Page 28 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

After hearing his voice in my head night after night, I was finally face-to-face with Ciarán Grimguard, Servant of the Frozen God, again.

And I was going to kill him.

I lunged forward, and his orange eyes widened in surprise.

Something hot seared into my wrists, and the muscles in my shoulders strained as my hands yanked me back. I fell against a stone column, landing on my backside.

My wrists were bound behind me, shackling my arms around the width of a pillar. Loose blue hair fell into my face when I fought against the bonds. My armor was gone, leaving me in a plain tunic and trousers, as if Ciarán hadn’t wanted to waste Skal on anything he didn’t deem necessary.

That was fine. I didn’t need armor to take down Ciarán, which was exactly what I was going to do as soon as I figured out how to break free.

“Is that a yes, then?”

Ciarán crooned.

“You did miss me?”

“What is this?”

I kicked out wildly and strained against the hot bonds that held me captive. I couldn’t see them, but the way they sizzled and burned told me the rope wrapped around my wrists was made of Skal.

“You were in my way.”

Ciarán stood over me. Soft blue light seeped through the holes in his dark cloak and threw shadows across his patchwork leather armor. He’d done a crude job in trying to repair the pieces that Tiernan’s explosive had ripped to shreds.

Bits of night sky shined through the dilapidated roof above him, ringing his inky curls in a halo of stars that made the blacks of his eyes seem all the more dark.

“We’re still in Tulyr?”

I demanded, looking around the stone room. The flooring was made of cracked cobblestone, and parts of the walls were falling down and replaced by curtains of lichen.

“Near it.”

The bottom half of Ciarán’s face was covered in his black cowl, but the set of his eyebrows held a smirk. I flexed my fingers and tried to imagine them elongating into claws, but they stayed frustratingly human.

“An old, forgotten outpost by the looks of things. It’s a bit drafty, but it suits my needs.”

He stepped aside so I could see the trickle of Skal leaking from a crack in the wall and pooling in a small basin. A bottle sat in the pool, collecting Skal as it streamed down the wall. A line of bottles stood beside the basin, half of them already full of the glowing liquid.

“A Skalspring?”

It was tiny compared to the one in Tamora’s throne room and Tulyr’s Sanctum.

“Oh, yes. I could’ve made Nightmares for you to fight all night long, Blue.”

“You used me to follow us.”

“I could’ve stayed silent.”

Ciarán knelt down so that his strange orange and black eyes were even with mine. He reached up to pull his cowl down away from his face. The blue light of the Skalspring turned his skin a sickly color, but he still looked a lot better than he had when I’d left him in Orla’s bed.

“I didn’t have to speak to you to know what you were feeling and seeing. I could’ve gotten what I needed from you without you ever knowing I was there.”

“So?”

I strained against the bonds again.

“I didn’t have to let you know Tamora’s brute was following you in Riverstead. I didn’t have to help you fight him in the Umberdust Plains. And I certainly didn’t have to tell you how to kill the rotsbane.”

“You helped me to help yourself. You wanted Titus and Tamora out of your way, and if the rotsbane had devoured me, you would’ve had no way to track the others.”

His mouth quirked, and he straightened up to stretch.

“You saved my life in Vanderfall, Blue. That’s no one’s mistake but your own. You better get comfortable. As long as you’re with me, the Lyrian can’t call you back to his side.”

He stalked to the doorway and leaned against the crumbling wall to stare out at the ruins and cliffs around us with his back to me.

“What do you mean?”

I shifted around the stone column to keep him in view.

“As long as I’m with you? You can’t keep me here!”

“Except that I can. I’m the stronger nocturmancer, and while it was tricky getting you to yield to me, there’s no way I’ll let you go now that I have you here, even if the old man tries to pull you back.”

“I have a job back at home,”

I said.

“If I don’t wake up, there are people who will worry. They’ll—”

My stomach dropped in painful realization, and I looked to the horizon glowing in the distance, trying to gauge how long I had until morning. How long I had until my phone rang with a Von Leer admissions officer waiting on the other end.

“Your friends in Keldori won’t let any harm come to you.”

He moved away from the doorway to crouch in the middle of the room.

“Your body is safe.”

“I don’t give a crap about my body! It’s my interview I’m worried about!”

Ciarán smiled as he piled dry twigs on the stone floor.

“An interview?”

He snapped his fingers over the twigs, and a flame flickered to life.

