“Got those lungs working again?” the pair of legs asked from somewhere directly above me.
How had they found me? Almost as in reply, I registered the piercing cold. My right leg was numb and tingly, the rectangle pulsing in my pocket, pushing out waves that chilled me to the bone. I tensed, preparing.
“Grab her, Jextor. She’s going to bolt,” the pale man said. He leaned against the wall on the other side of my hovel, neck craned to the side so his head didn’t bump into the ceiling.
I bolted. Boots scraping on the floor, kicking the quilt away, I lunged through the legs.
“Jextor…” the voice said behind me, sounding resigned.
The movement made the wound in my shoulder rip open again, clotted blood cracking. My other arm bled as well, fresh wounds across my bicep. I ignored the pain, stumbled out of the shed from the opening left by the planks that had been thrown aside. Clear air hit my face, fresh and cold. I gulped it down, only now realizing how stale the air had been inside. I glanced back, but I had a head start. If the big guy tried to get out first, it would take him a while.
I ran at someone. I bumped against his, grabbing on to his shirt to stop from falling. It looked familiar. I elbowed him in the belly, as hard as I could, yelping as it made the wounds rip open further. No reason to be… wait.
The guy took a step back. Didn’t even grunt. I looked up at Jordan, his mouth hanging open like an idiot.
The bastard had sold me to the couple! I hit him with an uppercut to the groin, putting all my weight behind the blow. The thunk and the squish made me wince.
He still didn’t grunt. His hand shot forward and grabbed me by the throat. I got a better look at his face, half-caved in, black and scraped, eye hidden somewhere deep inside his skull.
I clamped my hand on the flesh of his arm, digging my fingers and nails in. He didn’t react, just pushed me back and down. I fell, tripping over my feet, landing on the pavement, cracking the back of my head on it. Sounds of wood falling on the cobblestones came from behind me.
“That’s enough,” the bored voice said.
“Hnnrrgg,” Jordan said.
I couldn’t breathe, the hand around my throat was like a vise. I twisted and saw the pale man standing up after crouching to get out from my hovel.
He lifted a hand to point at us. “Enough, I said.” A bolt of darkness burst from his hand, flying through Jordan without a sound.
Jordan’s upper body disappeared, flecks of gray dust floated down, filling my mouth and my eyes. The legs fell backward. I screamed, but the fingers kept choking me, turning the scream into a ragged bark. I kicked and flailed, but there was nothing to grab on to, the hand around my throat wasn’t connected to anything.
“Oh for… fine, Jextor, get it off her.”
“Oh, so now my help will be appreciated?”
My vision was growing darker. Something in my throat would break at any moment. I pulled on the fingers, wrapping my right hand around its thumb, but couldn’t make even that budge.
My fingers were pried off, gently but with irresistible force. The grip around my throat vanished and I heard bones crack and snap.
”Goodbye, Falar,” Jextor said in a squeaky voice, waving the disembodied hand at the pale man. Its fingers flopped and pointed at random directions.
Falar let out a breath slowly, gazing up at the sky. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. ”Why did I agree to take you along?”
I coughed and hacked, spewing dust into the air, crawling backward as they talked. Blood thundered in my ears, sparks burst behind my eyes. I leaned my back on my safehouse door, fallen sideways. I was feeling faint, thirsty, and confused from all the blood loss. I grabbed my left arm, put pressure on the wounds on my bicep. How could they be there?
Falar turned away from Jextor and walked toward me. ”And you. It’s time to return what you stole,” he said, glaring down at me.
My throat felt cracked, my whole body bruised from being jostled around. I crawled back a step, pushing away from him.
“No more running,” he said.
“He’s right!” the other man shouted from behind him. “You’re half-dead. Trust me, we know.”
“Who are you?” I croaked. My voice sounded like there was a stone lodged in my throat.
Falar rolled his eyes. “How does that—“
“Bronte Jextor, the chancellor of the Academy!” the other man interrupted, bowing with a flourish.
Falar pressed his pale lips together, breathing out through his nose. He reached out a hand, palm up. “The Conspice.”
I looked left and right, taking in the situation. The alley was a dead-end, but it was just ten steps to the—
He snapped his fingers twice before my eyes. “Now! It could be getting hungry. Hurry.”
I moved my hand toward my pocket, but stopped. “I… I don’t want to touch it,” I said, letting my hand fall.
He froze, rotating his head slowly to peer at me with narrowed eyes. “Why?”
“What does it…” I stopped myself as his gaze bored into me. His pupils were tiny pinpricks even in the near darkness of the alley. “It’s wrong. Nasty.”
