Waking to excruciating pain was not unknown to me. That for the past few months I hadn't, in fact, was far less credible than the circumstances that had obtained prior to my body's restoration by an elven sorcerer. I had grown up debilitated, and having resigned myself to a short life consisting mostly of suffering, the reprieve had felt like some sort of beautiful dream. And as we all wake up from dreams, I have been waiting to wake from this one.

What I'd anticipated was to find myself in my old, seizure-raddled, human shell. Instead, when I could think through the bright wall of agony, I saw I was pinned to the floor by more blades than I could count. This intelligence I divined only because I made the mistake of glancing past my arm and seeing the hilts rising over me, like a crop of iron stalks... and from the blood drooling out of me, constantly, as I shifted against them.

Clever, that. So long as I bled, I couldn't hurt them. And they'd pinned me with so many sharp edges that I couldn't breathe without opening some number of the wounds, because my imperishable body had healed itself around them. The pain was nearly intolerable, but I had endured through so much already. This... this could be dealt with. If I took shallow breaths and did my best not to move... then it was merely agonizing, and not sufficient to snuff my consciousness. Which left me with enough mentation to recall how I'd arrived here. Barely.

My mentor's colleagues had decided that I was in league with demons, and taken matters into their own hands... and I had given them the opportunity by sending my friends upstairs to their lessons in magery. For an hour! The travesty my captors had exacted on my body must have taken longer than that. God knew they'd wedged enough swords into me. So where were my friends? And what had happened to the genets? And in what world did Eyre's unfriends believe they could keep me this way with the Church's knights above ground? Unless they thought the Church ignorant of my apparent demon-touched nature, and had planned to turn them against me...

I was in agitated contemplation of these questions when the door opened, which was itself an education. There was a door. I had noted none on our tour when we'd first arrived, which made it likely I'd been installed somewhere in the newest discovery, the palatial halls accessed via the library stairs.

“Don’t drop them,” an exasperated voice said. “For God’s sake, if you’re going to saddle me with this, have the grace not to make it harder by dulling the things.”

“Be reasonable, Miss Carrington. They’re sharp!” That was the second of Eyre’s antagonists, the meeker of the two. Powlett.

“Of course they are. They wouldn’t work if they didn’t. Oh, for love of… just leave them on the floor there and get out.”

“But what if he attacks you?”

“If he has the wherewithal to attack me, one more person won’t be much obstacle to him. And your presence is an obstacle to me, because I am now irritated at how thoroughly ruined my shoes are going to be by this debacle.”

Even through my pain-haze I could hear how dearly he wanted to be released. “If you’re certain—”

“Oh, get out.”

The door swung, but didn’t close entirely. I heard the scrape of steel on stone and then my body rocked and a flare of agony ripped up my back. The woman—Carrington, Mary Carrington—put her boot on my side to hold me still. “Stupid bigots,” she growled. “’Oh, get Miss Carrington to do it. She’s a woman, women must have experience with nursing, and blood, and such.’ Miss! They can’t even call me Doctor without twitching. As if I hadn’t sweated my way through school, and with twice their handicaps, to achieve what I have. Oh yes. I’m a colleague until someone needs impaling, and then it’s ‘oh, well, she has experience with pincushions!’”

“Rather unfair of them, if you ask me,” I said.

“God and saints!” She leaped away, then slowly walked around the room in an arc until she reached my face. “You cannot possibly be awake!”

“I wish I wasn’t, believe you me.” I licked the blood from my lips. “Would it be much of an imposition to ask you to cease stabbing me?”

“So you can work your demon wiles on me with your full powers at your beck?” She shook her head. “I’m afraid not, sir, or prince, or whatever you are.”

“My demon wiles,” I said, rueful. “They are so compelling that you and your peers attacked me and visited torture on me without apparent hesitation or remorse. Obviously my wiles are rather lacking.”

Join Morgan and his companions for the end of their journey in Book 3!

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