Endure

by Sara B. Larson

  I began to protest, but Akio happened to meet my eyes just then, and he shook his head infinitesimally. Confused, I snapped my mouth shut, choosing to stay silent instead of responding.

  King Armando took my silence as interest, because he continued, “Those subjects are an integral piece in my experiments — even though not all of them came willingly. Those who did offer themselves up, giving themselves to me for my experiments or allowing their bodies to be conduits, so that they might give birth to an entirely new breed of sorcerers, will be rewarded richly. The others …” He trailed off and shrugged. “But soon, none of this will be needed any longer. Because of you.”

  “Excuse me?” My shock forced the words out.

  “Your blood is the key. Your blood will assure my victory.”

  “My blood,” I repeated in disbelief. Manu’s words were beginning to make more sense — his wild outburst that it was better to take his king a vial of my blood rather than nothing at all. But why? What could they possibly want with it?

  A tall man who wore the same black robes with the white overvest that Manu had worn walked toward us. When his gaze met mine, the strange chill I’d felt in Manu’s cell enveloped me, and terror seized my body. He had the same silver eyes with abnormally large pupils that Manu had possessed, reminding me of the horrors Manu had brought to Antion. I battled to force my fear down. I couldn’t think clearly if I let it take hold completely.

  “This is the girl,” he said in Antionese, a sickening look of hunger crossing his narrow face.

  “Yes,” King Armando agreed. “I will not fail, now that she is in our possession.”

  “I have made many advances for you, Sire. But with her, I will be able to conquer all.” The man in the robes smiled, a terrible, chilling upturn of his lips.

  Despite my best intentions, terror ran through my blood, making my hands tremble. What could they possibly be talking about?

  “Tell me. Where is my brother?” the man in the robes directed his question to me, but I stayed silent. This had to be El Evocon that Akio had told me I was being taken to — The Summoner.

  “Answer him!” King Armando roared, jerking on my chains, and I flinched.

  “He’s dead.” Though I hadn’t realized they were brothers, I knew he had to be asking about the man who had called himself Manu de Reich os Deos. “I killed him.”

  “It cannot be,” the man in front of me breathed, his already-pale skin losing all color completely. The temperature dropped even more, making me shiver. “He was gifted with power nearly comparable to mine. He could not possibly have been bested by you.”

  “It is the fulfillment of my father’s prediction,” the king said, his voice tight. “She is the one no sorcerer will be able to stop. But now she is ours. She will never kill again.”

  Cold anger flared in the man’s unnatural silver eyes. “If you will chain her over there, I will get to work immediately.” He gestured to the tables where the strange instruments lay. Bottles were attached to long, thin metal tubes of some sort with sharp points. Like miniature daggers that had hollow centers. The sorcerer who had been standing next to one of the cots was now sitting on it, with one of the tubes in his arm. His blood ran into the bottle next to him through the instrument. Had he pushed it into his own vein?

  And then it hit me. My blood. They wanted it for some reason. They were going to take it from my body while I was still living.

  “No.” King Armando’s response took me by surprise. I tore my glance away from the sorcerer, who had reached up to pull the instrument — the strange, hollow dagger — out of his arm, to stare at the king. “She will sacrifice herself willingly. It would lessen the power of her blood if we take it forcibly.”

  The man in the robes glared at me greedily, his jaw clenched. But to the king he said, “Of course, Your Majesty. As you command. But if she bested my brother, who is to say that she won’t be able to escape from these chains? That she won’t kill everyone? Even I — the greatest of us all?” The man’s eyes sent a shiver of terror creeping down my spine to lodge deep in my gut. “And don’t forget, time is running short, my king.”

  “I am well aware, Evocon,” King Armando snapped. “She won’t be able to hurt any of us. She is in my power now. Do not forget your place — I am the greatest of us all. You are mine, and therefore beneath me.”