“Someone asks me questions, I answer them, and they decide if they let me into their stupid school or not. And if I miss it, they definitely won’t let me in.”

“I know what an interview is.”

He pulled a metal container from a nearby pack and nestled it into his fire.

“Then why are you laughing at me?”

I yanked on the bonds again. They stung against the skin of my wrists and were frustratingly sturdy.

Ciarán ignored me, pouring water from a skein into his metal cup and then adding chunks of something from inside his pack.

“You’re making soup?”

I seethed.

“I’m hungry.”

“You don’t need me!”

The bonds burned against my wrists, but I strained against them anyway.

“Let me go back to Keldori, at least! I’ll be out of your way!”

“And tomorrow night?”

Ciarán stirred his soup lazily.

“Galahad will call you back, and you’ll be in my way again. I saw how you cut down my Nightmares. You aren’t the same useless girl I killed in the woods outside Cape Fireld anymore, and I can’t summon a horde of warriors every night to steal you away from Galahad.”

“Then call me first.”

The idea was repulsive, but not nearly as repulsive as the thought of missing my phone call. Ciarán frowned at his soup.

“Unless you can’t.”

His continued silence was confirmation enough, and I forced a laugh just to get under his skin.

“And you say you’re the stronger nocturmancer?”

I jeered.

“You can only steal me away when I’m already in Skalterra and if I yield to you, otherwise you would’ve called me sooner.”

Metal grated against stone as Ciarán used a stick to push his soup out of the fire.

“I don’t know why I can’t reach you from across the Rift and Galahad can. I’ve tried nearly every night.”

His admission threw me off guard. He had no good reason to tell me the limits of his skills.

“So now that I have you, you’ll have to stay here. Otherwise, you’ll continue to get in my way. They’ll be easy enough to track now that I’ve caught up. They escaped on the river that flows down the mountain. It shouldn’t be too hard to follow them.”

“How long do I have to stay here?”

“Long enough to miss your interview.”

“How long?”

His eyes flitted up from his cooling soup to meet my gaze.

“As long as my powers allow, Blue. So, like I said, get comfortable.”

My insides chilled at the thought of being leashed in this run-down house for nights on end. My shoulders were already going numb from the angle my arms were tied at.

“You’re going to leave me here?”

“I’ll send you enough Skal down our bond to keep you alive, but yes. Until I have the Divine Sovereign, that spot on the floor is your new home.”

“I saved your life, and Galahad will kill me.”

As I said it, my Von Leer interview still felt like the more pressing issue, but the Galahad thing at least offered something else to worry about.

“You said it yourself. If he realizes I gave my name to you—”

“He doesn’t know you’re here.”

Ciarán closed his eyes as he sipped his soup.

“With so many Nightmares to cater to tonight, he has no way to know I’ve stolen you from his ranks. He’ll assume you fell in battle.”

“And then he’ll try to call me back, at which point he’ll realize he can’t!”

“The man is ancient.”

Ciarán’s low chuckle set my teeth on edge, and he opened his eyes to survey me with his horrible orange irises. Strands of hair fell from his bun to hang in his face.

“He’ll be quicker to blame his dwindling ability than a second nocturmancer.”

“I should have told him about you.”

The words were more for myself than for Ciarán.

“If you’d rather be dead than trapped here with me, then yes, you should have. Though I fail to see how being dead would help you with your interview problem.”

I shifted against the stone pillar at my back. Ciarán was focused on his soup again, and I tested the bond between us, trying to draw magick away from him to form my arm spikes.

I might as well have been playing tug-of-war with a brick wall because the invisible channel of Skalmagick that kept me linked to the Grimguard gave me nothing. Ciarán must’ve felt my attempt, however, because he looked up at me through thick eyelashes. His mouth curled into a half smile.

He stood up, his soup in hand and his tattered cloak trailing behind him, and he crossed the dirt-laden floor to crouch eye-to-eye with me.

“Does that work on Galahad?”

He set his soup down to better survey my face. His glowing orange eyes bore into mine, and I didn’t like feeling like he could see straight through to my mind.

“He lets you steal his magick?”

I settled against the column at my back with my head held high, and then struck out with my foot to kick his soup over. The steaming contents splashed across cracked cobblestone, and Ciarán frowned.

“That was my dinner,”

he said simply.

“Then you better lick it up quick if you’re hungry.”

A tuft of blue hair fell into my face.

