“Everythingends in death.”
Roiven rubs his forehead.
“So we have three or four days until they set out for our land,” he murmurs.
“Three more days travel from Barivum, to reach the Wild Seas, and that’s if they’re really burning through Enchanted. I don’t know how far the Gray Tower is, but...” I have to assume it’s deep in their lands, since we never could find it until now.
Roiven turns to look at Sava, then back at me. I wait, drawing a thin breath through my nose, feeling the wind sting against my tear-wet cheeks.
“Take off the obedience,” he says at last. “And then we can talk about what comes next.”
18
I take a deep breath as Roiven strips his ragged prisoner’s shirt off over his head, exposing his back to me. I remember the shape of the enchantment. The obedience I need to remove is centered low on his spine.
In the dark, I can’t see the details. Just the broad span of his naked shoulders, pale under the moon, divided by a slice of black—his hair.
I clear my throat and reach tentatively forward to push his hair aside. My fingers brush against Roiven’s warm skin and he flinches at the contact. The witch reaches behind his neck, fists his hair, and drags it forward over his muscular shoulder.
“I’ll have to touch you,” I warn.
“If you must.”
My living hand settles flat against his flesh and I feel a shiver work through him at my touch. His back is warm, a fire that steals my breath, centering me on him instead of on the chaos tearing my mind apart. Roiven is like the eye of a storm, the moment of calm that dragged me back to the here and now. But the calm can bedangerous, I remind myself. I can’t put my guard down just because he’s cunning enough to be kind to his captor.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done this. There’s a familiar hum beneath Roiven’s skin, the powdered crystal mixed into the ink of his tattoos. I pull at the power with my mind, and it awakes. Roiven grunts in pain, his shoulders stiffening as all the lines of his spells brighten and begin to hum. I can see them now, brighter than the pale ghosting of the moonlight, so that Roiven seems like nothing more than a map of blue marks hovering in the dark.
“It’s going to get worse,” I warn quietly.
“Just do it.”
“Sava won’t attack?”
“No.”
Now that I can see the magic, I move my hand to the exact part where the obedience is centered. I let go of the rest of the power and focus there, dragging my finger slowly over each of the lines.
Here. To me, I urge the marks. The crystal shards respond, reaching toward me, like ten thousand concentrated needles piercing through his skin. I can’t leave any piece behind, not even a single fragment. It will just grow back. I claw my fingers and exhale, steadily pulling at the power. I’ve never tried to do this much at once. Just little specks at a time. But the magic is eager to reach me. It’s gotten to know me as I’ve ordered Roiven about, and now, it wants to do as I say.
“Can you go faster?” Roiven asks through gritted teeth.
The pure blue glow of the enchantment lines dim as they're covered in blood and bruising. I can’t leave the power stranded halfway between the ink and the air. I pull harder and feel it strain toward me, abandoning the place the power was set. It all rips through his flesh at once.
His skin stops glowing. The powder of the crystal, made into a slurry with his blood, gathers into my palm. I forbid it to bury itself beneath the surface of my flesh. I can feel how much more is inRoiven, but I’ve gotten everything from this one particular enchantment.
My head spins. I stare down at the mess in my hand, faintly glowing. People died to become this power, to feed it, to create the spell crystals. Was it worth it? I’m holding their deaths in the palm of my hand. And every year more and more Enchanted are consecrated, wave after wave of sacrifices to fuel a war that never ends.
I’ve always believed the witches are evil, but they don’t power their magic through death itself. The Empire says death is natural; the most natural part of all of us. But that doesn't mean anybody wants to hurry toward it.
“Is it done?” Roiven asks through gritted teeth, his voice laced with pain.
I look up slowly. Everything spins, which is unsettling in the dark. My limbs quiver, like they’ve turned into boneless sea jellies.
“I got it out.” The words come out a whisper, the most I can manage right now. The usual fatigue I felt from doing this in the past is magnified into complete exhaustion.
He turns just as my legs start to collapse.
“Cai,” Roiven snaps, and grabs me by the shoulders as I slump against him. My face buries right against his bare pectoral. “What’s wrong?”