Page 60 of The Stygian Crown

Kara counted out an hour, waiting to see if the stranger or anyone else appeared, and then she kicked her legs forward, setting her body swaying. Her hooked skin was stretched thin already. She had two choices—try to pull the hooks out, barbs intact, or split the skin securing them. The latter seemed faster and less painful overall, though it was going to hurt like the mother regardless.

The chains swung through the air. Pain flared bright and hot as her abused skin stretched and tore. She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached and kicked through the air again. Then she gripped the chains and yanked them away from her with all her might.

Her skin ripped.

Kara couldn’t hold in her scream.

She fell, knees crashing into stone. She sucked in a jagged breath. Then another. She could control this pain—wrap it in her mind’s fist and squeeze until it snuffed out. Several heaving, gasping inhales later, Kara unscrewed her eyes.

She slowly climbed to her feet and unclipped the bloody hooks from the chains. Her back was a mass of throbbing, pulsing pain. Warm blood trickled down her back to her legs.

Kara made her way to the cell door and tested it, relief sinking through her when it swung open. She’d half expected it to all be for naught, that she’d imagined the stranger freeing her. Her heart raced as she dashed down the dark hallway on unsteady feet, feeling her way along the stone walls. She didn’t know what awaited her at the end—it’d always been obscured by darkness or the halo of Victus’s lantern.

She found a metal ladder embedded in the wall of a circular alcove at the end of the tunnel. A ladder to nowhere, into the abyss. Kara climbed until her head bumped against a solid surface. She pushed up, praying it wasn’t locked, and the wooden hatch lifted.

Kara climbed out into another hall of cells that mirrored her own, but this one was dimly lit with fiery sconces. An endless supply of pain echoed through this level of the prison—sobbing and moaning, screaming, crazed grunts. The noise sent an uneasy current through her gut. Kara lowered the hatch behind her and glanced down at herself. Her skin was bruised and dirty, and there were bright stripes of raw flesh at her wrists and ankles. Her belly was concave beneath her bloody shift, and her mark had faded, its usual glow so dull it more closely resembled rusty blood. She needed a disguise if she was going to get anywhere, though the thought of tugging on a shirt over her torn back made her want to retch.

She swayed lightly on her feet, then gripped the hooks tighter in her hands and tried to get her bearings. There was no end in sight to the hallway in either direction. Kara chose left. She peeked into the cells she passed as she stumbled down the hall.

There was at least one woman in every cell. Some cuffed or chained to the wall, some suspended like Kara had been. Others were free, but they sat in the middle of their cells, staring into nothing. Several of them bore the dark star of a magic eater on their flesh, though none so large as Kara’s had been. As Kara neared the end of the hall, a woman threw herself against her cell door.

“You’re one of us! Help me. Get me out of here.”

Kara glanced at the lock, then down to the hooks in her hands. She had no way to pick the lock, was in terrible shape herself. She had to keep moving. This floor was almost certainly warded against blood runes, too, given Namirahn powers. “I’ll come back for you.”

The woman laughed, and it was stretched and crazed. “No one comes back.”

The last cell on the block held a woman shackled to a wall—they’d gone so far as to close a metal cuff around her neck, the first of those she had seen. Kara stilled. Dirty, knotted white blond hair half-covered a familiar face.

“Saphia?” she whispered.

The woman could barely turn her head. She blinked at Kara, exposing one clear eye and one purple with bruising, the white of her eye full of blood. Kara blanched when she saw the dark star of the magic eater crawling up the side of Saphia’s cheek. Someone had put it there intentionally—every other prisoner she’d seen bore it on their arm, abdomen, or thigh.

Saphia opened her mouth to speak, then wet her lips and tried again. Her top lip was swollen and split. Kara’s heart ached for her—for all of them.

“Keep. Moving.” Her voice was a rasp. A whisper. She was barely hanging on. It’d been months since Travincal, when Saphia’d said she was heading to the Black Hills. Had she been here all this time?

Kara tightened her first around the handles of the hooks, digging her fingers into her palms. She tore her eyes away and forced herself to move on. She had to save herself before she could save anyone else, but she would free all of them. She had to. She rounded the corner to a hall full of regular doors rather than barred cells. A distinctly male groan sounded at the end of the hall.

Kara ran towards the source of the noise—more like hobbled, really. She’d seen no sign of Sanguine guards yet, but it was only a matter of time. She reached the end of the hall and froze. A familiar smell drifted under the door to her left.

She eased it open, heart going still when she saw the mass of still muscle on a table. Dark hair in a familiar shade. Kara blinked. A stone squeezed past her throat and plunked into the abyss of her stomach. A web of frayed nerves flared across her skin.

This couldn’t be happening. Kara bolted forward, barely checking the room. Logan was still as death, metal bands humming with magic wrapped around his bare torso, wrists, ankles. His eyes were closed, chest unmoving. She bent her head to his heart and waited for a beat that never came.

Chapter Fourteen

Kara shook Logan. His flesh was cold beneath her fingers, his eyes unmoving behind their lids. “Logan. Wake up! Please.”

She rose a hook to his mark, which had turned the color of shadow, and ran it through the middle. His blood rose slowly. There was no flare of power, no snapping open of his eyes. A sob caught in her throat.

Kara cut her arm and parted his lips to dribble blood into his mouth. She struggled to trace the sanguinata rune from memory onto his chest. Why hadn’t she practiced it, memorized it? She’d studied for a traitor instead of the man she loved. What had he done after he drew the rune?

Tears ran down her cheeks. She tried to pry off the clamps holding him down using the hook for leverage, but they held firm. They were seamless, with no keyhole. Kara lifted his limp, cold hand to her face and cradled it there.

“Please,” she sobbed. She combed his face for some sign of life. She’d heard him, hadn’t she? He washere. He had to be.

His hand vanished from her skin. He was there—the weight and smell and sensation of him—and then he wasn’t. Kara frantically touched the empty table. Even the manacles were gone.

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