AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My drooping head sways. The surface I’m staggering over blurs and wavers before my unfocused eyes.
“Wretched riven sorcerer,” the man hauling me along snarls. “Not even good enough to get a job this simple done. You don’t deserve one fucking shred of that magic.”
We burst out a door into a gust of cool air. Droplets of blood splat onto the pale cobblestones in my wake.
My mind recoils from the sight. There was more blood—blood all over marble tiles—blood splattered across a golden crown?—
My stomach flips over. Was that me? Did I slaughter someone in that vast audience room despite my best attempt at resistance?
Lothar—yes, that’s who’s jerking me along so forcefully—he’s angry. I made things more difficult for him.
But that doesn’t mean he didn’t get the basics of what he wanted in the end.
Yells and clangs ring out and fade in rippling waves. I can’t tell if any of them are real and not just hallucinations.
I stumble, and a sharper pulse of pain jabs through my skull to shatter my few coherent thoughts. I reel in a wave of dizziness.
My sense of the world around me completely fizzles out. I fade in and out of awareness.
I’m slumped against the wall of a jostling carriage?—
Lothar is snapping something at his companions?—
Someone presses something against my temple, maybe intending to bandage my wound but so roughly I’d flinch if the magic controlling me would allow it?—
Then we’re spilling out into the dark chill of the night, our feet thumping onto a packed dirt lane. Lothar yanks me on toward a looming stone house.
As we march inside, I catch enough glimpses through the muddled haze to recognize that it’s the same summer estate home he brought me to before. There’s a stumble behind me.
“What’s the matter now?” Lothar demands.
Zaneta’s voice has become outright ragged. “I—I’m doing my best, but the strain—Keeping her totally in my hold for so long is draining me?—”
The magic advisor spits out a few curse words and shoves me through a doorway. “Fine. I suppose you should get some rest before we mop up this mess.”
He raises his voice. “Biani! Where’s the lossum you picked up for us?”
The term penetrates the ache in my head. Lossum—that’s a common sedative.
Despite my careening thoughts, a fragment of understanding clicks into place. Drugging the riven is the typical strategy for ensuring they can’t use their powers.
They’re going to knock me out so Zaneta can rest without worrying about what I’ll do.
I’m going to be free from her scourge sorcery… but not conscious to take advantage of that fact.
Her hold must be weakening more. If I can wrench myself away now?—
But I’m drained too, and I can’t gather my focus through the pain still radiating from my forehead. All I manage is to suck in a deeper breath, and then my body is tossing itself onto its back on a low bed.
A vial lifts to my face. Bitter liquid coats my tongue.
My head lolls as I try to summon the control to gag and spit it out, but I simply roll onto my side.
An even thicker, darker haze rolls over me, and I don’t know anything at all.
Well, my wayward rogue, you do have a knack for getting yourself into the most contorted sorts of trouble, don’t you?
The voice echoes through the fog I’m floating in as if from all around me.