“Interesting,” he said, standing up. “Heard that?”
”She can sense it?” the big man said. He crouched next to me. His hand was the size of my face, as he picked up my chin gently and lifted my head to look at him. His eyes went wide. “Hmm, wait. That’s not it.”
I let my arms hang. He could crush my jaw by pinching his fingers together. Besides, I was done. Just done. Cold was creeping in, crawling up my spine. My legs were numb, dead weights somewhere in front of me.
Falar paced in a circle, hands clasped behind his back. He was taller than me, but not by much, skinny and pallid. “The girl has talent if she can sense the… Wait, did you say that’s not it?”
Jextor’s mouth opened into a wide grin. “She must have activated it, pulled on its power! I can feel it, she’s flooded!” He let go of my jaw and punched me in the shoulder. “What a kid!”
I smashed into the wall from the force of the punch, sliding down against it. The back of my head cracked against the wood, but the impact felt like it came from somewhere afar. The rectangle in my pocket blazed with cold, its icy fingers stretching further, prodding higher and higher.
Jextor stood up and looked down at me, pouting. “Also very nearly dead, though. Wounds on her face, back and left arm. Did she get attacked by a dog or—“
Falar shouldered past the big man. “Jextor, you oaf! Out of my way.” He wiggled his fingers, drawing purple lines of light into the air before my face.
The cold reached my eyes.
I closed them.
Finally.
Light trickled through my eyelids. I wasn’t warm, but I wasn’t freezing. What was below me was soft. People were talking. The couple. I wanted to scream and howl out of disappointment, for being rescued once again, but my instincts took over. I kept my eyes shut, my breathing stable.
”Any lasting damage?” Jextor asked. He spoke under his breath, but his voice was still loud and surprisingly high, compared to how large he was.
”Physically, no. I healed the wounds. Nothing too serious, by themselves,” Falar said. His voice was a low drone, sounding like he was wrinkling his nose at every word. ”But we’ll see what’s left of her mind when, and if, she wakes up.”
”But how could she use the Conspice? You said the process was exacting and meticulous and that’s why I shouldn’t be the one to do it. Now someone, whoopsie-daisy, did it.”
”Mostly I just wanted to keep you from breaking it.”
”Ha!”
The laugh made me flinch with how sudden and loud it was. Like a shriek. They were talking about me and the rectangle. It had been something special, just as I had known. Too special.
”…but it’s still true she shouldn’t have been able to do it. The artifact shouldn’t have let her touch the Null in the first place. There’s something to this girl.”
I creaked one eye open to steal a glance. We were in a dim room, lit by a single candle placed on a table. I was lying on a bed. The big guy was leaning back in a chair that looked like it should snap into pieces under him at any moment.
The pale man leaned against the wall next to the table, staring at me.
I pinched my eyes shut, too late.
”Seems she did wake,” he said. ”Jextor, go get her something to eat and drink.”
”I’m the higher-ranking faculty member here,” he grumbled. The chair rattled as he still stood up. ”I’ll be back soon, Falar.”
The last words sounded like a warning.
Not good. What was he afraid the other one would do?
I threw the cover away and pushed myself upright. At least I tried to. My arm gave out beneath me, making me topple back to the bed. The room spun around me as a tremor went through my body. My teeth chattered, a freezing breeze suddenly blowing through the room. Something white shimmered in the dark corner, the shape of a skull peeking through the wall.
A soft grunt escaped my lips. It was all that my lungs could manage.
Falar groaned, crossing the room in a couple of steps. ”Still, my rat,” he said, pulling the cover back over me.
The cold breeze disappeared like it had never been there. The tremors started to fade. My eyes were wide like saucers, but I managed a ragged inhale.
”I’ll be back soon,” Jextor said from the door. ”You heard him. Try not to move.”
”Why?” I whispered. Why did this keep happening to me? Despite the cold and how weak I was, fury roiled in my chest, pressing my heart flat. I wanted to bite my teeth into the face scowling down at me. All that horror for nothing.
”The enchantment on the quilt siphons off the dark you managed to guzzle,” Falar said. ”Stay under it.”
I turned my back on him, facing the wall. I hadn’t actually wanted to ask him anything, but I sensed it now, the tingling from the quilt covering me. Underneath the shivering and the rage, the familiar vibration of magic against my body.
The lock snapped shut.
I felt Falar’s eyes on me as he kept standing next to the bed. ”Now, as you’re awake, we’ll speak. Is your mind still intact?”
I didn’t answer, only clenched my fists tighter, pressing my fingernails into my palms.
”I need to know. You can pay me back with it or your body, the choice is yours.”