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TWENTY-FOUR

Sorsha

The next time when I woke up, I was still clamped to the lab table. Aches ran all through my back and limbs from the awkward position I’d been lying in, sharper in the spots where the experimenters’ tools had cut into my body. The lights had dimmed, giving the room a hazy, dream-like feel.

The deluge from the sprinklers had stopped, although the clothes still clinging damply to my body were proof that I hadn’t imagined it. The experimenters were gone. Had they noticed—? With a stutter of my pulse, I probed the base of my gums with my tongue and relaxed slightly. Thank hamstrung hippos for that smallest of small mercies.

Had they left me on the table because they weren’t quite finished carving me up? At least that would mean Tempest hadn’t gotten what she’d wanted yet. I’d sooner cuddle up with a cockatrice than make this quest of hers one bit easier for her.

The last words I’d heard from the Company scientists tickled through my head. To get that cure . I wouldn’t have understood why the sphinx thought I had anything to do with curing anything if it hadn’t been for Snap’s devouring of her lackey in Crete. What was it exactly that he’d said the dude had found…?

A warbling sound broke through my reminiscing: a voice, not much more than a whine that sounded more animal than human, wavering from the direction of the door. Then a gasp of pain and a hoarse plea: “You don’t have to— I came here because I?—"

That was Snap’s voice, its usual brightness tarnished. My limbs jerked against the restraints automatically—and the steel cuff around my left hand popped open.

I started at it for the space of a few heartbeats, barely believing it. How could Tempest’s people have been anything less than perfectly careful? But they were mortal, and as I’d imagine she’d have grumbled hundreds of times, mortals were infinitely fallible.

Lucky for me, shadowkind were far from perfect too.

I lifted my arm with a wince and fumbled with the cuff around my neck. It only took a matter of seconds for my groping fingers to snag on the latch and wrench it open. A moment later, I’d released the cuff around my other wrist and then my waist as well.

I shoved myself upright so fast my head spun, both with dizziness in the aftermath of whatever sedative my tormenters had injected me with and the lance of pain that shot up my spine. My breath caught just shy of a sob. I gritted my teeth and snatched at the cuffs around my ankles.

Snap’s voice was getting more distant but no happier. Had the others come to break me out and been trapped? Damn it. But maybe I could turn the tables on these Company assholes one more time.

I swung around and lowered my feet to the ground. As I eased my weight onto them, my legs wobbled and then held with the stiffening of my calf and thigh muscles. My gaze fell on the smaller table, but its spread of torture instruments had been cleared off.

Oh well. Slicing and dicing wasn’t my typical style anyway. It was barbequing time.

My hand was just coming to rest on the door handle when the fading whimper rose to a scream. I flinched, the hairs on my arms standing on end. The shriek carried on, quavering and hitching. It didn’t sound as if they were simply tormenting my devourer. It sounded like they were killing him.

My throat constricted. I yanked at the door handle, but it didn’t budge. Of course they’d have locked that.

I closed my eyes, groping for calm despite the rattle of my frantic pulse in my ears. I knew my way around a lock. If I just melted the right bits—if the sprinklers overhead didn’t trigger from the concentrated heat?—

An even more piercing cry sent another shock of urgency through me. I pressed my hand over the lock area and let anger mingle with my panic. How dare they hurt my lover. They would pay—all of the assholes here would pay in every way I could make them.

Heat flared across my collarbone, sharp enough to sear, but my fiery voodoo surged toward my intended target as well. I thrust more in that direction, wanting to reduce every mechanism in there to goop.

The shrieking had faded into a sputtering gurgle. Would I even make it to him in time?

I gritted my teeth and hauled at the door. It flung open to reveal two drenched scientists standing right on the other side.

My stomach lurched, but I didn’t have time to move so much as an inch. One of the experimenters was already slashing a scalpel across my forearm; the other slammed a container over the cut. A container that caught the rush of smoke that streamed up from the wound in my adrenaline-spiked state.

Fury clanged through me alongside the jolt of understanding. My inner fire whipped out in a blaze—but before it had done more than sizzle across the moisture flecking my attackers’ faces, a fresh downpour burst from the sprinklers both in the room behind me and in the hall, this time icy cold.

My breath rasped at the sudden smack of frigid water. The scientists were already fleeing with their ill-gotten plunder, and the burly guards from before barged in to replace them. I only managed to land two blows before I found myself tangled up so tightly in one of those glittering nets that I could barely wiggle my pinkie. I couldn’t even congratulate myself for the blood trickling from the one nose it appeared I’d broken.

Snap’s voice had vanished. But it had never really been him, had it? Or at least not him now. As the guards rolled me out of the net back into my cage, the remaining pieces clicked together.

The Company had captured my devourer before. The bits I’d heard of him actually speaking, they must have recorded while they had him in their facility. The screams and shrieks might have been from then too or simply been sound effects they’d picked to reasonably match his tone. It wasn’t as if I could have identified anyone accurately from that cacophony of agony.

They’d set me up. Tempest must have decided she needed the shadowkind essence I only bled when I was particularly worked up to manufacture her cure. Had she known for sure it would come out when I was frantic, or only been experimenting after I’d bled like a mortal during the initial torture? Maybe one of the Company assholes had noticed me leaking smoke during one of our battles. Shit.

