Chapter One
Kiva Corentine was on fire.
Flames scorched her body, and blood boiled inside her veins, causing her to moan and thrash and shove at the hands holding her down.
“She’s burnin’ up,” came a gruff male voice. “Get her some water.”
The smell of vomit overwhelmed Kiva’s senses, close enough to make her realize it was hers, causing her to gag anew.
She was sick.
No — not sick.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she wasn’t suffering from an illness.
A haze of memories came to her: blue-gold eyes and kiss-swollen lips, deadly shadows and broken glass, caramel dust and iron bars. But then her thoughts scattered, the images seared from her mind, the unrelenting heat all that she knew, all that she was.
“Gods, she’s a mess,” said a female voice, full of disgust.
A wooden tumbler was forced between Kiva’s lips. Water trickled down her parched throat and sloshed over her chin.
“She is,” agreed the man. “And she’s your mess. I don’t got time for the dead.”
The hands holding Kiva disappeared. She tried to sit up, but flames twisted around her torso. Her eyelids fluttered open for the briefest of seconds, but she could see no fire. It was her — the inferno was inside her.
“She’s not dead,” argued the woman.
“Give it time,” said the man, his voice further away, as if he was leaving. “She’s had too much of the good stuff to survive without it. Best leavin’ her to her fate. Or give her a mercy killin’, if you can stomach it.” A snort. “I doubt you’ll have any issues doin’ that.”
“You’re the prison healer,” the woman said angrily. “It’s your job to help her.”
Another snort from the man. “No one can help her now.”
Kiva barely heard his departing footsteps over the pounding in her ears.
Her heart was beating unnaturally fast. Dangerously fast.
Part of her knew she should be concerned about her state, but that part couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even think beyond the all-consuming agony blazing throughout her body.
A stream of curse words penetrated her pain, followed by a calloused hand snaking behind her neck and hauling her roughly upward, the tumbler pressing to her lips once more.
“Drink,” ordered the woman, forcing water into Kiva’s mouth. “If you want to live, you need to drink.”
Kiva tried to follow the command, choking on the liquid, all the while wondering why. If this was living, surely she was better off dead. A mercy killing, the man had said. Kiva wanted that — a quick end to the flaming hell, the gaping hole in her heart gone forever.
A hole she knew had nothing to do with her current state.
Blue-gold eyes flashed across her mind once more, the fleeting image spiking a different kind of torture, before it was gone again.
“Damn it, Kiva, drink,” came the angry female voice.
But Kiva couldn’t drink any more. Shivers began to rack her frame, fire warring with ice. Sweat coated her skin even as she trembled from the sudden cold, but when a blanket was thrown over her, she whimpered and
begged for it to be taken away.
Too hot.
Too cold.
Too much.
“Please,” she rasped out, unsure what — or who — she was asking.
“Please.”
“You don’t die like this,” the woman said firmly. “Not like this.”
But Kiva didn’t believe her. Because she wanted it to end — all of it.
And when she could no longer stomach the torment, she welcomed the blissful embrace of oblivion.
When Kiva opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the snake.
The room around her was spinning, the poorly lit space full of empty pallets and threadbare blankets, a familiar acrid smell tugging at her memory.
She was in the infirmary, whispered some distant part of her mind.
Zalindov’s infirmary.
A warning bleated through her, but she couldn’t summon any real concern, not with the taste of caramel coating her tongue, not when the snake opened its mouth to speak.
“Snap out of it!” the serpent hissed, shaking her roughly. It sounded a lot like the woman who had shoved water down her throat.
Kiva giggled and reached out to touch it.
Her hand was slapped away. “You need to follow me down to the tunnels, or they’re going to kill you. Are you listening? If you don’t work, you’ll be dead.”
At the snake’s urgency, Kiva sat up, her head lolling to the side.
Through blurry eyes, she saw that she wore a soiled gray tunic, the smell of her own sick making her nose wrinkle.
