The ground closed up immediately behind me, and I found myself back in Acre, surrounded by the possessed knights.
Chapter 25
I lay flat on the stone ground, and Midir pointed the tip of a sword at my neck. Morning sunlight washed into the hall, lighting his red hair ablaze.
It would seem the possessed seneschals had figured out how to reverse the spell on the key.
Midir stared at the floor. “Did the bloody portal close?” he asked in his singsong voice. “We don’t have Lyr. He was the important one. Why did you grab her first? This is a fucking disaster.”
“She was right there.” Gwydion came up behind him. “Just open it again.”
“It took me an hour to open this, and I was vomiting the whole time. We didn’t reverse the spell on it properly. I feel that my host’s body could be falling apart.” The fuath-Midir was whining now.
He looked sick—his eyes bloodshot, skin sallow. His cheeks looked sunken. “I don’t speak the Ys dialect, and I need that to reverse the spell properly.” He covered his mouth like he was about to vomit.
The World Key gleamed from his throat. Deep, booming voices echoed off the stone walls.
“Where is Lyr?” It seemed everyone was asking the same question at once.
“We need to open the portal again!” possessed Gwydion shouted. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at me, then flashed a wide grin. “Tell us how to open it.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Who are you working for? Who is looking for Nova Ys?”
Gwydion kept the gun trained on me. “Things being as they are, little one, I don’t believe you’re in a position to interrogate me.”
Fair point.
By Gwydion’s side, Midir was chanting the spell to open the portal. But the fuath possessing him couldn’t get the accent right. It was in the language of Ys, and he was screwing up the words. I listened in, trying to remember the words to the spell. If I was going to make it away from them, I’d need to somehow get the key from Midir, and open a portal myself.
“I need to make sure you can’t escape,” Gwydion went on. “You attacked us with magic before.”
Uh-oh.
I had to think fast. I had a few spells at my fingert—
The bullet ripped through my shoulder so hot and sharp I didn’t even hear myself screaming. I only felt mind-bending pain spreading through my body. The way the pain rippled through my veins, I was sure it was iron.
Gods, is that what Lyr had felt when I’d shot him?
When the haze of agony cleared a little from my mind, I stared up at Gwydion.
“Tell us how to get to Nova Ys,” he said. “You’re the heir. You must know how to find it.”
“I genuinely have no idea.”
“You know.” Midir flashed me a brilliant smile. “As soon as you begin to chant one of your attack spells, I will shoot another part of your body. And you should know that I’ve been slowly starting to learn from some of my host’s memories. And my host is very skilled at torture, as it happens. First I think he’d cut off your nipples. Then, he’d slowly carve away at the rest of your breasts—”
I tuned out the fuath’s macabre listing of all the parts of me he wanted to cut off. They were going to try to torture me into giving them information that I simply didn’t have.
If I still had my true power, everyone in the fortress would drown. From here, I could hear the ocean, the waves pounding against the rock. I tasted the salt on my lips. The sea called to me, and I wanted to draw it down over the fortress like a tsunami.
A searing pain in my side snapped my attention back to the room. Gwydion had cut me, and blood dripped from his sword. “I felt we were losing your attention.”
“So tell us.” Midir pointed the gun at my kneecap. “How do we get there?”
The pain was so blinding I wasn’t entirely sure I could form a sentence. My body felt uncomfortably hot, and sweat beaded on my forehead.
“I don’t know,” I managed.
Once, I would have drowned them all.
Now? I could make fog. I broke into a wild, hysterical laughter that made tears run down my cheeks, then I instantly regretted it because it felt like my side was splitting open where they’d cut me.
“I don’t know,” I said again, this time through real tears.
Stop crying, you idiot.
“Well then,” said Midir. “What good are you? We will have to cut you up into tiny little pieces of princess.”
I let out a slow breath, blocking out all the torture threats and trying to focus on the hall around me.
That wild laughter was threatening to bubble up again. Fog. Maybe I could just confuse them all with fog, like the baffled fishermen—
You know? It wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
“Then,” Midir went on. “I’ll cut off your thumb.”
“Tell her,” said Gwydion. “Tell her who we have captured.”
“What? Captured who?” I snapped.
I needed him to stop interrupting my thoughts.
I closed my eyes, tuning into the sound of the ocean, the waves crashing against the fortress. I hummed a low tune in my throat, calling the sea to me. The air thickened, and a faint ocean spray cooled my heated face.
A chilly mist pooled in the hall, and I hummed a little louder. The fog roiled in around us, a soothing balm on my body. Salt stuck to my skin.
“What the hell is this?” Midir trilled. “Stop it.”
I shifted on the stone floor, agony shooting through my shoulder as I did. But the fog was so thick now, I couldn’t even see a foot in front of me.
When the fuath shot his gun again, the bullet only grazed me.
Clenching my teeth, I rose as swiftly as I could.
I had a plan. I needed just a little more chaos in this cloud of sea spray.
I blocked out the pain as I rushed to the side of the room where the flags hung. Then, I pulled one of the torches from the wall. In the heavy dampness of the air, it was hard to light the fabric, but once I let a little oil drip off the torch, a corner of a flag went ablaze.
I pulled the dagger from its sheath.
Just a little more pandemonium.
“The room is on fire!” Someone shouted.
The scent of burning fabric and smoke curled through the air. Screams and commands filled the room. Luckily, I could find people based on sound.
“I need to open the portal again!” Midir shouted in his high-pitched voice. “I can’t even think clearly. I want to be sick.”
He probably didn’t realize that his voice told me exactly where he was. He hadn’t moved.
Through the fog, I crept up behind him.
I jammed my dagger into his neck—into his trachea, so he couldn’t make a sound. Since he was a demigod, it would hurt like the devil, but it wouldn’t kill him.
Then, I ripped the necklace from his throat. It isn’t easy to break a silver chain, and it bit into my fingers as I yanked it off. Sticky red blood coated the key.
Midir fell to his knees, not making a sound except the gurgling from his throat.
I rushed for the window, and I crouched on the foggy ledge, sea air whipping up mist into my face. Smoke from the burning flags billowed from the room.
I stared down at the shore, thinking of how shallow the water might be where it crashed over the rocks, and how it would feel to smash my legs on impact. I’d be stuck there with shattered bones, waiting for the fuath to torture me to death while I failed to give them the answers I didn’t have.