A/N: Ahem. Yes. I'm back. I know, I know – I am so sorry for not updating in so long! I am ashamed, really. Well, a little. I started a new story, as some of you know, and I am having a blast writing it, so this one is now on the back burner. I'm going to do my best to update this whenever I can, but it might not be as regular now. Besides, school is a killer. Anyway, thank you so much everyone who reviewed this story! You guys are the only reason I came back to it. I would have forgotten about it if not for you all. This chapter is for you – I'm sorry it's so short and not very good, but I just wanted to update after leaving it alone for so long.

Voices

A giant, jagged white scar stretched across Murtagh's bare back, from his left shoulder to his right hip, illuminated in the dim light. The sheer cruelty of the mark stunned her – how on earth had he received it? Was this how Galbatorix had broken him, forced him to serve the twisted king? Tortured him, torn his back upon, nearly killed him? But it held her attention for barely a moment.

Blood. It was dripping steadily to the floor. She could smell it. She could hear every drop as it splashed against the wooden floor. With a thud, Murtagh slammed the window shut, his breathing heavy and loud and erratic, leaving the windowpane smeared with red from the palm he had slapped against his chest. He was shirtless – his old tunic was on the bed, a red one on the bedpost – but he had collapsed to the floor.

Ariana gasped. A dagger was sticking out of his chest, and the hand he had pressed to the wound was doing nothing to help.

Muttering a few spells as she dropped to her knees beside him, Ariana locked and soundproofed the room, adding a few wards to the house for good measure as she pried his fingers off his chest, steeling herself and jerking the dagger out of his body.

Murtagh screamed, his body twitching in pain, and she recoiled as blood spurted everywhere. Bending forward, she put pressure on the wound, murmuring a spell of healing, feeling the magic drain her. Concentrating, she forced away the disgust she always felt at the touch of blood and pushed her palm flat against his chest, forcing the magic out from her palm into his body, hissing instructions to the most arcane part of herself through the ancient language. But suddenly she noticed something.

No matter how much energy she poured into him, how many times she recited her spell, the wound refused to close. The skin around it was darkening worryingly, the blood was refusing to coagulate, and case in point, he would not heal. Snarling with a combination of anger and panic, Ariana changed the spell, but soon discovered that even if she morphed multiple spells together, she couldn't help him.

It was taking too much from her – she collapsed in a weakly sitting position beside him, her limbs trembling, realizing, the knowledge tainted with dread, that her magic was taking no effect – he was lying there, gasping for breath, while the wound turned black, the blood refusing to clot and still flowing freely.

Poison, of course. But which? Ariana racked her brain, but although she tried various spells, remedies for different venoms, none had any effect, and the blood was pooling around his prone form, soaking into her skin, hampering her very ability to breathe as it clogged the airways inside her. He couldn't die now. Why did she care? She didn't have any answer, and didn't care. There was no time to find one. Just don't die. Please.

I need to see the blade! Thorn smashed through her mental walls in seconds, and Ariana hissed as he took over her body, turning her head so she was looking at the dagger, picking it up, smelling it. The dragon cursed.

What is it?

It's a combination, Thorn snarled. Seithr oil and poisons and magic.

Ariana didn't bother asking how he knew. It was enough that he did. Besides, he had a connection to Murtagh – he could probably piece the symptoms together. How do we heal it?

Combine spells, he said curtly.

Murtagh gave a choking wheeze, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

For a moment, Ariana sensed a torrent of paralyzing pain and fear from Thorn, before he cut it off abruptly, and instead began feeding her lines of the ancient language. Ariana began repeating his words, trusting the dragon to know what he was doing – there was no time to double-check the spell he was inventing. Murtagh would die if they did – he might die anyway.

Suddenly she stiffened as Thorn invaded her mind – completely. She had no control over her body, even though he poured enough energy into her to still her tremors of exhaustion. Ariana fought the panic, hoping he wouldn't hurt her. She sensed regret from him, but more than that, there was kindness.

Thorn, she soon discovered, knew exactly what he was doing. The wound was stitching up as a the ancient language flowed past her lips like a song, the dragon firmly controlling her body as he spoke through her mouth, his magic guiding hers. She could feel the red dragon's desperation pounding against the few barriers still separating his mind from hers, but she did her best to ignore it. The moment either of them openly panicked, the spell would most likely be broken – and Murtagh would definitely die. He was clinging to life by a thread as it was.

A long while later, Thorn withdrew slightly from her, and Ariana felt her muscles tighten and strengthen as he gifted her some of his formidable reserves of energy. He will live.

