NOVEL NEXT Chapter 87: Read the Fine Print
I must hold some kind of record for being thrown into prison, Rae thought bitterly. She'd forgotten to ask Kess about hers, of course. There were plenty of stories out there about heroic people thinking deep, philosophical thoughts while imprisoned, but Rae was increasingly certain they were bullshit. Prison meant a lot of free time for meandering thoughts, but it also meant a clawing sensation of being trapped—of the walls closing in around you.
She shifted, scowling at the bruises visible faintly in the torchlight spilling into her cell. She would have been able to trounce the guards who left them with full access to her powers, but at least her Fulminancy was slowing returning to her deadened limbs. A creeping, prickling sense of dread remained, however. Whatever those creatures had been, Rae never wanted to see one again.
Briefly, Rae wondered if Kess and her ilk would come for her. They were good people—worlds better than the brutes who ran the Council—but she wouldn't expect them to risk so much coming after her. Clouds, she wouldn't even rescue herself. Besides, Rae was more than capable of getting out of a cell, especially with her Fulminancy crackling back to life.
Keys rattled in the lock, and Rae leapt to her feet, Fulminancy snapping. She prepared herself to spring at the guards as the door opened with a creak.
Instead, a hand snapped through and grabbed her by the throat, slamming her against the wall hard enough that she nearly blacked out from the impact. The hand squeezed, and Rae's vision fizzled out. She fumbled at that clammy, rubbery arm as it dug into muscle and vein. Its grip only tightened. Within seconds, her world went dark.
When she came to, she was handcuffed and being dragged down the hall by her shoulders, a retinue of guards in tow. She willed her Fulminancy into her limbs and found—
Nothing. It was gone.
White-hot, prickling panic crept through Rae. She glanced at her handcuffs and realized what had happened. Rather than risk Rae's known capacity for fighting and escaping, they'd sent in one of those creatures to temporarily drain her, then cuffed her with manacles.
Those, of course, would not have been a problem with the enhanced strength of Fulminancy, but as she waited for that slow trickle that would show it coming back, she felt something blocking it—something emanating from the chains themselves. Rae squinted at them as the men dragged her down the hallway. There was a faint feeling there—where the cuffs touched her skin, that strange sensation of nothingness settled in her limbs, subtle but there all the same.
They were magicked, then. With what, Rae wasn't sure. Certainly this was a new conundrum—like seeing a new Stormclap move for the first time. Part of Rae's strength had always been that the Council had underestimated her on that dark night of her sister's death. They'd seen her at her most broken and assumed that the mind games had worked to break her spirit—that she would be easy to subdue and control.
They had been wrong.
But they'd apparently learned from their mistakes.
The guards dragged her down several more corridors, and as soon as she considered saying something about the state of her poor backside, they tossed her bodily into a room. She landed without the grace of Fulminancy in her limbs, though mercifully, she found a rug where her face would have skidded along the stones. The guards left, and Rae checked her surroundings, the side of her cheek burning.
It was a plain room, but it contained a strange amount of Uphill wealth for what essentially amounted to a dungeon. There was a well-fed hearth, a plush rug, and an ornate desk. A gilded chair sat behind it, occupied by someone undoubtedly distasteful. An older man sat there, his features stern, a locket on his chest where the blue and silver of his sash adorned his clothes. A Council member then, but not one Rae recognized.
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There was another stool nearby, and in that stool sat a man close to her age, perhaps flirting with his thirties, his face oddly familiar, though Rae was fairly certain she'd never seen him before. He wore no sash, but his eyes were glued to a book, and another locket sat on the desk in front of him, a knife by its side.
Rae froze.
Her breath caught as she stared at that locket, at the threat that had been dangled over her head for the last year. She'd shrugged their threats off before—sometimes by force. She couldn't fight several Councilmen, but she was capable of distracting them long enough to leave.
This time, though, she didn't have that option. Her Fulminancy was gone, the blank tingling in her hands a mockery of the snap of her powers. The older man took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes before looking at Rae again.
"Rae," he said. "We're not acquainted, but I believe you have something that belongs to us."
"Like hell I do," Rae growled. Her muscles sang and itched to fight. It was all she'd known, running and fighting. It was all she had left. And now—
"I'm afraid you don't understand. You violated your contract with us."
"I've violated it before," she snapped, stalling for time. There had to be a way to—
"Without such disastrous consequences, I'm afraid." He held her eyes. "We were generous, dear, but what you had was always on loan."
"I was born with it, you son of Fanas. I loaned it to the Council on the condition that you'd let me go free. I did my half of the job. I watched her for a year. I followed her. I led you right to her, and your men failed to kill her. This isn't on my head."
"And yet you were tasked with killing her, were you not?" he asked. Rae scowled at him, but said nothing. "Mariel lives. The Downhill grows restless, and I'm sure you've had no small part in making it that way. The tentative alliance between us ended months ago, even if the rest of the Council was too blind to see it." He paused, reaching for the locket. "Your time is up."
Rae got to her feet, backing towards the door. Neither man was a fighter, though the Councilman might be a problem with his Fulminancy. She'd never doubted her abilities before, but Rae hesitated. Without her Fulminancy, she was naked—a woman with little to no experience using her own body to solve her problems. Clouds, she'd never even thrown a punch that wasn't tinged with the power of Fulminancy. Still, she'd outsmarted the Council before. She would do so again.
Her back hit the door. The older man called for the guards, who slammed in through that same door, knocking Rae to the floor. She bucked and tried to get her leg and arm under her to flip the men—a move Kess had used on her months ago—but without her Fulminancy, Rae was just a woman. Worse, she wasn't even a fighter. Where strength and skill should have been, she found the weakened limbs of someone who'd only ever used her powers to fight.
Rae fought valiantly, but it was hard to do much with a pile of soldiers on her back. As it was, she barely had the energy to keep breathing. Eventually, she focused on that alone as one man stretched out her arm for the old man to take.
Rae snatched it back, but then there were more arms grabbing at her, and several knees in her back. One planted itself into her arm, forcing her fingers to splay open. She was helpless as the man sliced open her palm and handed the knife to the younger man, who did the same to his own hand.
"Please," she whispered. Rae had never begged before in her life, but she did so now, no longer caring about her pride. Tears fell down her face as it pressed into the rug, and her own bloody hand blurred before her eyes. It couldn't end like this. Not after years of running. She was nothing without her Fulminancy. She couldn't—
"I'm sorry," the younger man said, something slightly human in his gaze. She met his eyes, willing him, begging him to choose differently, but the locket was pressed into Rae's hand, and the man met it with his own.
Rae's power, her friend, her very sense of self, flooded into this stranger, white-hot, blinding, searing, and then empty. She screamed until she knew no more.
And briefly, in that snap of blinding gray power that was her Fulminancy, Rae thought she saw Reina, tears running down her face as she tried to shield Rae from the force of that power. Rae blinked, watching her sister, her face as real and beautiful as it had been in life, and remembered, fleetingly, a time when she had known something more powerful than Fulminancy.
She wondered if she was dying.
At that moment, Rae decided she didn't care very much if she was.