Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (18 page)

I take an unconscious step away from the door. “Sounds terrifying.”

Horik nods us toward the assembling table. “I’d rather share than send you into that war zone. Find some chairs.”

Logan and I drag three chairs from a corner while Horik dumps his bounty at one end of the table and gathers plates, cups, and knives. The plates are rimmed with gold, and the knife Horik uses to hack at the ham looks like solid silver. I almost laugh at the absurdity of it all. Logan, rolling up his wrinkled sleeves, looks more like a soldier than anything. Horik has one elbow on the table and is sawing at the ham like it’s a block of wood, and I’ve just noticed a gray stain on my shirt. And a green one. Gold-rimmed plates, indeed.

Horik drops a slab of ham onto my plate as I fill the cups. Horik drains his and takes the flagon from me to refill his cup himself. I guess I didn’t pour correctly. Ah. I see. I didn’t fill it
all
the way to the brim. My mistake.

“No luck with Kronos?” Horik asks.

“No,” I confirm. “Gone.”

Horik’s eyes flick to Logan. “Sorry, Logan.”

Logan concentrates on sandwiching ham between two slices of bread. I’m reminded that Horik and Logan’s last interaction involved Horik hauling Logan away from Heborian, then Belos.

I start to worry Logan is resentful of that, but he says, “It’s not your fault.”

Horik wants clearer confirmation. “We’re good?”

“Of course, Horik.”

Horik looks relieved. He swirls his wine and takes a sip. “Have you seen the courtyard?”

“We’ve been sleeping all day.” I add, exasperated, “Hasn’t anyone else gone to bed?”

“I just got up,” Horik assures me. “But I did go look at the courtyard. All filled in. Looks better than it did before! And the bridge is up. These Earthmakers.” He shakes his head in awe. “We should keep them around.”

That makes me wonder: will they stay? Or will they return to Avydos?

I ask Logan his opinion on it, but he shrugs. “I have no idea.”

“What will Aron want?”

“To go back. How soon will they do that? Who knows. And it will take longer to rebuild the islands than to repair that courtyard. You saw what the mountain did. There are no crops.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” I say. “Earthmakers, Drifters, humans. All of them here, working together. Maybe things will be better. You know? Maybe they’ll learn to accept...” I don’t realize I’m talking about me and Logan until I fall silent. Will it be better? Or will he have to choose between me and his people?

He finds my hand under the table and squeezes, telling me what his decision would be.

But I don’t want him to have to choose.

Horik drops a pair of dice onto the table. “Care to reduce some of your debt?”

I don’t remember how much I supposedly owe Horik after our last game of dice, but I’m pretty sure it was a lot. Certainly more than I have, which is nothing.

“You know I’m not lucky, Horik.”

“Oh, I disagree, Astarti. You just need a broader perspective.”

That makes the corner of my mouth tug up. I return the pressure of Logan’s fingers under the table. “Maybe so.”

We play dice in the corner of the room, apologizing profusely when one of the assistant cooks comes out and exclaims at the mess we’ve made. She clears away the remains of our meal, muttering all the while, but she returns shortly afterwards with a fresh flagon of wine.

“For saving the castle,” she says. “But, truly, the assembling table is not for eating at.”

“Apologies, Jennie,” Horik says with a grin.

She blushes and hurries back to the kitchen.

“What is it with you and the girls, Horik? They love you.”

Horik puts on a hurt expression. “And why shouldn’t they?”

I snort. “I don’t know, that terrible haircut?” Horik’s hair has grown out a little, but it’s still cropped close to his head.

“And whose fault is that?”

“Mine maybe,” I admit, thinking of the way I accidently cut off a lock of Horik’s once-long hair while learning to refine my control of Drift-energy.

“Maybe!” he objects. “Huh.” He tosses the dice into the corner, and they turn up two dots.

“You’re so easily riled,” I tease, knowing it’s the opposite of true. “So easy to put you off your game.”

“Phht. You turned those over with Drift-work, didn’t you?”

I stare at him, taking in the playful smile behind his question. “Is that how you win? Have you been cheating?”

He gives me a look of mock-outrage. “Of course not!”

“You have!”

He sniffs. “I guess you’ll never know.”

“Due to suspicion of cheating, I must declare I owe you nothing.”

