Page 3 of Anchor

She didn’t betray me,I wanted to say, but this was Radock. These were my brothers, and of course they wouldn’t understand. I’d be a fool to expect them to, so…

“I’m alive—why wouldn’t I smile?” I said instead.

Radock was a bit surprised—thathe couldn’t argue with. “You’re a fool, brother. You’re a damn fool.”

If he only knew.

“You walked through the fucking Drainage. We saw you, dickhead. We saw,” said Seth, and he, too, slapped me on the back of my head lightly, because they could all see that I couldn’t move properly yet. I had no energy. I was starving. Not to mention my magic…

“A wanted felon walking straight into the Iris Roe with nothing but a charm in his pocket to shield himself—bravo, Taland.Bravo,you fucking prick.” This from Radock, but he refrained from slapping me again.

Meanwhile I hadn’t stopped smiling yet.

She never betrayed me.

“Are you so stupid as to carry her all the fucking way out of there just so…what, soyoucan get to kill her? Was that it?” Kaid spit.

“Are you Mud now, too? Are you seriously that stupid—did the Drainage really drain you, or was that just for the game?” Seth came in front of me, too, and then I was sliding to the side of the chair, not able to hold myself upright. My body wasn’t working all that well.

Cursing under his breath, Kaid grabbed my shoulder before I hit the ground.

“Speak,” Radock demanded. “Are you Mud, Taland?”

Yes,I wanted to say.Yes, I am Mud, and that’s perfectly okay.

Can you tell me where we are, where you brought me, so I can figure out exactly how far away she is right now? How far I needed to go to steal her from the rest of the world?

Except my mouth opened to say that word, just those first three letters, but something stirred inside me.

It was instinct, I guessed. The thought of magic made me want to reach for it without even realizing it, and when I did…

It was there.

“Taland, answer me.”

I looked down at my hands over my thighs, covered in blood and grime, skin pale, the silver of my rings barely visible from dirt, my knuckles extra pronounced like I’d lost all my body fat in the Roe. And I couldn’t move my fingers no matter how hard I tried, but my magic was there.

It was under my skin, streaming through my veins with my blood. It wasthere.

“Taland, for fuck’s sake, are you?—”

“I don’t know.”

My voice was even drier than before.

I looked up at Radock, at his wide, bloodshot eyes, parted lips. At my other brothers who were confused, just as confused as I was.

Radock leaned closer. “How can you not know?” He grabbed my hands, raised them up. “You either have your magic, or you don’t.” He looked at my fingers, flinched. “Do you have Blackfire magic in there? Can you use it?”

Did I?

Could I?

“Give me a feather.”

Noise in my head, white noise. The image of her face was still at the center of my mind, but right now everything else had turned to a blur.

“You can’t even keep your head up,” Seth said.

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