Unbroken

to do was help them.”

Luis didn’t say that he’d warned them.

We didn’t say anything at all, just put our hands and heads back to the hard work of saving us. Luis and I were gasping for breath, sweating, trembling by the end of it; it was only the helping hands of the Wardens tearing their flesh and fingernails that broke through the last barriers. We were too weak.

And so it was that we were helpless, drained, and entirely off guard when the harsh glare of the sunlight through smoke resolved and showed us what stood before us.

“I’ve been kept waiting,” Ashan, my Djinn brother, lord, and master, said. He stood facing us, flanked by others, a row of impenetrable and immortal force. He’d clothed himself in a human shell, a pale and perfect imitation of humanity down to suit and gleaming silk tie, but his eyes were a bright, unearthly swirl of colors that, taken together, made up white. “I don’t like to be kept waiting, humans.” He looked at the Djinn standing at his right and left, and nodded. “Take them.”

There was a sound around us then, a kind of crystalline creaking, like frozen wind chimes, and everything seemed to grow darker. Even the Djinn seemed surprised. Ashan lifted his head, and whatever he saw on the aetheric made him gesture to the other Djinn in a blur.

But it was too late. I don’t know what descended on them, and on us. I saw the Djinn grabbing for the Wardens, for Luis, and Ashan came for me, but something got between us. Something worse than Ashan.

Something that had me.

I tried to rise. Tried to fight.

Darkness took me down, fast and merciless, and the last thing I saw was Ashan and the Djinn retreating, and abandoning me to my fate.

They kept me in the darkness, and the worst of it was that I didn’t know why. Why keep me alive? Why not kill me outright, as would have been best and safest?

But there was no doubt they wanted me alive. Suffering. Waiting.

I was aware of time passing, but there was nothing I could do except count the ticking seconds by the measured, rapid pace of my heartbeats. I was confined in a tiny space, but there was air flowing against my face. Whoever had me didn’t wish me dead.

Not yet.

I had no illusions that miracle—or nightmare—would last forever, but it seemed to stretch to the breaking point. My mind was full of questions and fears. The Wardens we’d rescued… the children we’d abandoned.

And, always, Luis. I could no longer feel his presence, or the bond between us… yet I wasn’t dying the slow, starving death of a Djinn cut off from the aetheric, either, so he must have been alive. That was all I could hold to for hope.

I was in a prison. A prison built to hold Djinn, indefinitely; it would do equally well to hold a Warden, no matter what their specialty. I could call no powers, not even a spark of light, and the tiny opening around me seemed to shrink, inch by inch, as my panic increased. I forced myself to breathe more and more slowly, focus on small sensations and details. The Djinn wouldn’t understand human instincts, human frailty; if I panicked in this tomb, I would go mad before they noticed my lapse.

And then the pain began.

It started in small ways at first, a burning sensation on the outside of my left thigh, a pinch in my right upper arm… and then it grew worse. It wasn’t burning, or pinching. It was something pressing into me, with exquisite slowness. Pushing, and pushing, and pushing, sharp points digging until they broke the skin and bored deeper.

Those were the first, and not the worst. The torture came so very, very deliberately. There was nothing human about it, nothing driven by hate or fear or anger.… No, this was a cold, empty kind of pain, inflicted in a lifeless and distant way.

I couldn’t keep calm. The pain ate away at my hard-fought reserve, sped up my breathing, brought back all the desperate panic that I’d striven to keep sealed away.

And it went on, and on, and on. The red-hot, invading pain. The whispering trickle of blood against my skin. My own ragged, too-fast breathing stirring the lank strands of my hair in the tiny spaces.

And then the screaming.

My voice wore raw soon, and my throat ached and bled from the effort. There was no more peace, no more logic, no more planning left inside me. Only the pain, the terror, the despair.

And then, from a vast distance, came the whisper of… music.

It wasn’t music as a human might hear it; this was the language of the Djinn, of tens of thousands of immortal voices raised together in a sound that held nothing but exaltation, beauty, harmony.

It was the sound of worship, and madness… a divine, thoughtless madness that had no room for individual pain or pleasure, sadness or joy. It was my brothers and sisters, but they had ceased to be the individuals I’d once known.

They sang as they killed.

Death was moving across the face of the world, and I could feel it. Worse: I could be it. Some part of me knew the insane peace of surrendering will, conscience, logic, of becoming the Great Beast, and hungered to join it.

And then I heard Pearl’s voice whispering to me. Let go, she said. Let the music fill you, Cassiel. Let the earth take you as you change. I will make you into a creature of terror and beauty, a weapon for the new Mother’s hand. I will make you my angel—not of mercy, but of death. Shining, cutting, crushing death, and you will be as beautiful as a knife. This is why I’ve spared you all this time, to serve me. Fight and die, or surrender and be reborn. Your choices, my sister.

No. No, these could not be my only choices. It didn’t matter whether I closed my eyes; I could see nothing, not even a glimmer of light, but now I deliberately squeezed them shut and brought up vibrant images in my mind: Luis, lying propped against pillows in bed, tracing his fingertips over my body, smiling. His skin gleamed like fine new bronze, and the indigo lick of flame tattoos on his arms had a sinuous grace and beauty that made me shiver. His eyes were a rich, dark cocoa, and his kisses held spice and sweetness and woke vast, unhurried needs inside me. His touch trailed heat, and his tongue woke fire.

I reached for him, and for an instant, just a single flash, I saw him. Not the image of him from our bed, not the smiling, lazy, sexual creature I’d imagined in that moment—no, this was a frightening vision of a hard, battered man, stained with smoke and blood, and his eyes were as dark as empty windows as he drew and shaped a fireball in his hands.

And I heard him, just a whisper. I might have imagined it, so quickly did it pass.

Luis said, I’m coming.

And then the singing madness rose inside me to a shattering pitch, and the needles piercing me drove deeper, and it was all darkness, solitude, loss. I was weightless, then falling into the darkness.

Alone.

Trapped.

Chapter 9

LIGHT.

It came in a white blaze that seared my skin, blasted my eyes even through the squeezed-closed lids, and I heard myself make a rusty, metallic sound of protest.

It was a single, thin crack in my prison, and I felt a tiny whisper of something so sweet and precious that I couldn’t identify what it might be. Fresh air? Hope? Both seemed impossible to me now.

There was a sound that echoed even through the impenetrable walls pressed against me, and I felt a shudder go through the world, my world… and then, the tiny crack of light widened into a bar. The darkness shattered and left me bare.

I couldn’t move. The weight that had trapped me in this tiny space was gone, but when I tried to lunge for the light, I couldn’t get free. Moving woke screaming agony everywhere in my flesh and bones, and all I could do