Read Online A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir - Free Book Online

voice is a rasp. I tried not to scream during the interrogation. My throat is raw with the times I failed. Mother stitches a wound, and I hide a wince as she ties it off.
    “She’s right, Mother.” Livia, who at eighteen is the youngest Aquilla, gives me a dark smile. “Could have been worse. They could have cut her hair.”
    I snort—it hurts too much to laugh, and even Mother smiles as she dabs ointment onto one of my wounds. Only Hannah remains expressionless.
    I glance at her, and she looks away, jaw clenched. She’s never learned to quench her hatred for me, my middle sister. Though after the first time I pulled a scim on her, she at least learned to hide it.
    “It’s your own damned fault.” Hannah’s voice is low, poisonous, and wholly expected. I’m surprised it took her this long. “It’s disgusting. They shouldn’t have had to torture you for information about that—that monster.”
Elias.
I’m thankful she doesn’t say his name. “You should have given it to them—”
    “Hannah!” Mother snaps. Livia, her back rigid, glares at our sister.
    “My friend Aelia was to be married in a week,” Hannah snarls. “Her fiancé is dead because of your
friend
.
And you refuse to help find him.”
    “I don’t know where he—”
    “Liar!” Hannah’s voice trembles with more than a decade of rage. For fourteen years my schooling took precedence over anything she or Livvy did. Fourteen years where my father was more concerned with me than his other daughters. Her hate is as familiar as my own skin. That doesn’t make it sting less. She looks at me and sees a rival. I look at her and see the wide-eyed, tow-headed sister who used to be my best friend.
    Until Blackcliff, anyway.
    Ignore her
,
I tell myself. I can’t have her accusations ringing in my ears when I meet with the Snake.
    “You should have stayed in prison,” Hannah says. “You’re not worth Father going to the Emperor and begging—
begging
on hands and knees.”
    Bleeding skies, Father. No.
He shouldn’t have lowered himself—not on my behalf. I look down at my hands, enraged when I feel my eyes burn with tears. Bleeding hells, I’m about to face off with Marcus. I don’t have time for guilt or tears.
    “Hannah.” My mother’s voice is steel, so unlike her usual gentle self. “Leave.”
    My sister lifts her chin in challenge before turning and ambling out, as if it’s her idea to go.
You’d have made an excellent Mask, sister.
    “Livvy,” Mother says after a minute. “Make sure she doesn’t take her anger out on the slaves.”
    “Probably too late for that,” Livvy mutters as she walks out. As I try to rise, Mother puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me down into the seat with surprising force.
    She dabs at a wicked, deep cut in my scalp with a stinging ointment. Her cool fingers turn my face one way and then another, her eyes sad mirrors of my own.
    “Oh, my girl,” she whispers. I feel shaky, suddenly, like I want to collapse into her arms and never leave their safety.
    Instead I push her hands away.
    “Enough.” Better she think me impatient than too soft. I cannot show her the wounded parts of me. I cannot show anyone those parts. Not when my strength is the only thing that will serve me now. And not when I’m minutes away from meeting with the Snake.
    I have a mission for you
,
he’d said
.
What will he have me do? Quell the revolution? Punish the Scholars for their insurrection?
Too easy.
Worse possibilities come to mind. I try not to think about them.
    Beside me, Mother sighs. Her eyes fill, and I stiffen. I’m about as good with tears as I am with declarations of love. But her tears don’t spill over. She hardens herself—something she has been forced to learn as the mother of a Mask—and reaches for my armor. Silently, she helps me pull it on.
    “Blood Shrike.” Father appears in the doorway a few minutes later. “It’s time.”
    «««
    E mperor Marcus has taken up residence in Villa