“You can’t keep me here.” I ground out the words. “I’m a Legionnaire now. I’m not yours anymore. I belong to myself.”
He grinned, but the movement was about as friendly as if he had dragged me up the ladder and thrown me from the top of the Obelisk. He pushed off the wall, walked toward me and grabbed my arm. He turned me and then yanked down until I stumbled back onto the bed. He planted his boot on the mattress beside me, leaning over to intimidate me. To loom over me.
To show that he would always have power over me.
“I give you a room of your own and this is the thanks you show me?” he sneered.
“This room has no door, and my ring is missing,” I shot back, rising to my elbows, panic clawing at the back of my throat. “This is a prison, not a room.”
How long ago was my battle? My wounds might have healed, but that didn’t mean my magic had.
Was I in a state to fight for my life again so soon?
“Calder woke up days ago.” He still hovered over me, his eyes categorising my reaction. “This is to punish him, not to imprison you. He’s been in quite a state.”
A fissure of pain shivered through my chest and I pulled my lip between my teeth to hide my wince. Calder had tricked the five great masters of the world, sacrificing himself for me.
He was the reason I had won my battle, the reason I was now free. The reason we both had defeated the Warmaster to become Legionnaires.
To wake up after what he had been through … to realise that I was missing…
I shoved at the Scholar, but he didn’t budge. He loomed closer. “Say thank you,” he demanded. “For the room.”
I swore at him instead, shoving him harder. He didn’t even seem to register my efforts. He was like a statue. A giant of a man with pain in his eyes and a hurricane in his mind.
I was fuelling his anger.
He hated being touched.
I brought my hands up again but instead of pushing him, I slipped them inside his cloak, setting them against his chest. He inhaled roughly, the material of his shirt shifting beneath my fingers. He started to twitch backwards but caught himself.
“He’s searched everywhere,” Andel gritted out, trying to answer pain with pain. “He even searched the Obelisk.” His lips twisted in a cruel way, white teeth flashing. “Barged in like he had a right to, sending people running to the shelves to hide. He’s really taken to his role as Fyrio’s toughest new Legionnaire.” Andel dropped to his forearms, half of his weight settling over me, my hands now crushed to his chest. “Well … almost the toughest,” he whispered, close to my ear. “After all, it took two of you to beat Helki, didn’t it?”
I flinched at his words, turning my head to the side. “Just tell me what you want, Andel.” I forced my tone to sound even. Confident. Bored. But of course, he knew. His chuckle against the side of my face told me as much.
He was the Scholar.
He knew the right thing to say to torture me.
He knew that I had stumbled over his real name, the power of his Fated name trying to steal over my tongue, trying to whisper to me that I wasn’t good enough to treat him as an equal. I wasn’t powerful enough to match him, or the other great masters.
I couldn’t defeat Helki on my own.
“This is cosy,” a familiar, silky voice snarled.
Andel didn’t move, his broad frame still blocking out the speaker, though his eyes narrowed further, his temper hardening the sharp line of his jaw.
“Fjor,” he gritted through his teeth. A greeting of sorts.
There was a strange kind of tension between them that I hadn’t felt before.
The Inquisitor entered my line of sight, standing at the end of the bed where I had directed my gaze away from Andel. His eyes swallowed mine, blacker than black, the bottom of a bottomless pit, that hint of something waiting for you in the invisible darkness of night. The bronze piercings across his left eyebrow glinted in the light filtering through the polished roof. His elegant features were pulled tight, his hands covered in leather gloves as he set them against the metal bed frame, the material creaking as his grip tightened.
“What are you doing, Tempest?” he asked quietly.
My hands curled into involuntary fists, the material of Andel’s shirt bunching between my fingers.
“I’m trying to get this … machine … off me,” I snapped.
I didn’t catch Fjor’s reaction to my words as Andel’s hand wrapped around my jaw, snapping my head forward. His nose hovered over mine, his voice a harsh whisper.
“Everything we have given, we can take back, koli.”
I closed my eyes, refusing to look at him, refusing to acknowledge what he had said. The koli were tiny, fearful birds that mimicked the sounds of nearby predators to protect themselves.
The insult was pretty clear.
Andel pulled himself off me, and by the time I shot to my feet, he was already gone, disappearing the same way he and the other great masters often did. It wasn’t like what I did with my ring—to my knowledge, they weren’t even using a magical artefact to enable the ability. It was simply something they could do. One of the many impossibilities that shadowed their existence. I faced Fjor, remembering Vale’s words about the mysterious Inquisitor.
He listens.
He can hear it all.
The spirit magic had a sound. It whispered from person to person, filling the night with mutterings and secrets. Andel might have had a grip over the mechanisms of the mind, turning our thoughts outward until he could read them as easily as his own—but Fjor could read our magic in the same way, turning out the very essence of us until we stood before him, naked. Skinned.
It was no surprise that he had suddenly appeared.
“You’ve punished Calder enough.” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “I’m a free person. You can’t force me to stay here.”
“Tempest, Tempest,” he tittered, shaking his head. “When will you understand? We can force you to do anything.”
“Let me go,” I demanded, my voice sharpening. “Now.”
“Oh, we will,” he assured me, the ghost of a mocking smile shadowing his lips. “But first, there’s a small matter to settle. Come.”
He held out his hand, and I stared at it, grinding my teeth together. He was my only way out of the room, and he knew it. I could see the twitch in his fingers. Could read the urge to withdraw his hand in his eyes, to say “never mind, you had your chance,” and disappear before I could take him up on the offer. I slapped my hand into his, holding my breath as he pulled me to his chest, one arm wrapping around my shoulders as the world seemed to fold in on itself, oxygen draining from the air. There was a slight pressure on my mind, my eyes blinking through a sudden blindness that fell away just as quickly, leaving me to stumble back as Fjor dropped his arm.
We stood in a damp rock walkway, stretching so far into the distance that I couldn’t make out its end. The sound of the ocean echoed all around us. Thin openings were cut into the rock at eye height, affording me a glimpse of the pink-stained morning sky. The occasional wave lapped up to the sill of the opening, spilling over and down the rock wall. Andel was ahead of us, striding away, his cloak brushing the damp walkway.
Fjor grabbed my wrist, pulling me beside him as he followed Andel. I stared back over my shoulder, trying to see an entrance to the tunnel.