Page 7 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams
Hold on Kit, I’m coming.
“Talk,” Caledon says. “Then perhaps I’ll grant your request.”
“I can orbit objects and produce sun beams and…I can read someone’s inner flame, telling me if they’re close to death—” I gasp, flinching as something inside Kit cracks—a bone breaking under the force of his convulsions, I think. Caledon pays him no mind, his eyes narrowed onto me as he takes in the extent of my abilities. Not one power, but three. It must seem so tantalizing to him.
“There, I told you something. Now let me go to him,please.”
Impatiently, Caledon raises his hand from Kit and gestures to the clerics to undo my bindings.
Desperate relief floods through me. Once I’m unbound, I stumble down off the altar, my legs almost giving out under me. However, I muster my strength and limp toward Kit, my hands clenched down by my sides.
When I’m a few feet away, Caledon steps between me and my friend, his eyes bright with greed.
“Andhowis it that you can do those things?”
I glance over his shoulder at Kit. I’m so close, but I need to feed the beast just a little more.
“When I was growing up, a dryad gave me a potion to hide my power,” I say. “It worked, but my magic fought back against it, and she had to keep increasing the dose as I built up a resistance. The stronger the potion got, the stronger my power grew to fight it. That’s the source of untold power the prophecy is talking about.That’swhy I’m so strong.”
Caledon’s expression is thoughtful, his dark eyes glinting as he lets me step around him so I can drop to the floor beside Kit.
The moment I touch my friend, something inside me collapses. I remember the way his skin felt under my fingertips when I first held his hand in Otscold. I recall admiring the color of his hair as I ran my fingers through it. So many intimate, innocent moments, belonging to a girl who is lost to me now.
After today, Kit will be lost to me too, but I can’t let him die the way Caledon is planning—thrashing helplessly in a living agony as his pain is wielded as a tool to pull every last secret from me. I have to save him from that. He’s still shaking, and I draw him into my lap, holding him tight to stop the more violent convulsions. Blood drips from his nose onto the floor. His head shifts slightly, nestling against me, taking the tiniest bit of comfort from my nearness. My heart twists so hard in my chest that I can’t breathe for a second. How could it have come to this?
“Kit,” I whisper into his ear. “Should I help you? Should I end this?”
Something squeezes my leg, and I look down to see Kit’s fingers wrapped around it.
“Please,” he wheezes, the word so faint it could almost be a sigh.
My eyes blurring with tears, I bend over him and open my hand, revealing a bloody scalpel.
One of my torturers had been careless enough to leave it by my hand on the altar, and I’d felt it brush against me when I struggled with my bindings. Caledon had been watching me, drinking up my pain, but his eyes had been on my face…not my hands. It had been easy to palm the scalpel without anyone noticing.
Now with one swift movement, I draw it across Kit’s throat.
His eyelids droop as blood wells fresh and thick from the wound. The grip on my leg loosens, and I swallow hard, stifling a sob. There’s so much more I wish I could have done for my friend, but at least I was able to give him this: a quick death, as painless as I could make it, in the arms of a friend.Go join your parents, Kit,I think as I press one last kiss to his forehead.And may the gods watch over you.
I don’t bother asking for them to watch over me. It’s already clear that they won’t.
Caledon has been pacing the sanctuary, ignoring Kit and me. I don’t think he even saw me use the knife, nor do I think the two clerics spotted it from the edge of the room. I’m still bending protectively over Kit, holding him to me, and I drop my hand to my side as Caledon spins around.
“How long did you take this potion?” he demands. “What was in it?”
“Twenty-one years,” I say calmly. “Give or take a few months. And I don’t know what was in it. Like I said, a dryad made it, not me.”
“It worked because you were young,” Caledon guesses, his voice pensive, calculating. “Your magic was still developing, and it adapted to combat the potion.”
I know he’s worked it out—why I’d been willing to tell him this in the first place. It’s of no use to him. There’s no way he can replicate what I did to boost his own power. He can drain mine…but Respen said the fae scholars reckon that only gives him a temporary boost. When that’s gone, he’ll be back to being the same old Caledon, knowing he’ll never achieve power like mine that he can keep.
I see it all unfold on his face, his skin going pale with rage.
I seize my moment, leaping up with the scalpel and diving toward Caledon. He jumps back, but not before I’ve slashed the blade upward across his face, leaving a perfect cut from chin to ear.
He shrieks in pain and shock, blood dripping onto his perfectly white robes.
“Disarm her!” he shouts at the clerics. As they close in around me, his eyes fall on Kit’s lifeless body on the floor, and he realizes what I’ve done. I’vetaken the control from him, outsmarted him at his own game. All that talk of being superior, and he’s been bested by a stupid little bitch.
