Page 76 of Ties of Dust

“Flora?”

He spoke softly as he entered the hedge and moved cautiously through its spirals. Relief flooded him when he caught sight of her partway around the first bend.

“Flora.”

He could only see a sliver of her, but he’d know her anywhere. She was sitting on the ground with her back to him, her head leaned back against the hedge, looking up at the starry sky above. When she didn’t respond to his greeting, Cassius strode forward.

“Flora, what—Flora!” Alarm raced over him as he reached her at last, only to find that she wasn’t staring up at the sky at all. Her eyes were closed, and her face was deathly pale.

Cassius knelt down, panic overtaking his better sense as he grasped her shoulder. The contact sent her toppling sideways, the movement masking another one behind him. He knew nothing except a brief moment of blinding pain on the back of his head, then blackness.

Cassius woke to an agonizing headache and an unsettling sense of restriction.

He forced his eyes open. The light was dim, and the air horribly stuffy. He couldn’t seem to move his limbs at all.The disorientation was intense, and for several long moments he couldn’t make sense of where he was.

Then his eyes fell on another shape in the gloom, and ice seized his heart as the events of the evening came rushing back. He’d been so easily manipulated. Someone had discovered not only the tether, but his determination to hide it, and no more had been needed to draw him into a trap like a fool.

And as always, Flora had paid the price for his weakness. Doubly so. While he was bound hands and feet, with a thick rope attaching him to a ring on the wall, Flora was much more brutally restrained. She was upright, ropes binding her to a narrow wooden beam so tightly that her breaths were shallow and labored. Even her head was strapped back. There were no obvious injuries on her, but her eyes were closed, and her lips and cheeks were colorless. In addition to whatever means their enemies had used to subdue her, she would have suffered twice the impact of the blow Cassius took, even if she’d been unconscious at the time and unable to feel it happen. It was a wonder she was still alive.

“Flora!” It came out as a rasp, Cassius struggling against his bonds.

To his relief, her eyes flew open at once. He could see the panic in their dark depths, and he willed her to keep her gaze locked on him, to find an anchor there.

“It’s all right, Flora. I’m here. We’ll find a way out of this.”

She didn’t respond, and peering through the dimly lit space, he realized that on top of everything else, she had a thin gag threaded around her mouth.

He swallowed the rage he was feeling, knowing thatcursing and swearing vengeance wouldn’t help her right now.

“Do you hear me, Flora?” he said firmly. “Don’t give up on me, all right?”

A single tear leaked down her cheek, sending a metaphorical dagger through Cassius’s heart. But she kept her eyes on his, and he could see her gaining control of herself.

“Did you see who’s behind this?” he asked.

She strained a little, but it occurred to him that bound as she was, she couldn’t even nod or shake her head.

Cassius let out a hiss of frustration. “They don’t want you moving at all,” he realized. “They don’t want you to have access to any magic to harness.”

He looked around the space, which appeared to be a root cellar. That must be why the air was so still.

“I’m not as tightly bound,” he mused. “I can move around some. Can you harness the magic from my movement?”

His words were hopeful, but it only took one glance at her sagging form to remind him that she was in no state for advanced magical feats. He remembered something from his studies about it requiring incredible strength to wrest magic from someone else’s movements, akin to the mental version of battling them with your bare hands.

Flora was again unable to answer his question with words or head movements, but she flicked her eyes backwards and forwards, which he took as an attempt to shake her head.

“Don’t worry,” he told her quickly. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let your body rest as best you can. I’ll figure something out.”

His words had the opposite effect towhat he intended. He saw familiar determination blaze into life in Flora’s eyes. Already some color was returning to her as he mused aloud about their situation. How long had she been awake and alone, succumbing to panic in the gloom of the cellar?

Flora’s eyes darted around, taking in the small space. There wasn’t much they could use. But as Cassius watched, one of her shoulders started to shift. It wasn’t much movement, but from the determined way she kept doing it, Cassius assumed it was stirring up something. A tiny movement caught his eye, and he gestured to it with his head.

“Look! A beetle. You don’t have to fight animals to harness their movement, right?”

Flora didn’t answer, but her attention was bent on the insect in a way that confirmed his question. Cassius watched, hypnotized by the rhythmic motion of her shoulder and the intensity of her focus on the beetle. Sweat began to bead on her forehead, and before his eyes, the rope around her moving shoulder loosened ever so slightly. He could tell because the movements of her shoulder became more pronounced. It seemed her plan was to use what little magic she could gain to free herself inch by inch, each new step allowing greater movement that would compound the effect of what she was doing.

Judging by how minimally the rope at her shoulder had loosened, it would be a long and tedious process. Did she have the strength for that?

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