Now, here she was, in a prison they called the Wailing Cliffs, far from freedom and even farther from Goldwater Port. To be tried for treason and executed as a Kemeiran spy.
They had tried to beat some confessions out of her, and she had told them what they wanted to hear. Because the petty crimes she’d admitted—of spying on Cyrilia and attempting to sabotage the Empire—were nothing compared to the truth.
That she was a friend and ally of the refugee Crown Princess Anastacya, and that she was plotting to find her way back to her.
A muffled clanging sound filtered through the blackstone door. The guards were coming for her. It was time for her daily interrogation.
The thought sent a wave of nausea through her stomach, but Linn brushed off the fear that tugged at the back of her mind. Silently, without even a single clink of her chains, she slipped from her straight-backed meditating position into a fetal position on the floor.
A rattle of keys at her door, and then it slid open.
Torchlight blinded her. She dragged a heavy hand across her face to cover her eyes. A jangle of metal as keys were pocketed again. Footsteps rang sharply against the floor, and someone knelt by her side.
“She still alive?” She recognized this as the voice of her guard, Isyas. Twice a day, he slipped a tray into her cell in a small, rectangular opening in her door, splashing the contents of her cold porridge and hard rye bread onto the floor. They’d laced her food through with Deys’voshk, the poison that inhibited Affinities. That was how they kept their Affinites in check—a lazy yet horribly effective method. Nobody could survive without water or food. And the dosage of Deys’voshk they added lasted at least two days.
There was a snort of laughter from a second voice. “If you kill her, you don’t get to play with her anymore.” Her interrogation officer—Vasyl—was bred for cruelty. Her first day here, he’d hurled her into the cell and dumped a bucket of cold water on her. She’d spent the rest of the night shivering from the cold; she’d been sick the next week.
But that had been a petty act of malice he’d inflicted on her to teach her the rules. It was during her interrogation sessions that the true monster he was really came out.
Linn’s back ached with echoes of the wounds he’d inflicted. But that didn’t matter. Flesh wounds were just that: physical. It was the mental wounds one had to watch out for.
Still, she couldn’t stop a sharp cry from escaping her lips as Vasyl’s foot slammed into her ribs.
“There we go.” He grinned as she doubled over, winded and gasping for air. “Ignoring us, you slit-eyed deimhov?” He suddenly grasped her neck and shoved her against the wall so hard that her skull cracked against the rough blackstone. Linn gritted her teeth against the stars that burst before her vision, forcing herself to remain motionless.
She needed to have them believe she was weak. She’d struck back in the beginning, landing blows and jabs at her guards and Vasyl—and she’d been punished for that. Strapped to the wall without an inch of moving space for days. Deprived of water and food until her lips bled and she passed out.
Day by day, her struggles had weakened, her blows landed softer and softer, until one day, they’d found her curled up in a corner of her cell, head bowed, arms clasped. They’d sneered, and she’d tolerated their dominating touches and lingering fingers as though they owned her.
Little did they know that it was all part of a coordinated act.
She kept silent as they dragged her up, her cuffs chafing against her wrists, cracking open flesh that had already rubbed raw. Linn allowed her head to loll slightly and let her legs trail limply against the floor.
“Deities-damned useless Kemeiran,” Isyas growled as he lugged her after him. “Get the hell up, won’t you?”
She ignored them.
“We’re executing her in a week,” Vasyl said to Isyas, and despite everything, Linn shivered at the callousness of his words. He spoke of her death with less emotion than he’d speak of livestock. “We’re not to touch her after today; they want her healthy and alive for the axes.”
They hauled her past cell after cell and then up a flight of spiraling stairs, during which the air grew steadily less rank and the darkness began to turn into flickering light. Fresh, snow-scented breezes brushed her cheeks, feather-faint, yet she found her senses awakening as a flower would to sunlight. The Deys’voshk that ran through her blood blocked any response from her Affinity—yet still, despite all of that, the cool winds stirred in her chest, breathing life into her. Life, and hope.
It was when they continued up the stone steps that she realized something was different. Normally, they crossed through the first set of blackstone doors to a corridor of interrogation rooms. Today, they continued: up, up.
As though sensing her trepidation, Vasyl smirked at her over his shoulder. “There’s something special waiting for you,” he said, and the pure glee in his voice made her shudder. “We’ll see if you don’t spill all your filthy secrets today, Kemeiran.”
She stumbled on one of the steps, her ankles chafing against the rough stone. Isyas let out a frustrated groan, and together, he and Vasyl hauled her up the last few steps—through a different set of blackstone doors, followed by a second set of iron doors.
Her bare feet hit clean, cold marble. Tapestries appeared on pristine white walls, depicting white tigers, the Deities, and the usual Cyrilian fanfare.
Her escorts led her down several forks and turns, and she noticed the elegance of the polished oakwood doors, the tiger’s-head brass handles, the alertness of the guards. This had to be a place for highly ranked guests frequenting this prison. Linn knew little about Cyrilian prisons, and less about the Wailing Cliffs other than the possible fact that it was on a set of high cliffs. The entire prison was a tower with no windows and a single, highly guarded entrance that promised a swift death if one were to try to escape—even for someone like her.