  “Of course, Sire,” The Summoner murmured, but I didn’t miss the loathing that burned in his eyes for a brief moment, making the air flare hot around us, before smoothing into a look of placid agreement once more.

  The king turned to face me. “Alexa, do you understand what is happening here?”

  “No,” I answered, hating the way my hands still shook. I clenched them together in front of me, hoping to hide my fear. Armando thrived on it, and I couldn’t let him have the satisfaction of knowing he’d succeeded in frightening me.

  “I have created sorcery such as the world has never seen before. The Gods that strengthen my sorcerers have given us many gifts already — gifts that the Blevonese weren’t brave enough, or strong enough, to deserve. You’ve already seen evidence of our blessings: Rafe and Vera, two of our successful creations.”

  “Your gifts come from demons, not the Gods. And Vera is dead,” I said coldly. “So not very successful after all, perhaps.”

  “Silence,” King Armando shouted, slapping me against the mouth so hard my head snapped to the side and my lip split open. I lunged forward, but the sorcerers at my side yanked me back. “You might have stopped her, you might have even stopped Iker and The Summoner’s brother, but now that you are in my control, you will see the beauty of my power. You will sacrifice yourself to me so that I might take what is rightfully mine!” His declaration ended in a shout.

  I longed to yell back at him, but my mouth still throbbed from his strike. The bitter tang of blood encouraged me to swallow my angry retort. “What is it that you want?” I asked instead.

  “Everything.” His voice dropped to a whisper, his eyes burning with the fire of insatiable greed. “And now that you are here, you can’t take it from me. Not anymore.”

  “How could I take it from you — why do you think I am so important?”

  “You are the one!” King Armando cried, grabbing my jaw, yanking my face toward him again, as he’d done the first time I’d met him. The sorcerers pulled my arms back, keeping my shackled hands pressed against my belly, not allowing me any slack with which to attack their king. “My father told me you would come. But I have made myself stronger than he ever could have dreamed possible. I have created sorcerers the likes of which this world has never witnessed. You won’t stop me — no one can!”

  The flash of madness in his blazing blue eyes frightened me more than anything else I’d seen to that point. “Your father never knew me,” I said quietly, and his fingers turned into claws, digging his nails into my skin. “I’m not the one you think I am.”

  “Yes, you are! You are the one — the warrior no sorcerer can stop. He claimed you would come, that you would stop my plans. But now we will bleed out your invincibility and take it for ourselves. We will claim every ounce of your power for Dansii — for me.” He leaned forward until his mouth was only inches from mine. I stiffened, my heart thrumming a panicked triple beat beneath my ribs. “You are mine now.” He remained there, staring into my eyes, his hot breath blowing over my bloody lips for a long moment. But then, suddenly, he let me go and turned back to the room. My chest rose and fell rapidly as I tried to contain my emotions. My entire body trembled, despite my best intentions to not let him see that he’d frightened me.

  “I killed him, you know,” King Armando said without facing me. “He told me that I would never be a good king. He predicted that you would come — that you would stop me — so I poisoned him. Just as I will eventually kill you. But it will be a worthy sacrifice, Alexa. You will die to serve a greater purpose.”

  I knew without asking that he meant his father. He’d killed his own father. Not
out of necessity, as Damian had been forced to do, but out of anger. Out of spite.

  Out of greed.

  And I was next — once they were done with me.

  As I watched, the robed man took the bottle partially filled with crimson liquid over to one of the girls, who looked a few years younger than me. He had wrapped his arm in a cloth that was stained with his own blood. I stared at that stain as he lifted her head with one hand and pressed the bottle to the barely conscious girl’s lips with the other, making her drink. Acid boiled through my stomach, threatening to rise up into my throat, as I watched her swallow his blood with her eyes only half-open, some of it dribbling out to drip down her chin. Was this how Armando had created Rafe and Vera? How Manu and the man who still watched me from across the room with the same silver eyes had been created? Or did he have other, even more terrible secrets?

