An aufhocker was nearby.
“Sorin?” I called, my eyes still closed, trying desperately to hold on to the calm that had entered my body, but I already felt as though I was vibrating, my adrenaline spiking.
“I’ve got everything under control,” he called, though another growl joined the first, and the sounds of Sorin fighting filled the hollow.
I closed my eyes tighter and tried to focus. When Ana began to chant, Violeta and I joined, and the world seemed to fall away. We spoke in a language that had memory in my soul. I could feel the words moving around beneath my skin, twisting in the bottom of my stomach. I felt my magic roar to life—a stream of energy that tore me open.
I began to sob, to shake, to scream.
And then I was hit hard on the head, and I fell into the water, which was just as shocking as the blow. My hair was yanked back as I broke the surface only to hear Violeta’s and Ana’s screams.
I gasped for air as another two people grabbed my arms.
“Get her out!” a harsh male voice ordered.
I was dragged from the water, my ribs cracking against jagged rocks.
“Bloody witch!” another awful voice spat.
When I felt the earth beneath me, my attackers dropped my hands and began to beat my body. The first blow was a kick to my stomach. It stole my breath and made me nauseous, and as I rolled to protect myself, gasping desperately for breath, another blow landed on my back, knocking me flat to the ground. After that, it was a barrage of kicks to all parts of my body. I tasted blood and then I could not feel anything.
But that was not what scared me most; it was the peace that suddenly overcame me. I had felt it before when Dragos’s men set fire to the tinder at my feet. My body eased, sinking into the ground. I could not feel pain. I did not even need to breathe.
I rolled onto my side, and as I did, I saw Ana only a few feet away, her battered face aglow in the torchlight.
Suddenly I was in another time, running through these very woods, the ground uneven beneath my feet, the limbs of trees striking my skin. My breath shuddered out of me, my lungs burning.
“Ana!”
Her name left my mouth, a choked cry. I hoped it would make her stop, but she only seemed to run faster.
“Ana!” I begged, wheezing her name. “Ana, please!”
She stumbled and fell and stayed where she landed, her body shaking with sobs. I fell to my knees and held her.
I had no idea what had happened. I just knew it was horrible because I had caught her fleeing the castle, battered and beaten. I didn’t know how long we sat there, but eventually she sat up, her face swollen so badly, I didn’t think she could even see me. There was a gash across her cheek, and her nose was broken, her lip split.
“Ana,” I said, my vision blurred with tears. I wanted to touch her face, but I knew I would only hurt her, so I reached for her hands instead. They were bruised, her nails broken. “What happened?”
She tried to speak, but every time she started to open her mouth, a violent sob burst from her throat. I waited as she navigated this vicious cycle, and the more I watched, the more I wanted to carve out my own heart just so I would not have to feel the pain of it breaking.
“King Dragos keeps a pleasure house in the dungeon of the Red Palace,” she explained. “He says it is for his lords, says they will perform better if they have a place to spill their seed.”
She spoke with her bloody teeth clenched, her disgust barely contained.
“The lords are free to go any time so long as they bring a new boy or girl every month. They have kidnapped hundreds, and I have only helped a few escape, but tonight as I was trying to free a girl, I was caught.”
Her voice broke and she shook, tears streaming down her face. She pulled her hands from mine and started to wipe her face, but I stopped her.
That only seemed to make her cry harder.
“They raped me,” she whispered and then spoke through her teeth again, shaking with hate. “Every. Lord.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. I had no words.
There was no comfort for this—not even in revenge—because trauma was a nightmare that clung to its victims with an iron fist.
“Then they killed her,” she said, and then she wailed. “They killed her because of me.”
She collapsed in my arms, and I held her and cried with her until neither of us had anything left but rage.
Nineteen
Isolde
I woke up crying.
At first it was because of my memory of Ana, and then I cried for myself.
Adrian lay beside me, and I turned into him, burying my face in his chest, weeping harder. He held me gently and whispered love to me while he kissed my hair.
It took me a while to speak, to form words beyond the sobs wracking my body, and I held onto Adrian harder, almost as if I feared someone would tear me away from him.
I don’t know how long I cried, but what brought words to my lips was the realization that I still wore Violeta’s necklace.
“How is Ana?…Violeta?”
When Adrian spoke, his voice was quiet, warm, and pained. “Ana is healed but she has not woken up yet.”
“And Violeta?”
He was quiet and I shifted to meet his gaze. “Adrian.” My voice trembled. “How is Violeta?”
He looked far more pale than usual, and he swallowed before he spoke, the words escaping his colorless lips in a whisper. “She didn’t make it.”
I shook my head. “She had to have.”
If Ana and I made it, there was no other explanation. Why were we alive if she was dead?
I could not grasp it, could not accept it—wouldn’t.
“Isolde,” Adrian said gently.
“No—” My voice broke, and I dissolved into tears once more.
Adrian pulled me to him, and time passed in this turbulent manner—where I would cry and then sleep, overcome with exhaustion, and wake up once more in tears.
“How did you find us?” I asked.
He waited so long to speak, I didn’t think he would tell me, but then he started. “Sorin,” he said. “He found me in Cel Ceredi. He left you all in the grove, surrounded by villagers from Gal who thought they were doling out justice against witches.”
A wave of nausea soured the back of my throat.
This was Solaris’s fault.
“Why are you saying it like that?” I asked. “Why are you saying he left us?”
I felt defensive. I remembered hearing the low growls of aufhockers disturbing our casting, and the sounds of Sorin battling, but beyond that, I knew nothing because by then, we had been attacked. I wondered how the villagers had managed to slip past the monster or monsters attacking Sorin.
“Because that is what he did,” Adrian said.
“He could not help it,” I said. “There were…so many. It was almost as if they knew we were going to be there.”
Adrian was tense beneath me. I did not think he blamed Sorin for having to leave for help, so much as he blamed himself for not being there at all.
“How is Sorin?” I asked.
“Devastated,” Adrian replied, and I could tell he spoke with his jaw clenched. “He says he heard a growl and thought it was an aufhocker. Then he heard another and thought it might be a pack. When he shifted, he found he was surrounded by villagers, and by then, you had all been attacked. They were lying in wait.”