Page 105 of A Wayward Movement

She got her answer soon enough. A grating sound from above preceded firm footsteps.

“Good. They’re both awake and ready.”

Alina squinted upward, trying to get a look at the man’s face. At first she thought it was the refinement worker she’d recognized earlier, but she realized after a moment that this man was a stranger. He just spoke with a similar cadence.

He knelt down, studying her with detached interest. Nothing in his manner or words suggested she was a conscious human being able to understand him.

“Is this the one? She really maintained a shield all night without help?”

“Yes, that’s her.” Another voice came from behind him, but Alina couldn’t see the speaker. “And our contact thought she could bribe us to kill her, can you believe it?”

The one studying Alina gave a dry chuckle. “Our neighbors here on the Peninsula are consistent, aren’t they? Always wasting their best resources.” He reached through the bars, grabbing Alina’s chin and tilting her face up.

“Leave her alone!” Benji cried, as Alina yanked herself out of the man’s grip.

He ignored both of them completely.

“With that energy capacity, she’s the perfect option to test the next stage on,” he said to his companion. “We’ll transport her to the coast once the search dies down.”

“We’ll need to be careful,” the other man cautioned him. “Remember our information is she’s got some kind of hold on the prince. He’ll be looking for her.”

“I’m not worried.” The one who seemed to be the leader sounded faintly amused. “He won’t find us, and if he loses his head over it as we’ve been led to expect, it will only work to our benefit in the end.”

Alina longed to shout at them, to tell them not to hurt Xavier. But she knew it would be unwise to confirm the connection between them.

“Will you test her first?” the second man asked. “Before taking her to the coast?”

“Of course.” The leader stood, his voice brisk as he pulled something from his pocket. “It’s not long before dawn. We’d best put them both into service now.”

He tossed whatever it was to his fellow, and both men glanced up. Alina’s range of vision was very limited, but she realized that a thin shaft of light was coming in through a tiny hole in the roof of their underground room.

“What are you doing?” she demanded uneasily.

The second man had moved forward and was placing a neatly carved wooden object just in front of her little cell. He put another next to Benji’s.

“Ready?” the leader asked.

At the other man’s curt nod, he closed his eyes, his face tight with concentration. It was instantly obvious that the stranger was highly skilled in magic craft. Using her sense of magic, Alina could feel a funnel of Dust pouring down through the tiny fissure above, surprising her with its steadiness and strength. Where was it coming from? What was moving so consistently above them?

The man harnessed it deftly, its signature becoming more pronounced in Alina’s mind as it took shape in a way that only harnessed Dust could. She exchanged a tense glance with Benji.

“Lift the blocking enchantment now,” the man grunted.

The other man made a swift movement, and with a soundless pop, Alina felt the blockage that had prevented her harnessing Dust break off her. She had no chance to do more than cast her senses around for unclaimed movement before she was almost choked by a sensation that felt like the magical equivalent of someone wrapping their body around hers and forcing it to move. Spluttering helplessly, not trying to harness anything, she felt the Dust from the movement above enter her reach. Her magical sense latched on to it, her mind flooded with awareness of the significant amount of power in her grip. But it wasn’t really in her grip. It felt more like wet rope slipping swiftly through her fingers, directed not into any immediate purpose, but into the strange wooden object just outside her cell.

All at once, the rope stopped sliding, and all was still. It wasn’t that the Dust was gone. It still filled her awareness. Her senses were overwhelmed with the effort of harnessing power. But the power wasn’t hers to command. It was locked in the object before her.

Her captor looked at his fellow. “It’s true. Her energy is remarkable. I harnessed much more with her than with the others.”

His voice was fainter, his own energy reduced by the significant use of magic he’d just undertaken. It was nothing to the numb exhaustion creeping steadily over Alina’s body.

“Alina!” Benji called her name, trying uselessly to pull the bars off his cell. “What did he do to you?”

“I’m…” Alina could hardly get the words out. “I’m…harnessed…to the…magic that’s…stored in the…object.”

“What?” Benji’s voice was too loud in the small space. “That’s not possible.”

He was right. It shouldn’t be possible. She should only ever be able to be harnessed to active magic as she drew it from current movement. But the magic of whatever movement the other man had harnessed was captured securely within the wooden item. It could be released at a later time, like whatever had been used to silence and magically bind her. But all the time it was being stored, ready for use, it would be an active drain on her energy.