“What happens to your mother if you help us?” she asked quietly.
“She’s the strongest woman I know.” Kaïs held the fire high, the outline of his shoulders tense. His voice was distant, as though clouded in memories. “She would never hesitate to do the right thing. I’ve been focused on surviving and finding her for so long that I had begun to forget what she was like.”
“Sometimes,” Linn said, “I feel as if I have been away from my family for so long, I would not know them if I saw them again.” Her voice caught. How many nights had she spent sleepless, trying to conjure up her mother’s face, filling in the details with her imagination where her memory failed?
Kaïs’s steps slowed; he turned to look at her. “But we hold on to the spirit of their memories, and we do the best that we can to honor them,” he said.
No one had ever phrased it more perfectly, as though stringing the words from her soul and breathing them to life, sparking and bright and warm.
“The night we arrived, Sorsha came to me and showed me my mother’s shawl. I recognized it at once—she has kept it all these years we have been apart. They’d spotted me at Goldwater Port; they were waiting for me.” Kaïs continued steadily, his steps echoing in rhythm as he made his way down the stairs. “I almost lost it then. I was prepared to do anything and everything to save her. I’d always thought it didn’t matter how many people I killed or whom I hurt, if that meant I would get her back. But now I realize…I realize I have been dishonoring her memory by doing so. Tonight, I fight for her.”
They were nearing the bottom of the steps; Linn could see the arch of the doors that led into the room of her nightmares. Kaïs drew his sword and turned to her. His eyes blazed. “Who do you fight for, Linn?”
Names, faces, and memories flooded her mind. Enn, free as a sparrow, his life cut too short. Ama-ka, still waiting for them back at home. Ana, the friend who had helped her search for her destiny; Ramson, who had started all this the night he’d shown up at the Playpen and handed her the keys to her freedom.
And me,she thought. The girl who had staggered onto the cold, icy shores of a foreign empire. Who had been worked and chained and beaten to within an inch of her life, but who had held on stubbornly, doggedly, through it all. Against all odds.
There were so many others out there like her, still waiting for their chance to fight back.
Linn drew her daggers. “I fight for freedom” was all she said as she wrenched open the doors and stepped inside.
The chamber was longer than she remembered; she saw now that it stretched farther back, the walls interspersed with alcoves. When Kaïs lifted his torch, figures stirred in the far corners of the room.
The gold-haired girl Linn had watched Sorsha experiment on earlier was still sprawled in the same spot. Linn flitted over to her. Her body was cold, and when Linn touched a finger to her neck, she found nothing. She looked up, met Kaïs’s gaze, and sadly shook her head.
He held up the set of keys he’d taken from the scholar back in the library and motioned her forward.
As they approached the back of the room, Linn saw that there were more prisoners chained to the walls, their wrists and ankles bound by blackstone manacles. They squinted against the torchlight and shrank away as they approached.
Linn raised her hands. “Do not worry, we are here to free you,” she said as Kaïs began unlocking their chains one by one.
There were twenty of them, and they each fell forward with cries of relief as they were released. A few were just as emaciated as the gold-haired girl from earlier, but most were in better shape. They pulled themselves to their feet, helping those who could not to stand. Linn realized that not all of them bore distinctive Cyrilian looks; there were several who looked to be from the Aseatic Kingdoms, and one or two who resembled the people of the Southern Crowns.
Had they all been tricked to go to Cyrilia, only to find themselves being trafficked to a second foreign kingdom as human experiments? The thought made her sick. She needed to tell them that they were safe. That they would never come to harm again. Looking at their haunted expressions now, Linn felt as though she were looking into a mirror of her past self.
It gave her courage. It gave her inspiration.
“I am an Affinite,” she said quietly. “And like you, I was trafficked to the Cyrilian Empire, and bound under a work contract against my will.”
They were silent, watching her. Waiting.
“Tonight, a battle is taking place—one that will decide the course of history. Anastacya Mikhailov, the Red Tigress of Cyrilia, is putting a stop to the plans of the man who did this to you—Alaric Kerlan. She fights against the exploitation of people like us. But she cannot do it alone.” Linn looked around, meeting each of their gazes. “I am choosing to fight for freedom. I am choosing to fight so no other Affinite needs go through what I did.
“You are free to do as you wish now. You may leave if you like. But if you wish to fight by our side—if you have the strength to fight with us—we need your help.”
She had no idea where the words had come from, nor how she was able to deliver them so succinctly. She had always shied away from attention, preferring her shadows and wind, but as she looked around the room, Linn felt emboldened by the sight. She had saved twenty lives tonight. She had made a difference.
A dark-haired man in the back raised a hand. “I fight.”
Another Affinite, a boy several years younger than Linn, spoke, too. “I’ll fight.”
One by one, the Affinites spoke, their words ringing loud and clear in the chamber and filling Linn with courage. Ten of them were strong enough to volunteer.
Linn raised her blade and motioned to them. “We must make haste.”
As she turned to leave, she caught Kaïs’s eyes. He was smiling at her. “Your mother would be proud.”
Linn grinned back. “As would yours.”