  “I will never submit to you,” I said quietly, my voice mutinous.

  Rather than yell or hit me again, as I was afraid he might do, Armando only turned and smiled. “You say that now, but then again, that’s what they all say, at first,” the king said. “You’ll find that I am a patient man. And I have a knack for persuading people. I have spent decades creating my sorcerers, building my army. Putting events into motion that cannot be stopped. I can wait a few more days to finish what I started.”

  And with that, he turned his back to me again and waved his hand toward Akio. “Take her away. And only give her water for the next day and night. No food. Perhaps that will help her start to see reason.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  So much for having me in perfect health, I thought as Akio took my chain from the king and dragged me out of the horrifying room, back to my opulent prison.

  Hunger gnawed at my belly by sundown the next day, but I refused to ask for food. Instead, I stared out my window, wondering what had become of Eljin and Rylan. They had to be alive. After making it this far, I couldn’t have lost them. I convinced myself that King Armando would have kept them alive to manipulate me if necessary. I couldn’t bear to think of Rylan somewhere in the depths of the dungeon, his leg growing infected, his blood turning to poison in his veins, slowly killing him.

  Finally, shortly after the sun dropped below the horizon, the door opened. I spun around but then quickly shrank back against my bed.

  “I’m to be your escort tonight,” Rafe said, striding over to where the chain was anchored to the middle of the floor, then he unlocked it and jerked me to my feet. He wore a white patch over his eye with a strip of fabric tied around it to keep it on his face. A small stain of russet was beginning to seep through the material. His empty socket must have still been weeping blood. Apparently, the king hadn’t allowed Akio to heal it for him.

  “What are you staring at?” he barked at me. He yanked on the chain viciously, forcing me to lunge forward after him as he dragged me out into the hallway. The ever-present hooded guards immediately flanked me, discouraging any attempt at attacking Rafe, even though every instinct in me screamed to do something. It had taken every bit of training and ability I had to defeat Iker; there was no chance of my success and survival if I tried to take on two black sorcerers and Rafe, while shackled.

  And of course, there was the small matter that he’d made it so that I was unable to hurt him. I dreamed of bludgeoning him in the head with the iron bars around my wrist, but when I let the image get too solidified in my mind, a haze of confusion came over me, erasing the desire to hurt him. With a sigh I looked away from him as we rushed through the halls of the palace in the quickly dimming light of sunset. I caught a glimpse of the last dying rays of light through one of the windows we passed, a myriad of oranges and yellows that dripped into the unending expanse of pale sand on the horizon.

  “Hurry up,” Rafe ordered, yanking me forward once more.

  “I can’t believe he actually had your eye removed,” I retorted. “Considering how much effort he put into creating you, it seems a waste to destroy your one power so needlessly.” My wrists were raw beneath the iron shackles, and every time he jerked me forward, the shackles bit harder into my skin, threatening to tear it open.

  “I still have my power.” Rafe stopped and spun to face me, his expression livid. I’d never seen him so angry. “And he didn’t create me. Manu de Reich os Deos did. He and El Evocon.”

  “It’s unfortunate, then, that I killed Manu,” I baited him.

  He lifted a fist as if to strike me, but I didn’t so much as let myself flinch, staring straight forward. “You should learn to shut your mouth. If the king hadn’t ordered you to remain unharmed, I would have already exacted my revenge on you for what you’ve done.”

  “For killing Manu? Or for helping Damian kill your sister?”

  Rafe lunged toward me, but one of the men at my side snapped something in Dansiian at him and he stopped himself. “Don’t push me,” he warned, his voice low and furious. “Order or no order, if you dare speak of my sister again, I will hurt you. Slowly. And with great pleasure.” Then he turned to look at the man in the hood. “Why don’t you pull your hood back and face me? Look me in the eye next time you tell me what to do.”

  The black sorcerer merely remained silent.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like being threatened in Antionese,” I observed.