Ciarán sat back and drew his knees up to rest his elbows on. His head lolled to the side as he continued to study me, and I stuck my chin out at him.

I braced for the interrogation that I knew was coming. He would ask where we were taking Fana. I didn’t even have any fake answers I could feed him. The only place I knew the name of was where we were taking her.

He narrowed his eyes, and I held his gaze. I was ready. I wouldn’t break, no matter what he did.

“Tell me, Blue,”

he said.

“do you have friends in Keldori?”

The question caught me off guard and quite frankly stung more than whatever torture technique I assumed he’d use to get information out of me.

“Yes,”

I snapped. It wasn’t a lie. Liam was a coworker, but he was more tolerable than he had been at the start of summer. Plus, Jonquil and I were getting along better. Kind of.

“What kind of question is that?”

“You don’t seem very likable, so I was curious.”

Heat rose in my face, but I refused to let him know he was getting under my skin.

“What about you?”

I blew a bit of hair away from my face.

“Lots of friends in the Grimguard business?”

“Not really.”

He pulled something that looked like beef jerky out from the folds of his cloak and took a bite.

“Your friends keep killing them.”

“Daithi killed—”

“Caitria.”

Ciarán nodded solemnly.

“I know. You want some?”

He held his jerky out to me, and I recoiled, pressing my head into the column behind me.

“Hard pass.”

“It’s ramstag. Caught it and smoked it myself just a couple of days ago.”

He shrugged and took another bite.

“Is your hair blue in Keldori?”

“No.”

This interrogation wasn’t going the way I thought it would. Not that I had been in many interrogations, but I was pretty sure this was less than conventional.

“When are you going to ask me your real questions?”

“Are these not real questions?”

The tiny smile that pulled on his lips told me he knew what I meant.

“You want to know what I know about the Riftkeepers,” I said.

“And would you tell me if I asked?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the use in asking?”

“I figured you’d used some sort of magick to torture the answer out of me,”

I admitted.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Blue.”

His heavy eyebrows furrowed over his eyes.

“No, you just want to ruin my life by keeping me here.”

Ciarán smirked and stood as he raised his hands out to his sides.

“Guilty.”

He stalked over the Skalspring to replace the bottle he’d left under the steady trickle of pale blue liquid with an empty container.

“You should consider yourself lucky. There are worse places to be held captive.”

“Oh, yes. I’m overflowing with gratitude to be trapped in a leaky, old outpost,”

I snarled.

“This leaky, old outpost is one of the oldest buildings in all of Skalterra.”

He sat down next to the Skal pool to organize his bottles.

“The style comes straight from Keldori itself. I think they called it Romanesque. Does it remind you of home?”

I exhaled heavily through my nose, searching for patience I knew wasn’t there. Iseult’s warning to not tell anyone in Skalterra about Keldori was fresh on my mind.

“Definitely. Nothing says ‘home sweet home’ like a dilapidated stone shed.”

“Perfect. Then you should be plenty comfortable.”

He settled into the floor by his line of bottles and pulled his pack closer to use as a pillow.

“What are you doing?”

I demanded, once again struggling against the Skal that kept my wrists bound together.

“You can’t go to sleep!”

“You keep telling me what I can’t do,”

he rolled over so his back was to me.

“but I’m not the one tied to a post. Making all those Nightmares wasn’t easy, and your friends won’t make it far. They’ll be easy to track, so I might as well take a nap.”

“But my interview—”

“Is not my priority, Blue.”

Outside the door to my right, I could see the lightening horizon. The stars that shined through the holes in the roof seemed dimmer than before. Dawn was coming. My interview was in a few hours.

Ratting out Linsey to get a better grade point average would be for nothing. Spending a night alone in the woods would be for nothing. Mom going viral on the internet for punting Mrs. Harper’s lawn ornaments into oblivion would be for nothing.

Everything would be for nothing.

I had to get into Von Leer.

“I’ve worked too hard for this!”

I tried to kick a bit of potato from his spilt soup at him. It rolled a pitiful few feet before becoming lodged in a bit of moss.

“I’ve worked hard for this too,”

Ciarán said, his back still to me.

“I just happened to be the one who landed on top.”

I wanted to scream and thrash against the Skal that held my wrists together behind the column at my back. I wanted to kick my boot across the room and watch it smack Ciarán in the back of his head. I wanted to pull this stupid Romanesque outpost down stone by stone and take us both down with it.

