Free Shadowlark by Meagan Spooner

was full of these.”
    His hand emerged, holding a small copper sphere. I’d never seen anything like it before, but I saw Tansy flinch. She certainly recognized it. Her eyes flicked toward me, hidden and guilty. Something tickled at the back of my mind, some instinct that blared alarm.
    “Courier pigeons. Now, what reason would an innocent traveler like yourself have for carting a bag full of pigeons around? They’re Renewable messengers. And you’re not a Renewable, are you?”
    Tansy didn’t answer, jaw squared.
    The man thrust out his hand through the bars, bringing the sphere close to Tansy’s face. Her head jerked back, but she stood her ground. So near to her, the sphere unfolded, its surface rippling, extending wings and a faint glow that responded to the aura of magic surrounding her.
    A machine.
    The man laughed unpleasantly, withdrawing his hand. The sphere shut up tight again, and he dropped it back into the pack. “So what messages were you sending back to your leader, hmm? The location of our city? The number of people here? Our defenses?”
    Tansy said nothing. This time she didn’t look at me, but I knew. A burning cold spread through my body, an icy weight settling in the pit of my stomach.
    The man tossed the bag aside and reached for a key on his belt, unlocking the door. “Prometheus wants a word with you. We’ve got a great many uses for someone with your . . . talents.”
    As he grabbed for Tansy’s arm, she jerked it away, whirling to look at me. Her eyes were anguished, hot with guilt.
    “Lark, please—please, it’s not what you think.”
    I could only stand there, pinned to the stone with shock. “You were—spying on me.” The bag of messenger machines lay forgotten on the floor behind the men. Suddenly I remembered her scouting forays, how she’d race through her meals so she could go off alone. To signal Dorian our location. Now I understood her desperation when her pack was lost.
    “No!” She struggled as the man grabbed her more firmly this time and dragged her back. “The barrier you made, it’s starting to fall apart, and Dorian asked me to—I can’t refuse him, no one can refuse him. I really was worried about you.”
    I swallowed, trying to push the bile back down where it was threatening to rise in my throat. Dorian was no better than Gloriette or the other architects in my city. All anyone saw in me was something unique to be studied. To be used.
    “Lark, I’m sorry. Please.” The man was dragging her away—the cell door slammed shut, and she wound her fingers in the bars, trying to stay long enough to make me understand. “I never would’ve let him do anything, he only wanted to know where you were going.”
    Her eyes met mine. I felt sick, nauseous, barely able to stand. Her fingers were white-knuckled, clutching at the bars. I didn’t know who Prometheus was or what these people wanted with Tansy, but the only uses I knew for a Renewable were tantamount to torture. I thought of the captive Renewable powering my own city, in perpetual agony, constantly harvested of her magic, again and again.
    Tansy was crying. “Lark, forgive me.”
    All I could think of was her bitterness in the alley at having been fooled by the shadow family, the anger I recognized now for shame. I said the only words I could think of. “There’s no forgiveness for betrayal.”

CHAPTER 7
    When the outer door slammed closed, it was all I could do not to drop to the ground like a stone. I couldn’t think through the roaring in my ears, couldn’t begin to pull myself together with my stomach knotting itself over and over.
    Kris, Dorian, Tansy, Nix, even Oren himself—I was tired of the people around me taking advantage of this awful power I didn’t even want. Tired of them taking advantage of me.
    Out of the corner of my eye I could see Oren stalking from one edge of the cell to the other, long strides eating up the distance and pale gaze sweeping the shadows beyond the bars. More