“Gods, you have no idea what’s happening, do you?” muttered the snake. It coiled around Kiva’s back and pulled her to her feet. “They dosed you with too much angeldust on your journey here, and now you can’t function without it.” The serpent dragged her through the infirmary. “I managed to get my hands on some, enough to help you through the next few days. We have to wean you off it slowly, or your organs will shut down.
Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Talking snakes,” Kiva said dreamily, stumbling as she was towed out into the sunshine. She raised her hand and grinned at the rainbow colors all around her. “Pretty day.”
The snake spat a nasty word, then said through clenched teeth, “Kiva, it’s me, Cresta. Pull yourself together.”
Cresta.
Not a snake, then.
But close.
Cresta Voss. The name elicited feelings of resentment and fear in Kiva, accompanied by images of a muscular young woman with matted red hair, hazel eyes, and a serpent tattoo inked down the side of her face. She was a quarrier at Zalindov, someone Kiva had known for over five years.
Someone who had openly despised Kiva for those five years. Someone who was the leader of the prison rebels, loyal to Kiva’s sister, Zuleeka Corentine, the now-queen of Evalon sitting atop a stolen throne after having taken everything from Kiva. Everything — and everyone.
“Bad snake,” Kiva mumbled, trying to free herself from Cresta’s arm.
“Go ’way.”
“Stop that,” Cresta said, tightening her grip and guiding Kiva off the gravel onto the dead grass, heading toward the domed stone building at the center of the grounds. “You won’t last the day without me.”
“Will too.” Kiva stumbled again as she navigated the dried clumps underfoot, the colors continuing to swirl in her vision, bouncing off the limestone perimeter walls surrounding them in the distance. “Or won’t.
Doesn’t matter.”
“Do you even hear yourself?” Cresta asked as they skirted a large crater dug out of the earth, something that snagged Kiva’s hazy attention. It took effort to summon the memory, how the watchtower had exploded and crumbled down on itself. There was nothing left of it now but the ghost of where it once stood.
“Mot.” Kiva breathed the name of the man who had destroyed it, a moment of clarity gripping her thoughts. “Where’s Mot?”
“Dead,” Cresta said flatly. “By the Warden’s own hand, right after the riot — the one you used to escape.”
Sorrow touched Kiva’s chest as she thought of the morgue worker who had cared for her and helped her survive the Trials, but she couldn’t hold on to it for long before it vanished like the wind. She shook her head, trying to clear the spinning colors, trying to remember what the snake had said. “No one escapes Zalindov.” A manic laugh slipped out. “Not even when they do.”
Cresta was kept from responding by the approach of more gray-clad prisoners moving stiffly across the dead field, their faces lined with fatigue as they too headed toward the domed building.
“You need to get it together before we reach the tunnels, or the guards will send you to the Abyss,” Cresta warned under her breath. “They might not even bother with that.”
“Don’t care,” Kiva mumbled, dragging her feet.
The quarrier’s grip turned painful as she hissed, “You once told me I was strong and powerful and I could survive anything. That I owed it to myself to find a reason to live. Now I’m telling you the same, Kiva Meridan.”
Slumping in Cresta’s hold, Kiva said, “That’s not my name.”
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
“You are who you choose to be,” Cresta declared in a hard voice. “You are what you choose to be. And right now, you need to choose to live. You can figure out the rest later.”
Even in her sorry state, the words left a mark on Kiva. The idea that anything was her choice was laughable. For ten years in Zalindov, she’d lived by the choices of others, fighting to survive, day after day. When she’d finally tasted freedom, the decisions she’d made had done nothing but lead her right back to where she’d started, after losing more than she’d ever imagined possible.
The hole in her heart gave a pang; not even the angeldust could mask it completely.
“Make no mistake, I don’t care about you,” Cresta went on mercilessly.
“But you saved my life once, and because of that, I owe you a blood debt.
So you’re going to survive today, and you’re going to survive tomorrow, and you’re going to keep on surviving until those gods-damned drugs are out of your system. After that, you can decide what the hell you want to do with yourself. Live or die, you’ll be out of my hands. But until then, you’ll listen to me. And I’m telling you to buck up and prepare yourself for the worst day of your life.”
