Page 83 of Ties of Dust

Flora pulled back at last, trying to catch her breath as she clung to Cassius’s shirt. He rested his forehead against hers, his own breathing far from steady.

“I’ve made a mess of your plans,” she murmured.

“I don’t care about my plans,” he told her, his voice ragged. “Flora, all I care about now is keeping you safe. We have to find a way out of here before Sir Keavling comes back. And not just for our own sakes.” The hand on her neck quivered with his tension. “They’ll hurt you to get to me. They’ll kill you. And I’m very much afraid I’d start a war just to prevent it.”

Flora pulled her face away, frowning at him. “Start a war?”

He shook his head. “I can explain later. We have to find a way out of here. I didn’t expect to be left to ourselves even this long. I don’t think we can count on being safe until morning.”

“No, nighttime would provide better cover for an escape anyway,” Flora agreed. She flexed her shoulders, wincing as her muscles screamed in protest. “What did they hit you with?”

“Their fists,” Cassius said, the anguish back in his voice. “But for you, it was doubled, remember?”

“I’m not likely to forget.” Flora disentangled herself from his lap, a pleasant thrill shooting through her at his reluctance to let her go. “But never mind that. I’ll recover. And I’m free from the bindings now, which is a huge improvement. Surely I can stir up some Dust.”

She pushed herself cautiously to her feet. Pain met her every movement. If she was somewhere safe, she would have been taking to her bed to rest for a week before attempting anything at all. But she wouldn’t reach somewhere safe unless she pushed herself hard.

“That window is our best option,” she said, studying it in the dim light. It was open to the outside world but for the metal bars. “Do you think you can squeeze through it if we can get up there? Your shoulders are much broader than mine.”

Cassius followed her gaze as he also rose to his feet. “I can make it work,” he said. “The bars will be our problem.”

“Leave the bars to me,” said Flora, growing more confident the more she moved around the room. She squinted up at the window. “A large stone would help. I could try to break off a chunk of the wall, but actual destruction takes so much energy. It would exhaust me even if I could do it. It wouldn’t leave much energy for the bars themselves.”

“You can’t destroy the bars altogether?” Cassius asked hopefully.

She shook her head regretfully. “I doubt it. They look like iron. Too strong. It would be a struggle for me even with my usual energy and with unlimited sources of movement. Neither of which are remotely true right now.”

“I understand,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to push you. I wouldn’t have even thought it was an option except that I saw you reduce to splinters the arrows that were fired at Princess Miriam.”

“Wood is much easier,” Flora explained. “Stone is a stretch, but it’s doable. You probably didn’t notice, but when I destroyed the arrows, I only destroyed the shafts. The arrowheads remained intact. I was conserving energy. Besides which, I was using a weapon to stir up the Dust for that exercise. Weapons generate the perfect type of magic for destruction. Here, I’ll have to get more creative.”

“I’ll work on getting us up there,” Cassius said. He gathered up the ropes he’d pulled from Flora hours before and began knotting one end.

“That’s perfect,” said Flora, snatching it from him as soon as he’d completed the knot. She spun the rope around her like a lasso. Her movements were jerky as her muscles protested, and she saw Cassius leap quickly out of the way.

“Sorry,” she told him, with the closest thing to a smile that had crossed her face in many hours.

Once confident he was far enough back, she closed her eyes, letting her magical sense focus on the Dust that poured from the rope as it swung. Her mind was so weary and her body so overwhelmed that even the simple task of harnessing the power was a strain. But she forced herself to take hold of it, stubbornly resisting the impulse to use halfof the magic to create energy to fuel whatever activity she set it to.

Instead she coated almost all of the magic onto the knotted end of the rope as she let it fly up toward the barred window. When the rope reached the top of its trajectory, she forced the magic to take hold of the object, guiding the knot through a gap in the bars and back through the next gap over.

Even that was a serious cost to her energy. She let the enchantment drop immediately, carefully feeding the rope through so that gravity did the job of making the knotted end drop back down into the cellar. Cassius grabbed hold of it as soon as it was within his reach, firmly pulling it down.

“That was amazing,” he said, turning to her. The admiration on his face turned quickly to alarm as he took in her demeanor.

She’d stumbled back, leaning on the post to which she’d been tied as she tried to catch her breath.

“Flora!” Cassius placed the rope carefully on the ground where it couldn’t possibly slide back through the bars, and hurried to her side. “Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she told him, puffing a little. “I just need to catch my breath.” If only every movement didn’t bring with it so much pain.

“You’re overextending yourself,” he scolded. “Flora, even I know that you can’t use all the magic for the task. You have to use some to sustain yourself. Your body can’t handle continuing to manipulate magic with no source to replenish the energy, especially not in the state you’re in.”

“It’s a good principle, Cassius, but we can’t afford it,” Flora told him, her eyes closed as she willed her energy torecover itself. “If I follow good practice with the allocation of power, we simply won’t be able to escape. There’s no source of movement great enough for me to do both simultaneously, and there’s no way for me to store up the power.”

“I don’t like it,” Cassius said, clenching and unclenching one fist in his agitation.

Flora opened her eyes, her voice stern. “Then you should have applied yourself in your studies and tried to acquire the craft.”

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