I swallowed, eyeing the bandages. “They cut them off.”
“They ripped them. Slowly, piece by piece. For maximum suffering, I think.”
Eirnan loosed a string of curses.
“To what end?” I asked bleakly. “Did she have information they wanted?”
“They must have thought so,” Keres said, and I knew the look she wore could only mean one thing.
“Me,” I said grimly. “They wanted information about me. My whereabouts. My plans.”
“Your magic,” Eirnan said pointedly.
I swallowed, a weight pressing down on me at the thought of Lesha enduring such a horrific nightmare because of me.
“Then they were disappointed,” Slade said. “You hardly have any plans at all.”
I shot him a flat look.
He held up both hands. “I mean that in the nicest, ‘you keep improvising and almost dying’ sort of way.”
A faint sound came from the pallet.
It was small. Broken. But it was a sound.
I bent closer. “Lesha?”
Her eyes opened, clouded and unfocused at first, then clearing as they found my face. For a heartbeat, she just stared at me, like she wasn’t sure I was real. Finally, her cracked lips curved.
“You… look terrible,” she whispered.
Relief hit so hard my vision blurred. I huffed out a laugh that sounded suspiciously close to a sob. “You’re one to talk.”
Her gaze drifted past my shoulder, taking in the cave, the others, the dim torchlight. Confusion creased her brow. “Am I…?”
“Safe,” I said quickly. “You’re with us. We gotyou out.”
“Took you long enough,” she murmured, but even that hint of her old spark was a ghost of what it had been.
Keres slipped a hand under Lesha’s shoulders, easing her up enough to sip from a waterskin. “Small sips,” she warned.
Lesha obeyed. Every swallow looked like it cost her just as much as it gave.
I waited until she slumped back against the makeshift pillow, eyes half-lidded, then said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she managed.
“For not getting to you sooner,” I said. “For not being there. For… this.” I glanced at the bandages. My throat tightened. “They hurt you because of me.”
“Nonsense,” she rasped. “They hurt me because Heliconia is a monster.”
Her gaze sharpened slightly. Her fingers twitched toward mine. I took her hand, careful not to grip too hard. Her fingernails were broken, peeled down to the beds on some fingers. I hated imagining that happening to her. The pain?—
“Aurelia,” she whispered. “There isn’t much time.”
Panic sparked. “You’re not dying,” I said. “Keres says?—”
“I’m not dying,” Lesha cut in, a shadow of her usual impatience. “But I’m drained—utterly and maybe in a way that cannot be repaired.”
