This must be the purpose of the restraints. My arms and legs strain against them, testing their strength to contain me. I’m surprised they do.
The third pinprick comes, and before the needle is out of my arm, the world begins to blur at the corners. A mist rises from the floor as Renya watches my face. “She’s slipping away,” she says. I want to tell her I’m still wide-awake, but my mouth doesn’t work. I let my eyes fall closed for a moment. When I open them, I’m alone. The door to the corridor is closed.
I want to say Renya’s name, to call her back to my side, but my body won’t respond. The restraints feel like heavy weights. The music is still there, the colors still pulse, but it’s fading. The door opens. Only my eyes slide to the person who steps through. My head is too heavy to turn.
In the doorway stands the king, draped in a navy-blue robe. He walks in, alone. This must be a dream, another hallucination from the drug. His beard glows the same bright white as the walls, like snow clinging to cheeks so pale, they’re almost transparent.
“I wanted to see you before you left us, Astrid,” he says. “I can see in your eyes—your wide-open pupils—that you are feeling the effects of the drug. I hope you are comfortable.”
I try to smile, to tell him how good I feel, but the third drug has trapped me as if I’ve been turned to stone.
“I know all about this drug, Oblivion. Maybe too much,” he says. “I’ve come to depend upon it. Not total Oblivion, of course, but enough. Enough to feel like a great man.” He steps toward me and lays a hand on mine. He’s warm. Could it be that the king is actually here? “I’ve come looking for the Asps. I need them to make me comfortable, even at the expense of their own comfort. It terrifies them, to share the drug with me. But it’s only small doses, the smallest that will do the job. To make me feel like the great man I know I no longer am.
“But I will be great again soon, Astrid.” He smiles. “Do you know why I’ve told you my secret? Because I know yours.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I know you have Cientia.”
My heart races. The king is not really here. I’m sure of that. As he stands over me, his beard catches fire, and when he speaks again, his breath is like a wind that fans the flames. “Don’t be afraid,” he says, the fire racing up to his hair. “I won’t tell anyone, though I doubt I’m the only one who knows. It’s become quite obvious, I’m afraid.”
As the king speaks, flames spread to the walls; they flicker across the ceiling. I wish I could scream. It’s all in your mind, I tell myself. None of it’s real. “I’m going to make changes,” the king continues. “I know the Outsiders are suffering—your own family is suffering—but all that will soon change. I will be the great leader Oblivion makes me believe myself to be.” His smile widens, and beams of light shine through the gaps between his teeth. “I’ll leave you now, but first, one more secret. I’m sure you must be curious to know why you have Cientia, when all other Outsiders do not. Well, I know why, and before you go, I want to tell you.”
The door opens. A figure enters. My Oblivion-poisoned eyes try to make sense of what they see. At first it’s an Asp, then a bear, then my father. Then someone I know—a face so familiar—but I can’t place it. Something is clasped in the figure’s raised hand. . . . A syringe? A knife? Then the hand comes down, and the body of the king slumps to the floor.
Fire has spread to every part of the room. Everything burns except the figure that bends over the fallen king.
As I stare, I feel myself slipping away. The flames burn less bright. The roar in my ears fades. The figure in the center of the room approaches and leans close, whispering into my ear.
“It doesn’t matter what you saw here.” I try to place the voice, but it’s muffled and indistinct. “In a few minutes, you will have forgotten this. You will have forgotten everything. And before any of it comes back to you, you will be dead.”
Five
I wake to pain.
The sound of the whip tugs at my mind just before the pain of the lash returns, splitting me in two.
I want to scream, but all I can do is groan. As I slump forward, my gaze goes to my bare knees, grinding into a dirty stone floor. A floor I don’t recognize, in a room I don’t know. Sweat runs from my forehead, burning my eyes. I wear nothing but thin underclothes—white splattered red. My wrists, bound above my head, burn as they strain against rope.
Where am I? What could I have done to deserve this?
The crack of the whip returns, followed by searing pain. My mind searches for answers, clutches at thoughts, but each lash drives them away and plunges me back into a dark pit of pain. I hear my voice again, but this time it’s only a gasp. I want to let go—to let the pain pull me under and hold me there—but a stubborn strength won’t let me give in. I try to raise my head to see the face of the one who holds the whip, but my eyes swim with tears and the person’s features smear.
Then a voice cuts through the pain. A girl screams, “Stop! You’ve hurt her enough!”
“I’ve hurt her?” A boy’s voice, calm and measured. “Put the blame where it belongs, sister.”
I try to identify the voices, grasping for something to latch onto to slow my mind in its race toward madness, but then another lash sends every thought scattering, until the voices go silent, and mercifully, darkness crashes down.
I wake again, pulling myself up from deep sleep, this time roused by a rhythm I can’t quite make sense of. For a moment I’m half alert and half still dreaming, and I have the feeling of standing on the deck of a boat, letting the dream slide below the surface, watching it disappear into the depths. That’s how it feels at least, and I understand why when I open my eyes to find myself draped across a rock surrounded by the sea. Each wave that crashes against the rock mists my body with spray that is soft everywhere but on my back. There, each successive splash stabs like a dagger.
Over and over, fists of water pound the base of the rock before retreating. I have no idea how I got here, or even where I am. I feel the echo of the lost dream, and I’m convinced it was a dream about home, but now that I’m fully awake, I can’t think of where home is.
I steady myself and look around. I’m stranded on the point of a jetty. In front of me, a wide beach of black sand stretches in both directions, but the path across the rocks is submerged beneath the waves. The sun is directly overhead, and a shimmering haze of heat rises from the distant sand, like a curtain hanging up instead of down.
I watch the waves. As I do, I try to think of home, and when that’s not there, I try to think of the face of just one member of my family, but nothing comes. Making it easy on myself, I try to think of my own name, but even that’s gone, maybe dropped into the sea with my dream.
Each wave brings pain, so I breathe in and out in time with the waves, to make the pain more tolerable. A shadow grows behind me, stretching out toward the sea.
I may not know my own name, but I know misery, and this is it.
I try to concentrate on all the things I do know, to distract myself from all the things I suddenly don’t. I know that the landmass in front of me must be Lanoria, because that’s the name of the only landmass I can think of.