Legions of Bone: Dragon Rider Book 3

Chapter 19: When The Crazy Man Is Your Hype Girl

Norah

 "How long have you been down here?" Norah asked before Novak could go on. The man never stopped talking.

"Long enough to go insane," he quipped, but there was a tinge of irritation in his rough voice. "Are you sick or something, why do you keep hurling? You're not pregnant are you? You know, I was so sick once..."

Norah tuned him out, her irritation rising up into her head. Filling her head.

She didn't need to vomit but she gagged, making it louder in hopes of shutting him up.

"Two weeks later, I'm fine. Like nothin' ever happened," he finished. "It might have been an infected wound I got from this mage who cut me with a sheet of metal. The bitch took too long to die, little lady and I may have waited a few days before seeing a doctor. Do you know how hard it is to kill someone who bends the metal in your armor? I was like a fucking puppet, craziest shit ever."

Norah stared at the poor excuse for a chamber pot filled with blood. She wanted to scream.

Shadows filled her head like smoke. Now Norah wanted to pull her hair out.

"That would do you no good," Etin mused and she swatted at him in her head. He danced around her, laughing. He seized her muscles. Her body roared in pain but she refused to scream. "Never venture into my head again or there will be a far worse punishment than this." A pause, his mind drifting to the chirping voice. "Novak, the bringer of endless war. He has killed thousands of lives and orders the death of thousands more. His beliefs led to your sister's death."

"He's annoying," she told him, shuffling across the stone floor to slump against the cold wall.

"Then kill him." Etin made it sound so simple. But then again, he was a god. Very few rules applied to him. "It is simple. He is a mortal driven insane by eons of solitude and you are a girl with a god's gift."

"I know I can escape," she sighed. She knew Etin enough to see his games. Most of them.

"And yet you stay here to seek out the betrayer." The irritation in his voice reminded her of Holland every time she did something wrong. "You are so desperate to do something that you would endure these savage conditions when there are far easier ways to achieve them."

"I know my actions were brutal," Novak went on and Norah forgot what he was talking about.

Smoke curled in her ears, hugged her arms like a cold embrace. Like a father showing their child the right way. "Have you noticed he has yet to ask you about the surface?"

"I've noticed," she admitted. "Just haven't cared enough to get him on another story."

Etin hummed. "The guards are corrupt," he said. "Not all, but one."

That seemed reasonable. If Maxwell still believed in Novak's ways, why wouldn't others? And why wouldn't they whisper information to their leader especially if they hoped to free him?

"Who?" she asked. This could be information useful later on.

"I need to see them to know." He paused, his pointed, black fingers breezing over her memories. It made her skin tingle. Made her shoulders droop.

"Do you know what happened to Rima?" she asked. If anyone would know, it would be him.

His presence brisked away, slipping deep into her mind where the glass wall between her and Rima lay. She could feel his curiosity, feel him tap the glass like he had done when he'd first met her. Anger, a deep, sizzling kind radiated off him--in her.