IT WAS AN OPPRESSIVE SORT OF DARKNESS, THE KIND of darkness that smothered even sound.
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I’d suddenly stopped existing.
But when I moved my arm, my fingers hit the wall. No thump, though. No auditory evidence of the wall’s existence and no sign the nine other people in the room were still here, either. I couldn’t even hear the pounding of my own heartbeat, though it thrummed against my chest, painful and violent. (Five, six, seven . . .)
I’d never realized how many noises my own body made: the sound of swallowing, the hiss of air through my nose, the crack in my knees when I crouched and scrambled away from where the warriors had last seen me. Only with the absence of those sounds did I realize how I’d used them to give me a sense of orientation.
Now I didn’t know where the others were, if they were even alive. The warriors had been after me. Altan had been about to slap me. But now? Nothing.
I crawled under the table.
Complete darkness.
Complete silence.
The days of being trapped alone in my cell crashed down on me again, making me sway through the inky space. I would crumble like this. If the lights ever came back, if sound ever returned, Altan and his friends would find me huddled beneath the table, wondering if I was trapped somewhere between life and death.
And what about Aaru? He’d been . . . tortured. While I’d done nothing to stop it.
The table was in the same place as Before Darkness; I had to assume everything else was as well. Including Aaru.
With a murmured prayer for bravery—which, of course, I couldn’t even hear echoed in my head—I scooted out from under the table (not the way I’d come, where the guards and Altan would be) and risked the two steps to where Altan had left his jacket on the other chair.
It was still there, the leather soft and worn in my fingers. My sense of touch, at least, remained. As I mapped the room in my head, a part of me wondered who else was risking movement. Could they see or hear? Maybe I was the only one trapped in this void of sight and sound.
My stomach twisted at the thought. If I was the only one, everyone might be watching me. I could be grabbed at any moment.
But nothing had happened yet. And I had to move if I wanted to help Aaru. It was my fault he was here. It was my responsibility to help him.
I draped the jacket over my shoulders and let my numbers do the work. One, two, three . . . I stepped in Aaru’s direction, both of my hands slightly in front of me, in case I miscalculated.
My foot slid over a sharp, slick object that cut through my slipper and grazed the sole of my foot, but didn’t break the skin. Still. I had to be more careful. The object had made no scrape on the stone, offered no indication of what it might be. There could be more debris from . . . whatever had happened.
It took extra time, and I had no idea how long this darkness and silence would last, but I had to know what I’d stepped on. I knelt and felt around the floor until my fingers brushed the offending object. It was slightly warm, smooth sided, and sharp along the edges. Crystalline.
A noorestone shard.
One—or maybe more—of the noorestones had exploded. I remembered now.
I forced myself three more steps, even more cautious as I crept toward Aaru. Seven more shards rolled under my feet, and countless—even to me—tiny fragments slipped beneath me, like the floor was covered in a thin layer of sand.
Here. I should be standing right in front of Aaru. But this vast and unending silence locked away any shout for help, any whisper of reassurance, any gasp of pain.
“Please, Damina.” The silence swallowed my voice.
I lifted my hand ahead of me until my fingertips grazed hot skin. Aaru, I hoped. His head, most likely.
He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Maybe he was dead.
That was a horrible thought. I wanted to crush it as soon as it formed. But it was a possibility, wasn’t it?
“Shut up.” Like the anxiety ever listened. Like I even had a voice now.
My fingers crept upward along a smooth plane of skin. His cheek, it felt like. I let my fingers travel up his temple until they reached the strap on his forehead. I searched for the buckle, unclipped it, and slid the leather off.
As fast as possible, I found the other five straps and unclipped them, then lifted his feet out of the basins. Away from the hot noorestones.
With Aaru free of the bindings, I threw the jacket over him. He was burning up, but I recalled chills during my fever; he’d need the warmth. If he was alive. I couldn’t tell if he was, or how I was supposed to get him out of here, or if there was any sort of hope at all.
I took Aaru by the shoulders and shook him. “Wake up.” But, of course, I had no voice here. There was only silence.
