Page 29 of Silent Lucidity

Six

Abella’s leg muscles burned as she and Tenthil ran, and her ribs felt like they would either crack open or collapse inward with every labored breath. Tenthil kept his arm around her shoulders, holding her securely against his side, making an already strenuous activity more challenging. No matter how many times she tried to pull away from him, Tenthil didn’t release his hold on her, didn’t slow his pace even a little.

Their path weaved through countless dark alleyways and passages, the twists and turns well beyond Abella’s ability to track. Her body told her she’d been running for days, but her rational mind—its voice muted by her pain—insisted it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. The wounds from her punishment had combined with days of hunger and isolation in a dark, cramped space to severely limit her endurance.

When her knees wobbled, threatening to give out, she decided she was done. She dug her heels into the ground and shoved against his side. “Enough.”

Tenthil stopped but did not ease his hold. “Need to keep moving.”

Wheezing, Abella bent forward as much as his grasp allowed. “I can’t…keep going.”

Tenthil crouched, wrapped an arm around her legs, and hefted her over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she screeched as her world tilted upside down and flattened her palms against his back to push herself a little upright. “Oh, I’m going to hurl.”

But he was already running, even faster than before, darting across a quiet street and into another dank, dirty alley that looked just like all the rest. Though the city had seemed far more intriguing from that damned cage on the back of Cullion’s hovercar, she preferred it from the ground despite the filth—though she’d have preferred it even more were she walking with her own two legs to a destination of her choice.

Fortunately, Tenthil didn’t carry her very far—the alley ended on a railed walkway that ran perpendicular to it, beyond which was a huge tunnel. Vehicles of all sorts sped by through the tunnel, their engines silent but for low hums she felt more than heard.

Tenthil bent down and set Abella on her feet. He twisted to look back.

Abella’s stomach lurched, and she spun away from him, doubled over, and covered her mouth with one hand as she gagged. She took in a series of deep breaths, forcing the sickness back. Once she was reasonably certain she wouldn’t puke her guts out, she straightened and turned to face him again.

One of his hands was positioned at the base of his skull, holding his hair aside, and his head was tilted to the right. He lifted his left hand, which held a knife.

Abella’s brow creased. “What are youdoing?”

Without hesitating, he pressed the tip of the blade against the back of his neck and sank it into his skin; crimson blood welled around the tip. Abella’s jaw fell as he pressed the blade deeper, wiggling it and producing fresh blood that trickled down his neck in a rivulet.

The only change to his expression was a slight bulging of his jaw muscles.

She heard the knife scrape against something, and a shiver ran down her spine. Her stomach flipped and clenched.

He twisted the knife slightly and tilted his head to a harsher angle. Now his expression did change; his eyebrows fell low, and his pupils dilated to swallow his eyes.

“Tenthil! Stop it!”

He grunted and wrenched down on the knife grip, producing another hard, scraping sound.

Something was hooked on the tip of the blade as it tore out of his skin. Shifting his hold on the knife to free his forefinger and thumb, he pinched the crimson-smeared object and pulled on it.

The object, which looked like a small bone with a glob of mangled, bloody flesh attached to it, made a wet, sucking sound as he tore it out. She heard the sound clearly despite him releasing a guttural growl at the same moment.

Everything she’d seen, everything she’d done—she’dkilledsomeone less than an hour ago—rushed back in a merciless torrent, combining with Tenthil’s self-mutilation to finally push Abella past her limit.

She spun away, clutched the nearby railing, hunched over, and emptied her stomach onto the concrete walkway. Disgustingly, the food she’d eaten looked the same coming out as it had going in.

Averting her gaze from the mess she’d made, Abella settled her hands on her thighs and breathed for a few seconds. Once her stomach eased, she spat some of the foul taste from her mouth, wiped her lips with her sleeve, and glanced at Tenthil over her shoulder. “What did you justdo?”

He drew his arm back and threw the bloody object over the railing. Abella turned her head to follow its trajectory, but the visual chaos of moving vehicles caused her to lose sight of it almost immediately; its path seemed to cross with that of a huge garbage hauler that sped by an instant later, though she couldn’t be sure.

Abella straightened and turned toward Tenthil.

Using a piece of cloth, he cleaned his fingers, knife, and neck. “Was being tracked.”

“That was a tracker?” she asked. “And you just…cut it out of your neck? You could have killed yourself! What if you cut an artery, or damaged your spinal cord?” The sucking sound of the object coming free replayed in her mind; she shuddered, stomach churning all over. “You’re crazy.”

He shrugged as he folded the cloth. Fresh blood oozed from his neck wound, flowing down to disappear beneath his shirt. Moving at a leisurely pace, he pulled something that looked like a small bandage from a pouch on his belt, removed it from its packaging, and placed it over the wound.

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