Tarek lunged against his chains, reaching with his fingers, his teeth, his anything. They’d long since hooked his manacles to the iron bars of the cage, so his lunging accomplished nothing, but he did not stop. He could not stop. The woman was right there. He could smell the blood, could even see spots of it on her filthy dress, but it might as well have been on the far side of the mists for all he could do. He hadn’t eaten in two days, and the guard hadn’t even tried to water him today, but he cared nothing for such things. If he was weak, if he was hungry, there was a perfect solution, if only he could reach it. If he kept lunging, maybe the bars would break. Or perhaps he’d rip his hands off eventually – that would be fine, so long as he got the precious blood that called to him without ceasing.

I need to stop this. I need to sleep. Some small part of him watched his own raging with shame and despair, huddled in resignation at the back of his mind. Stop, just stop. This is pointless. The rest of him redoubled his efforts, shaking the whole wagon. He cried out wordlessly, and nothing but a hoarse whistle escaped. He’d screamed himself silent on the first day, and after three bemused beatings, his jailers had left him alone, waiting for him to either collapse in exhaustion or die from his exertions. If they hope to make a thrall of me, they must be disappointed. I’m lucky they haven’t decided to finish what they started and shove that spear through my throat.

The woman chewed on her bread and waggled the heel of it at him defiantly. She’d quailed and screamed when he first scented her blood and tried to snatch her like he had the sand rat, but a person could only maintain that kind of fear for so long. She’d gone from fear to anger, spitting and cursing at him repeatedly in her nonsense tongue, and now she had graduated to a comfortable contempt as she realized she was well out of his reach. The self-aware part of Tarek could only agree with her; at this point he made for a worse cage companion than a caiman with loose bowels.

Stop, he told himself as he strained once more at his fetters. Take a deep breath. Distantly he imagined forcing his body to stop its raspy hyperventilating and filling his lungs all the way with the hot, dry air of this strange place. It was futile; his body wasn’t listening. Most of his mind wasn’t even listening – an endless litany of blood, blood, blood pounded through his skull, making any other thought quiet, distant. My magic may be powerful, but it isn’t very smart. Tavi’s smart – what would he do?

He tried imagining his bloodlust magic as a separate being, a twin that wore his face. Maybe he could reason with it. He searched for Tavi’s voice in his head and said what it would. Let’s talk about this. Raging and screaming in this wagon isn’t getting you what you want. You can’t get to the woman, and even if you did, they’d overpower you and maybe kill you. Ones Beneath, it’s just a moon bleed. Every woman you’ve ever met has one and you’ve kept yourself in check thus far. What’s the problem? Perhaps it was that he’d fed the magic too much. Always before he’d held the magic at arm’s length, distrusting it, avoiding it. After taking Xochil’s blood, though, he’d embraced it, and maybe now he was paying the price.

Blood, blood, blood, screamed the drumbeat inside him. The face he’d imagined for his magic self didn’t even twitch. If you’ll just be quiet for a bit, I’ll get you blood. That’s the plan. But not hers – she can’t help us, and she’s done nothing to deserve us attacking her. The guard. Wait for the guard and we’ll get his blood.

The imagining that wore his face said nothing, and in the real world he continued to struggle against his constraints. He was fooling himself. He couldn’t talk to the magic; it wasn’t a being that was separate from himself. It was just him, and he was out of control, no matter what this corner of his mind chose to occupy itself with.

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Handspans later, his knees finally buckled and his head drooped, his body sagging forward as exhaustion claimed him. His wrists were hooked against the bars at shoulder height, keeping him from slumping to the ground. His feet were likewise trapped, and so he hung there awkwardly, body tilted forward, his rear touching his heels, his shoulders straining as the weight of his limp body hung on them. It was excruciating, but at least he’d fallen silent. His chin rested against his chest and sweat pattered on the dry boards below, soaking in instantly.

Sorry, lady, he thought at her. I don’t like this any more than you do.

It had been four days of this. The smell of blood still maddened him, even with his body wrung out and wasting. It felt like someone tapping hard on his temples while a fishhook yanked on his guts. He wanted it, wanted to bathe in it and drink it and slick it between his fingers and toes… but now, in its extremity of exhaustion, his body accepted that it could not get the blood it so desperately desired. A delirious calm descended bit by bit, and Tarek felt more of his mind returning to him.

Am I done? He couldn’t quite believe it. He’d once watched his father Tenoch train a panther cub he’d caught in a trap, and after two days of snapping at him and hissing, the cub had gotten so hungry it had accepted a bit of meat from his fingers. Tata said he’d broken the beast, and it trailed him obediently for years until a great caiman had pulled it into the water and drowned it. Had he broken his magic by not being able to give into it?

Blood, blood, blood, his magic chanted at him, but now it was in the quiet corner of his mind. Carefully, not trusting himself, Tarek eased himself back so that his shoulders weren’t in danger of being pulled from their sockets and then slowly, oh so slowly levered himself upright on shaky legs. He looked around. The other three prisoners watched him with wary disinterest. One of the guards – not the one that had stabbed him – was walking alongside the wagon. The sun was bright overhead and all he could see was sand in all directions. It was incredibly hot.

He waved a hand weakly at the guard. “Water,” he whispered, his bruised voice barely audible. The man noticed him and jutted his chin in Tarek’s direction, his face inquiring.

Tarek turned his head toward his pinioned hand and mimed tilting a cup toward his mouth. “Water,” he repeated.

The hateful man gave a huffing little laugh and shook his head before calling ahead to the others. The wagon creaked to a stop, and the fellow unlatched the gate of their cage, stepping into the prisoners’ space with a bucket and ladle in one hand.

“Bapanada,” he warned, his eyes dangerous. He lifted the ladle toward Tarek’s mouth, and Tarek greedily slurped down the lukewarm liquid. It was stale and brackish, and at the moment he couldn’t remember tasting anything better. Except blood. That puts water to shame.

He felt new strength course through him, a thin thread of normalcy amidst the utter insanity he’d been living ever since Xochil brought him to this terrible place. He’d weathered the storm. He would survive; he would find a way.

Then he lunged against his bands, his teeth snapping at the air more than three handspans from the guard’s throat. Blood, blood, blood, his magic raged, renewed and unbroken. The man with the bucket stepped back with a growl and swung the metal ladle at his head, connecting solidly with his cheekbone. Tarek shook it off and bared his teeth, struggling like a feral animal once again. He’d take the fellow by the jugular and drain him dry. His conscious self sighed and retreated to its quiet corner once again.

The man retreated and was gone, and the three prisoners shouted what could only be insults and threats at Tarek. Their jailer had left without watering them, and it was Tarek’s fault.

Still, as he hunkered in the hind parts of his head and waited for his body to exhaust itself again, Tarek felt a grim satisfaction and a patient kind of resolve. He’d had a moment of clarity, even if it hadn’t lasted. He’d outlasted his bloodlust and gained a moment of peace. If it could be done once, it could be done again, and maybe for longer. Maybe for good.

And even more than that, when he’d snapped and gone for blood again, he hadn’t tried to attack the woman, he’d reached for the man. The man he’d told his magic in the silence of his mind that they should focus on. The man that was the first step toward freedom.

Maybe he could break his magic bloodlust. And maybe then he could bend it to his will.