Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

Silver Coup. She had been pursued into the forest by assassins and shot with a poisoned arrow. Sarai had been the one to save her, to kill the assassins and carry her afterwards to their cousin and physician Albinus, who managed to concoct an antitoxin in time to save her. But the poison, much like the memory itself, had lingered—had sunk itself into her and claimed her, biding its time to do its deadly work. It necessitated a monthly administration of the antitoxin to stave off its effects, a regimen that she would be forced to adhere to for the rest of her life. And her father, he hadn’t even been that fortunate. His body had been found later, dead in his rooms, throat opened by an assassin’s dagger.

She was breathing too fast. Her eyes were open but her mind could not yet absorb her surroundings. Too much of her was still entrenched in the nightmare. It sank ghostly talons into her shoulders, knifed coldly through the gap between her ribs, surrounded her with the smell of dead leaves and wet scorch-moss. The dream, the memory, it had been so powerful this time. Details had surfaced that she hadn’t remembered before. She didn’t want to remember them. She had no idea where she was now, but wherever it was, she would far rather be there than sunk in the quicksand of her own mind.

Her mouth moved. “Hello?” she whispered. No one answered, but something shifted beneath her hand, and she realized that her fingers were tightly curled in something warm and furry. It breathed, its ribs moving gently up and down beneath her palm like a ship rocking at sea, and after a moment her own breathing began to slow to match it.

She looked down. Bluish-white eyes met hers. It was the dog, the gray one that had been with her and Tal on the ice.

Her breath stopped. Tal. He had been injured, close to death. She shot to her feet—a mistake, as she was quickly unbalanced and toppled over, smacking her cheekbone hard against the stone-tile ground. The fall only slowed her for a moment. She sat up and braced herself against the wall, about to use it to climb to her feet once again, when she heard the rattle of a chain and felt something cool and unyielding clamped around her wrist.

She froze. It was a manacle. There was one on each hand. She was chained to a cedar-planked wall. Imprisoned. Trapped. But no longer half-naked, she realized, looking down at herself. She wore unfamiliar, roughspun trousers along with Tal’s shirt and jacket. And the points of pain on her back and sides where the mooncat had bitten her were gone. Movements made clunky by the chain, she pulled the shirt up and twisted around to try to see the injuries. Had they given her healing tincture? Surely if they had, they would also have healed Tal. Unless…unless the Saints knew nothing about him except that he was her guard. Unless they considered him no better than her, and more expendable, in which case they might have executed him already.

The thought sent starbursts of panic flickering over her skin. She yanked hard at the chains holding her, tried to call up her fire to melt them, but nothing happened.

From one of the dark corners of her little room, a female voice spoke. “Well. That’s reassuring.”

Elodie jerked around. The panic intensified to hot, fizzing trails of sparks. If only she could will them into existence, could wield them to defend herself, to free herself—but no matter how fiercely she concentrated, the sparks tormented only her.

“Who are you?” she demanded, squinting to find whoever had spoken, tugging her shirt back down while she did.

The person stepped forward. Guileless light brown eyes, curly black hair and freckled brown skin, a mouth that looked made for smiling. She was shorter even than Elodie and perhaps a year or two older, with more generous curves and a sturdy frame. Every inch of her proclaimed kindness and naivety. “I am Helenia,” she said. She moved closer, just out of reach of Elodie’s chains, and held out something. A loaf of bread.

Elodie stared at it. They were feeding her? What did this mean?

Helenia’s mouth curved slightly. “It’s only rye bread. I was going to bring you a bowl of soup, but the others worried you might use the bowl as a weapon. You’re far less likely to bash me in the head with a loaf of rye, although I will admit it’s probably stale enough to do at least a little damage if you care to try.”

Elodie’s stare moved from the bread to the girl. Her mind worked furiously. She had many, many questions, but the person asking the questions usually held the least amount of sway in any given conversation, so she stayed silent a moment while she debated what to do. Her priority was to find out about Tal. But if she was going to regain at least a shred of control, she couldn’t reveal that she cared about him or he might be used against her.

She blinked. She cared about Tal—and not only because he had been the only person she could trust to protect her in the cesspit of the palace. The thought was a revelation that only added to her panic. She was more vulnerable now than she had been half-naked on the ice, and she couldn’t let this girl or any of her other captors know that or they would surely tear her to shreds.

They had to know she was the Destroyer. They wouldn’t have taken so many precautions with her otherwise. If they thought her dangerous, she would conform to their expectations, and in so doing gain back some leverage.

She pulled the memory of her old self over her like a coat of Smithed armor. The Destroyer settled into the lines of her expression, the cant of her shoulders, the cruel and ready grace of her stillness. “Where,”