I'm glad, Ariana responded tiredly, passing her hand over her brown, wiping away the perspiration beaded there, her breast heaving, casting her eyes anywhere but at Murtagh. She didn't want to look…but his still body drew her eyes like a mangled corpse; it forcibly dragged her eyes towards it, against her will.

He was pale, so pale. But the blood was already returning to his cheeks, and the gash on his chest had faded so a thin white line, which would either scar or vanish completely – Ariana wasn't sure how thorough Thorn's spell had been. If it scarred, Murtagh could always remove it later. Something occurred to her suddenly, and she snatched up the bloodied dagger, her lip curling as a drop of liquid scarlet slid over the back of her hand, hot against her skin. The handle was of simple wood, probably walnut, with no engravings or anything else to distinguish it. Holding it near her face, Ariana sniffed the blade, trying to discern a tell-tale whiff of poison amidst the reek of blood. But she caught nothing, and snapped her fingers at one of the candles on the nightstand. Brisingr.

She tilted the blade against the light, crossing over to it, her mind working furiously. Who had thrown it? The window was shut, and she didn't bother glancing outside. The assassin would not be waiting pleasantly outside the window, desiring to be caught…But she was no ordinary girl, was she? A quick glance at Murtagh – he was stirring slightly, would probably awaken soon. Thorn could fill him in. She folded the dagger in against her clothes, thankful she hadn't changed into a dress yet.

The window slid open soundlessly and Ariana swung herself out onto the rooftop, taking a deep breath before dropping down, her hand catching the sill of a window one story below. The night blurred as she let herself fall again, curling and rolling as she hit the ground to break her fall. The air was bitingly cold, and Ariana pressed herself against the wall, thankful for the shadow of the house that cloaked her in darkness. This was Dras-Leona. A single moment of complacency could prove to be her last moment alive.

Her eyes flitting around, adjusting rapidly to the barely-lit streets, she scampered across the street, hiding in the shadows as she moved, something that years of practice had made second-nature to her. It was in bright light that she was most uncomfortable – darkness and crowds meant safety. It meant she was harder to identify, if she covered her hair. It meant she was hidden.

Moments later she paused, finding herself staring down a much narrower, twisting street. A groan fought against her closed lips, dying inside her mouth as she pressed them together tightly, knowing better than to make a single sound. Ariana knew where she was. The unsavory part of the city – this was where the poor, the outcasts lived. And the most dangerous. But her clues were vanishing fast – although their visitor had taken care not to leave footprints, they had left traces. Not careful enough, Ariana thought wryly as her eyes skipped from one path of disturbed dust to a small whorl of dirt about the length of an average-sized man's stride away.

Without warning, a hand clapped over her mouth, and Ariana twisted, driving her elbow into a sternum behind her, whirling around and raising her dagger. But the blow never fell. Instead, she found herself pushed back into the wall, staring into a familiar pair of narrowed steely eyes.

"What are you doing?" Murtagh hissed, looking very much as if he hadn't lain dying on the floor of his room five minutes ago.

"How can you even stand?" Ariana whispered back, her eyes raking over his form. He had, mercifully, put on the red tunic she'd seen on his bed – if he'd been shirtless she probably wouldn't have been able to concentrate. He was holding himself erect, and the rise and fall of his chest was even, his muscles mostly relaxed. He didn't appear to be in pain or even any minor discomfort.

"Thorn," he muttered, his eyes leaving her to search the streets for movement. She nodded in understanding, knowing that he couldn't see. The dragon must have flooded him with energy until he felt ready to burst. Those gray eyes swiveled back to hers, and Ariana swallowed as she recognized the flicker of emotion in them before he hid it. He was angry.

"What are you doing out here?" he repeated, his eyes boring holes into her head as if he was trying to break into her mind. But he wasn't. She would have felt it.

"Looking," she mumbled, turning away from him to examine the street she was going to head into.

Hissing with irritation, Murtagh swung himself around her, so that his body was blocking her view, forcing her to look at him. "At this time of night? Are you insane? Do you even remember where we are?"

"Yes," she snapped. "Now will you go back? You've already nearly died once tonight. Let's not do it again, alright? Just go back, and don't mention this to anyone. I'll be back by dawn."

"Like hell," he growled. "You see that?" Murtagh motioned to the miniscule disturbances on the streets that she had been following, their enhanced vision able to pick up on the tiniest detail, even in the dark. "That is the trail of someone who wants me dead. I will follow it."

"Then I'm coming with you," Ariana said quietly, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. Don't leave me behind.

His eyes were unfathomable, but Murtagh didn't argue with her again. Instead, he whispered two words. "Thank you." She nodded in response, not sure what to say. And he didn't wait for her to figure it out.