It still might not be enough. She obviously hadn’t figured out how to transform what she was getting from me into whatever exactly she wanted.

The cure…

Maybe Tempest wasn’t quite as impervious as she wanted us to think.

For what felt like a millennium or two, I sprawled there in my cage. When I attempted the same melting trick on the lock at its base, the sprinklers went off in an instant, and all I got for my trouble was another freezing shower. After that, I pulled my knees up to my chest for warmth and willed my teeth not to chatter.

If Tempest had gotten what she wanted from me this time, what did that mean for my chances of surviving the next day? Or even the next hour?

She couldn’t be sure of her “cure” when she’d never made it before—or unleashed this disease before—right? I didn’t think she’d take the chance of offing me until she was one hundred percent convinced she had no further use for me. Of course, if that meant living out the rest of my days in this cramped box, death didn’t sound all that bad. Especially if Tempest went down with me.

My chilly reflections halted at the shimmering of a figure into sight just beyond the bars. The sphinx herself had returned. To gloat, it appeared, judging from the coy tilt of her head and the smirk curling her lips. I willed a small spurt of flame along my gums, ignoring the burning sensation of the flesh there.

“You really thought I’d give you a chance to escape,” she said, her voice languid with amusement.

I wasn’t in any mood to go easy on her ego. “Hard as it might be to believe, you don’t actually come across as all that smart.”

Tempest shrugged, but the twitch of her eyelid suggested I’d irritated her at least a little. Not the greatest victory ever, but give me a break. At this point I couldn’t be much of a chooser.

Unfortunately, she knew just how to needle me in return. “How does it feel knowing you’ve provided the final step in the plans you’ve been trying so hard to interrupt?”

“Pretty crappy,” I said breezily. “How do you feel knowing that you weren’t quite stealthy enough to stop me from figuring out what’s going on here? To shield against the weakness one or the other possesses, you must contain both their strengths . You’re trying to find some part of my essence to protect you from your own disease, because you’re not strong enough on your own.”

A spark flashed in her eyes. She managed to keep her tone even. “Not trying . I’ve succeeded. There’s nothing left that stands in our way. My people are ready to let loose our sickness tomorrow, and I’ll get to watch and laugh while both they and the ones they wanted so badly to destroy crumple in its throes.”

Using my smoky essence had worked, then? Or was she just trying to fake me out to set me up for some new trick?

“You seem to take a lot of pride in being a traitorous butcher,” I remarked. “And here I thought you were all about brains and brilliant schemes, not random slaughter.” I let my voice lilt into a skewed lyric. “Shows your lies, living so grand, darling. Do you mean to start cheating? Is your plunder planned?”

Another victory: warping songs appeared to annoy Tempest just as much as it had Omen. “Shut up,” she said with a wave of her hand that was clearly meant to be casual. The momentary narrowing of her eyes showed the truth. “I can’t imagine how Omen and his lot put up with you for as long as they did. I’d expect they’ll be pleased to find out you’re no longer their burden to carry.”

If she thought I was going to believe that after everything I’d been through with my shadowkind men, she was even more off her rocker than I’d figured. I rolled my eyes at her. “I think you’ll find it’s the opposite. But why don’t you invite them over to see who’s right? I’d like to watch that visit go down.”

She chuckled. “Perhaps you will. When I hold the only protection against this sickness, I hold all the power. Do you think I won’t have them bowing to me if their survival hangs in the balance?”

Of course. If even she couldn’t withstand the disease on her own, no other shadowkind would either.

Would my lovers compromise their principles to save their own lives? I wouldn’t blame them for appeasing Tempest for long enough to guarantee their immunity if they eviscerated her afterward. But I already knew that Snap would never willingly back down, not once this woman had become my murderer, and I couldn’t imagine Thorn putting his survival over his sense of justice. He’d already spent centuries beating himself up for remaining alive after the last war he’d waged.

She’d destroy not just me but possibly all of the beings I loved as well. A larger surge of fire shot through the nonchalance I’d been trying to convey. I clenched my jaw, but heat crackled just under my skin with a stinging wave of pain.

“You see,” the sphinx said, her voice dripping with vicious sweetness. “You really could have been something, my phoenix, but that mortal side of you hasn’t got the power to aim those talents properly. Such a shame.”

“Or maybe the only shame will be how quickly we’ll snuff you out,” I retorted. “You can’t see everything. We’ve already screwed up your plans at least a dozen times.”

“And yet not badly enough that it stopped me from getting to where we are now.” Her smile came back, thinner now. She motioned to her broad forehead. “It’s not just these two mortal-esque eyes that I see with, but my inner eye as well. And a sphinx always glimpses the answers one way or another.”

My gaze locked onto that smooth plane of skin beneath the fall of her gleaming bronze hair. That was where her supernatural wisdom came from—a third eye within her mind?

A jitter of excitement quivered through me. Tempest turned with a swish of her dress and vanished, leaving me alone again—but with a resolve I hadn’t found until just now.

Omen had told me to fight her by blinding her. I could still do that. I had the tools right here, and now I knew which eye she truly relied on.

The only question was whether I’d get a chance to make use of that knowledge before she brought both realms to their knees.