The world swayed, then stilled.
She waited for her sight to clear. She’d left her valkryf in the stables; she would need to make her way there. Ramson had gone, and in her current state, she couldn’t search for him. She would need to find a healer of sorts outside town, where she couldn’t be easily recognized.
And then…
Her head spun with the impossibility of it all, the way her plan had completely fractured.
There were still pieces to be picked up.
That started at Goldwater Port.
Ana put one foot before the other. Step by agonizing step she began to walk, pausing every few feet to catch her breath, to anchor herself against the pain thrumming in her midriff.
Somehow, she made it to the front desk. Then to the inn door.
The night was cold, the air bitter with the stench of smoke. Ana stumbled to the stables and was relieved to see her valkryf still there.
She managed to hoist herself onto the saddle, biting back a cry as her wound broke open again.
It took her several tries to ignite her Affinity, and then many more long minutes before she could wrap it over the blood leaking from her wound, hold it in place, and wait for it to coagulate.
With her other hand, she gripped the reins of her valkryf.
The world reeled around her when she emerged from the stables, slumping forward in the saddle, her head pounding, her blood dripping down the length of her hand and dotting the snow. Fighting, with her every last breath, to live.
Linn counted down the seconds on the second day from her conversation with the yaeger. She sat, stone-still as her masters had taught her to, and thought of time passing as the slowdrip, drip, dripof water wearing through rock. It was the Kemeiran way, of balance and harmony and staying attuned to the elements around you, aligning the ones inside you.
Drip, drip, drip.
For with patience, even water would carve through rock.
It was difficult, though, to think of water now when she’d barely had any in almost three days. Her mouth was excruciatingly dry, her tongue sandpaper against her throat, and she found herself thinking of the flat, wide rivers that cleaved the jagged mountains of Kemeira, how the waters turned the color of mandarins during sunsets, splashing against her skin in golden drops, cold and sweet against her tongue.
Someday—perhaps even someday soon—she’d see it all again.
With difficulty, she wrangled her thoughts back to the present. It had been two days since she’d had any food, and the minimal amounts of water she’d had were just to keep her from exhibiting any further symptoms of dehydration. Slowly, second by painful second, the Deys’voshk she had been consuming from her food was being weaned from her bloodstream. And it was working.
Her Affinity was returning.
Even as she sat against the wall, slightly dizzy and lips chapped from thirst, she felt it: the stir of her powers, attuned to the movement of wind between the cracks of the rough-hewn stone walls, the slightest whorls in the air with every breath in and out.
She was ready. Any moment now, her plan would be set in motion.
She heard it then, the faraway clack of footsteps that sent hollow echoes through the corridors and vibrations up the stone walls, dragging her from her stupor. In seconds, the small rectangular chute would open and her tray of food would tumble to the floor. They meant for her to slurp the kashya from the ground like a dog.
Except she wouldn’t. And she never would again.
The approaching footsteps belonged to Isyas: that slightly uneven, sloppy edge to each step that was so different from Vasyl’s cruel, calculated clicks.
When the food flap opened, she was ready.
Linn sprang from her position like a viper. Her arm shot through the chute, her fingers clattering past the tray of food and latching on to Isyas’s wrist. She yanked him against her cell door, and before he could let out a sound, her other arm was through, hand clapping against his mouth.
Linn needed only one hand to kill a man.
She twisted.
Isyas’s body went limp. Linn heard the jangle of his keys cut short as they scraped against her cell door, tucked awkwardly in that position at his hips. Leaning against the cold blackstone door, she tugged him against the opening at the chute, fingers creeping along his uniform until she found the cold metal and sharp-cut edges of the keys.
