For a second, she stiffened at the sight of the syringes. Then yanked a book off the shelf and started skimming the pages.
A small whimper left her throat.
Cason shook his head and grabbed her arm. “Brela, we’re out of time. My magic isn’t working with all the obsidian in here.”
She pulled out of his grip with less strength than he expected based on the feral snarl she released. “Change of plans. I need to interrogate one of their captains.”
His gut clenched. “What? Why?” Yanking the book out of her hands, he read. And read again. “This can’t be real.”
Experiments. Detailed accounts of failed trials. Not just for forging hellthorn in weapons and obsidian in the drill, but other herbs, poisons, and mixtures.
To inject the Veil wall into non-magic users.
Brela rested her palm over her collarbone and whispered, “That’s what we need to find out.”
* * *
Burning from the inside out,the outside in. Mind and vision fogged, then snapped to clarity with a vengeance. Brela’s stomach roiled from the horrifying information she’d just uncovered. Then roiled again from the poison. Her skin prickled from the hellthorn, but she took advantage of the small moments of focus in that tent.
Reaching up with considerable effort, one hand pressing into her head in an effort to stave off dizziness, she swiped a satchel off the top shelf. Then, she dumped every tincture, herb, and syringe into the pouch, including the book. The only thing left behind was the hellthorn.
Good riddance, though the less than fresh air wasn’t much better with the random stashes of hellthorn everywhere. Even the rain couldn’t wash away that prickling burn of proximity.
Cason led the way, and if he noticed how tightly Brela’s hand fisted the back of his shirt to stay steady, he didn’t acknowledge it. They made it four tents before voices picked up.
He stiffened, and she almost crashed into him.
“I can’t…” Eyes wide, he looked one direction, then the next, then another.
His magic was still too weak. Her own magic was writhing in discomfort, rebelling against the amount of hellthorn that coated her tongue, throat, and lungs.
Too early, too early to get you out safely.
Brela ignored the voice and shoved her hand into her pocket, crushing her last healing stone in her palm.
The shadows inhaled a clear breath at the same time she did—spreading, feeling for an escape. Any place to hide.
A second later, she had her answer. One body in the tent along their backs, not moving. Sleeping, perhaps, though the angles of shadow were wrong. It didn’t matter, that was the only option to avoid the guard.
Brela drew Night Carver and shoved Cason through the tent flaps, stepping on his heels and squelching mud as they burst inside.
A small, terrified noise escaped the body on the other side of the tent. She raised the dagger, ready to lunge across the space and silence the non-sleeping form.
Her heart and stomach plummeted to her heels as she met wide, amber eyes.
It was barely a shell of a man, bruised and bloodied, some fresh and some old. Pale head shaved with a carelessness that left nicks and scabs across his scalp. Sunken cheeks, eyes, and a horrifyingly crooked nose, all crusted with blood too dark to have once been red. Protruding ribs were made more prominent by the way they had chained him to a stake with his arms above his head. And the legs that were crumpled in bloodied mud… bent wrong, atrophied, and mottled with bruises of every color.
Unmistakably, stamped across his chest, were burned letters in his skin.
CULTIST.
The table to his left… she couldn’t look at the array of bloodied tools, vials, obsidian dust, and empty syringes laying on top.
Another whimper escaped his throat as his eyes darted frantically between Cason and Brela. Fear, defiance, and sadness flickered deep in the amber.
Until his eyes landed on the dagger in her hand and his body went limp, head falling slack as if he couldn’t hold it up any longer.
Hopeless. Defeated.
