Page 101 of The Iron Hex

Evangeline blinked back tears, confusion in her eyes and her voice thick. “You’re telling me my left hand is... gone?”

“Yes.” Eira nodded somberly. “I’m so sorry.”

Hugo watched as Evangeline tried to move the remainder of her left arm that Eira had expertly bandaged to her chest.

“Untie this so I can see it,” Evangeline said, her voice raising up an octave.

“That’s not a good idea right no—” Eira started.

“Untie it, Eira!”Evangeline screamed as loudly as she could in her fragile state.

“Okay,” Eira whispered, unwrapping the bandage just enough for Evangeline to see what was left of her arm.

The stump itself was bandaged, though blood had seeped through the wrappings. Evangeline looked at it, eyes unblinking and pupils still dilated from whatever was in the potion Eira had given her.

“I think, um, I think I need some time to myself,” Evangeline said, a single tear rolling down her cheek as she looked out the window. Eira instantly started rewrapping her arm, understanding that she had nothing to say right now to her that could make this better, that this was a journey that Evangeline had to take by herself.

Hugo stepped forward; it didn’t change what they needed to do. “I don’t think we have that time,” he said. “Carth said we need to get out of here, and I don’t want to risk the man doing anything else to us. I say we leave for the mountain pass now... we might be able to make it to Giant’s Gate by midday tomorrow if we do.”

“Evangeline is in no condition to ride,” Eira said, protective over her patient, her friend.

“She’ll ride with me,” Hugo answered. “You’ll ride alone on Arthur.”

Eira and Hugo both looked to Evangeline, fragile and sallow, her rich olive skin taking on a taupe hue.

“I can do it,” she croaked. “Plus, Hugo won’t talk to me. It’ll feel like I’m alone anyways.”

“I thought we were over our hate for each other,” Hugo said, a smirk on his lips but concern resting in his chest. Evangeline had no reason to be joking right now, and he worried about her constant deflection of the trauma she’d been through. That woman was going to have a reckoning someday, and he worried that the longer it took, the more devastating it would be when it finally hit her.

“Oh,” Evangeline coughed. “This is actually how I treat people I spend time with. It’s a fun game, people never know if I hate them or think they’re great.”

“So fun,” Hugo said dryly, turning and packing up their things.

They were on their way before midnight, the bright moonlight reflecting off the snow and lighting their way up the winding mountain pass. As they reached the peak, Evangeline slumped over Hugo’s back and Eira riding beside him, he looked down at Luwha.

Hugo hadn’t expected to come back here; he’d expected to spend the rest of his life fighting for the Iron Empire. He felt no guilt about leaving them, leaving Lord General Kerrigan, to find Evangeline and Eira. He turned his head to the winding, long path down the mountain to Giant’s Gate. It was only going to get more difficult from here.

49

Rhona

Rhona instinctively put her fists up, ready to fight as Dr. Balet approached her, his back hunched and hair even more disheveled than usual.

“You do not need to threaten violence, Sir Rhona. I am unwilling to fight,” he said, brushing past her and picking up a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the table beside her that Rhona hadn’t noticed.

“To think, the one night I forgot my glasses would be the one night someone finally broke into my laboratory,” he continued, a smirk on his lips.

Rhona lowered her hands, putting herself between Dr. Balet and Jack. She didn’t believe him. Had he seen her come in here? Had someone else?

“What is this place?” Rhona asked, her voice laced with fear that she could acutely hear. Internally, she kicked herself. It wasneverbeneficial to allow the people around you to know you were afraid of them.

“Great question. I love to teach.” Dr. Balet walked down the hallway and Rhona tentatively followed, passing a dozen morebeds until they approached one alcove that wasn’t occupied by a gurney. This alcove had walls lined with vials and syringes, and on the ground buckets of various ichors and liquids peppered the floor. A notepad sat beside the vials, nearly incomprehensible notes scribbled on it.

“About a year ago, Lord General Kerrigan warned me of a terrible plague in Astra.” Dr. Balet held up a vial of the black ichor Rhona had seen in the syringes. “He told me that this Rot was growing year by year. That he needed powerful soldiers to invade Corisia and take it for Astra’s people in order to survive the spreading Rot.”

Rhona watched in silent horror, the damp chill seeping into her bones.

“I wondered to myself, how am I going to create powerful soldiers that are impossible to kill?” he continued, tapping on vials as he monologued. “And I spent months at a loss, bringing prisoners in here only to kill them when I injected them with the essence of an animal or another creature. I couldn’t figure out how to even keep my subjects alive long enough to make them something more.” He smiled, crooked yellow teeth shining wetly in the dim light. “Until, one day, I took a look at one of the rotten crops.”