Page 173 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
Fifty-Five
EVIE
Pain.
Growing stronger and meaner the more I regained consciousness.
Something jostled my chest. No, my entire body.
Why was I so terribly tired? Even breathing was difficult, as if my lungs couldn’t be bothered to keep me alive.
I blinked the grogginess away. My eyes saw only a dirt track, flying underneath me. My body seized, fearful of the drop, but I couldn’t flinch away.
My hands were bound in front of me and I was tied tightly to the back of a horse, head hanging upside down, like a deer that had been freshly hunted.
Pure fear speared me. Where was I? Where were the others?
“We’ll be up north soon,” a boorish voice that didn’t sound quite human said from above me. It was muffled. A helmet, a mask, a piece of fabric.
If whoever had captured me wouldn’t kill me, the smell would. It reeked.
“We have to go east at the end of the road,” another voice said. Just as muffled, even rougher.
I tried shifting my wrists, but the thick rope coiled almost up to my elbow, making it impossible.
“She’s awake. Sap her before she fries us.”
With another hissed whisper, the world went dark and frightening once more.
I awokeas my black slammed against something solid.
“Don’t damage her. They need her blood.”
“Just putting her down while we revitalize.”
“Do it more carefully. Crack her head and she’ll spill out on the rocks before we arrive.”
I was surrounded.
Even with my eyes closed, I counted more than a dozen pairs of feet shuffling around me. Some more precise than others; three of them stumbled as their steps took them farther away from me, along with that horrifying stench.
But not far enough. I could still hear one of them exhaling heavily, putrid breaths alarmingly close to me.
I tried to keep my own breaths under control, so they wouldn’t know I’d woken up again. Whatever power they used had drained me, urging me to sink into the moist earth underneath me and never rise again.
Worst of all, I couldn’t feel Zandyr. That small pressure against my mind was gone and no matter how hard I tugged on our connection, there was nothing on the other end, only endless silence.
My heart threatened to gallop out of my chest.
No.
If I panic, they’ll hear me.
Think. Survive.
I’d been kidnapped.
I didn’t know where in the underworld I was.
