Devon patted him, the man’s face more pained with each jarring blow to his shoulder, fragile creature that these humans were.
“That’s the spirit,” Devon said, and walked to join my father in front of me.
“Hoist him up so he’s even,” the blond human said, and Devon crossed over to the left chain hanging from the ceiling. He pulled at it, a twinge of pain erupting all along my left wing until I had both feet lifted just off the ground and was hanging evenly.
The man came to me with one of the larger containers, pulling off the top of it, and began moving all around me. Consulting a notebook he pulled from his coat pocket, he walked around me, marking my stone body with his finger, the thick red liquid forming arcane symbols in a language I could not read. In the stretched pain of my body, the sensation was cooling, almost refreshing.
So close he was as he worked, yet I had not the fight in me to even lift a clawed hand to stop him. Nor did I wish to. Pain I could endure, if it meant that no harm would come to Alexandra and her friends. Her great-great-grandfather’s rules—to protect the Belarus family—might have been expelled from my being, but the desire to do so had not been. Whatever Kejetan and his men would do to me, I would endure.
After several more moments of this, the man stepped back from me, a pleased expression on his face.
“Is it ready?” my father asked him.
“Pretty much,” the man said, reaching into one of the deep, outside pockets of his coat with the hand not holding the flask. “Now to bind it.” He pulled free a battered black notebook, thick with well-worn pages, flipping through it until he found what he was seeking. His eyes met mine as he let out a long, slow breath, then he lifted the flask to his lips and drank.
His face twisted into a mask of displeasure, and for a moment he looked like he might fall over, but instead he forced his eyes open and looked to the notebook, reading from it. The words came out of his mouth in a soft, steady stream, and while I could not understand them, I did feel a connection snap to between the two of us, an invisible burning cord that stretched from his mind to mine.
The pain of it was far different from the physical one I had been contending with all this time.
This kind was far worse.
Only the distant memory of my human form being crushed to death centuries ago seemed even close to this excruciation. It was as if the very thoughts in my head burned. I opened my mouth to beg for it to stop, trying to fight it, but the only sound that came from my lips was a roar that echoed around the cargo hold, my father and Devon stepping back from it.
Although I thought that the violent sound coming from me would have torn a human apart, the man before me held his ground. He, too, looked pained, but his face was full of concentration, and it did not waver with even a hint of change.
Unbearable as it all was, I wanted to collapse but forced myself to stay awake through it all until, minutes later, the man stopped speaking, and the connection between the two of us broke.
My body—now free of the sensation—let out all its tension, and I fell slack, hanging from the two spikes driven through my wings. The man’s body lost all its tension, and he collapsed to the floor. My father and Devon were already moving to him, but the human raised a weak hand, waving them away.
“Lower him,” he said, his voice a mere whisper, and the two stone men moved to the chains. Together, they worked them until there was enough slack in the lines that I was able to collapse forward.
For several moments, I simply lay there, enjoying the lack of sound as well as the lack of pain. No one spoke until I pressed myself up to my knees.
“Is his will broken?” my father asked.
The human—still lying on the ground—rolled onto his back and slowly stood up. He brushed at and adjusted his coat and slid the notebook back into his pocket before speaking, running his fingers through his hair. “Let’s find out. What do you want to know?”
My father contemplated for a moment as he moved closer to me, looking down into my face, where I lay on the floor of the cargo hold.
“I want to know the secrets,” he said. “The ones the Spellmason Alexander Belarus stole from us.”
I remained silent, once more not willing to give up any information that might betray Alexandra.
“Answer him,” the man said. “Truthfully.”
I started to answer “no,” but the word would not come to my lips.
My mind screamed it, but somehow I could not. The harder I willed it, the more it would not come, and with each second that passed, my voice—my true voice—became quieter and quieter until it was barely a whisper at the back of my mind. Its former space was now filled with a foreign and dominant voice with but one desire—to answer my father with the truth.
“I cannot tell you those secrets,” I said, trying to allow my true self to speak as cryptically as I could.
“You can and you will,” my father shouted, full of rage. He turned on the man. “This was supposed to work.”
The man seemed unaffected by my father’s angered tone, holding up his hand to him as he stepped close to me.
“Hold on, now,” he said, glancing back to my father and Devon. “You told me the secrets are locked away within him, yes? That’s why you hired me, to get those out, right?”
My father nodded.
The man turned back to me. “The secrets of the Spellmasons are locked inside you, yes?”
“That is what I told my father,” I said, speaking the truth while still fighting to hold back the details.
“I am giving you permission to unlock those secrets,” the human said.
“I cannot.”
“Why not?” the man asked, skeptical curiosity filling his eyes.
The small voice in the back of my head pressed forward, shouting for me not to tell him the truth, but just as quick as it had shouted, it was silenced by the new, dominant presence in my head.
“I am not in possession of the secrets,” I said, a pained spike rising in my head. It throbbed, but my small true voice remained silent now.
“What?” my father shouted, pushing the man out of the way, his brute strength slamming the human into the wall, crumpling him to the floor.
“Easy,” the man whispered in a pained breath.
“What do you mean, you are not in possession of those secrets?” my father shouted, gripping my face in his hand.
“I never was,” I said. “I lied, ‘bluffed,’ the humans call it . . . to protect them.”
My father raged, lifting me into the air by my throat and throwing me. I tumbled end over end, chain and wings intertwining as I flew until I landed on the floor in a tangle.
“The time I have wasted,” he said. “All on a false promise by my own kin.” He turned to Devon. “Tell my men to head back to shore. We march on your family’s building.”
“What are you going to do?” the man asked, easing himself back onto his feet. There was fear in his voice, no doubt in fear for his life. “This alchemy is a work in progress. I just need some time to refine this . . .”
My father grabbed him by his arms, lifting him. The man screamed in pain, which stopped my father, but there was a current of rage underneath the restraint he was showing. “The only reason I am letting you live is because although you have proven a failure in extracting the information, you have at least exposed the truth of the matter.”
“Yes!” the man said, earnest in agreement with my father. “Exactly! See? Some good has come from this. Let me continue my work . . .”
My father set the man on his feet. “I think not,” he said.
The man paled. “So what are you going to do?”