Kiva was so distracted by Cresta’s speech that she hadn’t realized they’d arrived at the domed building and were lining up with the other inmates, all readying to descend the ladder shaft down into the tunnels.
Struggling to maintain a steady stream of thought, Kiva murmured, “Why are you here?”
Cresta made a frustrated sound. “I just told you.”
Kiva shook her fuzzy head. She must not have been given the same amount of angeldust that had kept her mostly unconscious for the last few weeks, the lower dosage affording her enough lucidity to ask, her words heavily slurred, “No, why aren’t you in the quarry?”
There was a moment of hesitation before Cresta answered, “Rooke changed my work allocation after the riot. He didn’t like that I’d survived for so long, so now I’m a tunneler, facing an exhausting and inevitable death.”
Six months Cresta would have. A year at the most. That was the fate of a Zalindov tunneler.
A fate Kiva shared, now that she was no longer the prison healer.
She should have been terrified, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
For some reason, she didn’t think the angeldust was to blame.
“Next,” came a bored-sounding male voice, causing Kiva to look up from the dead grass to see that they’d reached the mouth of the building, where a pair of guards were ushering prisoners toward a set of ladders poking out from a rectangular hole in the earth.
“I know you’re messed up right now,” Cresta said urgently as the inmates in front of them disappeared into the shaft. “But whatever you do, don’t let go of the ladders.” At the blank look on Kiva’s face, she hurried to add, “Think of something important to you. The boy — the one with the stutter. You love him. Hold on for him.”
Tipp.
A foggy memory of the freckle-faced, gap-toothed boy blazed across Kiva’s mind, causing the pain in her heart to throb anew.
“Next,” repeated the guard, waving toward Kiva and Cresta.
“One rung at a time,” Cresta said. “Do it for the boy. I’ll be right beside you.”
Kiva nodded dully, her head feeling too heavy for her shoulders, but at the same time, impossibly light. She tripped over her own feet as Cresta prodded her forward, the guards watching with amusement. They knew who she was, how far she’d fallen. They were enjoying this.
Fire rose within her, but it didn’t last, the angeldust sweeping it away by the time her hands reached for the metal rungs.
There were two ladders bolted side by side, and as Kiva began to descend the first, Cresta kept her promise and remained with her, all the way down to the first platform, then on to the next set of ladders. Down they stepped, rung after rung, platform after platform, with Cresta murmuring quiet encouragement. Kiva watched her hands as if they belonged to someone else, feeling nothing, only vaguely aware that she was moving downward, that her muscles were burning, that the air was
becoming stale and chilled.
Tipp. She would hold on for Tipp.
Even if, after what he’d discovered, after what she’d done, he surely hated her now.
An agonized sound left Kiva, and Cresta looked over in alarm. But then they stepped off the final ladder, causing relief to flood the other girl’s expression.
Safe. They were safe.
But they also weren’t.
Because before Kiva could catch her breath, she was being pushed down a luminium-lit tunnel after a line of prisoners, all shuffling along like ants. A distant feeling of panic hit her, the claustrophobia familiar but muted by the angeldust.
The last time she’d been here, she hadn’t been with other prisoners. But she hadn’t been alone, either.
Blue-gold eyes. A hovering, magical flame. A perfect snowblossom.
This time the drugs didn’t force the image away — Kiva did.
She couldn’t think of what had happened then.
She couldn’t think of him.
A sloshing sound caught her attention and drew her gaze downward, the earth turning to mud, then shallow water, becoming knee-deep the further they walked. When the prisoners were ordered to halt by one of the supervising guards, Kiva found that a pickaxe had been shoved into her hands somewhere along the journey. She tested the weight, waving it before her like a sword.
Caldon had shown her how to do that, training her with a wooden practice blade.
Kiva closed her eyes and forced that memory away, too, allowing the angeldust to subdue her reignited pain. She dropped her arms, trying to remember where she was, why she was there, what she had to do.
Tunneling.
She was a tunneler now, tasked with digging for water and creating passageways for it to flow into the aquifer.
It was the worst of Zalindov’s work allocations. The hardest, both physically and mentally. The quickest death.
