Dragon Soul by Jaida Jones

for you, Professor?”
    I should have known it would come to this—insults and nicknames recycled from a time we’d never quite escape.
    I resisted the urge to draw away, since that would have been akin to retreat and Rook knew all too well how to scent blood in the water. Instead I forced myself to think the matter over as quickly and carefully as I could, knowing what the outcome would be no matter what I said.
    He was angry; he was desperate for someone to blame. And I was the likeliest candidate since I was already there.
    “There’s a chance,” I said at last, a faint band of regret forming tight around my heart. “There’s always a chance. To my knowledge, Havemercy was never recovered, and…” I trailed off, the name sounding like blasphemy on my lips.
    More than anything, I did not want to send my brother on a wild-goose chase to try to recover something that had long since been lost. False hope, no matter its intentions, was never kind. But Rook was a grown man—perhaps slightly overgrown in some respects—and it was hardly my place to tell him what to do. He could decide for himself where he went and why, and would no doubt do exactly that no matter what I said to him.
    “Fuck
the hanging gardens,” he said, shutting the box top and picking it up. “I’m gonna go have a little chat with the man that gave me this and see if we can’t learn a little more about
exactly
where it came from.”
    I stood up, muscles aching in protest over what I’d already put themthrough. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked. As always, it was only a formality. I had developed a new instinct when it came to my brother’s actions—a kind of self-preservation born of desperation. It was necessary, for our sanity—and, at times, for our survival—that I be prepared for the punches he threw my way.
    He barely spared a glance in my direction.
    “Get in my way and I’ll leave you here. I mean it this time.”
    I didn’t doubt him. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, sounding desperate even to myself. Despite all my protestations, I was his younger brother, and I wanted, more than anything, to be useful.
    Silly Thom
, I thought.
You haven’t changed
.
    “I’ll do the talking,” Rook said, pocketing the box with one hand and jerking his other toward my travel log. “You can write things down.”
MADOKA
    Where was I?
    That was a damn good question. It was also a question I didn’t have a proper answer for, seeing as how my friends the cleanup brigade had blindfolded me nice and gentle and kept a knife in my side as insurance. On the one hand, I hated being kept in the dark; but on the other, it might’ve meant I’d get out of this alive, now that I had absolutely no real information about where I was or how I’d gotten there. Hopefully, I could wiggle my way out of this one on the strength of being stupid, but it didn’t seem likely. It was the best defense I’d cultivated, and not even years of being poor and a woman had managed to strip that from me.
    They sure had me good, though, taking me by wagon, then by foot, turning me this way and that so my head couldn’t focus on any one direction. All I really had to go by was the sound our feet made on the ground once we’d gotten down off the cart, and even that wasn’t giving me much. All I really knew for certain was that we weren’t outside anymore when we finally stopped for good, and the air itself was damp and kind of cold. The rest was silence. I tried to make like I was too dumb for paying attention, so maybe, in the end, I could go back to the rest of the world and laugh at everyone, telling them I could make it out ofanything alive. Just like a rat. The old woman’d probably clout me a good one with her stick, but I could even look forward to that if it meant getting out of here in one piece.
    Footsteps signaled the arrival of some new asshole. I braced myself.
    “You are being treated quite poorly,” an unfamiliar voice said.