Page 81 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
Bergam opened his mouth wide as if to shout for help. But just as the first syllable was forming in his throat, I yanked a shirt out of my bag and stuffed it in his mouth.
“I’m sorry about this,” I said. “But this is important. Are you listening to me?”
I felt like Nya that first night that she and Kieran visited my apartment.
He nodded.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I continued. “But I will if I have to. I need to know where The Council is keeping Kieran. I’m going to remove the shirt so that you can tell me, and I needyou to understand that if you don’t, I will hurt you. And if you call for help”—I swallowed reflexively—“I will hurt you, plus whoever comes to help you.”
I was grateful once again that that the hallway was empty, quiet.
Bergam exhaled through his nose. He blinked in what I hoped was understanding.
“I’m going to pull the shirt out now. And when I do, the only words I want to hear are where they are keeping Kieran.” I paused for emphasis. Then I removed the shirt from his mouth.
“Before you do this,” he said in a rush of breath. “There’s something you need to—”
Without missing a beat, I shoved the shirt back in his mouth.
“I’m not very good at this,” I said, holding up my right hand again. “But I did try to leave you some room to breathe. I can change that.”
I had no idea if I could change that. Increasing the thickness of the ice, tightening its grip around his chest, seemed like something that would require a ridiculous amount of precision. With my luck, I would accidentally spear him through the lung. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Let’s try this again. Where is Kieran?”
Bergam was already talking the second the shirt cleared his mouth. “I’monyourside!”
I blinked. “What?”
“I’m on your side,” he said, more slowly this time. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “If you’re doing this, if you’re rescuing Kieran and siding with the people from Ersa Estates—you do know that’s what rescuing him means, right? How The Council isgoing to take it? Anyway, I’m on your side, Maila.” I opened my mouth, and he immediately cut me off, “No time for questions. Go ahead, continue like I never said anything.”
And then he was growling and cursing and calling me every profane name under the sun, while struggling against the barrier of the ice.
“Um,” I began, trying to collect myself. He nodded imperceptibly, as if urging me on. “Be quiet and tell me where Kieran is?”
He sighed heavily, as if resigning himself to his fate. “He’s being held in a storage room on the first floor,” he said. “It’s not ideal, but Leon felt it would be too risky to try to move him to Headquarters until we had a better idea what to expect. Moving him sooner would’ve invited too many questions and created too many opportunities for onlookers to become collateral damage.”
“Where is the storage room?” My hands began to shake. Not from the magic, but from adrenaline.
“It’s right across the hall from where we were before. The others were moving like they were going to take him out the exit on the opposite side of the room, but that was just to throw you off. They left out the same door we did.”
I steeled myself to ask the question that terrified me the most. “Are they…torturing him?”
“I don’t know.” Those were the words he spoke, but he was subtly nodding his head yes. My heart sank. “You’re making a mistake. Kieran is extremely dangerous. Even before the incident the other night, we were told never to engage with him one-to-one. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself mixed up in.”
I knew I could have kept pumping him for information, but time was of the essence. I needed to get to Kieran as soon as possible.
“Thank you,” I said simply. I held the shirt back up to his mouth, hesitating slightly, and he gave another subtle nod. I replaced the shirt, but left it loose, making sure he could breathe easily enough around it. Then I turned to run for the emergency staircase at the end of the hall, the same one we had taken the previous day.
But I halted abruptly as a flash of yellow caught my eye, beyond Bergam’s shoulder.
Someone was standing at the other end of the hall, near the central staircase. Her billowy shirt was a pale yellow, her hair pulled into a low side ponytail that was draped gracefully over a shoulder. Her hazel eyes were wide, mouth hanging open. One hand still clutched the handle of a thermos, but her arms were limp at her sides.
“Brielle.”
Even from where she was standing, I could see her throat spasm involuntarily. She blinked at me. Then she slowly, shakily held up the thermos. It was pink, and something about that made a lump form in my throat.
“I-I made you soup.” Her voice was small. “You weren’t at—so I thought, maybe, you were sick, and…what’s happening, Maila? What is this?”
