-Chapter Nine-

The man’s jaw dropped, just a hair, and his eyes widened. For a moment she saw what she thought she wasn’t supposed to; someone as in over his head as she was, who was putting on a good front that had been solid enough until it had been dealt a blow by her unexpected question.

He closed his mouth almost as quick as it had opened, and blinked. She glared and tightened her grip on his arm.

“You’re jesting,” he said, raising his chin and narrowing his eyes at her.

“I am not.”

He leaned forward, peering at her, eyes roaming over her face, her hair. She let him scrutinize her.

“You can’t not have noticed it yourself,” he said eventually.

“Noticed what?”

“The similarities,” he said, slowly, as if speaking to an idiot. She felt like one, so perhaps he wasn’t unwarranted in using the tone. “The hair, the features, your coloring. You could be fullblood. In fact, the longer I look, the more extraordinary it is… It’s as if you’ve merely misplaced your wings.”

“I left them in my other jeans,” she said blithely.

Before their conversation could evolve -or devolve- further, Milly returned to the kitchens, grinning madly. Her gaze fixed on Karlene, and she felt her stomach sink. Her wrists tingled, and she wondered if it was her imagination or an actual prelude to what was coming.

Without being told, Karlene stood and went to Milly, expecting to follow her out. Instead the woman crooked a thick finger at Karlene’s dinner companion.

“You too, princeling,” Milly said, grinning unkindly. After a barely discernible pause, Karlene heard the shift of the wooden bench as her dining companion stood.

Princeling, huh?

“Lead on, fair lady,” he said. Karlene’s bracelets tingled again. As much as she applauded his needling of their jailor, she didn’t notice him wearing the cuffs-oh-pain, so she did her best to convey her wish for his silence with a glower.

She and the ‘princeling’ fell into step side by side as they followed Milly from the kitchen and through as convoluted a route through the keep as any tactician could wish for. Even though she knew it was still daylight outside, albeit late afternoon daylight, the interior of the fort was as dark as if it were night. Their light came from a half dozen spaced out torches, the flames of each framed in large plumes of soot that stained the stone walls from countless torches past. There were sconces that looked like they were meant to hold more efficient lamp oils, but she supposed oil was more expensive, and more difficult, to acquire than plain wood.

“Any idea where we’re going, princeling?” She murmured out of the corner of her mouth. She saw his lips go white as he pressed them together.

“Call me that again, and I’ll leave you behind,” he promised, his voice more even than his words implied. She grinned despite herself.

“Liar,” she accused. “You’re too curious to leave me behind.” He snorted in response, and the tightness around his mouth eased.

“Axion,” he said. It was obviously his name.

“Karlene,” she replied. He shifted his head a bit, looking at her more directly than he had been, eyebrow raised. “What?” She asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “That’s just...the least Enochian name I’ve ever heard.”

Enochian, she thought, letting the term roll over in her mind. It sounded familiar, though she couldn’t place it.

“I was supposed to be a boy,” she said. “Mom was going to name me Karl, after my father.”

Axion raised an eyebrow again.

“Somehow,” he said. “I doubt your father’s name was ‘Karl.’”

“If I could interrupt the princeling and his dropling’s conversation?” Milly said from in front of them, her mocking tone capped off with a condescending sniff. She gestured impatiently to a door she’d stopped in front of, cracked open. Karlene could see the telltale flicker of light that only fire could give off, and felt her stomach plummet.

“Behave yourself, now, my lamb,” Milly said, then pushed Karlene into the room.

Inside, Karlene saw the reason for the fire. The far wall was mostly one giant window that let out onto a balcony overlooking the bay, the same one she’d taken an impromptu dip in the day of her arrival. There were no glass panes, no doors, no windows to keep the cool ocean air from sweeping in and stealing the warmth that otherwise might have kept the room pleasant. Only the sheer size of the roaring hearth to her right kept the chill at bay.

The lack of doors or shutters made sense when she allowed herself to see and acknowledge the room’s primary occupant. She wouldn’t be able to stand being closed indoors with wings like that, either.

Diom stood with his back to them, his legs spread wide, thick arms crossed in front of him. His wings were only partially unfurled, and in the firelight they looked thoroughly unearthly. An apt description, she thought to herself, given that they were hardly on earth to begin with…

‘Never heard of em,’ Nix had said of angels and demons. Karlene wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, despite her adequate proximity to the fire.

She never thought she’d wish for the fears of an ordinary abduction.