Horik responds wryly, “Considering you never had any intention of paying me, you’ll forgive me if I don’t think that means very much.”

I snort.

Logan comments, “Are you sure you two aren’t related?”

“Well,” Horik says thoughtfully, “Heborian is my mother’s”—he ticks something off on his fingers—“third cousin’s son, so I guess we are, a little.”

I look at Horik in surprise. “I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he says with an air of mystery.

I snag the dice from the corner. “I know you’re about lose, oh, Man of Many Secrets.”

Horik grins. “Man of Many Secrets. I like that.”

We play several more rounds, and Horik wins, as usual. Try as I might to detect any currents of Drift-energy, I feel none. Maybe he is just lucky.

Horik teases me about still nursing my first cup, but I have no interest in feeling the effects of wine. Horik clearly enjoys those effects, growing more relaxed every time he refills his and Logan’s cups. But where the wine makes Horik laugh and give me an absurd kiss on the cheek, it makes Logan quiet. I try not to worry about how much he drinks. He doesn’t look drunk. His words aren’t slurred. Besides, he’s an adult, and I’m not his mother, not that she would try to stop him either.

Though Logan and Horik are both deliberately consuming, it’s Logan’s purpose that worries me. He is using it as he uses everything, to close himself in. By the time we leave the kitchens, with me yawning and ready to return to bed, he hasn’t spoken for at least twenty minutes.

What is he thinking?

He won’t tell me, so I don’t ask.

Should I?

It’s dangerous, what he’s doing, turning inward like that. It scares me so much it makes me silent, a coward, and I fall asleep with more fear in my heart than I felt even as I cut Kronos’s Leash, expecting to die.

Chapter 26

I WAKE NEAR dawn to find Logan gone. I want someone to curse; I want someone to blame. I blame Logan, a little. Why didn’t he wake me? Then I blame myself. I knew this was going to happen and did nothing to prevent it. Not knowing what to do is no excuse. I didn’t even try.

I dress quickly and slide into the Drift. I will find him, and if he’s fighting I’ll do whatever it takes to stop him.

I glide through the castle, prepared to hunt all of Tornelaine when I see him. He didn’t leave. He’s deep underground. In the dungeon.

I have a brief, absurd thought that Heborian has betrayed us and imprisoned Logan, then I realize what he must be doing.

I slide out of the Drift at the top of the dungeon stairs. I shape a Drift-light, which casts cool blue over the damp stone walls. Warm lamplight fills the bottom of the stairwell, and I move cautiously toward it.

A guard slouches in a chair, cleaning under his fingernails with a knife. The chair is leaned back, front legs off the floor, but slams down when the guard sees me. Even though I know Belos has been stripped of power, I’m still a little shocked that this is the only security down here.

“I’m looking for my friend,” I say, unwilling to speak more personally to this man I don’t know.

The guard waves me toward the cells. “You’re on the list.”

“List?”

“Of approved visitors.”

Approved visitors? If there are restrictions regarding who comes down here, why I am allowed? Logan clearly is also. I can only assume Heborian is keeping Belos alive for a public execution, so why allow those most likely to kill him to have access to him?

The aisle between cells is wide enough to walk down the center without being in arms reach of the cells on either side. Though it’s a good precaution, the open space makes my skin crawl. I don’t look in the cells. The guard’s lamp and the burning torch bracketed at the far end of the room are enough to show outlines. From the edges of my vison, I see prisoners lying listlessly on their cots or huddling in corners. Many of the cells, however, are empty, so I’m surprised to discover that Belos is kept at the far end of the row.

I know exactly where he is because I can hear his voice, the cold, clear tones unchanged, apparently, by his fate.

“Ah, Astarti,” he says when I stop outside his cell.

Belos reclines on his cot in apparent comfort, as though he doesn’t notice the iron shackles on his wrists. The chains are too short for him to lower his arms, so they hang above him like he’s a puppet on strings. It has to be uncomfortable, but you’d never guess that from his satisfied expression.

The reason for his satisfaction is readily apparent. Logan stands in the middle of the cell, arms tightly crossed. He is completely still, physically containing it all, but the anger radiating from him washes against me even where I stand beyond the bars. He blinks twice before he seems to register my presence.

Belos says casually, “We’ve been having the most pleasant chat.”

