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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

M aia was asleep, wrapped deeper in unconsciousness than she’d been in weeks, since the compound in Vassalaer. No dreams tortured her sleep. No nightmares made her heart race and body shake even in sleep. Probably because of the furnace wrapped around her, the solid muscle pressed flush to her back. A heavy arm settled across her waist, hand possessively wrapped around her hip. She felt safe, and warm, and protected. Waking up to the sensation of choking on her own blood was like being slapped in the face after a long, soul-nourishing hug.

She came awake with a horrible lurch, the movement so violent that Bryon’s arm slid off her waist, her own hands clutching at her throat.

“Maia?” Bryon demanded, instantly growling protective promises as he reached for her, scanning her face before his head whipped around to scour the room for threats. “Show yourself,” he barked, his voice so deep that Maia jumped, scratching at her throat as the sensation of choking worsened. It wasn’t a noose around her neck, wasn’t even hands. It was… liquid. Blood, she’d thought, but it tasted like dark, rotten plants and was as thin as water. Yet when she clutched at her mouth, expecting a waterfall of the poisonous stuff to flow from her lips, there was… nothing.

“I don’t understand,” she choked out, her throat throbbing and sore like she’d been strangled. But there was nothing there, no blood, no poison. Only her own fingernails scratching at her throat.

“Princess,” Bryon said, catching her hands and holding them firmly, lowering his head to meet her eyes. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.”

“I-I don’t know,” she gasped between sharp breaths, struggling for air even though nothing was happening. There was no one in the room, no hidden assailant, no poison shoved past her lips. She flung the covers off and crawled into Bryon’s lap, relief like a bright star in her chest when his arms instantly surrounded her. “I’m choking on… on liquid. I thought it was—” She coughed violently, her eyes watering as Bryon stroked her back, glaring out at the room as if it was to blame. “I thought it was my own blood,” she said when the coughing eased. “But there’s nothing there. I would be covered in it.”

Bryon stiffened and went very still. Maia’s instincts had her freezing too, a natural response to her mate sensing a threat. “There’s no one in the room with us,” he said finally, his hands warm and calloused against her back, and so damn comforting. “I thought someone was attacking you with magic at first but—”

“But,” she prompted, not liking the pause from him. Bryon rarely paused, which meant she wasn’t going to like what he said next.

“I don’t think you’re choking, princess. I think one of your mates is.”

The truth hit her like a fist to the chest and she scrambled away from him and off the bed, restlessness hitting her like a disease. She paced to the window, then the door, then back to the bed, her hands starting to shake, then her arms, her knees weakening as she sank deep into her own soul.

The glade of her soul was dark, the trees utterly still instead of waving in a natural wind, the leaves a deep green, almost black. In her mind, she ran through the long grass, searching for the wrongness, searching for which of her mates was drowning.

Bryon caught her when she paced back to the bed and she stood in his arms, shaking, her eyes closed to focus on her soul. There was a huge tree, it’s roots reaching through the glade, touching so many other trees that it was clear it was important. The heart of the glade. Maia crept closer, her heart pounding in her body even as her whole consciousness was here, nearing the tree, feeling sick at the blackness of its bark, the red-veined dark of the leaves. Was this what the iron poisoning had done to her soul?

She hesitated, her stomach tangled in knots, but even here she could feel Bryon holding her. He’d been brave in Marszton, had faced down a saint to heal her, so she would be brave, too. On soft feet she padded closer to the tree, a hand out in front of her, knowing she needed to touch the sturdy trunk, to soothe the damage within. Up close, dark, bubbling liquid oozed from cracks in the bark, the tree bleeding thick, viscous ink.

When she set her hand on the tree, liquid coated her palm, the slick, icy sensation distracting for a second before the glade was ripped from around her.

It wasn’t the bedroom with Bryon she returned to, but a different place—grey and austere and cold like their first cell. And instead of her sitting across from Bryon, the two of them scowling at each other, ignoring the chemistry burning in the space between them, this cell was bisected by a metal table. Upon it were instruments of torture that Maia knew too well.

