Page 125 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

Still, something ties itself around a wrist, and she knows she should be afraid.

The body lays in a bed,uncomfortable and hard, a sheet pulled up, itching against the scar beneath the breasts, and Ambra struggles to breathe.

There’s something over the face, fitting cleanly over the mouth and nose, and air, sweet air, flows through it. A cold prickle of metal sings in the veins on an arm, and there’s a bit of fear along with it.

But no pain.

After a few good long moments, Ambra cracks an eye open. The room is dim and pleasantly warm.

Wards swirl in the ceiling, fluently written, new ones on top of old, engraved into the very concrete and wood of the building itself. It’s beautiful, if intense and overkill.

Ambra blinks up at it, and the figures blur in her vision, before she squints to focus them. They’re odd, written in a hand she doesn’t know, in a glittering gold and copper paint.

Someone must’ve craned their neck for forever to paint it, for it to exist like this, and a detached part of her marvels at it.

Right up until she tries to draw in another breath.

Pain wracks its way across her chest, and she jerks, gasping, but her arm’s stuck in place, tied down, and—

Before she can think, before she can even comprehend what’s happening, black crowds her out.

Next time she wakes,the body feels more like her own, and while there’s pain, it’s more of a distant companion.

The paint is still on the ceiling, but she’s more alert this time, alert enough to realize there’s a demon trap around her, around the bed she’s laying on.

And Gurlien’s nowhere near by. She can’t sense him, she can’t feel his touch on the leash, nothing.

And no matter how much she tries to panic, no matter how much she tries to teleport out, she’s stuck in place.

Neck stiff, she tilts her head over to stare at her wrist.

There, neatly tied and still shining gold, is a strip of necromancer power, gleaming. It’s not hurting her, and it’s pinning her wrist in place, next to an IV hooked up to the vein in her elbow, the plastic line trailing up to a bag on a stand.

And, right beyond the IV stand, sits a man.

Ambra blinks at him, but she can’t make her eyes recognize him. His hair is wildly curly, pulled back into a bun, and he frowns at her through thin wire-rimmed glasses.

She stares blankly at him, and he frowns deeper at her, before she tries to open her mouth to speak, but…

There’s still the mask over her face, muffling her, forcing air down her throat. She’s stuck, she’s tied down, she can’t talk, she can’t—

“Stop panicking,” the man says, like this is a giant annoyance, and there’s something wrong with him. There’s something so completely wrong, he’s not a human, not entirely, but he doesn’t read as anything but human, but… “You’ll tear open your stitches if you do that.”

Ambra coughs, and everything hurts again, before trying to mouth, frantic.

“Where is he?” she manages out, and she can barely hear herself, so muffled, her voice a dry scrape against her throat. “Where is he?”

The man raises an eyebrow at her, but doesn’t answer.

“Where—” She coughs again, before jerking as much power to herself as she can, stuck inside the demon trap, but the magic slips from her grip before she can do anything, the strip of necromancy shining bright.

She gapes at it, trying to jerk her hand out from it, but the pain sparks up against her eyes, slumping her back against the bed.

The man stands, scowling at her, before picking up a small piece of technology—a phone, no, a short-wave radio—and presses a button. “She’s awake, can we get a familiar face in here?”

Ambra tries to pull in a breath, tries to force the lungs, but it’s hard, forcing her to gasp.

“Please stop panicking, we’re not going to hurt you,” the man says, crossing his arms, still standing. “The necromancy is because you were fighting us while unconscious and you needed an IV.”

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