Page 33 of Cages and Crowns
“I don’t feel anything besides hungover.” He mutters.
“What is that?” I jump as Laenie speaks up behind me. I spin around, her dressing gown is tightly wrapped around her. Chestnut hair is messily pulled up into a knot.
“What do you feel?” Someone has to be feeling the same thing. This isn’t just me.
“It feels like something is pounding on my head. Like pressure.” Emery’s door opens and she’s rubbing her face.
“Gods, why do I feel hungover?” She grumbles, leaning into the doorjamb and glancing around at us.
“I feel fine.” Enzo shrugs.
“It’s her.” Kassius is breathless as he crests the top of the stairs, with a tiny Mal right behind him, her strawberry hair in messy braids. “It’s her. Something is wrong.”
Chapter Twenty
The Caged
Everything hurts. Every part of me. My soul. My skin. My bones. I think I am dying, and if I am, I don’t even mind.
I keep my eyes closed, absorbing the silence around me. My limbs are stiff, being held down by chains on the stone table. He was here all night, for hours, carving me up like a roast chicken. He was yelling, he was crying. He was hurt.
I don’t know why I expected the few weeks of gentleness to continue. I knew what he was. I knew who he was. He’ll never be capable of comfort.
I love him. I know I do. Even despite everything. I can feel that love, feel it as if it is a shard of glass piercing my heart, moving with every beat.Gods. Whatis wrong with me?
I flex my fingers, or attempt to. I can’t really tell if they move.
I hope I’m dying.
What I do feel is a burning tingle in my fingertips. As if my hand strayed too close to a fire. As if it is burning through my skin, eating away at my flesh. As if it’s spreading from my skin to the stone. Lightning bolts taking away everything I have left.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Bound
“I cannot allow you to go. It is not time.” My father’s tired voice is loud, and I am cursing the lack of coffee I have consumed this morning as I sit at the council table.
“We don’t have a choice. She isdying.” Kassius speaks up for once, disagreeing with my father. His voice is loud, desperate as he urges him to understand.
“You can’t possibly know that.” The King of Labisa is bored, irritated with our constant pressure to rescue Elaenor. Even now, as Kassius begs for him to listen, he doesn’t.
“I can.Youmay not have felt it, but most of us did. The pressure, the pulse she sent. She isdying,Dav. That wave that we all felt,the one that wokemost of us up, was her aether. It was searching, begging for help as a last attempt to save her. I could see it, pure, undiluted starlight. I could see her, or what is left of her.” I whip my head in his direction, all of us stunned to hear he had a vision.
“What?” Disbelief coats my tongue like ash.
“My visions have gone, my ability to see, but something about her, something in her aether that she sent out, let me see her. She’s in a dungeon, chained to a stone table. Her skin has been sliced open; salt poured in her wounds to keep her from healing. I fear she will not survive the day.” His voice is soft, but I can hear the tremor. I can see the pain in his eyes. He once told us that she was like a daughter to him when she was younger. She was everything he hoped Mal would grow up to be—fearless and strong.
“You can’t be serious.” Enzo’s voice is low. Scarlett is leaning against the wall, her hand in Emery’s, her eyes lined with silver. Laenie and Erik are sitting to my left, watching Kassius as intently as the rest of us. Mal walks over and climbs into Enzo’s lap, her arms wrapping around his neck as he rubs her back. She doesn’t know Elaenor, or understand, but she’s smart. She knows someone is hurt and that we need to help her.
“I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what I believe to be her death. If Tobias goes back to her, goes back to the dungeons, she will not survive. I saw the blade. I saw it slice through an artery. She bleeds out before he can stop it. It’s an accident.” My hands are shaking, and I stick them under the table, clenching them into fists.
“That isn’t an accident, that’s murder.” Enzo growls.
“If you go, if you leave now without an army to back you, it will be a suicide mission. We do not have the manpower to send guards with you, nor will I risk anyone’s life for something that may not even be true.”
“We don’t need guards. In and out.” I speak up, turning back to face my father.
“Son,” he warns.
