Page 101 of This Dark Descent
What is happening?she thought.
This is your power, Arielle Kadar, said the voice.Embrace it.
Climbing carefully to her feet, she walked slowly to the bedroom door and pulled it open. The sitting room was empty. A note sat on the nearest end table beside a bowl of glowing chopped verillion. She opened the letter, revealing Reid’s mechanically neat script:
Went to tell Damien you’re not dead. Though you’re less dead than you should be. One of the perks of having magic no one else does, I suppose. Test it out for me? Try the verillion. A little to start, then more—I expect it’ll correspond to the rate at which you heal. Don’t actually die while I’m gone. The final race is tomorrow.
—Reid
PS. I’ll give Mikira her father’s message.
She rolled her eyes. Only Reid would turn a near-death experience into an experiment. Setting the letter back on the table, she ate a few pieces of verillion. Magic flowed through her in a gentle rush. The scabbing on her forearm began to itch, the skin beneath it feeling tight. She scratched at the scab, scraping it away to reveal healthy skin beneath.
Ari grabbed the bowl of verillion and sat down on the chaise. She ate several more pieces before her weariness overtook her and she lay down. The magic might heal her physical wounds, but it took energy from her body when she burned it, and the fog of a lingering headache remained. She could only do so much at once. She fell asleep with the magic still humming inside her.
Dreams of darkness plagued her. Dreams of chains and pale faces, of silvery knives coated in blood, her screams echoing around her in an endless cacophony of agony. Twisted shapes writhed in the shadows. Inhuman groans coated the air. A beast with blue eyes whispered her name.
She woke gasping for air. It was several long moments before she remembered she was free of that cell, and several more before she was sure she wouldn’t retch.
Ari knew these sorts of dreams. Knew the way they dragged you under and held you there until you drowned. The way they crept into your waking moments, tainting them with fear. Like the imprint of hands against her throat,like the cold, quiet dread that pooled inside her when her Saba’s screaming stopped.
Unless she did something, these dreams would consume her like all the rest.
Do not let them make you afraid, whispered the voice.
I won’t, Ari thought.
This time, she was fighting back.
CHAPTER 36
ARIELLE
LOCATING KYVIN WASeasier than Ari expected. He’d made a name for himself as Rezek’s right-hand man, so when she asked after him in pubs off Ettinger Street in the Crown District, people knew him. She learned he was a distant Kelbra cousin, the son of a butcher, who had taken a job working in the castle dungeons before Rezek had enlisted his services.
She also learned where he liked to drink.
Night had fallen by the time she spotted Kyvin inside the Whispering Rose on Rathsborne Street. She found a quiet alley with a view of the tavern and waited, occasionally eating verillion to keep up the store of magic inside her. She’d healed enough that moving was stiff, but not painful, though she’d stopped burning magic to reserve energy. The humming calmed her, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of stalking a lion back to its den.
You are the lion, not him, said the voice, and Ari believed it.
Kyvin emerged from the Whispering Rose, his face flushed with drink. He turned down the street, whistling a low tune. It sent a spike of hot anger through her. He didn’t care at all about what he’d done to her. Her screams didn’t haunt him the way they haunted her.
Ari burned the verillion, pushing magic to the ring and muttering a binding. Strength flooded her body. She tracked Kyvin from a distancedown the bustling street. People flocked from pub to pub, restaurant to shop, oblivious to her and her prey.
She dodged a pair of drunken women, and when she looked up, Kyvin had vanished. She hurried through the crowd, ducking to the edge to get around it better, but it was no use.
He was gone.
Hands seized her from the dark. She tried to scream, but one covered her mouth. In a blink, she’d been ripped from the street and thrust up against the wall of a dark alley. Kyvin’s dead eyes stared down at her, a cruel smile on his lips.
“My, my, little mouse.” He had a gravelly voice, so unlike Rezek’s rancid honeyed tones. “You’re supposed to be in your cage like a good pet.” His thumb stroked her jaw. “Now that you’re here, though, I suppose we can have a little fun. What Lord Kelbra doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He slid one hand down to her hip.
She drove her forehead into his. He stumbled back, and her fist cracked against the side of his head. He dropped.
For a moment she feared she’d killed him. Then she saw his chest move. She didn’t know what to make of the relief that swept through her. Shouldn’t she want him dead? Dead, he couldn’t hurt her again. Dead, her nightmares might die with him.
She shook the thought away and withdrew a length of rope from her satchel, using it to bind his wrists behind his back. Then she picked him up, threw him over her shoulder, and turned deeper into the alley.
