Chapter 2
They chose blood this time.
My fingers, my toes, all the edges of my body had plunged in a frigid numbness. Exhaustion settled deep from the amount of blood they took when the alchemist had placed me under some kind of chemical spell. The effects of the drowsiness had worn off, and I could again sense the bone-deep cold of the cell floor and the bolts of pain triggered from the most minimal of movement.
They'd return soon. They always did after they drained something from me. At least it wasn't like the last round when they starved me for days. Left me with only sips of water sparingly until I could barely lift my head off the floor through the lethargy.
The floor trembled from a shift in the stone wall, and I braced myself for the coming of another session.
I didn't open my eyes to greet the guard, but the glare from the kerosine lamp burned anyway. The candle in my cell had long melted away, leaving me in darkness for the last several hours. Perhaps maybe even all day. Time passed differently in this place.
"Get up," a gruff voice ordered.
"I can't."
A steel toe nudged me sharply in the side, disturbing a broken rib. I winced at the lancing pain. "Then crawl."
I tried to lift my head from my threadbare cot on the floor and moaned. "Can't you drag me?"
Just rolling to my side to sit up was a tedious task, but the watchman made no move to help, regarding me rather like a sickly rodent to keep at arm's length.
"My orders are to never touch you."
"Unless it is to inflict pain or punishment," I spat. They touched me plenty when I didn't listen. Perhaps if I aggravated him enough, he'd concede and bring me upstairs, where the alchemist waited.
"You are an agent of Chaos," he muttered, as if it were a terrible secret. "Everything about you is dangerous."
"Chaos," I said with a dry laugh. Hadn't Nico always called me the same? He'd somehow known all along, had seen straight through me, even the parts of myself I ignored. Just the memory of him gave me a fraction of strength, enough to push off my cot and stand on trembling legs.
Part of me wanted to lay here until the end came. Wanted to concede to the taxing demands on my body, the pain pulling me under with every step. But hope was a stubborn force. Even the barest of it, the smallest chance of seeing Nico and my family again, flickered a dry flame awake in my heart. Perhaps that was all the fuel remaining that dragged each foot in front of the other.
"What's your name?" I asked. He was always the guard they sent to fetch and escort me. The whispered thud of his boots across the stone was his only reply. "You look like a Michael. I shall call you Mike." People were always less threatening when you knew their names, especially when they carried weapons of torture.
"Where are we going?" He didn't ascend the tower like usual. Instead, he gestured for me to take the hall that led outside.
"Delilah has something special planned today."
I could hear the smile in his voice, fluttering a fresh fear in my gut. At least I knew what to expect from the experiments. She'd take more blood, write strange symbols on my body, watch my mark bleed my veins black, just to suppress it with an injection. Delilah, the alchemist who'd somehow collected a startling framework of my concerning remnant, was keen to learn how to starve my power, but so far had been unsuccessful.
The hall was short, the way ahead shifting by the will of the watchman behind me. I still hadn't figured out how they controlled the stone without a remnant. Surely benders who moved the earth could manipulate this place—unless there were none here to test that theory. Maybe these watchmen were benders. Maybe they were traitors.
My time alone had given me lots of time to wonder about such things.
The sun had begun to set behind the prison as we emerged from the tower. Cool air, carrying salt from the sea, hit my face like a fond memory. It was the first time I'd been outside since I arrived here, the first I'd seen of anything besides the inside of my cell or the lab that had become some sort of sick reprieve. My eyes blinked at the sudden assault of light.
It wasn't raining, but there was a mist hazing the air, chilling my cheeks. Dew glazed the ground just as hard and cold as the floor of the tower. Algae and hardy plants that made their home in desolate environments such as this one covered either side of the walkway leading toward the main building in the distance.
He didn't lead me there, however. The watchman pointed to an open area between the tower and the main building, where a group of alchemists, guards, and Delilah waited.
Her demeanor since our first exchange had cooled. Our relationship shifted to one of scientist and specimen. I was nothing more than a creature to dissect—like all the others she locked in her alchemy tower. Instead of the lead smock she always wore during experiments, she sported a heavy cloak that seemed warm, considering the coloring of her cheeks. Her bloodred hair was covered with a cowl, but her hands still wore the same leather gloves. The ones laced with glint. The ones that burned when they touched me.
She carried a book tucked beneath her arm. Always carried that book.
We came to a large, circular platform smoothed into the jagged earth. Nine alchemists and a single alchemedis—my designated healer—stood in a line with Delilah between them. I wasn't the only guest, however. Another prisoner, obvious by his matching uniform to mine, stood on the other side of the circle.
