Instead, my radiance felt like a bird trapped behind glass.
Horror rose in me like bile. The heavy sacks tied around my hands were doing something strange. It was like dipping my arms in frigid water. My fingers had gone numb. The fabric glinted in the lamplight, odd threads like gleaming mineral veins woven through the rough scratch of it. “What did you do to me?”
“Haven’t you heard of insulation,Conductor?” the bearded man said, spitting the word like a foul curse. “Your vile magic can’t get through it.”
“We could wrap it around her face,” the other said thoughtfully. He had a scar notched in his eyebrow and brown hair shot through with shocks of silver. “Smother her.”
We reached the courtyard. I craned my neck to Julian’s window where smoke poured out into the night, backlit by raging flames.
“What did you do to him?” I asked in a miserable whisper. If I was to die here, I needed to know how Julian had gone before me. The fateI’d caused by bringing Ezra into the Mission, by bringing him into our lives.
“That’s right, Ezra, what did you do to him?” The quieter man gave Ezra a cold, appraising look. “All that blood and no body.”
“Didn’t you see the bucket of slop?” Ezra said with a strained growl. “I tried out a new idea. Called to the blood in him and made it boil until it tore him apart like fruit left to rot.”
They shuffled back, eyeing Ezra warily. The man with the beard spat at our feet. “Abomination,” he muttered.
“I’myourabomination, aren’t I?” Ezra asked, his voice like shattered glass. “Feel free to sift through the ashes tomorrow if you’re looking for proof. You can pick through his bones and run back to your mistress with his teeth.”
Nausea gripped me, and I made a noise that must have made it clear to Ezra what was going to happen next. With one arm painfully gentle at my waist, he let me double over and empty the scant contents of my stomach into the chicken-scratched dirt at my feet. I was unable to move my hands, unable to comprehend how the boy who had made flowers for me in the woods could say something so grotesque. Do something so foul, so unimaginably violent.
The man with the scar let out a low chuckle. “Some sweetheart you got yourself.”
Ezra’s arm tightened around me. He lunged with a growl, dragging me awkwardly with him.
The other man stepped between them. He was short and stocky, built like a barrel. Sunburn made his pink nose peel. “Careful, Marshall. There’s no telling what a witch will do once he tastes blood.”
Ezra’s fingers tightened against my ribs, a brief, convulsive movement. But his voice was stony and even when he said, “Finally, an intelligent contribution from Ike.”
Ike said nothing, but his expression darkened, gaze flicking to my face with a leer that sent a shudder through me as I gasped to catch mybreath and swallowed against the sting of sick in my throat. The eerie, numb emptiness reached deeper within me, working into my muscles and clawing my insides. It made me feel trapped, as if they’d pushed me underwater. My arms thrashed involuntarily, weakly trying to shake the bindings from my wrists.
“We need to get back to camp,” Ezra said. “The fire will attract too much attention. We can come back for the conduction coils tomorrow. The Mission won’t recover from this.”
“When Ainsley comes in the morning, you can explain to her why you dragged your slut apprentice along,” Ike said, coming so close that I could smell the sour tang of ale on his breath. He spoke with the thickness of blood in his nose, like a child with a pathetic cold.
Using Ezra’s grip on my waist as leverage, I kicked Ike in the knee. He dropped to the ground with a yelp and clutched his leg.
“Bitch,” he snarled. “I’ll kill you myself.”
I was kicking, twisting, and fighting the spreading numbness that reached for my lungs. I was drowning. I’d pull Ezra down with me. Pull all of them down and hold them under until they went still.
“You were supposed to be on the train.” Ezra sounded very tired as he wound his arm around my throat and squeezed until the night swallowed me whole.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Iwoke to the smell of woodsmoke and the gummy taste of old blood in my mouth. Tumbling out of the darkness like a landslide, I tried to sit up and found my wrists bound and my arms aching. Panic flooded through me, tightening every muscle in my body. I was ready to lash out.
My radiance was not.
My fingers remained numb and cold even though the thick, itchy cloth from before was gone. My hands were bound in front of me with twine that cut into my thin wrists. A pair of well-worn boots moved into my line of vision where I lay in damp leaves too far from a campfire to feel its warmth.
“Be still,” Ezra said quietly, dropping to a crouch and carefully propping me up to sit against a tree. He wore a sweat-stained green bandana around his neck. I hadn’t noticed it before. “They’re drunk, but they’re always drunk. They won’t sleep for long.”
“What did you do to me?” He’d said to be still, not quiet. “Where’s my radiance?”
“Josephine,” he said with a hiss, eyes darting to the lumps of men beside the fire.
Fine.