But instead, I settled against my column and shook out my elbows to keep circulation moving through my shoulders. The sun wasn’t completely up yet. I wasn’t sure how daylight here correlated with daylight at home, but I had to have at least a few hours before Von Leer would call me. Screaming and melting down wouldn’t help me. It would only give Ciarán something to laugh at.

I tested the Skal around my wrists again, but it continued to hold strong even as its creator drifted to sleep across the room from me. It burned against my skin just enough to hurt, but not enough to cut into me, otherwise I happily would’ve sacrificed a severed hand to escape.

The column at my back felt sturdy too. I pushed against it, hoping it might crumble, but it stayed frustratingly upright.

My fingernails dug into the skin of my palms. Maybe being patient wasn’t the answer. Maybe I should scream until the Grimguard became so annoyed that he released me.

His shoulders rose and fell in time with his steady breathing. He’d fallen asleep quickly. Maybe creating all those Nightmares had taken more out of him than I’d realized. I chewed on the inside of my cheek.

He might not feel me try to draw his Skalmagick away when he was asleep.

I took a steadying breath and straightened up against my column. I siphoned away as little as possible, drawing it down our bond and feeling it tickle my fingertips. It felt different from Galahad’s magick. Even though I’d only taken a little bit, there was something electric about it that made my extremities feel lighter.

I waited and watched Ciarán for any signs that he had noticed. His breathing went uninterrupted. I looked back at the horizon over the tops of trees that swayed in a nighttime breeze. The sky was still dark except for the bright line where land met sky in the far distance. I had time. The birds weren’t even awake yet.

I bowed my head so that more blue hair fell in my face, as if it might better hide me from Ciarán. The next bit of magick slid down the bond too fast, and Ciarán’s deep breaths hitched.

I held my own breath, feeling the next tiny bit of magick bounce along my nerves as I waited for Ciarán’s breathing to resettle. I would have to take even smaller amounts, and maybe not so close together.

I forced myself to wait and counted to one hundred in my head before taking the next bit of Skal. And then I did it again, and again, and again, all while watching the lightening horizon.

When the first birds started to sing, I got nervous, and took more than I should have. Ciarán rolled over so that he was facing me, and I shrank against my column, but his eyes stayed closed.

I counted to five hundred before I dared to take more. The magick was tangible in my fingers, buzzing with electricity that wanted to be let out, but I wasn’t sure if it was enough to modify my body or break the Skal around my wrists.

If I tried and failed, it might wake up Ciarán, and then he’d make sure I missed my interview.

The birds outside became louder, and the horizon wasn’t just getting brighter, but I could now see the hazy shape of the sun taking form to dye the tops of trees in hues of red.

I siphoned more magick than I should have again. Ciarán, with his eyes still closed, screwed his face up. I counted even longer than before, losing track of my numbers somewhere in the seven hundred range.

The sun was rapidly chasing away night. Von Leer would be calling any moment. I shook hair out of my face. I hadn’t managed to steal as much as I would’ve liked. It definitely wasn’t enough to give me my favorite bone spikes, or even to form a weapon.

But I could tell by the way the Skal that bound my wrists buzzed and snapped that it was almost enough to overpower the magick there.

Almost.

I shimmied my way up the column until I was standing. I would have one shot, but the sun was nearly fully risen, and it was now or never.

I gave the invisible bond that bound me to Ciarán’s service a final, mighty pull and magick poured into me. Ciarán’s eyes snapped open, and the flow of magick stopped so suddenly that it flipped my stomach.

I pushed every bit of magick I’d stolen from him into my wrists before he could pull it back, and orange sparks flew as I broke free of the tie.

“Dammit!”

Ciarán scrambled to his feet, but I was already sprinting out the doorway towards the rising sun. “Blue!”

Low, crumbling walls covered in moss streaked past me, and birds took flight as I charged through the outpost. A fine, morning mist hung over the ruins, and droplets of dew clung to my bare arms as I hurtled through it.

“Wren Warrender,”

Ciarán thundered behind me.

“I command you—”

I reached the lip of the cliff and launched myself into open air. I twisted to catch a final glimpse of Ciarán standing on the cliff edge, his hand outstretched in a last ditch attempt to stop me and his tattered cloak billowing in the wind.

And maybe I was my mother’s daughter after all, because as I plummeted into the bright golden air of dawn, I lifted both hands and flipped him the double bird.

The stone below rose to greet me, and darkness swallowed the red-gold sky overhead.