The Songbird

Chapter 16: Say It Like You Mean It

When Mina woke, she did so silenced.

Her wrists and ankles were once again tied, and the gag around her mouth was tighter than the first time. She was back in her tent, Talmage sitting nearby and looking thoroughly disappointed.

"You promised you wouldn't scream again," he said, voice carrying a hint of worry as he briefly glanced outside the tent.

She could hear sounds coming from beyond the cloth walls, then faint rustling as Talmage ducked out to speak with someone. All the while, she seethed. She fantasized about breaking out of her bonds and running straight for the Blue Alley, the desire to strangle Lorenzo with her own ropes so potent that she physically ached at the thought.

"I guess we should count ourselves lucky," Talmage suddenly said, coming back inside. "I broke protocol to send scouts into the cave, but the knights weren't here. Wouldn't want to imagine what could've happened if they were when you did that."

Unable to take it any longer, Mina dug her shoulder into her cheek and forced the gag down as much as she could. Talmage's eyes grew wide in panic, but she spoke before he could do anything.

"Untie me," she ordered, words clear enough despite the gag only being halfway off her mouth. "Now."

He looked as if he were going to protest, but a strange sort of emptiness quickly filled his gaze. Almost outside of himself, Talmage walked over to her without a fight and began to free the restraints. He did so methodically and efficiently, none of the careless ease she'd previously seen left in him.

When she was free, Mina regarded the absence of anything in his eyes with a strange sort of unease. He looked into the distance, swaying slightly on his feet as a tension-filled silence grew in thickness.

But as quickly as it happened, Talmage broke the reverie.

"What did you just do?" He whispered, hand coming to rub his forehead as awareness was reborn in his eyes.

"I told you to untie me, and you did."

"You controlled me."

"What?" Mina asked. "You did it yourself."

"No, I didn't. The world went dark, and now you stand free."

She was about to protest, but a sudden wave of fatigue gripped her body like iron. The world tilted sideways as she careened, and the only thing to stop her from hitting the ground was Talmage.

"Careful," he said, holding her upright and trying to shake some awareness back into her.

"Why does this keep happening?" She groaned, head feeling as if it were being battered by rocks.

"You're bursting with magic that you don't know how to use," he told her. "It jumps out when you're angry or upset, and it's taking everything out of you."

In her haze of thoughts, empty eyes of phantom strangers from The Square were gazing back at her. One after another, no hint of awareness as they threw her coins, unable to look away even if they wanted to. She'd wondered without daring to think too deeply, too desperate to regret and too tired to try something else. But there was no running anymore, nothing to erase what she'd just done to Talmage and had unknowingly been doing to alley dwellers for years.

More than just them, she thought. That knight, too. The one who gave me coins. Him, Talmage, all those people...it was me. I made them.

The knowledge of that magic and what it had done for Mina tore a rift down the middle of her soul. One side of that rift was horrified, unable to grasp the fact that she'd forced people to do things against their will to ensure her own longevity. That she'd clouded their minds and invaded their autonomy.