39

Into the Hands
of Enemies

Consciousness returns slowly, like my head is stuck in a bog. Even so, the first thing that hits me is how freezing I am. I’m almost numb with it. The parts that aren’t numb ache so hard, my body is shaking, trying to generate warmth. All except my cheek and part of my right side, which are strangely comfortable.

Light, overwhelming in its intensity, penetrates my eyelids, and I squeeze them tighter shut, trying to block it out. But what I should be doing is waking up.

Yes, wake up, a small voice inside me urges.

Before I manage to crack open a bleary eye, other sensations filter in, one at a time. I think I must be lying on icy ground and something else lumpy and warmer. Familiar. My head hurts like someone gouged a hole in my skull and filled it with hot coals. A nasally voice I don’t recognize is firing off questions.

“Why are you here?”

Me? Why is the owner of this grating voice bothering me?

“We are coming to give an offering of thanks to the Goddess at the Sacred Tree.”

I twitch involuntarily at the deeper, silkier voice coming from under my ear, all around me. Reven. He must be the lumpy source of warmth I’m partially lying on.

I struggle to open my eyes, to understand what’s happening, to place myself anywhere that makes sense, reaching for control over my muscles and finding none, my head a wasteland of fuzziness and agony. Memories hit with a throb-inducing spike, sending a wave of nausea through me.

Oh goddess. The soldiers. Reven. What happened?

“Stay asleep,” Reven whispers at me.

Not difficult when I can’t even make my eyelids function properly. But I still and listen as whoever is here drills Reven with more questions. Ones he answers without hesitation—some kind of cover story, claiming we are Tyndrans. Finally, footsteps clomp away. His interrogator is not happy, by the sound of it. By that time, I am able to force my lids open, only to encounter a turbulent gaze close to mine. I was right. The lumpy thing I am laying on is his lap.

He smooths my hair from my forehead, the gesture surprisingly tender. “How are you feeling?”

I have to clear my throat to make my voice work. “Like someone collapsed my skull, shoved the hellfires inside, then froze my remains deep within the heart of an iceberg. Thanks.”

He searches my face for a long moment, then shakes his head. “You’re a walking trouble magnet.”

“You realize that you’ve been with me for all the trouble, right? Maybe you’re the magnet.” I must still be woozy, because my instinct is to wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his neck, grateful that he’s there. That I’m not alone. I frown instead. “My knives?” I go to feel for them, but he stops me.

“They declawed you while we were both out.”

Terrific. I groan and settle back against him. “Why aren’t we dead? I feel dead.”

“There’s blood in your hair, but I can only feel a knot.” Reven’s scowl is ferocious, sending a different kind of chill through me. “I’m going to kill the bastard who did this to you.”

The sky is covered with gray clouds, but the sun hitting both the clouds and the snow is brilliant. It’s daylight. How long have we been here? Where is here?

“You didn’t kill him already?” I grumble, only half joking.

Then the rest of our ill-fated journey comes back to me.

The guards in the temple. Vos lying unconscious on the floor.

Reven, compromised.

“Not yet.” Reven shifts under me. “And we have a bit of a problem.”

I don’t like the sound of that. I squint at him. “What?”

Contrition clouds those seafoam eyes. “The soldiers think we’re Vex. I told them we’re bondmates, newly connected. Vos is our…companion.”

Bondmates? Good goddess almighty.

Binding is serious magic. Rare. A vow and ritual well beyond simple marriage. One reserved for two people who trust each other implicitly. More than that, two people who don’t just want to be together but who have to. Through the rest of eternity. From this life into heaven, the hells, or the next life. A compulsion, I’ve heard.

My mouth drops open. “Why’d you do that?” And more importantly, why does my mind immediately plunge into a chaotic jumble of visions of exactly what it’d be like to experience the intimate bonding ritual with Reven? This is not the time or place.

“Vex here come to offer thanks to the goddess when they bond.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I said it to explain our presence, but also hoping they wouldn’t try to separate us.”

Separate us?

For the first time since waking, I glance around only to jolt as it finally hits me that we’re in a cage of sorts, one not tall enough to stand in. Metal bars surround us on all sides with a metal sheet for a roof, all welded together. The bars appear to be planted deep into the snow-covered ground. Which explains why my entire backside is numb.