"How is she?" Delilah asked my guard.
"Weak enough." The watchman nudged my spine with the hilt of his weapon, knocking me off-balance with the gentle probe. My knees cracked against cold obsidian, and I braced my hands in front of me so my face wouldn't suffer the same fate.
"We shall see." She cast a withering glance at me before barking an order at the alchemists. "Give her the salve and draw the barrier."
The watchman nudged me past a painted line drawn around the rim of the platform. Her associates scattered, each dipping their fingers into a pouch tied around their belts that stained them dark red. They drew something on the ground outside the circle.
"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice fighting against the wind.
Delilah stared into the bleak horizon with her hands clasped behind her back. "We have failed to suppress your power. It is not in your body, by the way it was triggered after we starved you of energy. It is not in your mind, as it was still provoked when we put you in a chemical sleep. And it is not in your blood, as we have already tested it for magical properties. And before you ask, no. It is not your blood we are using to create the barrier, as your remnant isn't found there."
"A Blood remnant's then?" I asked.
She nodded. "A descendant of Blood keeps their power in the same, which is why they become stronger when they drink it, enriching their own. Due to the magical property of their blood, we can use it for our own purposes."
Delilah loved to talk about her research, and I let her indulge me as often as possible. She was an expert in all kinds of magic, and she wanted to study my remnant almost as much as I did. Each experience as her lab rat allowed me to understand my remnant more exhaustively, and if I could somehow use it to save myself, then I'd let her reveal all the secrets Chaos hid within her dark magic.
"To find where your remnant is stored," she continued, "we need to see what it can do. There are no records of a Chaos remnant in history other than the record of Chaos fighting with her demon army in the First War. I'm curious how this power expresses itself in remnant form, if it is as powerful as Chaos herself. I have arranged three trials which should help us learn your limits, your source, and where it's hiding."
"Where is what hiding?"
The alchemist sealed her lips, refusing the information.
Her alchemedis approached with a jar in her gloved hands. "Don't move," she ordered. "I'm going to put this salve on your arm to annul the effects of the glint. If you harm me, you will be severely punished."
My eyes darted from the jar in her hands to Mike, unsure I trusted anything she put on my body. When I didn't cooperate quickly enough, the watchman snatched my wrist and shoulder with both his hands, burning my entire arm with the poison-rubbed leather.
My dirty skin quickly absorbed the cream she spread along my forearm, and as promised, my remnant flooded my spine with the warmth of its return. It filled my heart, racing my pulse with the surge of it all rushing in at once now that the door holding it back had been opened.
The pair quickly retreated over the line as I struggled to put a cap on the power seeking to escape. I needed to resist the mayhem in my veins and calm down—needed a source of distraction.
The man slouched on the opposite side of the circle stood motionless, his canvas clothes whipping in the breeze. The platform itself was large. Far enough, he couldn't possibly hear what we said as the wind carried our words in the opposite direction.
I asked Delilah, "Why is he here?"
Her smile was the most terrifying sight on the island—usually because it preceded something terrible.
"He is your first test. Today, we will see how you work as a weapon." She glanced at the descendant. "I offered him a deal. If he killed you, he could leave the island."
Her words carved me hollow, filling me with a fresh fear. She'd offered him his freedom. "And he... agreed?"
Delilah took several steps back until she was on the opposite side of the line. "He is a powerful Mirth descendant, Camilla. You are too weak now to physically fight him. You'll have to use your remnant if you wish to come out of this alive."
Every muscle lining my bones trembled violently in the damp wind. "I don't believe you'd let me die. Not after everything you went through to take me."
Her smile fell. "When the mortal spirit gets close to death, instinct takes over. I won't have to intercede before your remnant lashes out to protect you."
I clenched my teeth. "We'll see about that."
I had no intentions on hurting this man. If he realized that, he might have mercy on me as well. They couldn't do anything if we both made the choice to surrender. But with a prize as glittering and alluring as freedom in sight, could he see through her lies?
The last alchemist stepped away from her place on the line, finishing the final symbol. A milky blue glow lifted from the runes as static charged the air, lifting the hair on my arms as an iridescent wall wrapped the space around the platform, doming above to seal us within.
I'd never seen such magic made from blood and markings, and the idea of such a possibility unnerved me. What else could they do beyond creating more barriers between us?
"The boundary will burn you if you try to cross it. Only one of you will walk out of this circle, and only you will determine which." Delilah spoke loudly so the Mirth descendant would hear.
