I breathe an inaudible sigh of relief as the footsteps eventually recede. A few more of those eerie howls and hoots echo in the night much farther away. We’re still alive, for now. Roshan puts a finger to his lips and stands, reaching into his pack for a weapon. He hands a knife to Aran.
What are you doing?I mouth to him.
He presses his lips to my ear. “They know we’re here. We have no choice. We need to take this Scav and his companions out first, then we go from there. Stay put.”
I shake my head and grab hold of his shirt. “No. I can fight, Roshan. I’m not some sandsdamned damsel.”
We engage in a silent battle of wills for a few intense moments before he capitulates with a muffled curse. “Fine, but stay close.”
We inch in single file through the gap in the rocks, our movements careful and quiet, sneaking behind the closest Scav. Roshan snaps his neck with a flick of his wrist before he can make a sound.
Aran stoops to remove the blade from the dead creature’s hands, along with the crossbow strapped to his vest. “Don’t look,” he whispers to me.
Call it morbid curiosity, but I can’t help myself. As I step over the body, I see matted hair framing a face ravaged with oozing channels and sores. His nearly toothless mouth is agape, his two remaining canines long and sharpened to predatory points. More weeping lesions pepper his arms and torso, and my eyes are riveted to his—their unseeing and overly dilated irises colored and vined with the telltale chartreuse shimmer of distilled jadu.
Roshan holds a fist up and then two fingers, and my shock dies on my lips. His look to me is ferocious, indicating that I should remain where I am. This time, I don’t argue.
He disappears, and I duck into a crouch—but freeze as movement to my left catches my eye. I swallow a scream and brandish my dagger. This Scav looks even worse than the last. He’s hunched over, and his head is shaved bald but covered in the same festering blisters. His eyes are ringed in acid green, his shark-toothed smile gluttonous.
“Hello, pretty one,” he growls, his breath fetid.
“Stay back!” I hiss. “I don’t want to hurt—”
He’s quicker than I expect and I react much too late when he lunges. My magic brightens in an instinctive rush to my hands, right before I feel the pierce of something tiny and sharp at my nape. A cool, slithery rush follows, and everything stills. The last thing I think before my limbs turn to rubber is that I’ve never felt such intense euphoria in my entire life.
I slump to the dusty ground, and as I lie sprawled there with utterly languid limbs, the Scav topples beside me, his tongue snaking out to lick my cheek. I giggle at the wet scrape, my fingers mesmerized bythe texture of the ground beneath me as it turns into the consistency of a fat, puffy cloud. It feels as though I’m flying, a feather being carried away on salt-filled breezes.
Intoxicated with pleasure, I laugh and laugh. Everything fades away, and I am sucked into a shimmering, opalescent space that welcomes me with beautiful, delirious arms.
Chapter Twenty-One
The crone is watching me.
She is older and more wrinkled than I remember. Or maybe I’m the one imagining her features melting into scooped ridges and hollows. I flutter lead-weighted eyelids, struggling to focus on her face, but it keeps losing its shape. Now she looks like a clump of dough with twin starlit eyes blinding me and making the world spin.
I blink again, snatching my gaze away and dimly taking stock of my surroundings. It’s bright from an overhead lamp and it stinks. The sharp metal grate of the ground pinches the skin of my back, and my legs are covered with a ratty woolen blanket. Metal bars surround me like a rusty cage.
Cell. I’m in a cell.
Whyam I in a cell?
Snatches of memory cloud my brain in incoherent succession. Escaping the mercenaries. Going into the Dustlands. Scavs hunting us.Scavs—their sore-ridden faces pop into my mind like something out of a night terror. One of them attacked me with a needle. Have I been poisoned? My fingers drift to my neck to a tender spot there, and I wince.
Beyond that, I remember nothing.
How did I get here? Where is Roshan? Aran? Why—?
I lose my train of thought as a bout of nausea steamrolls throughme, making me retch. I clutch at my bare stomach. All my clothes are gone. In their place are two indecent strips of dirty linen barely serving to cover my private areas. My head is pounding so hard that I can feel it through my clenched teeth.
Grateful I haven’t bitten off my own tongue, I relax my jaw. There’s a horrible taste in my mouth, metallic and sour. My cheeks itch. Something prickles beneath my skin like sand beetles... scouring... scouring. I scratch hard, the sharp sting of irritated skin bringing me back to reality. And the cell. And the crone.
Who is watching me, silent and still.
“Whatshappeningtome?” The words rush together like some strange language. My lips won’t work to separate them.
Heal yourself, Starkeeper.
“Whyareyoufollowingme?” I roll each syllable over my tongue, enunciating each word as if learning to speak for the first time, but they still come out rushed.
