Page 32 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow (The Ravaged Kingdom #1)

Chapter

Twenty-Two

D esperate, thrashing helplessness.

That was what it felt like to drown.

With the water the Watchman commanded crashing in on me from all sides, I was nothing but an insect swept away by a flood.

I held my breath, but water forced itself into my airways. My lungs seized with the pain of a thousand white-hot knives, and my own tears mixed with the salt of the sea.

It was horrifyingly silent inside that crushing storm of water. I couldn’t yell. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t hear Kaden as he drowned beside me in his own tide of doom.

My chest burned as I kicked and fought, but there was nothing I could do. I was no match for the Watchman’s magic — no match for the sea he so ruthlessly commanded.

I could feel the darkness pulling me under — feel my body failing me. But I forced my eyes open as I pummeled the waves, determined to face my enemy.

There was only more darkness .

I was going to drown, I realized. This was how it would end.

I’d nearly died the night Silas had found me in that alleyway, and I’d spent my evenings hunting down vampires ever since.

I’d staved off death even as I’d walked beside it. Now I was going to drown on dry land.

But just as that cruel reality began to sink in, I felt my legs give out from under me. The water released me from its grip, and I crashed onto solid rock in a torrent of brackish water. It streamed down my face and arms, which were now splayed on smooth, cold rock.

My lungs seized painfully as I retched, expelling a stomach full of nasty water. With great effort, I pushed myself up on all fours, my arms quivering with the strain of holding myself up.

Gasping and choking, I looked over and saw Kaden hunched in a similar fashion.

He looked so awful that a streak of fear chased away my own discomfort. His usually tan skin was pale and clammy, and his eyes seemed unnaturally bright. His wet hair was plastered to the side of his face, which, for one unguarded moment, was swathed in pain like I’d never seen on him.

He seemed to realize that I was watching and hurriedly tucked it away, hiding it behind a mask of grim resolve as he surveyed our surroundings.

We were in some sort of sea cave whose mouth was open to the air. Metal bars spanned the entrance, and just below was the thrashing black sea we’d crossed to reach the Watchman’s fortress.

It was a cell — a cell carved into that bleak, jagged rock overlooking the ship graveyard .

Staring down at the waves crashing against the shore, I realized why it was open to the elements. Eventually, the tide would rise — filling this very chamber.

“Is your magic . . .” I began.

Kaden’s face tightened. “It’s gone.”

My heart sank, and I cast desperately around our cell for some other solution.

The small cave seemed to have been carved out of the cliff itself. The bars were too thick for even a supernatural to bend, and, since the Watchman had magicked us in here, there was no lock.

Hopelessness seeped into my bones as easily as the cold of the stone through my leathers, and I tucked my knees in tight to my chest.

Perhaps if I had learned of my witch heritage sooner, I could have honed enough magic to spirit us out of here. But Mankara’s text was gone, and the cipher was back in our realm. All I had were the daggers sheathed at my thighs, which now seemed as useless as I felt.

There was no way out. We were going to die in here — drowned by those icy waves.

“People don’t die in the in-between,” said Kaden, as though he’d read my thoughts.

“What?” I rasped.

“The body can die, but the soul . . .” He gave a hard swallow, staring down at his hands. “The soul remains trapped here, bound to serve the Watchman. Forever.”

A new kind of terror gripped me at his words. That was why the merpeople had all been undead. Their hearts had stopped beating, but the Watchman’s depraved magic kept their souls confined in the ruined husks of their bodies.

Kaden didn’t speak again, and I could tell from the stoop of his shoulders and the blue tinge to his lips that the poison was working its way through his system, robbing him of any strength he had left.

I began to shiver uncontrollably, partly from my wet leathers and partly from the knowledge that we would soon share the merpeople’s fate.

I didn’t know how long we sat there in silence.

After a while, Kaden’s head drooped back against the rough stone wall as he succumbed to a restless sleep. I just sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, watching his chest rise and fall.

I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to monitor his breathing. We were both going to die. It was only a matter of when.

And yet the dread I felt wasn’t only for my own demise. If Kaden succumbed to the poison before that icy water rose to claim us, I felt as though part of me might die right along with him.

So I stayed awake, back aching from the force of my shivers as I counted his uneven breaths. Every so often, I would allow my gaze to wander to Kaden’s handsome face, studying him in a way I never would have dared if he’d been conscious.

He looked so much younger in sleep — so much less fae somehow.

The hard planes of his face were softer in sleep, and there was no hint of the dark power that swirled in those silver-gray eyes.

His raven-black hair was mussed like a child’s, and his mouth hung open ever so slightly, filling our cave with the sound of his snores.

A smile tugged at the corners of my lips. Who would have thought that Kaden snored ? I might have believed him if he’d told me he had no need for sleep at all .

Eventually, my fatigue overpowered my looming sense of dread. I fell into a restless slumber, jerking awake every few minutes to check that Kaden was still alive.

After what felt like an hour of this, I thought the cold might kill me before we drowned. I could no longer feel my hands or feet, and my movements were jerky and uncoordinated.

My eyelids drooped, and this time, I couldn’t fight the pull of sleep.

Perhaps it was better this way — to sleep these last fitful hours away rather than quiver in dread.

But then I felt a hum of familiar magic, soft enough that I wondered if I was imagining it.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. There, lying on the stone floor of our cell, was Mankara’s text.

I sucked in a ragged breath. It had to be a hallucination — one of the Watchman’s cruel tricks. But when my fingers brushed the frayed edge of the spine, that magic seemed to reach out to greet me.

It fused together with my own, and I felt an unexpected surge of strength.