"She's lying!" I shouted. "We don't have to do this." Pushing slowly to my feet, I started toward him. "We have to show them they don't have power over us."
"Stop!" he warned. "Don't come any closer."
"It's alright." I lifted my hands in a show of surrender. "I don't—"
He attacked without warning. Though he hadn't moved a muscle, his remnant slipped into my mind, and suddenly I was no longer in control of my body. My feet halted, knees buckled from beneath me. I had only a heartbeat to be afraid before he canted his neck and snapped the joints.
He was a scolapa. A thought controller. And I'd just given him access to the greatest weapon in his arsenal.
My knees twisted, disobeying the rest of my body, and bending them so much the bones popped from the joints. I crashed onto the platform. Pain unlike anything I'd ever felt before consumed me. It shot through my legs, my spine, spreading until agony was so intimate, I knew nothing else. My voice was free to scream as my veins were burnished with fire—a fire I fought to suppress.
Tears swarmed my vision as I peered up at him.
"Please stop," I begged through gasping breaths. "I don't want to hurt you."
He responded by arching my back, bowing my spine until each notch of bone pressed together and the pressure threatened to split me in half.
"He's been here a long time, Camilla. His freedom is more important than anything." Delilah's voice was near, finding me through the ringing in my ears. "More than food to survive, more than air to breathe, more than goodness to live."
My hands clawed to gain purchase; the dark venom of my power had already spilled into my fingernails.
"He is not a man anymore. There is nothing you can say that will appeal to a heart the prison dredged from him. He will snap you in half if it means getting what he wants above all else. His humanity no longer controls him—he belongs to Greed."
Crack.
There wasn't much flexibility left in my spine. From my contortion on the stone platform, I stared at the descendant, whose stare was narrowed on me. Nothing existed in those dark eyes that resembled any kind of recognition of what he was inflicting. His image blurred as fresh tears brimmed my vision.
"Don't you want to know what you can do, Camilla? Isn't it time you explore your gifts in a safe, controlled environment?" Delilah coaxed me, stroking my power with her persuasive words.
But safe was the last word I'd use to describe anything on this island. I didn't want to find out what my remnant could do—not like this at least. Not at this man's expense. Though, the twist of my spine gave me little choice on the matter. He wanted his freedom—but so did I.
No one was coming for me. No one knew I was here.
The problem I faced concerned the uncertainty. I didn't know how to control my remnant. Whatever lashed out could hurt, kill, or annihilate. I reduced a man to vapor just a few weeks ago, and the bloody mist of his essence coated my hands every day.
Crack.
White-hot pain seared through my vision, and the world disappeared. The prison, Delilah, the other alchemists. It was just me and this agony, and the need to make it stop.
Anger swelled, overflowed inside me like a poison that tainted every drop of my blood. The Mirth descendant let go of my thoughts—or maybe I shoved him out. All I knew was that I could control my body, the parts left unbroken.
I rolled to my front and stared him down, blinking until my vision cleared and sharpened and dried of tears. My hands went black, flooded with inky darkness, and all at once my fury slammed open the door holding back my power. For the first time in weeks, there was no drug, no hesitation, no moral holding it back.
The rush of Chaos nearly pulled me out of my skin when I let it loose. Like I'd drilled a hole in a dam, not expecting the whole river to break through.
Thin black flames burst from my palms, crossing the floor and filling the circle in a sea of shadows that curled and flickered in the breeze slapping the island. The descendant took a step back, halted by the invisible barrier that somehow contained our remnants.
"Fire from Oblivion," Delilah whispered, something like awe in her voice.
He made a panicked sound as his unyielding composure cracked—but set his sights on me again. My flames reached his feet and lapped at his legs. His chest rose and fell in a rapid fluctuation, realizing his error too late.
I felt the push of his compulsion, the sharp turn of my neck as he tried to snap it.
"Stop it," I growled in a voice that didn't belong to me. This one too deep, too angry—a piece of thunder in a summer storm.
He didn't listen, but instead responded with the full force of his remnant to wrap my mind and squeeze. My wrist pressed and twisted against the floor, breaking with a loud pop. I cried out, my scream rolled from my chest and trembled the stone beneath me. The obsidian stone shattered, cracks spread through the polished platform like a web of fractures.
My arm pulsed with sharp, stabbing aches. I sucked a breath to tame the pain, a large inhale followed by a rushed exhale. The wind inside the barrier was unlike the gentle breeze outside. This wind—this storm—didn't come from the sea.
It came from my wrath.
