He brought the vibrating blade closer to Dualayn’s throat, a finger’s width away.
“There’s a way!” Dualayn croaked. “A way to make sure she doesn’t pass out. I can’t put her brain back, I truly can’t, but I can make sure the signal’s strength never fails. She won’t feel alien. So long as her mind remains safe in the jar, she’ll be normal. She’ll have all her senses. Her full faculty. She won’t have to fear losing control.”
“How?” The words came out a deadly whisper. The rage brimmed in Ōbhin. He would cut this Black-damned snake down if he said the wrong thing.
“We need a proper antenna.” An acrid stink filled the air. Snot bubbled from Dualayn’s nose. “We can find one in Koilon, the ruins where we met. But if you kill me, you’ll never discover it. I know where they can be found in the city. I know what they look like. How they work. Kill me, and she’ll be vulnerable for the rest of her life. Please, please, just let me fix her. Let me make her whole. I want her to be whole.”
“You just said you can’t make her whole!” The sword’s humming edge came within a hair’s breadth from Dualayn’s pudgy neck.
“But I can make her functional,” Dualayn said. “What’s the difference?”
Ōbhin glanced at Avena. Her brown eyes burned, emotion gleaming across the whites of her eyes. Flecks of gold reflected in her irises. Pain swam in them. She loved him like a father, and he’d butchered her. How could another parent betray her?
With almost no effort, the resonance blade would part Dualayn’s head from his body.
“I can make it so you never notice your brain isn’t in your body,” Dualayn said. “See the other jewelchines? They will never run out of charge. They are balanced perfectly to sustain your mind for the rest of your life. Let me live, let me save my wife, and I will fix you. Please, child, I only did what I thought was best.”
“You’re a selfish, lying roach scurrying through pig excrement!” she snarled. “I should have Ōbhin step on you. How many others have you butchered?”
“Saved!” he insisted. “All I have done was to save. To improve. I can fix you, child. Trust me.”
Avena’s lip curled in a snarl. She glanced down at her brain held to her chest. Then she nodded with savage finality.
“Deal!” Ōbhin spat, disgusted he’d ever desired to protect this man.
He wrenched his blade from Dualayn’s throat and turned off the emerald. The man collapsed to the floor, panting, the front of his pants soaked with his urine. He brought a shaky hand to his head, rubbing at the sweat.
“Here,” Avena said. She placed the brain into Ōbhin’s black-gloved hands, entrusting her very essence to him. “Let me see if I can save the poor man on his operating table.”
“Filthy, pus-filled, dung-eating roach,” Fingers snarled. He seized Dualayn and hauled the man to his feet. “Let’s go tell everyone upstairs what you’ve done to poor Kaylin and Avena.”
Ōbhin stared down at the brain of the woman he loved. Tears misted his eyes. “We’ll fix you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Despite everything Avena tried, she couldn’t save the last patient’s life.
She covered him with a blanket in the secret laboratory she never knew existed. There were other rooms off this one she was scared to open. She didn’t want to know what horrors they held. The storeroom disgusted her enough.
She felt Ōbhin’s eyes on her as she headed to the washbasin and the aquifer. She activated the sapphire in the faucet; the cool stream of water fell into the basin. It had a drain that must lead somewhere. She shoved her hands into the stream; watched the blood spill away.
How many died unnecessarily down here? she wondered. She heard the thoughts in her own head even though her mind was twenty cubits away in Ōbhin’s hand.
“We’ll see he’s buried,” said Cerdyn.
Others had come and gone. Jilly had taken one look at the storeroom and vomited in the corner. Then she’d ordered every maid to stay away. The guards had filtered in, Bran looking as green as kelp while Dajouth fought to keep from adding his own lunch to Jilly’s. Fingers and Cerdyn had carried the female patient upstairs for her to recover.
“We’ll bury him on Blackberry Hill,” Fingers said as he guided the strange stretcher they’d found. It was covered in heliodors. When activated, it floated, explaining how Dualayn brought his patients down here alone. Avena had no idea such a jewel machine was even possible. “Okay, Avena?”
She nodded, emotion brimming in her. She kept washing her hands, keeping her back to the two men. Cerdyn and Fingers worked with only the occasional grunt. Then their heavy footsteps thudded away, the yellow glow from the heliodors dwindling and then vanishing.
She shut off the aquifer and turned around, her hands dripping with water. Her eyes found Ōbhin’s, unable to fight the pain of what had been done to her. She ached for the numbing paradise of her emptiness. She understood why she’d retreated as a child into the hollow silence of her soul. It was so much easier than facing the betrayal from a person she’d thought loved her. Cared for her.
Ōbhin set down her jar with care on the vacated table. He crossed to her in moments, arms opening. She collapsed into his chest, pressing her face into his leather jerkin as her entire body shook. A keening wail, a long, piercing shriek of violated horror burst from deep inside of her. His arms were around her, strong, protective.
He rocked her, one hand stroking her hair at the back of her head, the supple leather rasping over her silken strands. The tears flowed. Her throat choked
