29

Michael was awoken at dawn by the cell door opening. A guard was standing there, stifling a yawn as he clipped his keys back to his belt.

“Head to the infirmary. Get your shot, and then you can return to your barracks.”

The soldier left, and Michael pulled himself up to his feet, slipping his jacket on and patting down the creases from it being folded before climbing up out of the tomb and heading to the infirmary. There was no guard placed on him, which seemed strange, and there was a thick fog all across the ground. He couldn’t see more than twenty feet in front of himself. If he’d been Xiu, this would’ve been the day that he’d tried to escape, but he had no desire to do that. At least not yet. He made his way to the infirmary. There were no medics there yet, and all the beds were as empty as they had been the previous night. In the back he saw Crim crushing something with a mortar and pestle, muttering to herself as she did so. She looked up at him and gave him a smile with half-lidded eyes.

“Go ahead and sit down. I have your shot ready. This will be the last one I’ll have to make for a while, and your last one ever.”

She came up to him, grabbing a syringe from a nearby table and flicking the needle twice.

Michael didn’t say anything—he wasn’t sure if his tone would betray him. Instead, he simply tried to look impassively forward as he always did when she gave the shot.

She leaned close, rubbing his arm gently as she rolled up his sleeve. She gave him the injection and whispered in his ear as she closed the injection site with a leaf.

“I guess you’ll just have to visit me because you want to next time instead.”

In spite of his contempt for her, he shivered a bit as her warm breath entered his ear.

“I heard you got into a fight with poor Marcus. He’s a nice boy, but he’s just that, even with his past life, a boy.” She moved to dispose of her syringe. “You seem to have kept more of the man in you from that life.”

He could feel the heat from the injection travel through his blood quickly. It seemed to warm him up. He very suddenly felt as amped up. Like he was in the front row of a concert surrounded by beautiful women. He could feel his control start to slip almost immediately. Had this been part of what she’d done to Marcus?

While she was distracted disposing of her syringe, he tore the leaf from his arm, letting it fall to the ground.

“Crim?” he asked to get her attention.

She looked and saw the blood leaking from his arm. She took a few quick steps toward him to examine the site.

Michael grabbed her forefinger and snapped it quickly backward, then he placed a hand over her mouth and forced her to the ground.

She screamed, but Michael kept his grip firm and held onto her broken finger.

“Stop struggling, or it’ll make this worse.”

She did struggle a bit, and the pain of moving against her broken finger brought tears to her eyes, and she forced herself to be still.

“I am not a horny idiot to be manipulated, and neither are my friends. You will leave Marcus be, and the rest of my friends as well. Understood?”

She stared at him with hate, tears in the corner of her eyes. She nodded.

Michael nodded back and healed her finger, dragging her to her feet.

He smiled at her. “I’ll see you next time I’m here healing.”

She said nothing, just eyeing the nearest syringe.

Michael noticed but turned his back anyway.

“I know the injections you’ve been giving everyone are altered. I wouldn’t be surprised if what Marcus did is not the first time something like that has happened in your presence. If you come after me and mine for anything, think about how much more scrutiny you’ll be under.”

He stepped out into the fog, surprised by a number of things. Surprised by his violence, surprised that the situation had worked out as it had, and surprised at how little remorse he was feeling. He definitely wasn’t feeling like himself. It had to be the result of the injection she’d given him. He’d hurt plenty of people in training and during the exercise over the last two weeks, but this was very different. It was a woman, for one thing, and it wasn’t training. Still, when he tried to summon some empathy for her or remorse for what she’d done, he thought about the different colored vials she’d mixed for them, the buttons she’d pushed, and the caning Marcus had gone through. A broken finger was a light punishment.

He was halfway to the barracks, his mind a million miles away and his blood still hot in his veins, when he heard a whistling sound for a moment, followed by a sharp pain in his left shoulder and a loss of balance. He fell, only barely catching himself. There was something thin and wooden sticking out of him, blood flowing freely from where it had struck. An arrow? Had Crim grabbed a bow and arrow and run after him right after he’d left? She would have had to have run past him without him noticing to shoot him from the front.

He heard another whistle, and there was a thud as a second arrow hit his gut. He rolled, the arrow shafts snapping as he did so, and pain exploding from the wounds as muscle and flesh tore, but a third arrow missed him. He tried to pull himself up to his feet, and another arrow struck him in the shin. He cursed and tried to yell, but another arrow hit him in the back and pierced his lung, causing his voice to come out as a gasp as he fell forward.

He placed a hand on his chest and started to heal himself as he ripped the arrows out. The arrowheads were triangular, and he could feel them tear through him as he ripped them out so that the wounds would close. He heard slow, deliberate footsteps from behind him, and when they reached him, he felt something else enter his back right where the arrow that had just been pulled from his lungs had been. It was sharper and short, a dagger, he guessed through the pain.

He was turned around with another kick and screamed without air as he was rolled onto the dagger’s handle. He looked up to see a man wearing a hood and holding a shortbow, a sword at his belt. His pace had been slow because he’d had a limp. It was Desdin, the horsemanship instructor.

Michael looked up at him in surprise.

Desdin returned his gaze with a look of disgust on his face.

“Why?” Michael wheezed.

“You killed the son of the man who saved my life when the Tusynians killed my horse and shattered my leg. I saw him in that face you stole from his son and wrote to him to confirm his loss. I had hoped to kill you during the exercise”—he stopped suddenly with a look of pain coming across his face—“but it was not to be.”

The moderator that Marcus had attacked, that he’d been accused of murdering. He had the same color and style of hair as Michael and was the same size. It was dark when the murder had happened. It must’ve been Desdin, thinking he’d taken Michael by surprise. The strange looks that Desdin had been giving him since he’d first shown up to his horsemanship class made sense as well. He’d thought he was seeing an old friend, the father of the body that Michael was in. Had he convinced the guards to leave him alone as well? How much had gone into his planning? He had slid one hand under his back and started to heal himself with it hidden.

Desdin pulled the sword from his belt and aimed it carefully over Michael’s heart. He raised it and went to slam it into him.

Michael channeled his magicka and whispered soundlessly “fuerte” to summon a shield over his heart rather than his fists. It was a desperate move, and the incompleteness of the shield meant that the blade slid rather than was deflected and stabbed through the skin near his armpit. He grunted and spun toward the blade, hurting himself further as he kicked out at Desdin’s bad leg.

The man fell with a yelp, letting go of his sword.

Michael rolled away from him, continually healing himself until the dagger, sword, and remaining arrows were torn from his body by his violent motion. His vision blurred as the effort of his healing began to exhaust him, but he pushed through. He considered running away, but Desdin was clearly a capable marksman and still had his bow. Michael instead kicked his bad leg again as he was trying to get away and then stumbled forward himself, falling on top of him.

They both struck at each other on the ground, not remembering any of their lessons in ground fighting and instead focusing on survival. At some point Michael’s hand wound up in Desdin’s quiver. He yanked an arrow out of it and drove it into the man’s gut, feeling hot blood spurt out onto his hand as he did so. He tried to yank the arrow out, but the shaft broke. He jammed the broken shaft into Desdin’s ribs as the man tried to push him away with a bloody hand, leaving a red mark on his face. Michael watched the light go out in his eyes and collapsed next to him. Realizing that at some point he’d broken a number of fingers on his left hand.

He heard footsteps approaching quickly and waved vaguely in their direction before placing his hand back on his chest, using the last of his energy to heal himself one more time.