“I’ll bet. Logan?”

He walks stiffly to the bars. The light of the torch flickers over his face, sparking in the swirling color of his eyes. His expression gives me nothing, and I won’t question him in front of Belos. He fades until I can see through him, like he’s a ghost. He passes through the bars and solidifies beside me. I touch his crossed arms. The muscles are knotted like ropes. He starts to move past me, but I tighten my grip.

“Please don’t,” I whisper.

I hold my breath until he nods.

I trust him not to lie to me.

As he walks away, his boots clipping along the stone floor, I know I should follow.

I can’t.

In this moment of standing outside Belos’s cell, I realize why Logan came down here, even if he didn’t get what he wanted. I know, too, why Heborian granted us access, and I’m grateful for it. Just as I needed to see Belos’s fortress in ruins, I need to see him that way. I need this to be my new image of him, even if he wears that smug, lying smile.

“What did you mean, ‘don’t’?” Belos inquires.

I take in his lank blond hair, the smear of dirt across one sunken cheek. I let my eyes linger on the iron cuffs. And so I am able to make my lips form a smug smile of my own. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I can probably guess.”

“I doubt it.”

“You forget, Astarti, I spent many weeks inside his head. I know him better than you do.”

I keep my face blank. “And I know you well enough not to listen to that.”

He gives me a lazy smile. “You’re a good liar, Astarti. I’m sure you fool everyone. But not me. I taught you.” He settles more comfortably. “Don’t you want to know what got him strung so tight?”

“I won’t be able to trust your view of events, so, no, I don’t.”

He shrugs in his chains. “No matter. I’m sure he’ll tell you.”

I adopt a casual posture, cocking one hip and leaning against the bars.

Belos smirks. “I’ll let you off the hook. Wonderful phrase, that. So appropriate. You are a fish on a hook, caught by your need to know.”

“And just what do you think I need to know?” Of course I shouldn’t ask that, shouldn’t give into him, but I can’t stop myself. And so he hits me with the truth, using it just when I’m braced for a lie.

“You need to know how to stop him.”

“Stop him?”

“From hurting himself.”

I stare. How can he know that?

“Like I said, Astarti, I know him better than you do. And I know
you
better than you think.”

He sees that I want to ask. He sees that I won’t. He pretends to be sympathetic. “I’d like to help you, but the truth, as I think you know, is that you can’t stop him. He’s going to break. It’s already happening. The only question is: how soon, and what will be the final blow that shatters him into a thousand pieces?”

And just like that, I know myself for the greatest fool there ever was. Better I had kept my final image of Belos as him crumpled by the sea. Better I had not given him this chance to defeat me with words once again. There are all he has now, and he wields them better than he ever wielded a sword.

I want to say,
I hate you
. It fills my throat, beats against the back of my teeth. But he would smile. He would love it.

Like the fool I am, I grasp at the only thing I have. “You talk boldly for a man who just lost everything.”

“Is that how this looks to you?”

I make a show of looking him over. “Yes, that is how this looks to me.”

“Come now, Astarti. You’re smarter than that. I’m yet alive.”

“And awaiting execution.”

“But that day has not yet come, and I have in my grasp the key to my freedom.”

“And what is that?”

“You.”

“Me? Have you lost your mind as well as your power?”

He ignores that last bit. “Because you want to save him. Because you still think it’s possible to prevent that last, shattering blow.”

I stare, unable to walk away, unwilling to ask.

He takes a deep, savoring breath. “I can find him. I am the only one who can.”

I don’t know how to react, so I don’t react at all.

Belos goes on, “Logan wants to find him, doesn’t he? His father? And you want that for him. Don’t you?”

“You can’t find Kronos.”

“Think, Astarti. Think. Straton was always wrong about you. You are smart. You know the truth. You can see it.”

Belos is implying that he left a bit of himself within Kronos, that he can track him by that. I’d like to scoff, but instead I feel the blood drain from my face.

Because it’s possible he’s speaking the truth. Because there is no way for me to prove that he’s not.

I back away from the bars. No. I won’t believe him. I can’t allow myself to.

I wish I could throw some cutting last words at him, but nothing comes to my lips. I turn away. As always, all I can do is escape.

Belos calls after me in his cool, smooth voice, “I’ll see you later, Astarti.”