Page 35 of Vasmora

No grinding of bone.

Nothing but the sound of gasps and a wet, barking cough.

I opened my eyes to the unhelmeted soldier grasping at his throat, hands covered in blood that oozed from a gaping wound where the dagger meant to cleave my glove sat lodged in his flesh.

What?

Loyce’s gaze darkened with outrage. “What is this?” she growled. “Killed one of our own?”

“I … I didn’t … I-I-I was c-c-c-cutting her and …” the soldier beside me stuttered, his hands outstretched and trembling toward his gasping and bleeding friend.

Loyce glanced to the other soldier. “And yet, the blade sticks to your comrade. If not by your hand, then whose?”

I tried to imagine how he’d managed it, given his fellow soldier was standing behind him. A vision of him swinging the blade around in a circle brought to mind a puppet show I’d seen when I was a child, and perhaps it was delirium that had me quietly chuckling as I stared down at the growing pool of blood on the floor.

The helmeted soldier yanked away the dagger with a squirt of blood, and I laughed harder.

“Shut your mouth!” he screamed, drawing his hand back as if to strike me. “I swear I didn’t do it. It was her! The witch!”

His friend collapsed to his knees, and the soldier abandoned his verbal assault to cradle the other’s neck as he tumbled to the floor.

Captain Drefan stepped forward, though when he’d joined us, I didn’t know. “On your feet, soldier!” he commanded, but the soldier merely remained, bent over the man he’d killed.

“I’m so sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!” he cried, and tugged away the dead soldier’s helmet, pressing it to his chest. “Forgive me.”

Growling, the captain kicked the soldier’s back, urging him upright, and as if snapped from his momentary trance, he pushed to his feet. “Cut it off!” Drefan commanded.

The soldier shook his head. “I can’t. Wasn’t natural, that feeling. Like an invisible hand forcing me.” He raised a trembling finger toward me. “She’s … she’s evil. Something evil lives inside of her!”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous.” The captain knocked the man upside the head, while Loyce kept her distance, observing from afar. “She has no power. She’s nothing but a weak, petulant child.”

“Something moved my hand, Sir. It wasn’t me! I swear it!”

The captain unsheathed his sword with a glide of smooth steel, and before I could dodge his grasp, he pinned me to the wall again.

With my ungloved hand, I clawed at his armor, panic shivering through me when he lined up the smooth, steel blade along my wrist. First time dodging the pain might’ve been nothing more than luck, but the determined look in his eye promised it wouldn’t happen twice. “Stop! Stop it! Please!”

“Maevyth!” I heard Kazhimyr call out for me from beyond the cell door. “Maevyth! I’m here!”

The captain drew back and slammed the sword toward my wrist.

I flinched and braced for the pain.

The sword bounced off the stones in an explosion of sparks and swung to the right, away from me, lopping off the head of the sobbing soldier behind the captain in one smooth slice.

The severed head tumbled to the floor, landing beside my feet where it stared up at me, eyes still wide with shock. The rest of his body collapsed to its knees, then toppled onto his fallen friend.

“Gods be damned,” the captain said, his voice tinged in awe. “Something moved my hand.”

I peeled my gaze from the floor and caught a flicker of fear in the captain’s eyes. He released me and stepped back, sword held out between us. “It’s true, General. Her magic hasn’t been subdued.”

“Fetch the bloodbinder!” she bellowed, and one of the guards in the corridor scampered off. The general stepped closer, alongside the captain. “Whatever trickery she’s hiding, he’ll find it.”

* * *

The guard’s eyes stared out at me from the severed head left lying on the ground. The torso still lay toppled over its fellow soldier, and beside them lay a new body, that one without eyes—the third guard Loyce had sacrificed, in an effort to demonstrate whether I could be stabbed through the eyeball.

Turned out I couldn’t, which had resulted in one of her men losing both his eyes and, ultimately, his life, when the blade cut through part of his brain.