I am a fool for experiences. Exploration and curiosity are my downfall, along with a certain habit of punishing myself for stupidity. However, I will remain fast on one thing: I would never willingly choose this fate again.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  “Needle.” Brother Horator held out an expectant hand. Gone, the calm serenity; gone, the even tones of a disciplined monk of the Light. His pale eyes blazed with something glossy and insane.

  Even through the growing fever, Dragos recognized it. His mouth quirked something between a smug smile and a grimace of anticipation. Zgavra… but he’d told the zmeu to leave him. His pride wasn’t incinerated yet. He wasn’t calling on the monster to rescue him.

  As if it would.

  Dragos observed the man before him, silent as the dead. The burst of energy from the kick was gone, and he hung from the chains like a weathered scarecrow. Slack. Waiting.

  The other hemp-robed monks scurried forward, one with an elegant silver needle in his hand, almost as long as a forearm. The captive drew in a long, steadying breath. Anticipation is the killer, not the pain. His life was pain, and either he would escape it, or he would die in that little dungeon. Fatality calmed the pounding of his heart more than breathing.

  The knight and the field marshal stood by the door as Horator examined the torture implement. Mare?al Urs grunted and thumped a heavy fist on Julianos’s shoulder and nodded. “Keep watch. I have better things to do than watch the Lumanitori play with a chained lynx.”

  The knight nodded curtly and took up a watchful stance, hands clasped behind his back. Urs strode out, and the sigil-marked door fell shut with a heavy thud.

  Dragos flicked a glance at the sound. The single candle guttered, glinting on the slender needle’s promise. He swallowed down his rage enough to whisper, “You’d better never see me free of these chains, monk. They are the only power you have.”

  Horator scoffed. The other two monks didn’t appear to be as dismissive, skittering back a few steps like robed spiders. The monk stepped in, close enough to breathe in Dragos's face. A sickly sweet stench spilled from the man’s lips as he whispered back, “You’ll be begging me to give you Light’s grace by the end, striga.”

  He touched the needle’s tip under Dragos's chin with a slow, steady pressure. The prick became a pierce, and the man gripped the end, palm under it to drive it with inexorable steadiness upwards.

  His soliloquy was lost on Dragos, who felt like the monk was digging for his nose through his chin as discomfort became pain became consummate agony. The press and wiggle stopped when it hit the roof of his mouth. Despite himself, Dragos felt panic clamping around his soul. It took everything to stay still. The pain spiralled higher as he fought the rush of adrenaline that threatened to split his skull more than the needle.

  This monk would die.

  “You’ll speak no more spells for a while, monster. If you didn’t have crimes to answer for, I’d do more than pierce your tongue.”

  As if they asked many questions. With a vicious twist, the monk yanked the needle out. “Take his boots off.”

  Little rat. If the man were taller, he could have reached Dragos's hands, but the captive knew what he would do next. Incapacitate. Blood spilled down his neck and filled his mouth. The wound throbbed to the beat of his silent fury. With a spiteful snarl, he spat at Horator. A fine red spray spattered on the man’s chest.

  The pleasure at seeing the man get even more incensed was undercut by what it would cause. Even as the two servile monks bent to try to work around the rope binding Dragos's legs, Horator's lips peeled back, fist gripping the needle like a dagger.

  “Bastard!” The monk hissed, an eager light glinting as the needle plunged into Dragos's thigh. “Keep your filth off me!”

  It stuck in his bone. That exquisite pain joined the heaping collection with a sharp inhale. Cold metal seared brand hot as it ground into the meat of his leg. The monk’s hand slid in the blood already on the implement until he grabbed it with both hands and ripped it free.

  Dragos sagged on his chains, exhausted. His awareness slipped, and only returned when something new lit up with a fresh round of agony. He stopped fighting.

  He drifted instead, consciousness sliding backwards into the dark.

  The limitless black glowed with the spirit-veins of the world, gently pulsing to the dance of the uncountable glimmering spirits within. Dragos flowed like them, moving toward the Embrace on currents unseen but felt.

  Mountains loomed differently, didn’t appear across the veil as they did in the living world. Waves of a thicker darkness rose above, through which the tributaries and the rivers themselves spilled, as if material boundaries were an idea easily changed. Shadow and light, luminously alluring, pulled him along with a dull, roaring hum.

  Spirits caught in the distant flow crackled and tinkled like ice on a winter’s day. Zgavra’s words returned to him, as if the beast hovered beside his ear.

