“I was told you were friends with her,” Sadov continued. “Well, with what she once was—before I broke her. Did you know she had a son in the Imperial Patrols? Oh, how easily minds can be shattered when pressed with fears for ones they love.”
Fury coursed through Ana. With great effort, she wrested her expression into careful blankness.
Sadov steepled his fingers. “Now, Little Tigress,” he murmured. “Won’t you tell me where the siphon is?” He smiled again, and those white teeth morphed, and the visions began.
For Ana, they always started in the middle of a dark, cold dungeon. Her heart beat so hard she thought her rib cage would burst; cold slicked her veins like liquid mercury, and sweat wet her shirt and her hair.
There were things in the pitch-blackness: bodies, their blood bright bursts, their limbs a pale tangle. The dead came first: Mama, then Papa and Luka and May, now Markov.
Then, the living. Linn, lying in a broken heap, daggers limp in unfeeling hands. Kaïs, splayed on the ground with a sword pierced through his chest; Daya, expression blank, braids drifting in a watery tomb beneath the wreckage of her ship. And Ramson—light gone from those quick hazel eyes, sandy hair tangled over a bloodied forehead, lips parted and half-curved as though he’d been about to speak her name.
Stop,Ana sobbed, but the word echoed in the prison of her mind, of her own emotion.Stop stop stop stop STOP—
“STOP!”
White fingers against dark velvet. Teeth, bared in that same smile.
“Had enough?” Sadov whispered.
It took her moments of gulping in rapid breaths, feeling as though her heart were about to explode, for her mind to piece itself together again. Who she was. How she had gotten here.
What Shamaïra had just told her.
“Just tell me what you know about the siphon,” Sadov crooned, “and all this will end.”
“I don’t,” Ana croaked, “know. Where the siphon is.”
Sadov’s fingers twitched again. Visions danced across her eyes—only this time, they were different: flickering shapes in the faintest oranges and yellows, reminding her of…fire.
It was the firelight from earlier, she realized, blinking away her tears and squinting at the windows.
Sadov stood, moving past her to the two windows overlooking the town square. Her back was to them, but Ana heard him mutter, “What…?”
Ana blinked. The light was growing brighter—approaching too fast, at a jagged pace…like the fireball that had demolished Ana’s ship. On the wall opposite her, shadows danced.
Sadov gave a sudden yelp and dove past her, wrenching open the door. She’d barely heard him yell, “We’re under attack!” when the wall behind her exploded.
The entire room rocked; the force knocked Ana’s chair to the floor. Time swirled into a slow trickle as the scene before her faded in and out. She was lying on the stone floor, still strapped to the blackstone chair. As her sensations began to return, she felt pain in her head, the stickiness of blood against her face.
Before her, the wall was engulfed in flames. There was a holewhere something had blasted through the blackstone, but the flames licked closer with every passing moment. Gusts of hot, acrid smoke billowed over her, and all she could do was squeeze her eyes shut against the searing brightness of fire just steps from her. The place was burning; the heat was unbearable. She was beginning to feel the exhaustion that she’d long held at bay seeping into her bones. She’d spent so long resisting Sadov.
She was so, so tired.
Breathe. She couldn’t breathe.
Her body was weightless. Light.
Was it her imagination, or did shouts echo somewhere nearby?
Shadows flitted across the warm orange of her eyelids; dimly, she sensed someone kneeling by her. A hand placed on her shoulder. Gentle.
“A prisoner,” an unfamiliar voice said. “She’s chained to this chair. Lil, give me a hand—or a dagger…” Footsteps; someone else dropping to their knees. Within moments, there was acrack,followed by a strange relief spreading over Ana’s shoulders as the chair broke and her arms fell to her sides. The blackstone chains were still tight around her wrists.
Someone pressed a hand to her neck. “Non-Affinite,” said the same voice—a boy.
“A non-Affinite?” This time a girl spoke, her voice high and sweet. Somehow, it sounded familiar. “Then why is she bound with blackstone?”
Ana opened her eyes a sliver. Through the tangles of her hair, she could see two figures bending over her. One—a boy—reached over to brush her hair aside, and her eyes fluttered shut again. She heard him let out a soft swear.
