2: Leashed to the enemy

Bounding down the slope of the mountain felt like the world was being ripped out from under Elena's feet.

She did not scream. The air had been knocked out of her the moment the stranger's arm clamped around her waist. All she saw was the Palace the only home she had ever known shrinking into a puncture of light against the black sky.

Then came the impact.

Sloane did not land like a man. He landed like a falling stone. His boots hit the damp earth at the mountain's base with a jolt that rattled through Elena's skull. The world went dark.

When her eyes opened, she was not on silk sheets. She was on a bed of rotting pine needles and sharp rocks.

The air was wrong. In the Palace, every breath was filtered through vents and smelled of lavender. Here, the air was thick and wet. It smelled of decay. Of dirt. Of blood.

Blood.

The memory hit her like a fist. Caspian. The blade moving faster than her eyes could follow. The way his head slipped from his shoulders. The wet sound it made hitting the marble.

Her stomach turned inside out. She rolled onto her side and threw up, her body heaving until there was nothing left but bitter bile.

"Finally awake."

Elena flinched so hard she cracked her head against a tree root. She scrambled backward, her breath coming in shallow gasps. "Get away from me. Stay away."

Sloane did not move. He sat on a fallen log a few feet away, his charcoal jacket gone. His white dress shirt was ruined splattered with dark, dried blood. He held a silver pocket watch, his thumb tracing the glass face with a slow, steady rhythm.

"I am not going anywhere," he said. His voice was low, dry. "Trust me. If I could be a thousand miles away from you, I would be."

"You murdered him." Her voice cracked. Her eyes stayed on the blood on his cuffs. "He was a good man. Why?"

Sloane looked up. For the first time, Elena saw the true coldness in his gray eyes. They were not human. They were the eyes of something that had watched too much and felt too little.

"He was a guard dog for a slaughterhouse," Sloane said, rising to his feet. "And he was in the way of a debt that is twenty-four years overdue."

"Debt?" she spat.

Then her chest tightened.

The Withdrawal was starting. Her body, used to hourly doses of the High Priest's medicine, was beginning to revolt. Her hands shook. Her vision blurred at the edges.

"I cannot breathe." She pressed her palm against her chest. Her heart was a wild, frantic thing beneath her ribs. "The air is poison. I need my medicine. I need to go back."

Sloane took a step toward her.

Elena tried to crawl away. The distance between them grew.

A crack of energy split the air.

Sloane let out a sound she had never heard from anything living—a guttural, animal noise of pure agony. He collapsed to one knee, clutching his wrist as the golden brand blazed to life.

23:58:59… 23:58:58…

The light was blinding. It turned the dark trees into skeletal shadows. Sloane's skin began to fade, turning a ghostly gray. Wisps of smoke rose from his wrist, his essence leaking out of him like sand through a cracked hourglass.

Elena watched, frozen.

"What is happening to you?" she whispered.

"Come closer." His voice was a wheeze, his teeth clenched. "The Shackle… the gods… damn them… get closer."

She did not want to move. She wanted to watch him dissolve into ash. The man who had killed Caspian. The monster who had dragged her into the cold.

But as Sloane faded, heat began to build in her own chest.

It started as a warmth. Then a burn. Then a fire spreading through her veins like liquid metal. Her skin began to glow a hot, angry amber. It felt like her blood was boiling. Without him to ground her, the thing inside her the sickness, the power, whatever it was was expanding, pressing against her ribs, threatening to tear her apart.

Her body moved before her mind caught up.

She lunged forward. Her hand found his arm. Her fingers pressed against the golden brand.

The forest went silent.

The timer froze.

23:58:12.

Sloane slumped forward, his forehead dropping against her shoulder. His breathing was ragged, his body heavy against hers. He smelled of rain and old power and something metallic she could not name.

Elena sat stiff as stone, her hands shaking as they stayed locked on his wrist.

She hated the touch. She hated that his skin felt like cold silk against her fingers. But most of all, she hated that the moment she touched him, her own pain vanished. The fire in her chest went out. The Withdrawal stopped clawing at her insides.

She needed him. And she hated him for it.

"Do not get used to it." His voice was a whisper against her neck. He pulled back slowly, keeping her hand pressed to his wrist. "I am not your hero, Savior. I am the man who came to put a knife in your heart. The only reason you are alive is because the gods turned me into your leash."

"I hate you," she breathed.

"Good." He stood, pulling her up with him. "At least we agree on something."

The ground shivered.

It was not an earthquake. It was a pulse. Deep and artificial, vibrating up through the earth. From somewhere inside the mountain, a massive gear began to turn, the sound grinding through the forest like a sleeping beast waking up.

Sloane went still. He pulled out his pocket watch. It was vibrating, the glass face flickering with red light.

"The Sanguine Clock," he muttered. "They are using the blood they stole from you to force a Recall."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they are trying to drag you back to your cage using your own DNA."

A wave of wind swept through the forest. It was a curtain of energy, low and wide, smelling and burning. As it passed over them, Elena felt it a violent tug at the base of her spine. Like a thousand invisible hooks had snagged her soul and started pulling.

She screamed.

Her body began to blur at the edges. She could see through her own hands, her skin turning to red mist, particles floating toward the Palace.

"Hold on to me!" Sloane roared.

His arms locked around her waist. He pulled her against his chest, one hand crushing hers against his wrist, the other wrapped around her back. The wind clashed with the gold of the Shackle. The two powers shrieked against each other, a war of blood against divinity.

For a heartbeat, the forest vanished.

Elena saw her bedroom. The silk sheets. The silver vials on the nightstand. The High Priest's face, twisted in concentration, his lips moving around words she could not hear.

Then came a sound like a snapped violin string. The wind shattered.

The forest returned. The silence was deafening.

Sloane stood there, still holding her against his chest. His breathing was heavy, his heart hammering against her ear. He looked down at his wrist. The timer was still frozen.

"The Recall failed," he said. His voice was grim. "The Shackle is stronger than their machine. They cannot bring you back, Elena. Not through time. Not through magic."

He let go of her like her skin burned him.

She collapsed to the dirt, her body shaking, her chest heaving. The Withdrawal was back now, gnawing at her bones. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold her body together.

"They will never stop." She looked up at the distant spires of the mountains where the palace reside glowing against the night sky. "The High Priest… he said I belonged to the Circle."

"You do not belong to anyone anymore." Sloane turned his back on her. He looked toward the dark peaks in the distance, mountains she had only seen in paintings. "But you are dying, Little Savior. The poison they fed you is turning your blood into acid. If you die, I turn to die. I am not letting that happen."

He looked over his shoulder at her. His gray eyes were flat, empty, but there was something else underneath. Something that looked like exhaustion.

"Fortunately," he said, "I know someone who can help."

He did not ask for permission. He walked over, hauled her up, and threw her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing. She was too weak to fight. Too weak to even speak.

He stepped into the brush, his boots crunching over dried leaves, carrying her deeper into the dark.