Myth-Touched by Joanna Maciejewska

Author:Joanna Maciejewska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joanna Maciejewska

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Caitríona’s face was calm in death, marked by what looked like a slight smile of relief. It was the only piece of beauty left on her whole body, mutilated in so many ways that it hardly resembled a mythborn.

She was found on a street in Stoneybatter. This area consisted mostly of small, one- or two-story residential buildings squished together into rows along the streets. Before the war, it felt cramped and poor. Now it looked empty and derelict, and I doubted many people lived around there. The mythborn had better choices in the whole north side of Dublin that informally belonged to them, and the humanborn could move to the other side of the river, and further south, where there were many modern and spacious residential buildings and single-family houses in greener areas.

This meant that there would be no witnesses to help us discover what happened, and all we had to go on was Cait’s body.

The extent of her wounds, some looking older and partially healed, made it clear she had been tortured for as long as she’d been missing, and our enemy just dumped her here like in a detective procedural from the pre-Magiclysm era. Yet this time it wasn’t some extra actor hired to lie on the ground for the opening scene. It was someone close.

We all stood in silence, taking in the extent of her wounds. I was the only one crying, but no one made fun of it, as if my tears were also theirs. As if I was crying for everyone.

Lorcan knelt beside the body, his moves those of a professional, and I had a hard time reading any emotion on his face. “She died recently, but not from the wounds.” He looked at Cathal. “She must have been hoping we’d find her, and only gave up when she couldn’t trust herself anymore.”

Sadb cursed in mythborn, and I glanced at Riagán, hoping for an explanation.

“Cait killed herself,” he whispered, “likely when she couldn’t endure the torture anymore. If she waited that long, she must have learned something important. Something worth suffering for.”

I nodded, sniffling. I resisted the urge to wipe my runny nose against my sleeve. It didn’t seem appropriate to treat my uniform this way—not when Cait died wearing hers.

“It seems that some of the damage was done after her death. Whoever took her wasn’t happy she slipped away,” Lorcan added. “I’d guess he used healing charms and special concoctions to keep her both alive and conscious through his torture.”

I shivered at that. We’d failed her. No matter what Riagán said about her learning important information, I could picture Cait simply clinging to life because she knew we wouldn’t stop until we found her. How gruesome her ordeal must have been for her to have given up on hope. At the same time, were I in her place, I might have done the same, because there was only so much suffering one could endure, and if Cait’s captor was trying to force her to give up secrets, death was a way to win against him.

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