Thirty-Four
Lory
In the dark tunnel,Hadrian was crouching over the lifeless body of Olive, his hands pressed into her side. Lory didn’t hesitate to summon a flicker of her power, illuminating the space so the others could see what was going on.
The skin around Hadrian’s eye was black, the bruise spanning the area from his eyebrow to the side of his cheek, and another bruise bloomed on his stubbled jaw; his curls lay matted against his forehead and neck, stickywith sweat and blood.
“We brought help,” Anees said, shoving Hadrian aside and replacing his hands with hers. “Take a break. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
He didn’t object, merely studied the small group with suspicion.
“They’re fine,” Anees informed him before jerking her chin to gesture for Lory, Jarek, and Tabi to get into the tunnel.
Lory shut the door behind them with her free hand, unwilling to risk being discovered. If anyone came down here to burn the two dead Flames, they would notice an open door and five voices.
“She passed out a minute ago. Blood loss, I assume.” Hadrian sat against the wall of the narrow tunnel, gingerly touching his jaw. With a wince, he gritted his teeth.
At Anees’s side, Tabi was already lowering the bundle of supplies onto the ground, spreading out the cloth, and sorting through the flasks. “Her breathing is shallow, but at least she’s still breathing on her own. That will give me some time to work.”
Hadrian once more glanced at the small group. “Why are we having company? No offense, Lory?” he amended.
Lory shrugged, gesturing at Olive. “Tabi is her best shot at survival, and Jarek, we ran into in the hallways. He’s a friend.” She didn’t bother using their full names. If they managed to pull this off, they would be past any formalities by far.
Hadrian raised his scarred brow and winced again. “Not all friends can be trusted.”
That earned him a groan of frustration from Jarek. “For the tenth time, I won’t tell anyone, Phantom Bleek, that youare hiding in the tunnels under the Ward, with a black eye and a half-dead woman. I also won’t tell anyone that she can’t be a student and that she looks remarkably like one of the three prisoners who supposedly died in an attempt to escape from Ashthorn’s dungeons. And least of all will I tell anyone that I definitely don’t object to helping a Flame-born to get out of the Master of Whispers’ torturous claws.”
That seemed to put Hadrian’s concerns to rest, and Lory didn’t even want to know how Jarek knew what the three prisoners looked like.
They all focused on Tabi’s restless movements as she assessed Olive’s wounds. Only one stab, but plenty of scratches and bruises that must have been older, some of them fading into scars. Lory’s gut twisted at the thought of what Lenya and his torture masters must have done to the woman.
“Cut the fabric here,” Tabi instructed Anees, who didn’t bother to use her dagger, but rather ripped the linen apart with her bare hands.
“Faster,” she explained with a shrug at Tabi’s sideways glance, but Lory noticed the meticulous tear, just as if a knife had sliced through the fabric. Anees had used her own magic without exposing what it was.
Uncorking a tonic, Tabi poured it over the wound. “I didn’t get the magical disinfectant, but this one should work well enough,” she narrated while the rest of them watched with bated breath. “Just a little more.” She set the flask aside, Jarek intercepting it before it touched the ground.
The air wielder picked up a piece of cloth from Tabi’s bundle and poured some of the tonic on it, turning toHadrian, whose hand shot to his sword in a practiced move. “Don’t hit me.” Jarek held up a placating hand, showing the cloth, his eyes shooting to Hadrian’s hand. “Just trying to clean out your wound.”
Lory hadn’t even noticed the cut on the phantom’s wrist with Olive’s blood caked all over his hands. Though the blood was congealed, the injury still seemed deeper than a simple slice. He held his hand out to Jarek, nodding his thanks, and Jarek made quick work of the injury, wiping the dirt and blood caked all over it away in one swipe. “You won’t believe it, seeing Maes now, but my sister used to be clumsy when she was a child.” A small smile graced his lips, softening his harsh features as he glanced up at Hadrian. “I used to clean her wounds all the time. A cut here, a bruise there, a scratch…”
“She’s all grown up now and can take care of herself,” Hadrian reminded Jarek, who inclined his head.
“And her temper is a handful.”
Anees and Hadrian shared a look, a grin of mutual understanding passing. “The things we do for family…” Hadrian said with a much softer tone than Lory was used to, and Jarek nodded once more, the smile widening as he turned back to watch Tabi work.
A groan of pain echoed through the tunnel as Olive woke, and Lory’s attention snapped back to the Flame-born woman, the fire flickering in her palm flaring as her emotions threatened to get the best of her.
They needed to get her ready and out of here before anyone noticed they were gone.
“What happened?” Olive’s voice wasn’t more than gravel, but Lory felt down behind her head, smoothing back her sweat-drenched hair. Her skin was so cold?—
“We got you out of the cells and under the pyramid. An exit is less than a hundred feet away. We just need to get you back on your feet and out of here,” Anees explained in the neutral tone of the phantom interested in finishing a task rather than the rebel smuggling people out of the king’s most creative prison.
Olive nodded, her eyes darting along the tunnel walls and floor as she rolled her head from one side to the other. “Enya?” she prompted. “Hadrick?”
Anees shook her head, and the choked sobbing coming out of the woman cut down to the marrow of Lory’s bones.
