Page 191 of The Eye of the Fifth
Kyra was grasped again, one of the soldiers taking a fistful of her hair and forcing her head back.
Gedeon unstoppered the vial. Then none too gently yanked her jaw open and poured its contents down her throat.
There was nothing but cruelty on his face, but his mind-voice was calm.This will freeze your magic and render you unconscious. You may not wake until we are in Dracyg.
Indeed, it was like swallowing an icicle whole as it trickled down her throat. She told him scathingly,You’re a little too good at this.
Something like sorrow flickered across his face, but the mask of cruelty swiftly snapped back.See you on the other side. Try not to kill anyone else.
Kyra spat at his feet for good measure, and then she knew no more.
Chapter Fifty One
The High Wielders
???
Dracyg Dominion, Zarynth.
Gedeon.
Concealed in his shadows and perched on the back of the carriage, Gedeon watched Dracyg Dominion pass by him. Nothing about the city felt like home anymore. He idly wondered if it ever had.
They trundled over the cobblestones, the people awake in the early hours of the morning paying them little mind. They had witnessed this precession countless times before, after all.
Slave imports from the Agni Lands were by no means a new development.
Gedeon somewhat resented those city dwellers now. Safe in their homes, their ankles and wrists free from the chains that bound most of the nation. Ignorant of the pain and torture that the desert-born Zarynthians endured, whilst sitting comfortably in certain freedom.
The resentment was merely a mirror unto himself.
It was immediately stifled when his gaze fell upon The Flaming Falcon.
Still standing and teeming with patrons as it once had, with no sign that the refuge beneath had been discovered.
He would have to tell Sunsi when he returned to Phaenon, that for now, the Base remained out of the crown’s pernicious grasp.
Down a lane left of the Black Castle, the carriage reached the barracks and came to a stop. Silently, Gedeon moved away from the barred doors and watched as two slavers removed Kyra from within, holding her limp body between them.
Gut twisting at the sight of her like that, Gedeon followed them into the shallow building.
Never had he visited the barracks before. Never had he bothered to learn what became of his students once they were moved from the castle as fledglings, to here, as full wielders. If he had done so, he would have learned the truth of his mother’s army a lot sooner.
Sunsi had berated him for that once.
The barracks were no more than a detention camp. The wielders' rooms no more than cells, twisted iron separating him from them. It smelt like a privy. He recognised some of his ex-students, many of them grown into young men and women. However, the number of themnotpresent far outweighed the number that were.
Gedeon knew what had become of the ones that weren’t.
The soldiers dropped Kyra in a cell of her own, then hastily locked the door on her, as though they could not bear to be in such a place longer than necessary.
After easily swiping the key from the unsuspecting soldier’s belt, Gedeon crouched by Kyra’s cell and waited. Once the soldiers disappeared from view, he dropped his shadows. His magic was already depleting, and he needed every ounce of it if they were to come out of this alive. None had recognised him in the Agni Lands, but his face was known here. It was why he had chosen his shadows instead of an alias. Without his darkness, they would be vulnerable.
???
Kyra.
Kyra woke to the smell of shit and piss.
