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I didn’t trust him enough for that. For the last thousand years, he and his father had been absorbing souls so they’d, theoretically, be strong enough to take over Matriax one day. What if he wanted to put Michael out of his misery? What if he killed the prick and took away my chance of finding them? What if he was working with them all along? I doubted he was, but that was irrelevant.

“You can tie my hands behind my back,” he said. “You can bind my abilities. But I have a theory, and I want to see if it’s correct.”

“What’s your theory?”

“Let me ask him so I don’t have to repeat it.”

“Fuck off.”

Rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, he said, “It’s about Véa. And the other par animarum, I suppose, but an Angel I was fighting said something yesterday, and I need to see the look in my brother’s eyes when I say it. That’ll tell me if it’s true.”

My heart skipped a beat. “What’d they say?”

He grew quiet again, only the distant caw of a draken sounding.

“What is it, Rafael? Just tell me—”

“It isn’t good news,” he said. “And I don’t want you to be the one to ask it. Please. Just a few minutes with him.”

* * *

Once I knew it was bad news, I was even more reluctant than I’d been. I was in the middle of telling him to fuck off for the thousandth time when Alastair arrived. Rafael and I were still arguing. Or rather,Iwas arguing, and he was rolling his eyes at me.

Medica wasn’t far behind Alastair. They both agreed. So long as Rafael agreed to bind his powers, and as long as he stayed in cuffs while he was inside, they wanted to see if we’d get a different response out of Michael.

I still didn’t like it, but I was outvoted.

Still, I kept a hand around his wrist as we ventured through the halls of the prison. I’d said something about how if he tried to trick me, he’d be out of here before he could blink.

He’d only frowned at me and said, “I’m not your enemy, esiasch. We’re on the same side.”

Maybe we were. Maybe we weren’t.

I was too bitter to dissect it.

When we made it to Michael’s cell, and Rafael saw the condition Michael was in, his mouth fell agape. His eyes even filled with tears.

Since I’d put that ore inside them, it deactivated their abilities. They healed at a slower rate, almost like humans.

A human would be dead by now.

Michael’s skin was nothing more than a coating over a skeleton. He was paler than a cloud. Medica had plucked one of his eyes out last week, and it’d yet to grow back. A thick mane of blondish gray hung from his cheeks to the middle of his chest.

A series of lashes and slices lined his spine from yesterday’s session, crimson puddling beneath where he lay on the ore floor. His wrist was swollen to four times its size beneath his ore cuff from where he’d writhed against his restraints.

He was not the Michael he’d been a decade ago. If I hadn’t been the one who’d done this to him, I wouldn’t recognize him.

“Fucking stars, Nix,” Rafael said beneath his breath.

I pressed my teeth to a hard line, saying nothing.

Michael’s eye met his brother’s, awakening to the sound of his voice. It almost looked like he smiled. “What’d you do, esiasch? Why are you in cuffs?”

Rafael was practically speechless. He took a step closer to his brother, but I yanked him back.

“No touching.”

He frowned at me, then took a step back. He looked Michael over for a long moment, taking him in. Eventually, he cleared his throat. “It’s a curse, isn’t it?”