Page 85 of The Coven of Ruin
Trista reached for her, and Zyana leaned forward to meet her hands, the witch’s features softening the moment her fingertips brushed over her face. She tried forming words, her lips working around the cloth, but a cloaked mage pulled her out of Trista’s grasp.
“Let her go,” she demanded, searching the space for Thel.
Amethyst eyes illuminated unnaturally as they considered her. “What was his purpose in Witch Country?”
“Whose?” she cried in reply, desperately trying to conjure a way for her and Zyana to survive this situation.
“What is he to you, that you feel the need to keep his secrets even with the threat of injury to your friend?”
“He is just an Iron Coven mage. He was my….” She hesitated, her lips forming words that all tasted like too much or too little. “My friend,” she finished belatedly.
Zyana fell to her side, resisting a groan before a muffled scream tore from her bruised lips. Seizing, the muscles in her neck constricted against the invisible abuse.
“Stop,” Trista screeched, scrambling from the chair to collapse again near Zyana. She pulled her trembling and panting friend against her. No secrets were worth this. “He’s here because of the Legion!”
“He is indeed the Witchbane?” His voice was crueler, darker, and the small amount of light in the room dimmed further. And though he asked it in the form of a question, it was apparent that he knew. “What does he know?”
“I don’t know, he didn’t tell me—”
Zyana’s body went rigid before she released another agonized cry. Blood gushed from her nose, soaking into the cloth around her mouth. Even in The Arena, she had never heard someone in such pain. The binds around her kept her cramped, even as she struggled against them.
“Please!” Trista begged.
But Thel’s torture was relentless. The mountain witch was so cold her skin burned with an icy fever. If she didn’t give him what he wanted, he would kill her.
The God of War had been partially right. Trista would give the enemyeverything. Just not as the result of her own torture.
“It’s Ares!” she shouted, folding over Zyana as if she could protect her from his onslaught. “He’s trying to stop the Legion, stop Khaos from taking over Olympus.”
Still, her friend thrashed against the torture. Her cries had ripped her throat so much that they had turned into hoarse, jagged phantoms of a scream.
“He knows about the prophecy.Please.That’s all I know.” Her own sobs choked her.
A guttural hiss came from Thel. The lantern held aloft by one of the mages flickered and then extinguished. Then the flames in the fireplace rippled and dimmed, choked of light and heat until it too died. They were thrown into complete darkness—the same devouring black of The Arena’s cells, the same as the abyss of unconsciousness. Trista clutched Zyana closer, not wanting to lose her to it.
Finally, that ancient, wicked voice cleaved the space around her. “And what are you tohim?”
Nothing.Trista was nothing to him. And though it shouldn’t have hurt when she was here in this place and so much else ached, it did. Fissures formed in her heart. Despite their moments of shared vulnerability, Trista knew that she was nothing to him, so that was the answer she gave.
“And yet you felt the need to keep his secrets. It would seem, witchling, that you have told several lies this night.” Icy claws gripped her mind in a threatening hold. “But you will be useful to me, so I will not break you. Entirely.” Those same claws scraped down her lungs and tore at her belly.
She could only scream and hope for a death he would not give.
“Trista,” her friend’s rasping voice drifted to her.
Had they napped again after lunch? Sprawled in Demurielle’s bed or maybe her own? They had probably fallen asleep to Demurielle talking dreamily of what her life could be and Zyana interjecting with something shrewd. Her petite friend had probably pulled their limbs around her, only satisfied when all three of them were touching before she fell asleep.
“Trista!” The whisper was sharp, full of panic and desperation.
Pain entered her groggy awareness, and the truth of her world returned all at once. Cracking her eyes open, she could just make out Zyana’s features, separated by a barrier of bars.
“Mother,” Zyana breathed, leaning farther back, out of her view. “I thought you were—” she cut herself off, unable to finish the sentence.
Raising her hand, she reached for her friend, forcing her hand through the small space between the bars. Zyana closed her hand in one of her own with a slight squeeze, their spell ore bangles clinking together with the motion.
“Are you really here with me?” Trista asked.
“As much as I wish I wasn’t”—Zyana blew out a breath—“I’m really here.”
