Page 16 of Court of Wolves

Yllevia had survived, that haven of artists and poets near the mountains. But how long until the creatures devoured it? How long until the saints turned it to ash?

Isak would have been dead if Viskae hadn’t insisted he go to Sainsa. “Shit. Is this why you made me leave?”

Viskae’s voice was unsettled, quiet.No. I didn’t see this progressing so rapidly.

Isak dragged a hand through his hair. It needed a cut, or a wash, but he’d been travelling nonstop to reach Sainsa this quickly, and he didn’t have the nerve to ignore Viskae’s advice to continue to the capital. Maybe she hadn’t known this was happening, but her intuition had saved him. It would have been one hell of a mistake for him to be killed when Viskae was reborn inside him, but for the saint of mistakes and redemption he wouldn’t have been surprised.

Isak forced himself to read the rest of the paper, finishing his food and ordering a second watery pint as he filled his mind with tensions, war, emergency meetings, coalitions, and stories of the displaced who’d fled those places Ismene now occupied. He felt sick by the time he was done reading and always came back to that map. He couldn’t help the way his eyes lingered on one town—Eosantha.

It hadn’t been home, he hadn’t been there nearly long enough, but Isak had felt safe for a little while. He wondered how many people he’d drank with, laughed with, and regaled with stories had survived. Wondered if they were all dead.

In his moments of weakness, he wondered about his brother, and about Maia. What were the dark saints doing to them this very moment? Were they given the same agonising treatment he’d been? Isak swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, and grabbed his stick where he’d propped it against the chair.

“Better be going then,” he said under his breath, ignoring his exhaustion and the tremor in his leg. He was free, alive, and not enduring torture. So he would keep going until he found someone to help.

What happened to not being a hero?Viskae asked, curious more than snarky.

“I’m here now,” he muttered as he tucked the paper into a well-worn bag he won off someone in a game of cards. He woundhis way to the stained glass door, a weight on his shoulders. “I might as well do something productive.”

And he couldn’t stop thinking about what Maia said.When whatever is leaking into this world comes for us? Comes for Jaro? It's on you, Isak Sintali.

If he’d been on the island with them, would they be free? Or would he be locked up with them? Back in the same nightmare where he was turned into the fucked up thing he was now.

On the street, Isak took a moment to fill his lungs with sharp sea air, letting it clear his head. He had no plan, only a city, a direction. What the fuck was he going to do?

Walk,Viskae suggested.

So Isak walked.

CHAPTER NINE

Etziel stood over her, his hair like ice coiling around his face, the constant drip, drip of water from the cracked roof of her prison hitting them both. Not that Maia’s torturer seemed to care. The moisture in the air thickened the scent she’d never been able to forget—sweet, ripe apples and blood. It clung to every drop of water, to the mist and mould, to her lungs until she’d never get it out.

“I think we can cut deeper, don’t you?” Etziel asked, pale head tilted as he contemplated the meat of her body, assessing her the way a butcher would a cow carcass. “It’s a good amount of blood, but shallow wounds always do bleed well.”

Maia had been here for so long that she no longer tried to run. She didn’t even shrink away when he crouched lower, a serrated blade with a wicked curve at the tip that he’d used to open a devastating wound on her thigh. She’d almost died from that one. It had almost been over. But like every other wound, he patched her up and her torture continued. The one on her stomach was the worst. And he wanted to deepen it.

“Will you sing for me, snaresinger?” he asked, what empathy or guilt should have belonged in his voice long replaced by glee and bloodlust.

At first, she’d spat in his face. She’d told him to take a short hike and throw himself in the pit of the chasm. She’d struggled and fought and she’d bled and she screamed. Now she just bled and screamed.

Don’t you dare stop fighting.

Maia jerked at that voice, smooth and full of warmth, an equal balance of rough and refined.

Az…?

“I think you’ll sing,” Etziel said, almost to himself, as he set the knife to her skin, grinning when she tensed, resigned to the pain but unable to fight her base instincts. The first cut was bearable. Her nostrils flared, her vision swimming, but she could handle it. The second tore a whimper from her, veiling her eyes in tears. She screwed them shut, shaking, gasping. The third angled deeper, widening the slice across her gut, and Maia screamed, her body curling, trying to protect itself. Etziel held her still and dragged the blade across her skin. “Louder.”

She shook her head, gasping, sobbing, tears streaking the grime the cell had left on her. She wanted to beg him to stop but she’d done that for days and it only ever made him cut deeper.

Wake up. Open your eyes, sweetheart.

Etziel twisted his hand, the jagged edge carving her open, and Maia’s back arched as the scream poured from her, the sound a wild animal, a force of nature. Her heart strained under the pressure of that pain, which made her whole body buckle.

“Princess,” Etziel laughed, his cruel face sneering, delighted. “Princess!”

That wasn’t what he called her. Maia gasped over and over, choking, blood pouring hot from her stomach as Etziel cast the knife aside and shook her shoulders, the scent of apples and blood stuffing up her nose until it was everywhere, until her ruined stomach cramped around the emptiness inside it, until she retched with bile.

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