“What a pleasant view, Lithandres,” Axion said conversationally as he entered the room behind her. He moved to a chair by the fire and helped himself to a seat. He crossed one leg over the other, and managed to look more refined doing it than a politician’s wife in a twinset and heels.

“I am so touched you decided to share it with me. Of course, it might be more practical to-”

“Spare me your droll attempts at pleasantries,” Diom -Lithandres?- said, turning from the window. He didn’t look at her, which was fine with Karlene. She kept very still, watching and listening.

She eyed the window. How close was it to the edge? How far down was the ground? Would she be lucky enough that it was a short drop down into conveniently rock-free waters?

Sure, she thought. Might as well wish for a cell tower and a direct line to the NYPD while I’m at it.

“Since you’ve done me the courtesy of already doing the same, I shall oblige,” Axion agreed, tone amicable.

Snarky ass, she thought, fighting back a grin. As if the mere thought had drawn his attention, Axion glanced quickly at her from the corner of his eye. She guessed he was wondering the same thing she was; why either of them were there.

Diom spotted the glance, even discreet as it was, and smiled grimly. He answered their silent question without speaking. Instead, he raised one hand, and made a very deliberate, very specific gesture.

Karlene dropped, and by the time she’d hit the floor she’d forgotten her name, her mother’s name, her mother’s face, her own face...and absolutely everything else. She felt them stripped away one by one, her memories, her fears, her loves, every pathway carved by the cocktail of chemicals in her brain that calculated her every reaction was striped away in a blaze of abrasive nothingness. She swam in nonexistence, the remaining shred of her sanity swathed in confusion. She wished for pain. Pain meant you were real; pain meant you were alive.

This was worse.

This was knowing what it was like to cease to exist.

In a rush, it all came back, and without any part of her working anything other than perfectly, Karlene writhed on the floor and shrieked in twisted anguish. This was a misery no soul, no mind was meant to know and survive. This was…

“Unmaking,” Axion was saying, and his voice was nearer than it had been. He was kneeling beside her, his hands holding hers away from her face. Her fingers were bent into claws, and her eyes felt sore, the skin around them raw. She smelled copper, and realized the liquid wetting her cheeks was too thick to be tears. Only Axion’s hands clamped around her wrists kept her fingernails from doing more damage.

She’d been trying to claw her own eyes out.

She felt more than saw Axion twist to face Diom. “The Command of Unmaking. How did you learn that?” His voice was full of anger, and fear, and something else.

She forced herself to draw in deep breaths. She focused on the pain around her eyes; pain was good, pain was existing. Slowly, her grip on reality solidified, and she was able to look up to stare at Diom, at those pretty blue eyes.

She’d never been more terrified of anything in her life.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said to Axion. “What does matter, however, is what you’ll do to keep me using it on you.” He reached out to the unobtrusive desk that sat against the remaining wall, and lifted a pen. He held it out to Axion. “Tell me where your King is hiding the Alchemist.”

The first time he was asked, Axion tried to tell Diom that he didn’t know what he was talking about. The Alchemist, whoever that was, was a rumor, nothing more. If such a man actually existed and was in the custody of the Enochian -there was that word again- royal court, Axion would know. Since he didn’t know, Diom could rest assured the Alchemist didn’t exist.

Diom didn’t like that response. He raised his hand, and his fingers contorted.

This time it was Karlene’s turn to scramble on hands and knees to keep Axion from shredding the flesh of his face with his fingernails, keep him from biting off his own tongue. He was stronger than her, even if she hadn’t been weakened by the ordeals of both days and minutes past, and she barely succeeded in keeping him from digging his fingers into the moist tissue between eyeball and socket, barely managed to wedge a stick of kindling between his teeth.

By the time Diom dropped his hand and released Axion, both of them were bloodied. Axion’s eyes, when they met Karlene’s, were grim.

“Let’s try this again,” Diom said softly. “Where is the Alchemist?”

“Anything I could tell you would be rumors only,” Axion said, still sounding out of breath. Diom raised his hand. “Wait, just- just let me catch my breath, catch my thoughts, I-”

Diom did not lower his hand, but he did shift his attention from Axion, to Karlene.

There was no need to guess his intent; Axion would get his moment to catch his wind, and Karlene’s sanity would be the cost. Axion’s head snapped up, eyes wide as he stared at Karlene, grief and regret and apology darkening his eyes-

She bolted for the opening in the far wall, knowing what was coming, hoping there were rocks at the bottom of an unsurvivable fall.

She made it a single step before the Unmaking hit her, and she collapsed before she could even scream. This time, her brain did the only thing it could to save her, and shut down completely.