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I kick at the bars and hiss profanities in his direction.
When he is out of sight, there’s nothing I can dwell on but the bleeding girls in the brig. On Deros’s body. Wallov closes his friend’s eyes and sits on the floor next to him.
“Push harder, Sorinda!” Mandsy says. “It will hurt her, but it’s better than her dying! Wallov, toss her your shirt!”
Mandsy has already tied a tourniquet above Niridia’s knee. She focuses now on directing Sorinda.
“She’s having a hard time breathing,” Sorinda says.
Her voice less urgent, Mandsy asks, “Is blood coming out of her mouth?”
“Yes.”
Mandsy blinks slowly. “Let go of the wound, Sorinda. Hold her hand and talk to her.”
“What is it, Mandsy?” I ask.
“The ball must have struck a lung. It’s kinder to let her bleed out than choke on her own blood.”
Every breath I take seems to fuel my hatred for my father.
“It will be all right,” Sorinda says, her voice taking on a soft tone. I didn’t think she knew how to be soft. “The pain will stop soon, Reona. Close your eyes. Just listen to my voice.”
I cannot take this. I cannot stand being trapped in here and unable to do anything while my crew dies around me!
“Athella?” I call out.
“They searched me too well, Captain,” she answers. “I haven’t so much as a hairpin on me.”
“Sorinda, do you have any weapons hidden on you?”
“No.”
Reona lets out her last breath. Sorinda releases her hand, setting it gently at her side.
For several seconds, I can do nothing but blink. “We’ll find a way out of this. Everyone think.”
I refuse to give up, even when my own mind tries to tell me it’s useless. Tylon has the keys. He will keep them close. He won’t let anything go wrong. Not now that he thinks he’s so close to getting what he’s always wanted.
Thank you, Alosa,he said. For betraying my father. For taking myself out of the running. For making him look good. He thinks my father’s legacy will go to him now. I curse Tylon’s name.
“How’s Niridia?” I dare to ask.
“I’m fine,” she says. Her grunts are audible now that Reona’s gurgling gasps have ceased.
“She’ll be okay,” Mandsy says, “so long as I can get to my kit soon. I need to dig the ball out of her knee.”
What I need is to get Tylon back down here. I can’t get us out of here unless I can reach something useful.
“Are you all right?”
Riden is in the cell next to mine. I haven’t been able to spare him a glance with everything else happening.
“I’m fine,” I say. But it’s not true. Not with the two bodies in the brig.
“What happened after you left?”
It clears my head to focus on something other than the deaths around me. I tell them about meeting my mother again and what she offered us.