What’s more, we’re surrounded. From my vantage point on the ground, all I see are canvas-walled tents. Rows and rows of them. To my left, the ground naturally drops away, and hundreds more are laid out.

Goddess save us. This isn’t a few soldiers. It’s an army.

The sounds of the camp buzz in the air. The hustle and bustle of hundreds or more. They must be cooking their meals, because the scents of fire and meat waft to me. A burst of laughter sounds from nearby, followed by good-natured ribbing. I guess someone lost a bet.

We’re still here.

My fuzzy brain is finally starting to piece everything together and put it in the right order. Because, if we’re still here, that means Reven hasn’t been able to get us out.

“Why haven’t you—”

His hand clamps over my mouth. “Careful,” he warns. “We don’t know who might be listening.”

Wide-eyed, I nod, and he lowers his hand.

I change my question to “Can you get us out?”

He shifts under me again, and his voice, when it comes, is like someone took a knife to the fabric of night. “It’s taking every single thing I have to keep what’s inside me locked up.”

He was already struggling before the soldiers knocked him out. “Why?”

Reluctance works over his face, and he drops his head back against the bars. “I’m pretty sure it’s you.”

“Me?” I squeak.

The shadows inside him are a problem because of me? A million thoughts fly through my mind trying to work that one out, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m babbling a lot of them out loud.

I cut myself off abruptly. “Sorry,” I mutter. “I talk when I get stressed.”

Amusement glints at me. “You think I didn’t realize that the second I took you?”

I actually find myself wanting to smile back. Laugh, even. See? I react badly to stress.

He glances around us. Then back to me, serious again. “The…things inside…get stronger on the mainland and in the temple. Trying to return to the king, I think. I knew that, which is why I…”

“Powered up?” I supply.

He nods. “But it’s been getting harder around you. To control them.”

I have no idea what to say to that.

A shake of his head, mouth an unamused slash. “I think maybe it’s because I’m so…protective…of you. It started getting worse once I took you.”

Great. One more thing that’s my fault.

“There’s no way I can do anything to get us out anytime soon.” He shoots a pointed look at the bright skies.

Right. So, he’s holding back evil—barely—and can’t recharge, however that works. And we’re in a cage. Together. And I make it worse.

Damn, I really wish I had my knives.

Maybe we should talk about something else. “Are there always this many soldiers here?”

“No.” At the grim roll of thunder in his voice, I push back to look at him more closely. Because I recognize suspicion in the tone.

“Where’s Vos?” I ask. I don’t see any sign of another cage.

“I don’t know.” Even grimmer. Yup. Definitely suspicious.

Maybe Vos managed to escape, or maybe he’s being kept somewhere else. Separating us to check our stories seems like a smart move. “Did he come this way when he followed us back to the Shadowood?”

Because if he did, and these soldiers had been here, he would have warned us. Right?

“No. He came the same way we did.”

There’s something not right about that. “The ladder was broken, though.”

“There’s a second one.”

I should have guessed that. This is not a man who leaves things to chance. “Then he didn’t know. He was on the floor, unconscious.”

Reven grunts, which could be agreement, disagreement, or a comment on the weather.

Translation: Subject closed.

Fine. He can worry about Vos’s connection to the Tyndran soldiers by himself. I study our cage. “Can we dig under the bars?”

“These soldiers have a metal Hylorae. He buried them deep.”

I force myself to sit up, groaning with the effort and swaying a bit as the pounding in my head, like the drums Aryd’s military uses to stay in step, threatens to topple me either into passing out or vomiting every scrap of food in my stomach.

With a lot of deep breathing, I push through the pain.

“Let me try.” There’s got to be sand in the ground under the snow. Look at what I did to the creek without meaning to. What if I can do the reverse effect and make it push the cage out? It would be like skin pushing out a deep splinter—only a lot faster. I hold out my hand, ready to call my power up, only to have Reven snatch me by the wrist.

“Wait.”

“For what?”

He nods at something over my shoulder, and I turn to see a man standing at the end of the row of tents. He’s dressed in white-and-blue military gear, much fancier than the soldiers on the hill or even the woods in Wildernyss. His back is to us.

“If he turns this way, we need to put on a show. As bondmates.”