  Without another word, Rafe spun away and jerked me forward again.

  We only walked a little farther, past the great hall where I’d met King Armando the first time, and turned down a hallway across from it. Rafe knocked on the door, one hard rap then two short, quieter ones. Did they each have unique knocks to alert the king to who it was he should expect on the other side?

  The door opened, and a man I hadn’t seen before ushered us in. He was only an inch or two taller than me and very thin, with mostly gray hair that looked like it might have once been red. But his green eyes were sharp, bright with a keen intelligence.

  When he saw Rafe, his gaze flickered to the patch and then away again. “Come in. The king is waiting for you, Son.”

  Son? So this was his father. A duke of some sort, if I remembered what Vera had told Damian correctly. And supposedly the king’s right-hand man.

  “I do not like being kept waiting.” King Armando’s voice came from deeper in the room. Rafe led me in to stand in the center. The walls were covered in shelves. Some of them held books, but others had strange devices on them — one looked like a glove made of metal, with spikes on the knuckles. Another was a whip with barbs on the end, encased in glass. A gruesome library of torture devices and books. There was a chair in the center of the room, next to where I stood. When I looked ahead, the king stood behind a massive desk.

  “Please, sit,” he invited, as though I were a guest and not his prisoner.

  I stubbornly remained standing. He expected me to continue to resist.

  “I said, sit,” the king repeated, this time nodding at Rafe. He yanked on the chains, making me stumble forward and hit my shins on the legs of the chair. Then he shoved my shoulders down, forcing me to sit.

  “Good. That’s better.”

  For some reason my gaze was drawn to the whip yet again. It appeared to have been used plenty; the barbs were stained a deep mahogany. The color of dried blood.

  King Armando noticed me looking and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Curious, are you? A strange item to put on display, you might think.”

  The duke, Rafe’s father, had moved to stand beside the king, just a little bit behind him. He watched me as well. I wondered if he could control people with his eyes and words, or if only his children had that ability.

  “I personally wouldn’t choose to decorate with old, dirty weapons, but to each their own,” I said.

  “I see you noticed the blood that is still dried on it.” King Armando walked over to the shelf where the whip was encased. “Hector’s, to be exact. And a little of mine, as well.” He put his hand on the glass, staring down at the weapon. “If you can make someone fear you, you w
ill make that person your subject. A favorite lesson of my father’s — even for his own sons. But he didn’t make me fear him by hurting me; he was more cunning than that.”

  He paused, glancing over at me as if waiting for me to ask.

  “What did he do?” I forced out, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I didn’t want to pity this man, or Damian’s father.

  “If I disappointed him in some way, if I didn’t meet his expectations, he didn’t beat me. He made me watch while he beat Hector, because of me.” King Armando’s eyes flashed with fury. “People are often willing to suffer quite a bit themselves for their failures. But it’s another thing entirely to watch someone else suffer — someone innocent — because you made a mistake.”

  I struggled to swallow past the lump of disgust that had lodged just above my stomach.

  “It was a brutal lesson. Brutal but effective. I feared my father. He controlled my life because of that fear.”

  “But not forever. Eventually your fear grew into something stronger — and you exacted your revenge,” I pointed out.

  “Which is why I am even more ruthless with my subjects than he was with me. He made me fear him enough to control me when I was young. But he didn’t break me. Eventually, my fear made me strong.” When he looked at the whip again, it was no longer anger on his face but a chilling twist of delight and triumph. “Beating my brother kept me in his control only until I grew strong enough to do something about it. Until I grew powerful enough to invade Antion and take it for Hector, and then return home to kill my father and take his throne for myself.

  “So instead of beating those who disobey me,” he continued, “I kill them. Or their loved ones. I take their women and use them to breed my sorcerers. I claim their children for my experiments. My people don’t just fear me — they are terrified of me. I have broken them so that they will never have the strength to turn their fear into revenge.”