Page 64 of The Stygian Crown

Kara scrambled away from them, but the two guards backed her into a corner and secured her by the arms. Salizar bent to unlock her cuffed ankle, and Kara jerked her knee up, catching him in the face.

Salizar cursed and fell away. “Godsdamnedit, hold her fucking legs, you imbeciles.”

The guards grunted and locked their legs around Kara’s, holding her still.

Salizar rose and brushed off his robes. Kara smiled when she saw the swollen patch of skin around his eye.

He backhanded her across the face, and the sharp ring he wore tore her skin in a ragged streak of fire. He lifted the ring to his mouth and sucked her blood off it.

Victus hissed. “Don’t fucking touch her again, or I’ll have your hands. We’ve come too far to risk this.” Victus shoved Salizar away and knelt to unlock her ankle cuff. He ran a hand down the inside of her leg as he bent, and Kara shuddered. She hated the growing number of physical similarities she recognized between him and Logan.

He rose to his feet and gripped her jaw, running his thumb across her cheek. “You see him in me, don’t you? His power should have been mine. He could have been so much more.”

Kara tried to twist her head to bite him, and his grip tightened, holding her fast.

“I wanted to delay this until your keening, but you have tenacious friends.”

Kara stopped struggling as they carried her out of the cell. Tenacious friends? Were the Stygians close to finding them? She knew they’d look—for Logan if not for her—but she’d had little hope of being found in time, since their attempts to locate Victus’s prison were fruitless in the past. If she could delay, it might give them time to arrive.

The guards dragged Kara up the ladder and down the upper cellblock. Kara’s stomach dropped when they passed Saphia’s cell. She hung in the same place, but now she bore an ugly wound on her cheek where someone had sliced the magic eater out of her. It would scar, badly.

They walked down the hallway that’d held Logan until they arrived at a large central chamber with several paths branching off it. The ceiling was curved stone, the hallways rough tunnels that looked like they’d been formed by a rockworm’s burrowing.

The cavernous room had a deep, sunken pit in the middle lined with barrels arranged in a spiral. A stone slab with metal cuffs bolted to it sat in the middle. Kara swallowed thickly when she saw the intricate rune carved into bottom of the pit. It was the largest she’d ever seen, some forty feet across, forming interlocking paths between the barrels and the stone slab.

The Sanguine guards dangled Kara over the pit and dropped her. She fell several feet, stumbling to her bruised knees against the rough stone. She scrabbled up and ran to the other side, determined to climb a barrel and try to jump to the pit’s edge.

She glanced up and jerked to a stop. Sanguines appeared from every hallway branching out from the chamber, slowly closing in. There were hundreds of them—men and women, young and old. A sea of red metal encircled her. Victus and Salizar stood at the edge of the pit and looked down. Kara’s knees shook.

“You understand your situation now, I see,” Victus said. He snapped his fingers, and a group of Sanguine mercenaries parted. Four large men carried Logan to the edge of the pit. He appeared unconscious, head sunken down, his body riddled with bruises, streaks of blood, and the insidious dark holes from the poles Victus had rigged him on. Victus’s guards carried him to a metal chair and cuffed him into it, securing his arms and ankles.

“I thought he might like to watch,” Victus said with a smile. Then he drew his sword and rested it on the back of Logan’s neck.

Kara’s heart constricted. She forced her battered body into a run. She’d kill as many as she could before they brought her down—

Victus held out a hand. “Stop. If you want him to live, however briefly, you will turn around and secure yourself to the stone.”

Kara halted. More of Victus’s games. She scoured the eyes of the Sanguine onlookers, looking for a friendly face. Where was Magdalena, Wesley? Anyone who might help her. Stony expressions met hers.

“I don’t need him alive for my purposes,” Victus said. He applied pressure with his sword, and a dark red line welled on Logan’s neck.

“Okay!” Kara stumbled back toward the stone. She climbed onto it, closing the cuffs around her ankles first. They snapped shut with force, like they were eager to close, and the hum of magic sizzled around her lower body. Kara laid back. Her eyes shot open in pain as her flayed back met the rough stone. As soon as she positioned her wrists within their cuffs, they snapped closed on their own.

Kara’s heart beat wildly. Magic arced across her skin, creeping up her throat and down the roots of her hair. It had the same familiar sting as the magic they’d used to mute her voice in Travincal.

Salizar lowered himself into the pit with a rope. He walked to the first barrel in rune’s spiral and tapped it, then moved to the next and repeated the process. Kara heard the steady drip of liquid against the floor of the pit, but she couldn’t see what came out, still circled by an inner ring of barrels. Maybe they’d drown her in well-aged whiskey.

Salizar went barrel by barrel, and the slow drip became a steady patter. Dark red fluid ran down the rune lines carved deep into the stone, inching towards Kara.

At first Kara thought it was wine, and then the old, coppery scent hit her nose.

Blood. Barrels and barrels of blood.

Kara cast her eyes around the pit, searching for any runes she might recognize within the larger sprawl. What spell required this much blood?

Salizar tapped the final barrel and turned to her, a twisted smile on his face. “I must thank you again, my dear, for being so accommodating as to take the magic eater of your own volition. Really sped up our timeline. You squandered your power, your heritage, but now it will serve a greater purpose.” Salizar climbed out of the pit and pulled up his rope.

Blood reached the edge of Kara’s stone. She looked at Logan, willing him to wake up. If these were going to be her final moments, she wanted to say goodbye.

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