“Think of the boy,” Cresta commanded from Kiva’s side. “Don’t stop thinking about him.”
The sheer authority in her voice had Kiva obeying, and when the guards ordered them to begin digging into the hard limestone walls, Tipp’s face remained front and center in her thoughts.
Kiva swung the iron axe into the unyielding rock, over and over again.
The movement jarred her arms, the sound set her teeth on edge. She welcomed the burn that grew with every thrust, her vision turning hazy as dust clouded around her, her hearing overwhelmed by the clash of hundreds
of axes meeting solid stone. She was vaguely aware of Cresta working at her side, reminding her about Tipp, telling her to keep digging. She couldn’t stop — if she stopped, the guards would come. They were patrolling freely, whips and batons at the ready. Don’t give them an excuse, Cresta told her.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.
There was blood on Kiva’s axe, dripping down the wooden handle, from split blisters and cracked calluses. She felt the pain, but it was muted, just
like everything else around her.
Until it wasn’t.
Because as seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned to hours, the angeldust’s effects began to fade.
It started with a low, persistent headache at the base of her skull. Next came the taste of copper on her tongue, followed by a tremor in her fingers, making it difficult to keep hold of her blood-slicked axe. When the guards finally announced the end of the workday, Kiva was chilled despite the arduous labor, and finally cognizant enough to realize that what she’d survived was nothing compared to what was ahead.
“I feel awful,” Kiva moaned as they waited their turn to climb back up to the surface.
“I’ll bet,” Cresta murmured. “Is there anything in that infirmary of yours that might help?”
“It’s not my infirmary anymore,” Kiva replied, swaying from exhaustion. Her freedom from Zalindov had granted her access to regular food and exercise, and that, combined with the numbing effects of the angeldust, had given her enough strength to endure the day’s hard labor. But she was feeling it now, every part of her hurting. Her thoughts, however, were clearer than they’d been for weeks, so she battled to keep her focus, rattling off a list of plants all known to ease withdrawal symptoms.
“The only way out is through,” Cresta said sagely, brushing her twisted red locks away from her damp face. “I’ll see what I can scrape together.”
Kiva mumbled a reply, unsure what words left her mouth as her chills grew and her body began to tremble. She couldn’t remember climbing out of the tunnels, nor could she remember Cresta supporting her all the way to the dormitory building and dumping her unceremoniously on a pallet, dust and mud coating her skin, her tunic still stained with her own vomit. She had no idea how much time passed as she lay there, shaking and sweating, her muscles aching, her bloodied palms now throbbing mercilessly.
“Give me your hands.”
Cresta was back. Kiva didn’t know how long she’d been gone, or how long since she’d returned. Her snake tattoo was almost indistinguishable beneath a layer of grime.
Wet slid across Kiva’s palms, eliciting a sharp sting. She tried to tug them back, but Cresta held firm.
“You need to keep these clean, or they’ll get infected.”
Kiva stilled, the words echoing across her memory. She’d heard them before. She’d said them before.
You need to keep these clean, or they’ll get infected.
Strong hands attached to a strong body, tousled gold-brown hair, perfect lips quirked into a knowing grin, blue-gold eyes dancing.
The hole in Kiva’s heart tore open, the pain enough to halt her tremors, if only for a moment. But she wasn’t in the infirmary right now. And he
wasn’t with her.
Not this time.
Never again.
“Swallow these,” Cresta ordered, reclaiming Kiva’s attention. She held out a fistful of thin green bulbs, along with a mix of yellow and orange flowers, and a lump of black, charred wood.
Kiva didn’t ask how Cresta had snuck into the infirmary’s garden, nor did she dwell on how the charcoal must have been acquired from the crematorium. But as she shoved the offering into her mouth, grimacing at the texture of the chalky wood, she did say, “I didn’t mention charcoal.”
“You’re not the first person I’ve seen through withdrawal,” Cresta murmured, still cleaning Kiva’s hands. “It’ll soak up the toxins in your blood.”
Kiva wanted to ask who else Cresta had helped, but her torso spasmed with a stomach cramp, and she gasped, curling in on herself.
