A Web of Steam & Puppet Strings (Sevastyan #1)

Chapter Eighteen

Aris rolled his eyes and didn't bother to hide it.

I fitted together the right words before finally saying, "I'm not immune. I never have been."

Eliza nearly hit her head off the ceiling. "What? Hang on—what?"

I stared up at the wooden panels above us. I didn't want to see their faces. "The strange drawings on the wall were mine. I don't remember ever doing them, but I woke up with chalk on my hands the morning after." I wasn't even sure how long ago that was now. Yesterday morning? The day before that? How much time had I spent unconscious? "And when Ivan claimed he saw me dragging away Valery, he...most likely did."

Eliza threw her fists to her sides. "That's not enough proof. It doesn't make sense—you said we're all controlled together, that one doesn't go without the rest, and how could you have done those things? You're tied to me every night!"

Aris's eyebrows shot up. "Are you, now?"

Lazar sharpened the glare onto him. Aris returned it.

I sighed and deflated in my cocoon. "How else can we explain the drawings on the wall? Or the powder on my hands? Or the fact that the chalk in my crate is all new and freshly replaced?"

Eliza clawed at the air. "She's mad. Who knows what she'll do to distort you, Sev? If she can control you, why hasn't she? Why hasn't she simply made you into the toy soldier like the rest of us? Why let you walk around freely?"

Perhaps because she knew I would become a toy soldier anyway.

She knew I'd obey.

Ever since she had captured me on the ship, ever since I'd allowed her, she knew she could control me easier than any of the others in this prison.

Aris caught my attention, his hand on his thigh, nails digging in, eyes burning into the floor.

"Sev." Eliza knelt beside my cot and dropped her hand atop the lump where my shoulder was hidden. "It's all right. The fight's not over yet. We're going to get ourselves out of here, remember? We're going to have freedom again. I still believe in you."

It hurt to look at her.

Forcing my gaze to hers dragged nails down my throat and into my stomach. I hated that she believed in me so much, so blindly. I wasn't Lazar, who could look at a drawing of a machine and tell me how it worked. I wasn't Aris, who could stitch me up and stab me with a syringe.

I wasn't even bloody Anastasya, who could decipher wavelengths.

I drew on walls. I wasn't anything.

And yet, if not for Eliza's faith, I would never have tried as hard as I'd had. It was as Isidora had said: enough livable comfort kept us controlled. We might have left some nights and returned with new injuries, and on the rare occasion, one of us didn't come back at all. But here we all were, waiting for the world to end and our short lives in this concrete hive to be over.

After inhaling a deep, quivering breath, I murmured, "I need more rest."

Eliza's eyes lowered. The knife in her heart killed me. She pulled away, but Aris inserted himself with, "You need sustenance, Sev. Your body needs fuel for healing after how you've abused it."

I couldn't help a small laugh. "I thought you weren't a doctor. For all the medical jargon you've used, I'm beginning to doubt you."

His laugh was more convincing. "I'm certainly not a doctor. But our pack mates stuck together, didn't we? We looked after one another, never turned away from someone. I've had plenty of doctorly-like learning by tending to our sick and wounded, but that doesn't make me any more of a doctor than you." The laugh left his eyes. "Ivan, Katya, and Maksim don't even remember me anymore."