My fire danced in the turbulence, shards of rock peeled in treacherously sharp shards from the ground and were thrown into a cyclone of my mayhem. The descendant cowered, blinded by shadowed flames and upturned stone. His fear leashed some of the rage in my heart, appealing to the one still racing erratically against my ribs. My breath slowed as the anger shifted into shame, and the storm died with my fight.
The Mirth descendant peered up at me through the gaps of his arms that he used to shield his face, like a child facing a monster. And in that single connection of our eyes, his remnant slipped into my thoughts once more. This time, however, unexpectedly.
"What are you?" he asked through a mental bond.
Remorse splintered through my chest. I don't know.
His arms slacked at his sides. "I don't take pride in this, but I need my freedom. I have a daughter..." The image of a girl I recognized too well flashed in my mind, placed there by this man's memory. She was young, a mere child, but it was so obviously her.
Sera.
His face paled. "You know her?"
I choked back a sob and nodded. She's my friend.
I brought my memory of Sera to the surface of my thoughts. A recent one, so he could see the woman she grew to become. Surely, he would abandon this fight if he understood what his daughter meant to me—and I to her.
She'd been looking for him, and he'd been here. Why was he here?
The descendant was locked there, staring at me. His eyes focused on something beyond the perceptible planes of this world. "Saints and stars. She's so beautiful."
"Do you realize now who I put you up against, Camilla?" Delilah crouched near the barrier line so only I could hear.
The realization hit me all at once, recalling what I knew about Sera and her father. What happened to him. This pairing had been intentional. My choice now would be more painful than any displaced or broken bone.
"Your father put his trust in the wrong people," Delilah said. "I asked my family in the city to figure out why the Marcheses would give one of his children a familiar, and they figured out the rest. With the help of the inspector, they discovered Marco Gallo and brought him here, where we too easily made him show us the memories he took from you."
I shook my head. It didn't matter. I was not his to protect. It had been my fault any of that happened, and now I could add Gallo's capture and imprisonment to a long list of consequences.
"It was him, Camilla. He betrayed your family, the reason your father is dead, why your brother is dead, and how I found you. You were your parents' best kept-secret, and he betrayed their trust." Delilah continued to dig her nails into my heart a little deeper. "That descendant is the cause for all the pain in your life, and now you have the chance to tear him apart like he did your entire life. You deserve this."
"No. No, it wasn't his fault," I murmured. Not to Delilah, but to myself. He'd only done what he thought he needed to protect his daughter. I tucked my broken wrist to my chest and flipped to my back, surrendering the fight.
"Finish her!" Delilah roared, at last realizing she wouldn't get to me. "What are you doing?"
I rolled my head to the side to look at him. His throat bobbed. "I'm sorry. I'll make this quick."
"No," I said. "No, please. Don't do this."
He froze my body into place and slowly strode to where I was sprawled across the broken platform. Broad hands braced either side of my face.
"I'm sorry," he whispered again.
His remnant slipped, having me just a neck-snap away from death. My life in his hands.
I snatched his forearm. "Me too."
The darkness from my hands seeped into his wrist. His skin rolled back, molting from his flesh where my touch connected us. Layer by layer. Skin, fat, muscle, tendon. His body stripped itself until there was only bone caressing my cheeks and the echo of his scream beating against the magic barrier, until even his skeleton eventually turned to dust like the rest of him. Nothing was left behind of Sera's father besides a red vapor that smelled distinctly like blood.
There was no controlling Chaos. It defiled anything it touched. Even now, as my disgrace festered, as it rose in my chest like the tide in a storm, so did the violence of the wind return within the barrier as it tore at my threadbare uniform. Closer than a kiss, slipping beneath my skin until its corruption stained my heart.
My eyes squeezed shut, and I clutched my broken wrist against the wall of my chest as bitter tears streamed down my cheeks. Sera would never forgive me. I'd killed her father. And for what? What had any of this accomplished? Had it fed something in Delilah's unsatiated curiosity?
Footsteps charged through the barrier. The watchmen carried shields coated with a glint mixture to buffer themselves against my power. One alchemist had followed close behind, a syringe in her hand. If she thought I'd fight her, she was wrong. I didn't want to feel this power any more than they wished me to have it.
I resented the remnant I carried, the mark on my back, and the day I ever let myself dream of becoming more than just a spoiled little heiress with a pretty train.
I had flipped sides. From being limited to knowing no limits. Being powerless to having too much. What I'd give to be less than everyone again. What I'd trade to be not enough.
No one knew I was here. No one was coming for me.
I looked at the red vapor soaking the stone. Perhaps that was for the best.