She tried to back up, but something froze her in place. She couldn’t move her arms, couldn’t lift her legs. A black-haired giant walked around the table with a knife curved at the tip, the kind that had once scarred her deep. Maia’s chest rose and fell with panicked breaths, but in this space, she was utterly still, staring straight ahead.

An animal rumble of warning came from behind the man, and Maia jolted in surprise, a sick understanding creeping up on her, dripping like ice down her spine. Was this—was that Jaro, growling? It sounded like her mate. The stranger came nearer, bringing psychopath eyes that wicked knife unsettlingly close, approaching where she’d frozen against the wall. But Maia was a bystander. He wasn’t approaching her. Who? One of her mates but who?

Frantic, she searched for any clue, trying to drop her head to see his body, trying to lift his hands so she could check for scars and tattoos and rings, growing more out of control with every second, with every inch of floor the torturer crossed. He was like Etziel—she knew it in the way he moved, the easy way he held the weapon, the way his eyes glimmered. He was like Etziel and he was going to torture her mate and she couldn’t help remembering the wound on Azrail’s chest where someone had begun cutting into him, peeling his skin away from muscle.

Az? She screamed down her soul, down the bond. Azrail!

Her body jerked—no, his body jerked against the wall. Cold air scraped over his bare chest as the torturer neared, his head tilted as he assessed his victim. Considering where to cut next. Maia was going to be sick. She was going to scream. Heat and rage and power drummed in her chest, a roar of fury building. She might have let it out in her body, in that distant bedroom with Bryon.

“Where are you running to, knight?” the torturer asked with a little smirk that made Maia hotter, angrier. Power throbbed in her veins, cresting like a wave, capable of destroying all civilisation. “It’s awfully rude to disassociate when I’m giving you my undivided attention.”

Az! Maia screamed down the bond, and this time she knew he could hear her because his body jumped again. She surged through the bond, vibrating with rage, and it hit her like a solid brick wall—his pain, his endless, screaming, blinding agony.

Oh, Azrail. Maia tried to wrap herself around him, to protect him even though she knew she wasn’t really there. She could taste it now—the liquid he’d been choking on so hard that it woke her. It tasted of poison and herbs and rotten, putrid water. She felt it pumping in his veins as if they were her own, and panic made the power flow faster, furious, inside her.

Could she use it here? The second she had that thought, she was already grabbing a fistful of magic, letting the rage and protectiveness fill her, remembering the way she’d ripped up that street in Eosantha. She remembered the way her snaresong had closed all the exits in that forest, remembered the growing sense she’d had—that it wasn’t a one-off, that she could use her snaresong woven with her saint magic to change the world around her.

There are no weapons in this room, she said with complete confidence, feeling the magic tingle her tongue. It shouldn’t have worked; her magic was locked inside her body even in their new, upgraded room. Azrail’s mouth didn’t open to form the words. It tingled through her, shivered along her tongue, stinging her lips. She watched the table of weapons and… nothing changed. They didn’t vanish. They remained, a deadly threat to her mate. The torturer advanced with the curved blade in his hand.

She sank deeper through the bond, reaching for Az, growing desperate. She could feel something coursing through him, infecting him like a sickness, reaching through his veins to his heart.

The torturer is dead, she said with total conviction, letting her magic crest and spread.

In her body, she held her breath. Through Azrail’s eyes, she watched the torturer take a step, unimpeded, unharmed. Fuck! He was close enough to touch Az now, close enough that the blade gleamed as it neared his chest and—

The first crash of pain ripped her away, back into her room with Bryon. It disoriented her for long, dizzying seconds. And when she plunged back into the glade, when she raced through the dark grass and slammed her hand against the tree, it didn’t take her to Azrail. It didn’t take her anywhere. He’d shut her out.

“Maia,” Bryon was growling. “Maia!”

She opened her eyes just as a sob clawed its way up her throat. “He’s being tortured. Azrail’s being tortured and I can’t get to him.”