Silently, he turned into the street, motioning for her to walk by his side. Ariana obliged, watching him move out of the corner of her eye. The moonlight barely penetrated the dank streets of this accursed city, but even in darkness she could not deny that this young man beside her was beautiful. There was something about the way he held himself, the way his every movement, whether calculated or not, was smooth, fluid, perpetually graceful. Looking at him hurt, because she knew that she had no right to feel the way she did. They barely knew each other, and had come together only through loss and pain. She knew that soon he would leave her behind – he was a Rider, and she was nobody. But in the recesses of her mind, in those dark places where no one could ever overhear the words she murmured to herself, afraid to speak them aloud lest they lose their beauty, Ariana was terrified that the way her heart trembled whenever he was near would morph into something more. In a sort of dull surprise, she realized that she hadn't recalled Orrin's face in nearly a day – a definite improvement.

She was torn from her introspection as the streets narrowed farther, and Murtagh ducked around to walk behind her, so close she thought she could feel his body breathing behind her. They wound through the city, stepping over the bodies of sleeping outcasts, Ariana blinking away a few tears at their plight. The next time she thought her own life was a travesty, she would think of the people she was seeing here. Men, women, children…all out in streets, in the cold, unprotected, many deformed, all poor. There were no elderly here. Life, for them, was a luxury. No one survived long enough to be old.

Suddenly she realized that Murtagh was no longer behind her, and Ariana turned to see him kneeling down, slipping a few coins beneath a sleeping child's head, resting his palm on the child's brow and murmuring something. Her heart tightened as she watched him. She'd heard the tales of him – a man as cruel and merciless as his father, a man with no heart, a monster who thirsted only for power, who knew only how to kill. She had believed those lying tongues. And at this moment she hated herself for it. The sorrow in his face wrenched at her painfully, and she worked to hide it as the straight planes of his body realigned as he stood erect. Without making a single comment, he walked up to her, taking the lead.

It was only when the oppressive streets melted away that Ariana took a breath – and it came as a gasp. A huge, ornate building loomed up before them. She knew what it was. A structure this grandiose at the center of the city. This was the home of whatever government had deluded itself into thinking it held power in this nest of injustice and cruelty.

Murtagh's mouth was a set line, his tall slash of a body tensed, his eyes roving over the building.

"That window," Ariana said softly, her lips barely moving, pointing with a single finger to a window through whose closed curtains a light was glowing. He nodded, a sharp motion of assent, and they tilted their heads back, both wondering how best to enter. The inside was not an option. They would be surrounded in moments.

"The building is warded," Murtagh murmured, positioning himself close to her so that she could hear his barely audible whispers. And feel his breath on her neck. "Give me a few minutes. Thorn and I can remove the ones on the outside up to that window."

It took him more than a few minutes, as it turned out. The frustration manifested itself in lines on his brow and in the tightening corners of his finely carved mouth, but finally he relaxed slightly. "Think you can climb up?"

Ariana scoffed. "Of course I can! What do you think I've been doing all these years?" His face twisted in pity, but she ignored it. They were her demons, not his – and she could handle them. "Can you?"

A flash of humor in his eyes was his only response.

Murtagh insisted on going first, so Ariana let him choose the best places to grasp the tiny cracks between the bricks. Whoever had constructed the building had been incredibly lazy. Cracks and crevices abounded, making for excellent handholds – and when necessary, they used magic to jump up a few extra feet, occasionally using chimneys or even windowsills to hoist themselves up.

Murtagh pulled himself up to the windowsill, which was uncommonly wide, his slender body crouching on the jutting slab of wood. Ariana hung onto it by her fingertips, watching as he closed his eyes, trying to ascertain if the room was empty. He shook his head, and mouthed a word. Two.

Ariana nodded, and jerked her chin towards the window. She wasn't going to hang out here and freeze to death. Better to take their chances with whoever was inside. And, knowing their luck, she had a hunch.

"Wait!" Ariana hissed as Murtagh raised a palm to break through the window. Drawing on her own magic, she let the spells fly from her lips, making sure that whatever happened inside the room would not be audible to anyone outside it – and that the door itself was locked as securely as it could be. She knew some fantastically intricate locking spells. Silver eyes met her own as she gave him a tiny smile.

Murtagh raised his palm, and the window swung open silently, voices spilling out over them, Ariana's safety net of spells preventing the night air from jostling the curtains even slightly. Even as she saw Murtagh's angular body go rigid, Ariana felt her heart begin to pump erratically in her own breast. She knew those voices. This was not going to go well at all.

A/N: I'll try to update again soon! And please leave a few comments!

CC xxx