Soul of Ice

Chapter Twenty-Six

"There you are." Pascal smoothly grabbed Astra by the arm and gave the other dignitaries a smile as he lead her away. "The physician would like to speak with you."

Astra turned to look behind her as Pascal pulled her away. Only the prince of Solasia met her eyes before Astra quickly averted hers.

"Why?" she asked as they moved through the hallway.

Pascal gave her a roguish grin. "Would you rather die of some sort of complication from the zynthe injection?"

Astra grimaced and flexed her hand discreetly. The feeling of pent-up magic had slowly gone away over the past few days until it settled into the now slow, thrumming pulse beneath her skin—the source of powerful ice magic, barely held back, but in control.

"The physician is quite excited to see you, you know. He had his third test subject just yesterday, and, well." Pascal grimaced. "Not sure what was happening to his body, but he was convulsing and the physician pronounced him dead a few minutes after the zynthe injection."

Astra shuddered involuntarily. She was lucky to have survived that first injection, but a second...?

"Ah, here we are." Pascal pushed Astra ahead of him through the open door.

"She's here!" the physician announced rather unnecessarily. "Set her down, set her down."

There was a moment where Astra considered making a break for it again, but the four burly guards standing near the door, in addition to Pascal, made her reconsider and then admit defeat. If she had to do this, she'd rather go in clearheaded and aware rather than dazed and disoriented like last time.

"Strap her down now, a little tighter, ah, yes, perfect!" The stout man hovered as he inspected the restraints. "Excellent. We can proceed."

Astra focused on her restraints, testing them as she raised her limbs, testing the tension and the tightness. Ropes, not chains, she reminded herself as she stared at the bonds keeping her down in this chair. It was still hard not to panic. She couldn't help remembering the chains weighing her down years ago.

The physician washed his hands and then pulled on a pair of gloves before sliding up the sleeves of Astra's dress. The faint blue-black markings came into view.

"Extraordinary," he commented, touching and prodding her skin before tracing the lines down her arm.

Astra imagined the lines disappearing as the physician traced his finger down them, but they looked just the same. The marks weren't that thick. Thin, just like veins, but they colored her arms like some sort of disease, or an accident that had left her horrendously scarred. They made her look like some sort of mutant. They made her look like a monster. She looked away, uncomfortable.

"I really do think she could be the key to a breakthrough," the physician muttered as he nearly bumped his face into Astra's trying to look into her eyes.

"Breakthrough to what?" Astra asked, trying to avert her eyes from the physician's pale brown ones. She didn't like how close his face was to pressing up against hers. His breath, which smelled like fresh mint, made the proximity worse.

Unsurprisingly, no one bothered to answer her. Instead, the physician backed up, and Astra let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. The physician asked, "How do you feel?"

That was an easy question. "I feel like impaling you with a thousand of those syringes."

The physician didn't seem fazed, instead nodding and taking some more notes in his notebook. "Excellent. Mental capabilities still intact. What about sleep? How well are you sleeping?"