Unable to resist, I picked up the book and cracked the black cover with shaking hands. The pages were yellowed and stained with age, and the text was inked in a tight, precise hand.

It was impossible to read in the darkness of our cell, but crawling over the page in neat black rows were intricate bands of runes.

Hungrily, I flipped through the pages, running my fingers over the lost magical language that my ancestors had mastered .

How was it that this book was here? It didn’t feel like the Watchman’s doing.

No. Something had happened when I’d opened that chest. This book had recognized my magic the same way I’d felt drawn to it.

Had Mankara’s text sought me out? Offered itself up in my time of need?

My mind raced to come up with some other explanation. I had practically no experience with the magic that flowed through my own veins — no idea what was even possible .

Perhaps there was a rune or a spell that could free us from this cell. If only I knew where to look.

As if in answer to my unspoken request, the book hummed in my hands so violently that I dropped it. The tattered cover flopped onto the damp stone floor, pages flying as if caught in a high wind.

I stared down at the book with a mixture of trepidation and awe. The pages fell open to a spot near the middle, and I saw what looked like an arrangement of triangles with markings I didn’t recognize.

I sighed. Even if the book was trying to help, it wasn’t as though I could do magic without any knowledge of the Coranthe runes. I had no idea what any of them meant — let alone how to use them.

That debilitating hopelessness crept in again, but I shoved it aside and concentrated.

If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the hum of magic that had called to me inside the fortress. It wasn’t mine, and yet it wasn’t not mine. It seemed to belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time — a river of power that I could access if I could only find a way to channel it .

I focused harder on that steady buzz of power and let it fill me up. I willed it to travel down my arms to my fingertips and felt the magic respond to my unspoken command.

I could feel it humming in my veins, unrefined but powerful. It was as if the magic wanted to do what I asked. I only had to direct it.

Hands shaking, I reached out and touched a fingertip to the metal bar and watched as it simply melted away.

I jerked my hand back, and the magic receded as if startled by my sudden movement.

I stared at the floor, blinking in disbelief. Between the other solid bars was a mass of melted iron.

“Kaden.” My voice sounded strangely far away.

Kaden jerked awake, and I felt an unexpected surge of relief. He looked awful, but he was alive, hurriedly donning his mask of unflappable cunning despite his weakened state.

I didn’t have the words for what I’d done, but thankfully, I didn’t need them. His silvery eyes traveled from Mankara’s text lying on the floor to the opening between the bars of our cave. “Is that . . .”

I nodded.

Kaden blinked. A wide, feline grin broke across his gaunt face, and I grinned back.

My legs were shaking by the time I burst through the front door of the House of Guile — half carrying, half dragging his semiconscious form.

It was only by some stroke of luck that we’d emerged from the pool in Mirabella’s crypt to find the chamber deserted. I had no idea how long we’d spent in the in-between, but night had fallen over the Quarter, and the surviving vampires must have gone out to feed.

Supporting most of Kaden’s weight, I stared up the impressive staircase with a sinking feeling in my gut.

I’d dragged him more than a mile from Mirabella’s, and my body was spent. I knew I’d never manage to get him up the steps, so I settled for shuffling him into the sitting room and dropping him onto the antique settee.

Kaden’s eyelids lifted a fraction of an inch, and his bleary gaze made my stomach clench.

“Where’s the antivenom?” I asked.

Kaden didn’t answer right away. He squeezed his eyes shut with a grimace. Then his head lolled onto the cushions, and my heart stuttered with dread.

“Kaden!” I snapped, grabbing a fistful of his soft raven hair and tugging his head upright. “Where — is — the antivenom ?”

A long moment passed before he opened his eyes, and he seemed to have a hard time focusing. He dragged in a breath that sounded like a death rattle, and his face went even paler. “Down the hall.” He coughed. “Kitchen cupboard above the stove. Blue bottle.”

A small amount of relief trickled through me, though I was terrified he might die if I took my eyes off him for a second.

Shoving this fear aside, I released his hair and tore down the wood-paneled hallway. Faelight illuminated brass wall sconces along my path and ignited the candles in the chandelier that hung from the kitchen ceiling.

Despite the lavish gothic style of the manor, Kaden’s kitchen was surprisingly modern. Dark stone countertops flanked the walls, and appliances with shiny brass handles and dials gleamed in the winking faelight.

Pulling myself up onto the counter, I threw open the cupboard above the stove and rummaged around until I found a curved blue bottle small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

Snatching it up, I leapt off the counter and sprinted back down the hallway, careening into the sitting room.

Kaden’s eyes were closed once again — his face so pale he might have been a corpse. My heart pounded against my ribs as I unstoppered the bottle and lifted his head off the back of the settee.

He didn’t move a muscle — didn’t even open his eyes as I pressed the bottle to his lips. I had no idea what the correct dosage was, so I emptied the contents into his mouth a few drops at a time.

Kaden coughed as it hit the back of his throat, but I tipped his chin up and forced him to swallow.

A few lines appeared along his flawless brow, and I guessed that the antivenom tasted terrible.

He didn’t open his eyes, and my chest tightened.

Maybe I’d been too late.

Hot tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I let my head fall onto the cushions to rest beside his. For several minutes, I watched for the rise and fall of his chest — the rhythm so erratic that I felt certain each breath would be his last.

My eyes grew heavy, but I forced myself to watch — as if I could will him to stay alive.

A tiny voice in the back of my head wondered when I’d come to care whether Kaden lived or died, but I was too exhausted to answer it.

My eyelids drooped as I sank deeper into the velvet cushions. The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was Kaden’s smug grin as he turned to face me.