  “All things return.”

  Dragos glanced but saw no familiar aura. Was it with him? Was Mirel there? He knew she was dead, but the dead didn’t often arrive in Cel?lalt T?ram. As a son would know, though they weren’t blood kin—she’d left the mortal world.

  CRACK!

  Dragos's eye flew open. The ragged wound on his cheek screamed, tongue's throb resurging, and the blood-sealed eye still refused to budge. Horator had slapped him. Pizda.

  “Lumanitori.”

  The voice. Julianos swam into his focus. The cavaler approached the monks that surrounded Dragos, a hand up. The knight’s gaze flicked over all of them and fixed on Horator. “This man needs medicine and time to heal before you go further. He has other crimes to answer for.”

  “What crime is greater than his offense to the Light?” Horator demanded, shaking the bloody silver needle in the knight’s direction.

  “The reason he’s wanted in Sigovara.” Julianos stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Horator threw the needle down like a child angry at a toy. It clattered to the ground with the bright tone of silver and lay glistening in a shallow pool of Dragos's blood.

  “Fine.”

  Without more words, the monk strode off, hemp robes whispering his irritation. The other two glanced at each other and gathered the trays of devices ordained for Inquiry. Julianos watched them go before facing Dragos again.

  Dragos flashed him a bloody smile and had no energy for more. Without words, the knight undid his legs. Dragos didn’t look down. He had no desire to see the damage done to his toes and soles.

  He fell when Julianos undid his wrists, knees crumpling to hit the stone floor, and groaned past a mouthful of agony, “Futui.”

  The knight helped drag him back to his little cage. Once propped against iron bars, Dragos fell into a stupor between wakefulness and dreams, punctuated only by the rattle of his cage. A hand offered him a cup of medicine. He took it.

  Bitter but nourishing. Familiar herbs, boiled down into a tea that, though vile, soothed the throbbing of his body as he sipped. The flutter of his heart calmed. Some of the swelling in his nose left, and faint scents penetrated the blood clots. He wished it didn’t. The stink of mildew and his own body turned his stomach.

  “I’m not sure this is right…” Julianos murmured, his pause holding space for words he hadn’t said. Or didn’t have.

  “First time witnessing an Inquiry? Mine too,” Dragos mumbled around his swollen tongue. His whole face howled from the movement. Drained and weary, he couldn’t even fake a smile. “It’s not as spiritually uplifting as expected.”

  Dragos shifted, as if it would yield a more comfortable position. As the medicine sank in, he considered his options. Locked away in the Palisades, he had little chance of a successful escape. He glanced at his boots and the wad of socks beside them, avoiding the sight of his ravaged, throbbing feet in the dim candlelight.

  He’d assess the possibility of escape on the road. There were a few nights between the Palisades outpost and Sigovara. There was time to consider his options.

  Existence blurred.

  If the cavaler fell asleep on his stool, Dragos didn’t notice. He drifted in and out on waves of aches and the scraping of his nerves, which sang a slow trilling tune beneath his skin.

  When morning pierced the utter dark of the cell, he was already awake and stiff from the cell’s cramped confines. Cavalerul arrived to escort the prisoner, along with a monk, who had a bowl of water, a stack of cloth, and salve for his wounds. The knights dragged him out and bound him to immobility before the monk washed and treated his wounds.

  “Where is my box?” He asked, words garbled and lisping from the hot chunk of meat in his mouth that served as his tongue.

  “The Luminator that brought you is keeping it for study,” the monk said, tone curt, words brief.

  His flat gaze held none of the empathy a servant of the Light should have had. But then, Dragos knew he thought him a heretic. Striga, denied by the Light. Inhuman.

  “The prince needs what’s inside. And my claws. Don't let the monks keep them,” Dragos said in a dull, careless tone that belied his feelings. They had to travel with him. They could not be left behind.

  Though a small part of him hoped the monk had explored it. Touched things he shouldn’t have. Found his doom within its drawers.

  A damp cloth laid over his sealed eye finally softened the scab. He was able to blink again and was pleased to find he still had sight in that eye. Relief flooded him as he blinked. His feet took the longest to treat, bound with cloth in the end.

  Knights hauled him up, and more dragged than escorted him back up the stairs and into the burnt orange glow of the entrance hall. The blazing orange eye in the stained glass caught the rising sun. Dragos squinted away from it, having grown used to a mere candle’s flicker.

