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Lindsay tried to spit at her, but the medication made him so uncoordinated, he only dribbled saliva
down his chin.
“I know.” Lourdes wiped his face clean with her sleeve, mopping his cheeks as well. It was only then
that Lindsay realized he was crying. “It’s going to be okay.” She kissed him on the forehead before she
rose. “It was hard for me, too. And look at me now. I’m fine.”
She left, swiping her key card through the i
Mahesh followed her out. Her mind slid away from Lindsay’s at last, her presence and her locks drawn
away, and he could feel his magic again. He could feel it, for all the good it did him. The medication and
the cage of runes locked him down, locked him in. He let his head fall on his knees, and dreamed.
His dreams were strange, and in them Dane was dead, and he woke sobbing and high and he knew
that Dane was dead. He knew it like he knew there were walls around him. The runes made him sick and
dizzy. They floated down and loomed large in his vision, jostling with one another for his attention, as
though they all knew each other and him. He had seen all of them before, he realized, in the memories that
Ezqel had dredged up from his time with Moore.
“I know you.” His voice was loud even though his mouth didn’t move because of the drugs. His
muscles spasmed against the straitjacket, but it was as though he wasn’t there to experience it.
On bypass.
What had Ezqel done to him? Or had the mage done anything but show Lindsay where he had been?
Now, Lindsay wished that he’d been less filled with loathing and self-pity and fear, that he’d had the
detachment to watch his own torture. Now, he understood the detachment he’d hated in Cyrus and Ezqel,
the detachment Dane lacked because of what he was.
Ezqel had seen Moore’s research as much as Lindsay had, or more. He had seen, through Lindsay’s
memories, the way that Lindsay had escaped the collar and the cuffs. The runes fell over one another to line up in three rings. One for the throat, two for the wrists. And, now, they were on the walls.
The haze of drugs was wearing thin. He’d been given them the entire time at the Institute and now
they didn’t last. As they cleared, Lindsay remembered that he had escaped the runes once. He knew that
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they had broken him when he did it. And he knew that Ezqel, healing him, had known what they were.
Maybe even that Lindsay would see them again.
No one was coming for him, though his body said that hours had passed. It was time for another
injection, and yet it hadn’t come. Lindsay reached for his magic, and through it, he reached for the runes.
Come on, he said to them. I remember you. Slowly, his mind slid up and down the razor edges of them, tracing them over and over until he found the weak places into which he could sink his magic.
Moore understood that he had broken the artifacts—by sheer strength, it had seemed. Lindsay’s magic
was huge, yes, but it was not the size of it that had broken the collar and cuffs. It had been his will to survive and the strangeness of his mind that had found the way out. Moore had done it to herself, his
parents had done it to themselves—it was their own fault that he was shaped as he was.
Lindsay wedged his will into the cracks in Moore’s knowledge, the places where the world and magic
had changed over the centuries and the runes were no longer strong enough to hold either in check. He
pressed slowly and cautiously, bracing illusion up against reality to give him more strength, and when he
felt the bindings crack, he stopped and waited.
Time passed. Hesham came and attended to Lindsay’s body, and went. Mahesh came and filled him
up with drugs, but not full enough. Lindsay let the little illusions of his body hide his awareness with closed eyes and slack limbs, hid his magic away in the runes around him. Finally, finally, Moore came, and Lindsay’s fear, peering through the cracked runes, could feel her coming from far down a long hall.
The door opened and the twins came in first. Hesham—and Lindsay still had no idea how he knew
which was which—picked him up and set him on a chair put in place by a white-clad tech. Another chair
was set across from him for Moore. Mahesh pressed a hypodermic injection to the base of Lindsay’s skull.
The cold sting had hardly faded before Lindsay was awake, shockingly awake, with the hardness of the
world all around him bruising his tender consciousness.
“Hello again, Lindsay.” Moore sat, crossing her legs at the ankles and letting her empty hands lie
folded in her lap on the tight stretch of her tweed skirt over her rounded thighs. Today, her chestnut hair was loose and fell around her shoulders in soft waves. It made her seem disarmingly gentle. Behind her
glasses, her eyes were the color of tea, with dark flecks like leaves. “I’m glad you’re back, and well.”
Lindsay’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he managed to peel it away and speak. “I’m not.”
“Not glad or not well?” Moore smiled at him and gestured for Hesham to bring forward a glass of
cold water—Lindsay could smell it—with a straw in it. He drank, letting the ache of remembering Dane
overwhelm him for the moment. “Mahesh, let’s be civil. Undo that jacket, he looks like a psychotic.”
“You’ll get to see him again.” Lourdes stepped in and stopped behind Moore. “Apologies,” she said to
Moore’s stern expression. “I had something that needed my attention.”
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“He’s dead,” Lindsay said to her, speaking past Moore. He was done speaking to Moore. The flicker
of surprise on Lourdes’s face was gone almost as soon as it came. “And you know it.”
“You have so little faith,” Lourdes said quietly.
“I have so little reason,” Lindsay shot back. But he knew, suddenly, that Dane was still alive; he
fought it, so he wouldn’t have any reason to hope. He let Mahesh peel the straitjacket from him and relaxed into his chair, gathering himself.
“We have work to do.” Moore tried to bring their attention back to her. “We require cooperation,
Lindsay. We need to discuss your circumstances. Your healing. Lourdes.” She snapped her fingers at the
other woman. “Give me his mind.”
Have it.
Lourdes reached for him, wide open, to draw him in, and Lindsay lashed through the cracks in the
room’s binding, splitting the runes open and stabbing into her with all his might. He forced himself on her, pushing his magic through her, crushing her mind into the back of her awareness, moving through her and
out of her to blanket everything with illusion.
Nothing is wrong.
The runes on the wall were bleeding fire and ichor, alarms were sounding everywhere, but Moore—
half out of her seat at the first sign of trouble—sat again, eyes fixed on Lindsay. There were no shouts of alarm. Nothing was wrong.
“Now,” Moore said pleasantly. “Let’s talk.”
“Go right ahead,” Lindsay muttered. Lourdes clung to the back of Moore’s chair, blood ru
her eyes and from her bitten lip. He wondered if he’d broken her. Hesham and Mahesh stood silently. For a
moment, Lindsay was afraid they were unaffected, but when he moved, neither looked his way.
Lindsay ached, but his body answered well enough when he tried to stand. He got out of the chair and
grabbed Lourdes by the front of her shirt, pulling her into his place. She sat obediently, staring blankly into his chest, while he searched her for her security clearance and key cards. Already, his head was throbbing