::Wake up,:: I tapped against his shoulder.
Nothing. He didn’t move.
I let one hand slide down to his chest, and the other up to his throat. Slowly, distantly, I found what I’d been seeking: his pulse fluttered under my fingertips, and his chest lifted with breath. He had a heartbeat.
Just as I was ready to try throwing Aaru over my shoulder, a haze of blue light flashed through the room. Noorestone light.
It vanished quickly, leaving me no time to inspect Aaru or look for the other occupants of the room. Its only gift was light spots that danced in front of my eyes, and heavy tears squeezing from between my eyelids. I blinked them away. Now, I knew four things:
1. I was not blind.
2. The lights were not gone forever.
3. Altan and his friends would be furious.
4. I had to move.
In the dark again, I grabbed for Aaru’s arm and pulled him forward. His whole body shuddered as he slumped toward me. I angled my right shoulder under him and tried to lift, but in spite of being so thin, he was heavy. Or I just wasn’t very strong.
Light tore through the darkness again, and this time, I caught hints of movement from the guards. Or maybe that had been Rosa; the light was gone too soon for me to tell.
“Come on,” I hissed. I could hear my own voice, though it was muffled inside my head. In addition to not being blind, it seemed I wasn’t deaf, either. Likely, I still existed as well, which was distantly comforting.
I heaved Aaru up, but he was too heavy, too tall. I fell backward with a sharp cry, the weight of an unconscious boy on top of me. My breath whooshed out in a faint oof, and pain sliced through my back and shoulders and legs. The shattered noorestone. I’d forgotten about it and now shards cut through my skin.
Tears dripped down the sides of my face, both from the stabbing pain in my back and for the horrible realization that I wasn’t going to get out of here. Not with Aaru unconscious. Not with the fire of hot noorestones slicing through me.
While I struggled to breathe through the pain, I stayed absolutely motionless, in spite of the body on top of mine. He grew heavier and heavier, it seemed like, defying all the natural laws I’d once thought I’d understood. Or maybe it was just that my back hurt.
Sound returned more steadily than light, but it wasn’t very useful. Fragmented noises came from everywhere and nowhere, and it was too hard to tell what was in my head and what was real. But I needed to place the others. I needed to know what I was up against and if maybe there was a chance of getting out of here—
Dim illumination pulsed through the room in time with Aaru’s heartbeat.
No, that couldn’t be right. But when I slid my hand down his chest again, the thump of his heart came at the same moment as the light flared.
Then I understood.
Aaru had done this. Aaru had caused this darkness, this soundlessness. My sad, silent neighbor.
For seven of his heartbeats, I waited, hoping the light and beat would fall out of synchronization, but even as Aaru’s heart rate increased to a normal speed, so did the pulses of light. It was Aaru. There was no question.
Far away, I heard magic-muffled shouts. Crunches. Orders: “Secure the girl” and “Fetch more doctors.”
With all my strength, I shoved Aaru until he rolled off me. His body hit the floor with faint thumps. Once his weight was gone, the noorestone shards gouging my back eased. Hopefully Aaru hadn’t fallen onto a particularly sharp fragment, too. Maybe since he’d just rolled, he wouldn’t get stabbed the same way I had. It seemed especially awful for him to get stabbed just after enduring torture and then . . .
Magic.
My body screamed as I forced my way up to my knees, but I did it.
The light was steady now, released from Aaru’s hold, and it grew brighter. It came from the twenty noorestones shining in their sconces, but also from shards and dust spread across the floor. Beneath me, the debris was wet and dark with my blood.
Altan appeared in the fractured light. Five guards followed him, all with their weapons drawn.
“Stay down!” The warrior’s order sounded faraway on the first word, and then leaped into normal volume for the second word. “Stay down!” he shouted again as he stopped just three paces away. Two pairs of boots crunched over the ground behind me and halted.
At least six people surrounded Aaru and me. There was no escape.
Altan stormed toward us with fire in his eyes. His baton was drawn, and as he thundered through the room so loudly that I began to regret the return of sound, a wild growl tore out of him. He rushed beyond me.