  Outside in the dusty courtyard, a livestock wagon sat waiting. Already loaded within was a cage much like the one he left. The people of Palisades all slowed their tasks, eyes turned up to watch the procession of the knights and their captive monster. Dragos felt every stare, through the cascade of straggling white hair, boring into his skull.

  Knights climbed up and hauled him up after, while the hands of others shoved his bruised body up and into the cage at the front. The iron door slammed shut, a mirror to its twin in the basement of the monastery.

  Two sets of bars, now. Iron, and beyond, the wooden, meant to contain animals. Instead, the knights rounded up people from the stockades and herded them on board. He squashed the hint of dismay when they all pressed away from the iron cage and its tightly bound captive. He ignored their fearful presence after that, closing his eyes.

  Better to sit in silence.

  The wagoner’s whip cracked. The cart lurched and rolled. They passed through the shadow of the main gate and rattled onto the stone-paved road. The small group of people clustered at the tail, against the gate, murmured too softly to hear.

  The sun beat down on his bowed head, and he slept in the warmth of the sweet summer air, to the sound of hushed voices and creaking wood. Distance stretched by the changes of scenery and whispered conversations between prisoners.

  He roused when the wagon stopped in the shade by a brook. The oxen were watered. A familiar voice caught his attention. “Striga, medicine.”

  Julianos thrust an arm through both sets of bars, holding a cup. Groggily, Dragos took it.

  “Still with me?” he asked, tasting the brew. It was the same as before. A decent concoction of herbs to soothe fever and inflammation. Dragos had to trust his body to do the rest. It had survived wounds before, though never this severe.

  “I’ve been on caravan duty for a year,” the knight replied, then belatedly looked around. He huffed and rolled his shoulders. “We escort criminals and tithes, mostly. The Luminatori usually deal with heretics. You’re something of a special case.”

  “Huh,” Dragos murmured. He sucked on the wound in his mouth and spat. It didn’t taste like infection. Good. Despite the garble, he forced his words out. “The order formed by Zaleska, the first Cavaler al Lumin? dedicated to protecting humanity, has fallen into guard duty. Do they still accept swineherders like her, or are they all nobility, now?”

  Julianos’ eyes flicked to the side. Dragos hadn’t counted the guards, but there were a few near enough to hear. The knight huffed and said, “Not everyone born noble has more than swineherds.”

  Dragos grunted acceptance of the dodged question. The answer was obvious. He handed the cup back, and as the medicine settled in, he turned his attention to his travelling ‘companions’ for the first time since they were loaded in.

  Seven in all: three women, two men, and two children.

  It was clear enough that one couple and the children were a family. The other man had clothing that suggested he was a bard, the faded patchwork silk of his overcoat a hallmark of his profession. The two women clinging to each other were uncommonly beautiful. Seemed beauty was a crime—and Dragos wondered if any of them had to do with criminal activity or blasphemy at all.

  His aching, muddled head judged before he could stop himself. He knew nothing of any of them. In the midst of considering their backgrounds, one of the children looked over her shoulder and pointed at the crossroads. A stone bridge crossed the whispering brook just past it.

  As she stared, her eyes slowly widened, the whites glaring out around her dark irises. Her little hands clutched at the woman’s ragged hemp chemise.

  She whispered, “What is that, mama?”

  Dragos felt it before he twisted to follow the child’s gaze. Pressure in the air, an ominous tingle coursed along his arms. As he watched, a shadow cast beneath the bridge elongated. Slowly it crept, finding grass and tree shade to hunker beneath, but once he’d seen it, he couldn’t look away.

  “I don’t see anything, draga mea. What do you see?”

  Trapped in an iron cage, without his claws or his box, Dragos watched as the Nerostit? slithered closer. None of the guards noticed the irregular shadow moving on its own. No one but Dragos—and a frightened child.

  Mare?al (ma-reh-SHAL): Field Marshal

  (STREE-guh): All manner of creatures with wounded souls. It could refer to the undead, to witches, or ghosts, depending on the context.

  Cel?lalt t?ram (chel-uh-LULT tuh-RUHM):The other realm, place of spirits never living.

  Pizda (PIZ-dah): Curse word. Equates to genitals.

  Futui (Fu-too-ee): Dragos uses the f-bomb on occasion.

  Cavaler (kah-vah-LEHR): Like a knight belonging to the Luminatorii order.

  Draga mea (DRA-gah MEH-ah): My dearest.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.