are full—I can’t.”
“I have it,” she snaps. “Keep hold of Celeste. Matthias?”
“I have Nyx.” He sounds grim. “But we need to go.”
It’s strange, hearing my sister’s names on their lips. As though I’m dreaming.Let this be a nightmare. Hala, please.
Callan steps around me. “Stay close to me. We’ll move as soon as we can.”
My voice sounds dull. “Where?”
None of them answer. I follow, almost numb as Callan and Esme move for the doorway.
The creature enters before they can move.
The numb sensation in my chest morphs into something else. A cross between fear, shock, and painful understanding.
It is nothuman. Not anymore. It whirrs, and clicks, and tilts its head. Where there once might have been eyes are… gold cogs, or something like it. They shift and move in a hideous mockery of Caelumnai maegis.
“What in Ellas isthat?” I hear Matthias’s horrified whisper.
Rio sounds as though he’s about to be sick. “Tomos. From the guard unit. He was—”
“Conscripted,” Callan says grimly. “Tier three peristi. I remember him.”
The silence. That strange, blanketed silence from Petyr’s military compound, behind those gray walls.
Nausea surges. I twist to the side, emptying what little is in my stomach.
Callan edges closer. The thing that used to be Tomos doesn’t move. I glance down at its arms. “Be careful.”
There are weapons attached to him. Jagged blades attached to Caelumnai hands that don’t move as they should.
“I see them. Es, I’m going to draw him in—distract him. You’ll go around. The rest of you follow.”
“Wait.”
But Callan takes another step forward.
Tomos lurches into a surprisingly swift movement. His arm sweeps out, the blades slicing barely an inch from Callan’s throat.
I wrest my maegis free once again, and direct it at him, my hands out.Hold him.