“You need to eat.” Cresta said. There was no warmth in her tone, no concern for Kiva’s well-being, just a statement of fact.
“I’ll just” — another spasm hit Kiva, and she gritted her teeth — “bring it back up.”
Cresta began arguing, but Kiva didn’t hear her, the cramping in her stomach turning violent enough to demand all of her attention. It would take time for the hashwillow bulbs, tilliflowers, buttercress petals, and charcoal
to take effect, but even then, their relief would be limited. If Cresta truly intended to wean Kiva off the angeldust, then she was in for a rough night.
The next thing Kiva knew, there was a piece of broth-soaked bread being pressed between her lips. Sweat dotted her forehead, her skin turning hot then cold then hot all over again.
“No,” she moaned, shifting her face away.
“You’ll need energy to get through tomorrow,” Cresta said, shoving more bread into her mouth. “You can’t survive on angeldust alone.”
“Angeldust,” Kiva gasped, half choking on the food, her voice hoarse and desperate. “Please . . . I need . . . just a little.”
Through blurry eyes, Kiva saw Cresta’s face harden. “What you need is to eat, then to sleep. I’ll give you more in the morning.”
Denial had Kiva shaking her head, her teeth rattling from the tremors controlling her body. “I need it now.”
“Eat.” Cresta pushed more bread between Kiva’s lips.
Kiva gagged, but Cresta clamped a hand over her mouth, making her swallow.
“The charcoal should help you keep everything down,” Cresta said.
“You’re facing a mental battle as much as a physical one. You just have to be willing to fight.”
Kiva groaned as she was force-fed more bread. Cresta was unmoved, deaf to Kiva’s pleas, unwilling to provide even the smallest dose of angeldust to see her through the night.
For hours, they waged war against each other, with Kiva wailing as her body shrieked for the slightest hint of relief.
“Would you shut ’er up? We’re tryin’ to sleep here!” grumbled the other prisoners close enough to hear her suffering.
“Go cry to your mother,” Cresta snapped back at them, ignoring their complaints — and Kiva’s, too.
But then, sometime in the middle of the night, Kiva descended so far into her madness that she screamed, loud enough to wake half the dormitory, “GIVE IT TO ME! I NEED IT! YOU HAVE TO GIVE IT TO —”
Cresta swore and slapped a hand over Kiva’s mouth, hauling her damp, shivering body off the pallet and past glaring, sleep-rumpled inmates painted in moonlight. She didn’t stop until they stumbled into the darkened bathing chamber, where she dragged Kiva beneath a showerhead and turned on the icy spray.
Gasping and spluttering, Kiva tried to escape the water, but Cresta held her in place, becoming equally drenched in the process.
“LET ME GO!” Kiva bellowed.
“I won’t,” Cresta gritted out, her grip unyielding. “Not until you calm the hell down.”
Kiva tried to fight her way free, but it was no use, her body too weak to manage the barest of attempts. All too soon she was panting and leaning against Cresta, the ex-quarrier bearing most of her weight.
“Are you done?” Cresta demanded.
Kiva could only nod, her strength gone, her spirit broken.
The water turned off, and then Kiva was sliding to the ground beside Cresta. The two of them sat against the wall of the shower block, dripping and shivering, their labored breaths echoing into the darkness.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” Cresta grunted.
The words summoned an image of Caldon, since he’d said the same thing to Kiva — more than once. Despite her heartache, Kiva’s lips quirked, ever so slightly. Through chattering teeth, she croaked out, “You’re n-not
the first person to t-tell me that.”
“I doubt I’ll be the last.”
“I’m s-sorry,” Kiva whispered. The freezing water had sobered her enough that she was appalled by her behavior, even if it had been the drugs making her act that way. “And th-thank you. For helping m-me.”
“We’re not out of this yet,” Cresta warned. “There’s a long road ahead.”
Kiva knew that. And when she was through it — if she made it through — she would find a way to thank the ex-quarrier, even if Cresta was only repaying a debt.
