“Do you smell that?” a male called out.
Others murmured in agreement. Even Kai thought the air smelled strange—acrid, bitter. And the coughing had increased.
Poloma knelt beside one of the prone warriors and held her wrist. She frowned. “Her heartbeat is slow.”
Half a dozen females or more had appeared to give in to exhaustion. At least, that’s what she’d assumed. But this one hadn’t stirred. Not even at Poloma’s touch. Not even a twitch.
What was happening?
At the south doors, a female tugged the handle again—hard. “They’re locked from the outside.”
“Check the east gate,” Kai ordered, already moving. “And the west tunnel.”
“It is the same there,” a male said.
“The oxbeast went through the tunnel not even an hour ago,” Niabi said, hands hooked to her hips. “It was open.”
“Those are locked as well,” someone reported.
“Force it open,” another shouted.
And from the north-side exit, metal struck the door.
Chapter
Forty-Three
Augustus had woken to worse sounds, but not many. A hammered nail splitting bone. A scream.
And the voice of a future dead man.
Thorne. “Painful, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you,” Mettius said. Defiant and pained.
Augustus rolled toward his father’s voice, blinded by the sudden sunlight. His mother’s words a faint echo. “You fight. You survive. That’s what our family does.”
He pushed onto his hands and knees, dug toes into the sand, and engaged his muscles to lunge?—
Hardness like bone cracked him between the eyes. The world darkened with shadow, and a low, wet snarl charged the air. The Vorash spread its torn wings and released a sound like a high-pitched scream into the sky.
“Welcome back,” Thorne said. He stood over Mettius’s body, sprawled across a weatherworn gangplank in the sand.
Too friendly.
Too composed.
Mettius bared his gritted teeth, his face wet and drained of color. One of his hands had been stretched up above his head and nailed to the top, fingers like rigid claws.
Augustus lurched toward his father, ignoring the searing tug of the still-healing lashes across his back.
The Vorash flared and shrieked, a towering wall of shadow and ash. Power rolled from it in a soundless pulse—no, not sound. A pressure. A storm behind its eyes. A scream that didn’t need ears.
Augustus winced, and two men dragged him to his feet by the elbows.
Thorne knelt beside Mettius and began rubbing a thick scar in the center of his hand. “This is where Loto Savali found me.”
Mettius dragged his attention off Augustus. “What?”
