Everything went black.
19
AIMON
I'd never wantedto spill blood so desperately in my life.
Fawn was a brightness in this world that drew me to her like glow wisps to fragrant flowers, and I had fallen in love with her deeply.
It was the worst feeling in the world to see my beautiful elemental mage bound to a chair while a mage I had allowed close to her used a dagger to slice into her soft flesh.
Our bond surged with agony with each stroke of his enchanted blade.
"The empire deceived with a secret, whispered tales of your loved one's demise, so bold you believed, you wept. Your parents had died, had taken their last breath, peaceful is but a facade, the truth is much darker," Matthieu told his awful riddle with pure joy.
His riddles were getting increasingly more terrible and less coded.
"You're full of shit," she hissed in pain as she glowered at Matthieu.
"Do you honestly believe that your parents died of old age?" Matthieu cackled, a sound like claws on a stone wall that screeched through the damned room. "Your brother was killed, of course, by a monster attack. But was it a grockett or was it an abominal? What if an abominal tore your entire family apart limb-by-limb until their blood gushed from the opened wounds of their torsos, and they were nothing but a bloody heap of flesh on the ground?" Matthieu mused, his knife cutting deeper and deeper into her skin as he sliced each delicate part of her exposed skin. "Does that story sound familiar?"
She was already pale, but the little bit of color that remained in her face drained, and her eyes widened. "No."
The single word she uttered made my blood run cold.
Matthieu threw his head back and cackled his evil, demented laugh. The sound made my gut churn.
It had been almost forty-eight hours, and we still didn't have access to our powers. I didn't know what kind of spray potion Matthieu had used, but as soon as my powers did come back, he was a dead mage.
She let out a sharp gasp, and her eyes widened as they started to glow a beautiful, powerful blue. Her hair floated up around her, and her lips curved into a smirk.
Matthieu was too far lost in his own gleeful humor to notice that Fawn had just gotten her powers back.
Before she could do anything, his laughing ceased as he stared up at the ceiling and faded out again.
I used to think the way Matthieu faded out of consciousness was annoying, but at that moment, I couldn't be more grateful for it.
"Whatever potion they used on us is more powerful than we expected." Fawn let out a bitter laugh. "Potions do not have the same timestamp with us due to our ties with Hexarium. Effects are usually a lot shorter."
The atmosphere heated as fire appeared behind her, burning her ropes as she tore her hands free. A gust of wind blew through the room as she used her wind power to slice our bindings with one stroke.
My shoulders slumped, and relief filled my muscles as they were no longer strained from being bound tightly behind my back.
"Silas," Bastian croaked, holding his arm out, his skeletal hand clacking the bone fingers together. "Healing potions."
Silas carefully rose from his chair and stumbled toward him before dipping his fingers into his rune and gathering six healing potions from it.
He handed one to everyone but kept two potions and popped a lid off one before holding the opening of the vial over Bastian's mouth, pouring it down his throat.
The flesh formed back over Bastian's hands along with the muscles and tendons.
Casper and Jasper gulped down their potions, and the skin webbed back over the muscles of their faces. It was almost satisfying to see.
The brutal bruising around Silas's throat healed, and as I took mine, my stomach finally settled from the potion that I had been forced to take.
After Fawn swallowed down her potion, her wounds from Matthieu's assault healed almost immediately, and the runes on her arm lit up before all four of her phantom cats jumped from them and started to nuzzle up all over her face.
"I think the effects of the potion trapped them in their runes," Bastian murmured, holding his scarred hands to his cheeks and taking a deep breath. "Makes sense our protection runes didn't work."