It was a risk she would have to end up taking.
Isyas unlocked one of the heavy oakwood doors. Linn followed his hands as he looped the key back onto his belt and fastened the metal buckle with a secure click. The door swung open, and before she’d even had a glimpse of the room, Vasyl shoved her inside with a vitriolic push.
“Enjoy your last interrogation, deimhov,” he sneered, and the door slammed shut.
She was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. Yet slowly, her senses stirred as she realized that her face was warm with a familiar, delightful sensation, like a mother’s kiss.
Sunlight.
In an instant, Linn was on her feet, the chains on her wrists and ankles lighter than air as she crossed the room in two, three steps. The window was shut tightly, sealed on the outside by thick iron bars that broke the sunlight into blocks.
Linn pressed a hand against the cool glass, her breath fogging so that the snow-covered landscape beyond was a hazy, glittering stretch of white. The Syvern Taiga spanned out beneath her, specks of dark green peeking out from the crusted snow. Above, the sky unfolded in a brilliant, eternal blue.
She was so mesmerized by the view that she almost—almost—missed the silent opening of the door, and the footsteps that fell like shadows.
Linn spun around as the door clicked shut.
She wasn’t sure what—or whom—she had been expecting, but in the midst of her shock, there was also the realization, like a tightening of tangled strings, that this was fate. Action, and counteraction.
“You,” she whispered.
He was even more vibrant and alive than she remembered in her memories of the moonlit tower. As he stepped into the sunlight, each line of his muscles looked to be sculpted, his every edge sharpened to the lethal precision of a warrior.
The yaeger’s boots clipped on the floor as he paced forward, his movements as deliberate as those of a tiger circling its prey. He was still dressed in armor—but
she noticed that it was no longer the glittering gray livery he’d worn back in Salskoff. His new outfit was a smoother, silver-white metal that glinted in the sunlight, and the snowy cloak that he’d worn so proudly was gone.
Somehow, it made him look incomplete.
“I didn’t think we’d meet again so soon.” There was the slightest hint of amusement to his words.
Linn bristled. He was insulting her, even before he began whatever cruel methods of interrogation he had planned.
Keep silent, she thought, eyeing him warily. Find out why he’s here.
But she couldn’t stop herself from quipping back, “You would think I gave a strong hint, after I threw myself from that tower to get away from you.”
“And, now, here you are. It seems they’ve clipped your wings, little bird.”
Her breath caught. Little bird. A wingless bird.
She kept her face as placid as his, but his words had set off a drumroll of a heartbeat inside her chest. It was the same thought he’d triggered in her that night atop the Salskoff watchtower, before she’d jumped.
He knows, she remembered in a sudden, wild bout of panic. The yaeger was the only person who had seen her in close proximity that night at the Palace. The only person who knew of her alliance with Ana.
What do you want? Linn thought again. His eyes bore into hers, and she had the strangest feeling that he could see into her past, her very soul.
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to break out yet,” he said instead. “The guards reported you as unruly and combative in the first few days—and now, docile, submissive, and weak.” He paused, as though waiting for her to speak.
Linn kept her lips sealed. She could feel his eyes roaming over her, taking in the slight lean to her stance, favoring the ankle that wasn’t twisted, and the way her shoulders hunched and her head bowed. She must look pitiful, her hair disheveled, her clothes torn, covered in dirt and grime and excrement from the past two weeks.
Good, she thought, dipping her head even more. Let him think that.
The yaeger continued, “That sounds nothing like the warrior I met in Salskoff. Which means…” He stopped pacing suddenly and turned to her, his eyes pinning her like two daggers. “You’re planning something.”
Linn fought to keep her expression blank, but high-pitched bells pealed in her head with increasing desperation. Say something, she thought, and at the same time: Keep silent.
“Help me,” she said instead, and the break in her voice was half-real. It was against Kemeiran honor to lie and to beg, but years of forced servitude had taught Linn that to survive was equally important. And it didn’t matter how others perceived her, so long as she knew that at her heart, she was still as strong and as proud as the young Kemeiran windsailer who had stood at the edge of cliffs and flown.
But am I? a small voice whispered inside her.
“Look at me.”
She could sense that he’d stopped pacing, and when she finally raised her eyes to meet his, he stood outlined against the brightness of the only window in the room, his face swathed in shadow.
His voice was a low breath. “I need your help, too.”
His eyes were the mesmerizing, inscrutable blue of glaciers in the north of Cyrilia, the ones she’d seen from between the cracks of the hull of her trader’s ship. And Linn felt a cold sensation in her chest as well, as though the ice of his gaze were creeping up the fissures of her heart and twisting its grip around her, seeing exactly what she was thinking and who she was.
She looked away. “I do not know what you mean.”
“You’re not a very good liar.”
She hated the way he watched her—as though she were clear as glass, and he could break her with just a tap.
Be brave, she thought, but without her winds at her back, she could not hear the voice that had guided her through her darkest moments.
The yaeger’s expression flickered like the tip of a snake’s tongue: a shift so subtle that it raised Linn’s guard. “I was a soldier in the new Empress’s army,” he said quietly. “For the past moon, I rode with her throughout the Empire, following her as she established her reign.
