Quill of Thieves

Chapter 8

Abel hadn't been his name. It had been the girl's. Abel.

Astrid wondered if they were in love.

If so, it must be a strange kind of love, for the boy's elemental connection had been killing her. 

Astrid's heart had thrummed at that realization. His elemental connection!

It was true, then. There was another human with control of the seven elemental threads.

Another living Author.

Just as she had expected and her mother had hoped for. 

Her conviction had only grown as Astrid had perched on the roof outside that dodgy room at the inn. She had observed them both as the girl had grown sicker and weaker the longer the mysterious young forgotten Author had held vigil at her side. The cuff around her arm had squeezed.

"This was designed not only for your protection, daughter. Unchecked power leads to chaos." Her mother's words haunted her. "It is that power that could claim a soul."

Astrid shivered even now, because she knew the kind of weakness Abel had been experiencing intimately. After all, it was the same feeling that swamped her after her mother's Monverta fed on her strength. Not only that, but her own Spirit's elemental thread had tasted the tension in the inn's room, had sensed the resonant struggle of two wills competing for dominance. The same flavor of pain she'd felt in her gut when the boy's power had attacked her own.

Unfortunate, really, that the girl had no magic of her own. Instead, the boy's leeching elements had been competing against Abel's very soul. Draining it. There hadn't even been a chance for a fair fight.

What a pity to be so defenseless.

If there was one thing Astrid hated above all else, it was being stranded in vulnerability. So, she'd healed the girl. She'd let her magic extend from her soul. Her power had flowed smoothly against the cuff, wrapped around the boy's power that gripped the girl in its destructive vice, and wound it around her own instead.

Astrid wasn't exactly sure why she'd done it. She wasn't normally so selfless. A slight frown tugged at her lips as she felt the extinguishing cuff around her arm. Her magic was still beneath its weight at the moment and, as a result, so was the boy's. At least now she had a constant way to track him; he was, quite literally, attached to her. If he tried to feed off anyone else again, Astrid would know, and she would stop him.

Though, she did wonder if the girl had deserved it.

Such were the thoughts circulating her brain as she entered Treason's Tower.

The tower went deeper into the mountain than it appeared. Its main entrance was circular—the part of the tower in which Astrid trained with the Scribes—but there was a hidden tunnel behind a thick tapestry depicting Queen Davina's victory during the Purge that burrowed nearly two kilometers into the stone. Two of her mother's personal guards stood on the opposite side of the tapestry. Neither one of them protested as she pushed it aside and entered the tunnel. She supposed they should have saluted her, at least, considering she was of higher rank than them, but she had more important battles to fight than ones against improper etiquette.

Nevertheless, she couldn't resist snapping, "Straighten up, won't you?" to them as she strode by.

There were seven prison cells contained in the tunnel: three to her right, three to her left, and the final one sat at the very end of the kilometer walkway. It was the cell set deepest into the mountain. As such, it was also the coldest. Astrid's breath condensed in the air as she strode to a stop in front of the furthest cell, rapped her knuckles against the copper bars—made from the same alchemical mixture as her cuff—and demanded into the dankness, "Open your mouth!"