Page 19

“Nothing.”

“Then do tell me, why there is a dead girl in the caravan.”

“She’s not dead.”

Silence follows, and I fear for what might follow.

Will they burn my body so that my spirit can join Livith’s domain of oblivion? Or will the attackers bury me in the desert under a nameless grave so I might lie restless for an eternity?

The torrid heat slithers over my skin, ready to devour me.

I fight to pull away, to push my lifeless body up, to run away as far away as possible. The only thing I accomplish is that my fingers twitch. A curse follows.

“Will you help me, or will you keep standing there?” asks the deep voice, and I anchor myself to it.

“Who is she?”

“We can talk about her name, the raid, and the color of my underwear as soon as we get her inside. Deal?”

A soft sound of boots burying in sand, and a shadow looms over me. A touch on my arm, and my concentration shatters, the heat crackling around me and scalding my body until there is nothing but pain.

My mind comes to a sharp focus, but pain soars, shattering it into shards I might never piece together.

“Evanae’s grace,” a woman’s voice breaks through the silence.

I fight through the crust covering my eyes, but it won’t concede. I can’t control the cadence of my breath, the stammer of my heart, the flight of my thoughts.

A gentle pressure on my arm, and blood spews from my wound. I moan, stilling when powerful arms hold me down. Even if the only thing I want is for this torment to be over, I squelch my desire to fight as soon as I hear a crisp sound of fabric tearing.

With a groan, I finally manage to open my eyes. Everything is bright around me. Too bright.

I realize I’m looking at the ceiling of a room when a curtain swirls in the air above me. I turn my head and meet the empty gaze of a white mask with red tears. The mask of rebels who hold me prisoner. With a cry lodged deep in my throat, I recoil at the sight, but to no avail. A firm grip holds me in place.

“Pass me the scalpel,” says the woman.

I buck under the restraints, unbridled sounds breaking out from my lips. I haven’t survived the nightmare only to perish in the house of a stranger lost in the desert.

Someone leans over me, but my eyes can’t focus on anything.

“Stop.” My breathing shallow, I tear on the restraints again, and the woman sighs. “Hold her still. This will hurt.”

The skin of my arm splits under the blade of her knife. Pain follows soon after. Violent and sharp. What I’ve lived through in the darkness was nothing but a dull ache pulsing through my muscle. I howl, tears streaming down my face, mixing with dust and grime. I thrash in place, no longer caring if I bleed to death. Anything must be better than this.

The sun dims and glows brighter as I slip in and out of consciousness.

“Please,” I mumble through pain and tears.

The woman doesn’t listen, digging inside the reopened wound. Wails echo through the silent desert until my mind becomes a tangled turmoil of agony.

“There,” says the woman triumphantly.

Metal clatters on a dish close to my ear, and I know the bullet is out of my arm.

The needle pierces my skin, and wails erupt each time it comes through my skin and back out as the thread tracks its path. In the constant rhythm of a seamstress of skin and blood, the woman shuts the wound in what must have been minutes. Somewhere between her tying the last knot and wrapping the bandage around my arm, even the last of the sun dims from my view.

I open my eyes to a searing world. A blanket damp with my own sweat holds me in place. I throw it off and swallow a groan as pain shoots through my arm. Pulling the collar of a shirt I don’t recognize, I see a bandage wrapped around my arm. Blood seeps through it, staining the shirt and the sheets of my bed.

I sit up, my head spinning, my stomach twisting. I grip the bed railing with my healthy arm, taking a few steadying breaths. When the horizon stays as a solid line, I reach for my split brow, but only a thin crust covers the wound.