Page 126 of Red Demon
Faruhar opened her yellow-green eyes, alert.
Then it happened. In a single, horrifying breath, Faruhar burst up. Two strides, then she launched herself atop Ruan’s back with animalistic grace. A crunch filled the audio feed before Ruan’s body fell.
I watched, my body numb, my heart shattered in my chest. Faruhar, my Faruhar, hunched over Ruan in a primal rage I refused to recognize.
“Ruan was dead already,” I said. Faruhar’s screams echoed in the confined space, a chord of pain and fury.
The screen flickered. So did the lights in the room. It barely registered in my numb state, I was just glad not to have to watch as the screen flicked off. Mahakal cursed under his breath, touching his comms.
“Command, repeat that please.” Mahakal’s face contorted in frowns as Kane’s did the same. They exchanged worried glances.
Then, without another word, he and Kane strode out the door, leaving the tablet abandoned on the table.
It flicked back on.
I surged forward. My hands wouldn’t reach, the chains groaning in protest. I was able to reach the table edge with a toe, inch it closer. There—I had the tablet in my hands. Maybe I could interface with something, a control.
I found a grim array of video feeds, grainy dim-lit cells. Most of the prisoners were women, many visibly pregnant. Horror gnawed at me, putting together the details of what Mahakal and his personal squad really did here.
A mechanical whirring filled the air, followed by a series of clicks. The prison cell groaned open a crack, but my mechanical manacles held. The video feed flickered off and on again.
It took forever for that tablet to reboot, and I was grateful there was no login prompt.
I flicked through the menu, desperate for any clues. It might be an attack—Telesilla and the Disciples of Reic. My heart lurched.
I found the video feeds of the cells again, all doors cracked open. Lights flicked on in every room, bodies lying on the ground, presumably sleeping. I kept scrolling until I saw the blood. A pregnant woman, abdomen ripped open. I looked away.
They weren’t all sleeping.
I found Faruhar’s cell—the same cell number in the top left corner: twenty-two. I scanned it, empty. Gone.
I found her in a frame, red hair flying as she crashed into a chained girl too young to call a woman, hands on her neck and twisting, then exiting the cell in a flash. I shuttered my eyes closed with wracking breaths, grateful for the pain in my lungs. When that girl’s heart stopped beating, Faruhar crushed mine too.
Chapter 51
Strike Cold
My world shrank to the flickering tablet screen when I could bring myself to look again, to keep swiping and looking for something that wouldn’t wreck me. Images blurred by: an empty cell, death, a grimy kitchen, more dead. A hallway patrolled by armed guards in Mahakal’s black and red, sprinting down the corridor.
The prison’s exterior, snow distorting the feed. Asri cloaks, blue-lit hands. At first I was too afraid to hope. But there they were. Telesilla had found us.
The rebels moved in a unified line, their engraved staffs glowing, the snow pulsing with the light of Oria under their feet. Magic, unblocked and unrepentant. The screen lit up with the flash of an aerial assault, the ground of my cell shaking. Mahakal must have launched artillery at them.
I braced myself before I looked at the video again. The rebels stood tall, standing in a ring of undisturbed ground when the dust on the screen settled.
Mahakal’s soldiers came at a run, no doubt with fresh magic blockers among their gear. Yet I watched as the empire soldiers stumbled, clutching their heads as their faces contorted in pain. An unseen force, no more than a ripple of light, as the first wave of soldiers fell. The rebels pressed their attack.
Hope unfurled in my chest. Asher had done it. He’d reversed that magic blocker to break the other machines, allowing our allies to squeeze Mahakal with their full power. My eyes scanned the battlefield, flicking the exterior cameras, searching for Asher, the familiar glow of Istaran. He had to be here. He must have used Istaran to track Far.
There! Istaran flashed and cleaved through a line of twitching soldiers, the blade humming with power. A ragged sound escaped me—Asher, blade flying as he took to the front, his face determined and fearless.
And then, Faruhar.
She assessed from the edge of the fray. Soren gestured to her. She picked up a weapon from a fallen soldier, Chaeten tech—blade dull like the kind Mahakal had gifted Ash. Her eyes burned with fury, alert and devoid of recognition as she struck down a robed Asri rebel with brute force to the head. My throat opened, tasting the rank air of the cell. She picked up his staff next as its glow faded.
I didn’t understand. I couldn’t.
She lunged down the line as the rebels raised their blue hands in her direction, as the ground underneath swelled with light. Another black-robed rebel fell to the ground, silent on the video feed, but I felt the thud all the same. She found Soren with a swiped dagger, using her body to sweep him to the ground as she sliced his belly open.