“You said you’ve h-helped someone else th-through withdrawal,” Kiva said, relishing the cold that was keeping her thoughts clear. “Who w-was it?”
Cresta was quiet for long enough that Kiva thought she wasn’t going to answer. But in the darkness of the shower block, she eventually said, her voice barely audible, “When I was a child, long before Zalindov, my sister found a stash of angeldust and didn’t realize what it was. She overdosed, nearly died. I didn’t leave her side until she recovered.”
“How o-old were y-you?”
“Ten,” Cresta answered. “She was eight.”
So young. “Your p-parents?”
“Things weren’t good at home,” Cresta said without emotion. “My sister had the gentlest soul of anyone I’ve ever met, but my father saw that as a weakness. He had no place for a meek child in his household, so he wiped his hands of her, caring little whether she lived or died. And my mother . . . she was too busy trying to survive my father. I was all my sister had.”
There was pain in Cresta’s voice, though Kiva could tell she was trying to hide it. Through still-chattering teeth, she asked, “What h-happened?”
“I got her through the overdose, and then through the withdrawal. She stayed far away from angeldust after that.”
“No,” Kiva said, rubbing her arms to generate heat. “What happened t- to your family?”
This time, Cresta’s silence lasted longer. “I have no family. Not anymore.”
Kiva closed her eyes against the depth of feeling in those words. Cresta had arrived at Zalindov over five years ago as a teenager — perhaps sixteen years of age. Whatever had led her there . . . however she’d lost her parents, her sister . . . there were too many missing pieces for Kiva to have any
insight into the ex-quarrier’s past.
“How —”
“Story time is over,” Cresta said, her voice hard enough to remind Kiva that they weren’t friends. Until recently — even presently — they were closer to enemies than anything else. “Try to sleep.”
Kiva blinked into the darkness of the shower block. “H-Here?”
“You can’t go back into the dormitory. Another episode like that, and the guards will come investigate,” Cresta said, shifting into a more comfortable position.
“But it’s f-freezing.” Even as Kiva said it, warmth began to flood her again, her withdrawal symptoms returning now that the shock of the icy water had faded. And while the shower had been frigid, the late spring air was temperate enough. Once she was dry, it wouldn’t be too awful. She’d slept in worse places — but never while being weaned off an addictive substance.
“Sleep,” Cresta ordered, ignoring Kiva’s complaint. “While you still can.”
Kiva wanted to argue, wanted to ask the million questions she had while her mind was clear, wanted to bask in her current clarity before she
succumbed to more angeldust come morning. But Cresta was right — she needed to sleep while her body would allow it, gathering her strength to get through all that was ahead, both mentally and physically.
And so, clenching her jaw against the hot-and-cold sensations streaking beneath her skin, she closed her eyes and allowed exhaustion to pull her under.
The next three days were some of the worst of Kiva’s life, the following four nearly as awful, and another week after that almost as unpleasant.
Through it all, Cresta honored her debt and remained by Kiva’s side, giving her just enough angeldust every morning to survive the workday — less each day — and sleeping beside her in the shower block every night.
Often, Kiva would thrash and scream, fighting the ex-quarrier for all she was worth. Equally often, Cresta had to hold back Kiva’s hair as she purged her stomach. Even the charcoal lost its effectiveness as the angeldust ran low, with there being no relief from the nausea, the stomach cramps, the sweating, and the chills. Every inch of Kiva’s body ached, not just from her repeated toiling down in the tunnels — something she was barely aware of doing, her hours underground a haze of mud and dust and pain — but also from battling against her very self, night after night, without end.
It was too much, too hard, too much.
Every day, she wished for death, her agony too great to bear — and not just the agony of her withdrawal. As the drugs began to leave her system, the memories began to invade, the things she’d witnessed, the things she’d done. And the people she’d done them to.
It was a different kind of pain — the worst kind of pain. The kind she would never heal from. The kind she didn’t deserve to heal from.
And so she shoved the memories away and embraced the torture of her withdrawal, until, two weeks after her return to Zalindov, her tremors began to ease, her nausea began to settle, her desperation began to fade.
It was over.
But the worst was still to come.