The other guards were no longer advancing. With agony slicing through my back, I glanced over my shoulder.
Bodies. Three of them.
Two were the trainees who’d been assisting. The other was Rosa.
She was facedown in a pool of blood, illuminated by noorestone shards. Fourteen pierced her motionless body, brightening the puncture wounds with their eerie blue glow. Blood almost looked purple as it flooded around her.
All three were dead.
“How did this happen?” Altan asked.
“Three noorestones exploded.” The guard’s tone was deadly calm, like a dagger dripping with poison. “The ones in the basins.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
But I knew.
Aaru stirred under my hands. I bent toward him, keeping my voice soft and under the rumble of discussion. “Can you hear me?”
He looked at me, but his eyes were unfocused, like he was dizzy, or not quite awake, or still in shock. Dark circles hung down to his cheekbones, and even his blinking was erratic. “Oh, Aaru,” I breathed.
When he opened his mouth and made the shape of my name, nothing came out. He frowned, swallowed, and tried again. Still, nothing.
He’d lost his voice screaming. Even through our small hole in the wall, I so rarely heard him speak. The screaming was probably a year’s worth of voice for him. Maybe more. “Are you—” Not all right, because he wasn’t.
In the background, Altan said, “Maybe someone tampered with the noorestones.”
Aaru blinked five more times, still trying to focus. Again, his mouth shaped my name, but only silence emerged.
Shame burned through my veins, igniting the edges of panic. He was hurt because of me. My ally. My . . . friend, maybe.
He struggled to push himself into a sitting position. My shaking hands slid off his sweat-slicked skin as I tried to help. But in spite of our disoriented fumbling, he made it up and tugged the jacket tighter around his shoulders. Shivers racked through him. The sudden absence of the noorestones’ fire seemed to leech all the warmth from his skin.
Before I could think better of it, I drew him toward me and wrapped my arms around him, like I could take some of the cold from him. Pain rippled through me as the noorestone shards in my back shifted, but I dismissed it. This was only a fraction of what Aaru had endured.
He leaned against me, shuddering as his cheek rested on my shoulder.
“Is it possible to sabotage noorestones?” someone asked.
“Anything can be sabotaged.” Altan’s voice was like gravel. “Find whoever did it. Notify the trainees’ commanding officers. I want this taken care of immediately.”
Altan could never know the truth. It was impossible to say much about his relationship with Rosa, or whether he’d even known the trainees’ names, but surely his honor demanded harsh retribution.
I pulled Aaru closer to me. After so long with a wall between us, I’d wanted to see more of him than just fragments in the dark. I’d wanted to do more than just hold his hand. But not like this. If I’d known that Altan would use Aaru against me . . .
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry, Aaru.”
He started to tap something in the quiet code, but his hand trembled too badly. I seized his icy fingers and pulled them to the hollow of my throat.
“Don’t try to speak yet.” The chill in his skin made my own feel hotter. “Can you get up? Run?” The words were just for him, barely perceptible even to my own ears.
He shook his head.
No. Of course not. He’d just been tortured. And with crystals still digging into my back, I wasn’t in the best condition to run, either. Where did I think I’d go? With what food? With what knowledge of the Pit?
Tirta had access to food. To the rest of the Pit. She was third level, with more leniency.
My gaze cut to the warrior blocking the only exit.
I’d never be able to get both of us past him.
“Could it have been the girl?” one of the warriors asked. “Maybe she used her Daminan powers on the noorestone.”
“You think she charmed it into exploding?” Altan gave a sharp laugh as he stood, the bodies of Rosa and the trainees at his feet. In the eerie blue light, the bodies were like paintings: lifelike, but clearly lifeless. “No, it was someone else, so stop speculating and find them. And get these prisoners out of here.”
I pulled Aaru closer to me, like I could protect him, but it was futile. From behind, a warrior grabbed me under the arms and hauled me to my feet.
Aaru collapsed to the floor, and for the first time I noticed the bloody shreds of his feet. It had been the noorestones in the basins that had exploded, killing three people.
A dark part of me celebrated. They’d deserved it.