Copper Ravens(75)

“If you die, I will kill myself and follow you to the underworld,” I declared. “If you dare leave me, I will torment your soul until the end of time.”

The bastard smiled. “Good.” Then he kissed me, lightly at first, but when he would have moved away, I threw my arms around him and held him fast. Since he wasn’t wearing anything, I was very aware of how much he enjoyed that.

“Sara,” he began, but my kisses silenced him. Right then, I needed him more than I’d ever needed anything, more than breath or water or sunlight. Micah drew me to the far side of the room, down onto a heap of the oversized floor cushions. We’d only made love once before while dreamwalking, and it had been amazing, so amazing that I hadn’t wanted to repeat it, in case that one time had been a fluke.

It wasn’t.

Afterward, Micah stroked my back while I lay on my stomach, watching my slumbering body. “My body’s wearing clothes, but my dreamself isn’t,” I mused.

“Did you think your clothes would just disappear?” he asked, and I laughed. We cuddled a few heartbeats longer, then Micah went from teasing to grave.

“I must go now. We’ve dallied long enough.” He rose then and murmured a few words that extinguished the drug-laced incense. Someday, far from here, he was going to have to teach me a few of these tricks. I was starting to think he was leaving all the good stuff out of Sadie’s Magic 101 lessons. “By the time your body wakes, I will be here.”

“If you’re not, I will come for you,” I promised. “We will leave this place together.”

“I am counting on it.” Micah squeezed my hand, and then he was gone.





23

Vibrating again…

I opened my eyes—my physical eyes this time—and saw Micah’s hands gently shaking my shoulders; once again, he was the source of my seismic event. I opened my mouth to speak, realized that that wouldn’t be happening, then rolled onto my hands and knees and retched violently. Aw, I ruined the pretty silk pillows.

“The incense,” Micah murmured as he rubbed my back. The nausea passed soon enough, and Micah went on to wake Sadie and Max. They had similar, disgusting, reactions to the smoke.

“What was in that stuff?” I rasped. Sadie had gotten over it fairly quickly, but Max’s skin had taken on a grayish cast. He was coated in a thin sheen of sweat, and he couldn’t stop puking. “Will he be okay?” I asked, jerking my chin toward Max.

“He will,” Micah assured as he helped me to my feet. I saw that he wasn’t naked any longer, but had covered himself in dark iron armor. He’d even fashioned himself a short sword, complete with a belt.

“The manacles and hinges?” I asked, to which he nodded. “Did any guards see you?”

“They won’t be following,” he said flatly. As a rule, Micah avoided violence, mostly because I couldn’t stomach it, but since these people—goblins, orcs, whatever they were—had captured us, I was fine with Micah doling out whatever punishment he saw fit. And after the beating they had given Micah, I wouldn’t mind seeing this place razed to the ground.

Once the smoke had dispersed and Max’s stomach was somewhat calm, Micah informed my siblings of our recent capture and Mom’s interrogation over Dad’s whereabouts.

“I don’t remember being captured,” Max protested, rather weakly, since our current situation proved otherwise.

“I remember you walking into a deep shadow, then the shadow moved,” Sadie whispered. “Mom yelled for you to stop, but you were too far ahead to hear her. Then, we woke up here.”

Micah nodded. “They took Max first, as an enticement for Maeve,” he said. “They could not risk her flight.”

Max pushed himself upright, wobbling only a bit. “All right. Let’s get Mom and get out of this hellhole.”

Our progress toward Mom was ridiculously slow, being that Max needed to vomit every few minutes, the retching punctuated by some Olympic-caliber belches. I wondered if, as the first one captured, he’d been exposed to some other drug along with the smoke. Whatever it was seemed to be working its way out of his system, albeit in the most revolting way possible.

“Maybe you should sit,” Sadie suggested after he yakked on her feet.

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“Then puke on a bad guy next time!” she huffed.

Eventually, we made it to the last bend in the corridor before Mom’s cell. We’d only encountered two guards along the corridors, both of whom Micah had quickly and quietly dispatched.

“Wait here,” Micah murmured, then he crept forward and peered around the corner.