Lina whisked through the altarhouse, her reclaimed freedom giving her the sensation of flight.It took two days for the warden to recover enough to make good on his threat; two excruciating days of being watched by an increasingly frazzled River, who wouldn’t let Lina out of his sight but who also was suddenly concerned for Kai’s wellbeing.
“You can’t sleep after a concussion or you’ll die,” he insisted, shaking Kai awake every time he nodded off.“And if you die on my watch, I’ll be screwed.”
“That,” Kai practically whined, “is amyth.”
“Mikau said rest,” Lina added from the armchair, bored.The books at her disposal in this cramped room (infamously,The Kraken’s Consort, which River begged her to stop reading aloud) only kept her busy for so long.
Only after River woke Kai up the fourth or fifth time, prompting Kai to threaten to kill him and his entire family, did River finally leave Kai alone to his fitful bouts of sleep.And focus his attention on Lina, who apparently might torch the entire island.
She tried to admire River’s dedication, knowing he was playing jailor because he wanted Ione kept safe from this monstrous spawn of Sowelan.She tried to understand his feelings of powerlessness, of being a mundane man surrounded by spellcasters.She tried a lot of things, but by the end of two days of being treated like she might spontaneously combust, she was fit to slap him.
She was still a little awestruck that they released her, that they allowed her to return, unmonitored, to the life she had grown so accustomed to.She nodded at a guard she recognised as she passed into the altarhouse’s outer halls, breathing deep the late summer breeze streaming in through the opened walkways on the way to Ione’s flat.A delight after a coffin room reeking of old smoke.
Her heart fluttered with each step, an uncomfortable hum of excitement and anxiety.Lina hesitated before a full moon mirror, checking, fluffing out her hair and her skirts and feeling stupid for it.She smiled, forcing herself to meet her own gaze.
Alive.She was alive, could greet another dawn, feel the sun on her face, see her friends again.
See Ione.
Pathetic, she could hear Castor saying back to her.It was true.Our family serves no one but Sowelan.
She shivered.While she hadn’t revealed her relation to Castor, talking about him, reliving it all, was like resurrecting an evil spirit.Lina spun on her heels and hurried down the hall.Away from her eyes – his eyes – on her in the mirror.
“A deal’s a deal,” Kai had said after everything.He sat on his bed, elbows on his knees and one eye still shaded with bruising; behind him, River stood guard.“You can live.”
“How magnanimous.”After two days of listening to Kai and River snipe at one another, her fear of them had tipped towards apathy.
Without ceremony, he unsheathed his knife and pricked his forefinger.“Drink.”He thrust his finger, the bead of blood glistening like a tiny ruby, inches from her mouth.When Lina only grimaced at him, he sighed, grabbed her hand, and wiped the blood on the back of it.
“It’s a simplified binding ward,” he explained.“What I wove around Nalu to shut him up.And if you wanna go back to kissing Ione’s ass, you’ll drink that blood before it gets cold.”
He waited until, nauseated, Lina licked the blood from the back of her hand.She knew enough about wards to guess what he had in mind, and if it would free her from this room, she would have done anything.
Kai lifted his forefinger, still shiny with blood, and drew an intricate pattern in the air between them.“This’ll only allow for one command,” he went on, his jaw set with concentration.“But unlike a full binding ward, it’ll last until I dispel it.”
“Why not cast the full ward?”Lina challenged.“Then you could have complete control of me.”
“And no more worrying,” River mused.
“Meh,” Kai actually said.Finished, he drew a line of blood across her throat, making her skin prickle with the sea-salt burn of magic.“I haven’t the time nor the patience to be plying you with blood every other day.The complete ward’s only fun while it lasts; I once got Nalu good with it, made him sing and dance in front of his crew.”He whistled.“He made me regret that.”
He knelt, his eyes darkening as they bored into her.“I think it would serve me in the long run to keep you around.Your command is this: from this moment you are not to harm or bring about harm to anyone on this island.”He paused, one hand playing with his ear, the recent dent in it.“Unless in self-defence,” he finished.
“That’s an unnecessary loophole,” River snapped.It was so good to know he was on Lina’s side.
Kai stood, disregarding that.“Easy enough, right?”he asked, and in response, Lina’s throat tightened.
Not her throat – something around her throat.
“And if you disobey,” Kai said amiably, pointing, “those wardstrings around your neck will strangle you.”
That was hours ago, and yet Lina had not grown used to the sensation around her neck.She tested it, delved her finger beneath one of the strings.It was as thin as fishing line, cool to the touch – until she pulled.
A bitter chill shot up her arm.A warning.Scowling, Lina let the wardstring go.
Around a corner ahead, a door creaked, shattering the strange quiet of the altarhouse.A glimmer of silver streaked through the crossway – Ione, dressed for an outing, her gauzy pearl-blue dress sweeping behind her.Her plaited hair swung with each stride, her expression lofty and cool, lips pursed, the face she wore when she was on a mission.Cynthia followed close behind, a stoic shadow in the face of Ione’s bright star.
Lina hung back, watched her a moment.Dug her fingers into the bruise of her own futile feelings.You are an attendant.You are furniture.You are living on borrowed time.
