SHIRONNE ANJIR’S ARMS ached, immobilized for so long. She didn’t know how long she could maintain the masquerade of sleep. If they discovered she was awake, they would drug her again, so she kept her eyes closed. Opening them would only make her sick anyway.
A female sat beside her in the swaying coach, her demeanor dictatorial. She smelled of camphor. The two men obeyed the woman’s commands without demur, keeping their hands well off their prisoner and their mouths closed.
Shironne’s stomach, long empty, twisted with hunger, growling loudly in the dour silence. She tried hard not to move or react. She heard no response from the other inhabitants of the coach, though.
She sensed nothing from them.
She didn’t know what they’d done to her, but that frightened her most—the internal silence. Her world had gone flat, the shades of emotion and intention she detected from others stripped away. As had her sudden blindness years before, this new deafness terrified her.
Worst of all, she had no sense of Mikael Lee anywhere. His usual grip on her mind had been torn away. She listened for his voice. In the furthest recess of her mind, Shironne waited for the proof of his coming after her. Nothing answered her search, though, as if his blood-bound link to her mind had been severed.
He will come. He promised.
She wanted to cry. Her arms burned, held in place by the strange jacket they’d put on her. The drugs muted the pain, and Shironne struggled against the urge to tell her captors she was awake just to ease her discomfort.
She fought to keep herself calm instead.
What did they give me? Whatever it was, the drug must have deadened that part of her mind that sensed other’s emotions. It had deadened the often-overwhelming impressions that came through her skin with every touch. And she could see now. That was profoundly wrong. She didn’t want the hazy images her eyes could give her, not at the expense of the sensitivity she’d worked so hard to make useful.
She had to hang on, so she kept her eyes closed and feigned unconsciousness. If they drugged her insensate again, she couldn’t learn anything about them or where they were taking her.
The coach began moving. The sounds and smells of the inn’s yard told her nothing more than its function. Not where it was, nor where they intended to take her. They had changed horses. She waited for her captors to say something worth the pain of staying awake.
It seemed like hours that she stayed that way, willing herself immobile. The coach continued on in the cold.
Out of the silence, she heard the barest whisper of Mikael’s thoughts, fretting and worrying over her. And as soon as she’d noticed it, she felt his mind’s recognition of her, as if he’d turned and spotted her across a crowded room. He called her name, and she willed him to hear her, hoping desperately he would find her soon.
“She’s awake,” the woman said.
Hands grabbed at her face, another attempt to force her mouth open. Shironne kicked out with both feet, her useless arms bound too closely to her chest to move. Her left foot contacted muscle and bone, earning a muffled curse, before her balance failed and she toppled forward. Someone grabbed her braid and yanked her head back, keeping her from falling to the floor of the coach.
Other hands steadied her and strong fingers pried her jaws open again. Liquid, metallic and foul, poured down her throat. She gagged. A hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from spitting the solution back out. The hands pushed her back onto her bench, not gently this time, and her skull banged into the coach’s wall.
Her head swam, so she opened her eyes. Nothing about the man across from her told her where they intended to take her. The man’s tan uniform tunic seemed impossibly nondescript, matching his very average Larossan face, brown skin, brown eyes, brown hair.
The man started when he noticed her gazing blearily at him, and told the woman, “She’s looking at me.”
“She’s blind,” the woman returned in a dismissive tone. “It’s only an illusion.”
Everything faded away.