“She’s murdering people, Kemeiran. That may not mean much to you, but I came to Cyrilia as a child and a part of me is bound to this empire, no matter what. And I cannot stand by watching as the new Empress burns down this world.” His words crackled in the air, lightning before a storm. “I resisted, and she had me sent here. I am as much a prisoner as you are. Stripped of my honor and my ranking.” His hand flicked slightly by his side, almost as though he were brushing the ghost of a cape that was no longer there.
“You say you are a prisoner, yet I do not see you in chains and a locked cell,” Linn said. “I do not know what you want with me, but if it is to beat your anger into me, then go ahead.” She bowed her head, quelling the tremor that threatened to start inside her when she thought of the whip and the slashes of pain that seared like fire across her back.
A few seconds passed in utter stillness. And then she heard the schick of his dagger. Linn closed her eyes, burrowing herself into the darkness and spinning a cocoon of her own flesh around her consciousness. She would do this back in the days when the traffickers had beat her, because that was the only way she made life bearable: by telling herself that flesh wounds healed, and that it was the strength of her heart and spirit that she needed to protect.
But the touch of his thumb, warm and coarse on her chin, jerked her back out. Her eyes sprang open. Even in the silence, he had closed the gap between them without so much as a stir in the air.
Who was this man? This silent warrior who stood before her, inscrutable and cold as ice, fierce as fire?
“I want to join the ranks of the Princess Anastacya,” the yaeger said.
Linn forced her face to be a mask, a mirror, reflecting his.
He continued, “In two days’ time, when I’ve had enough time to make the necessary preparations, I will come for you, at the midnight shift. And we will leave this place, together.”
Two days. Her thoughts whirled.
The yaeger raised his dagger, and this time, Linn couldn’t help but shrink back. “Are you going to hurt me?”
Something shifted in his eyes—the faintest melting of ice. “I am a soldier, Kemeiran, trained on the Cyrilian values of honor and dignity. I imagine you have similar values in Kemeira. Should we duel again, it will not be when you are chained and starved and reeling from your guard’s last beatings.”
The yaeger brought the blade down on his own finger with striking accuracy.
Blood welled at his cut, dripping onto the floor. Linn stood very still as the yaeger touched his bloodied hand to her cheek, her neck, her grimy clothes.
He knew. He knew that Vasyl would beat her if he saw no traces of blood on her.
Gratitude stirred briefly in her heart before she stomped it down. This man was dangerous—this man was the enemy, a threat to Ana if she believed him. He was trying to buy her favor with some preplanned acts of kindness.
In two days, at midnight, he would come for her.
And he would find her cell empty, her long gone.
The yaeger’s hands were infinitely gentle as he dabbed her in his blood. But Linn’s thoughts were already elsewhere, a plan beginning to form in her mind. Ana had told her that the Redcloaks’ base was in Goldwater Port; it was the only place Linn could think of that she might find some clues to Ana’s whereabouts. She would make her way down south, to the territories not yet fallen under Morganya’s influence.
Her eyes darted to the window in the back of the room.
It didn’t matter that there were two thick panes of blackstone glass, and iron bars stood sentry, solid and unbreakable. It didn’t matter that they were so high up that the Syvern Taiga looked like an unending ocean of distant trees.
Where there was a window, there was a way out. Because no matter how many chains they wrapped around her, no matter how many locks they threw her behind, no matter how much her body was battered and bruised and broken, she would never forget who she was in her heart.
I am shadows and wind. I am the invisible girl.
I will fly.
Darkness. Pain. Then, gradually, the tiniest flickers of light. A sharp coldness on her face.
Ana cracked her eyes open. It was still dark, the world before her spinning as she tried to focus on the faintest dustings of light from the moon outside. She was lying in the same spot at the bottom of the staircase in the parlor of the Broken Arrow, where Seyin had left her.
Had stabbed her.
Had thought he’d killed her.
She had no idea how much time had passed. But even with her Affinity weaving in and out of focus she could tell she had lost a significant amount of blood. It was so cold that she could barely feel her fingers. Her breath misted in the air.
Ana tried to shift into a sitting position, but the pain in her back nearly made her pass out again. She could still sense blood seeping from her wound, slowed by the cold. If she stayed here, she would die. And no one was coming to save her this time.
Ana gritted her teeth and homed in her Affinity to the knife wound. It was long, slipping through her ribs in a cunning and malicious cut. She could sense her blood trying to coagulate at the spot.
With all the energy she had left, she focused her Affinity on hardening the blood where flesh and organ had sliced open like fruit. She had to stop every few seconds to catch her breath, and once or twice she relapsed into bouts of dizziness so strong that she thought she would faint.
After what felt like an agonizing amount of time, she managed to clot the blood at her wound enough that the bleeding was stanched. She let herself lie on the floor for several moments, focusing on steadying her breathing. Her Affinity flickered softly in the back of her consciousness. There were no signs of blood besides her own and that of the two bodies in the room. The inn was so silent, she could hear the whistle of the wind outside. It was still night, impossible to tell how much time had passed.
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