The Vhinesse had enough life in her gasping body to deal them one final horror, and she did. As the allies began to stagger under sheer numbers, Elohl felt the Vhinesse’s power roar. Felt her weaves of milk-mist cast wide like the silk of some enormous spider. Her poison erupted through the room, seizing her Valormen, wrapping them in a command that they give their all for her. Red Valor surged with renewed will, and Elohl saw weaves of white blossom in their eyes as he cut them down. As if the Vhinesse’s control were a physical thing that tainted flesh, he saw why she’d ruled over three nations for more than twenty years.
Because she could summon her power to fill armies – to fight with no more mind than corpses.
As her horrors fell upon the allies, Elohl felt no fear inside them. They were dead men but for her will. Elohl gasped as a foe raked a blade across his hip. Even his sensate wyrria was slipping under the poison that coated the hall like a forest full of spiderwebs. He heard Fenton cry out, staggering as a Valorman slipped his guard, a dagger buried to the hilt in his left thigh. Dherran roared, falling to his knees clutching his sword-hand as his wrist spurted blood from beneath his cut leather bracer, the tendons severed, that hand useless. A foe barreled in, raising his sword to plunge down through Dherran’s ribcage and into his heart.
No!
All at once, a command rose in the hall upon a surge of midnight wind. Like a glacial night, Ghrenna was there, her presence roaring all around Elohl. On instinct he drove toward her, as if she was the last thing in the world. Suddenly, he could see her, sitting alone under the mountains to the vigil of a small luminous stone; Ghrenna’s cerulean eyes widened, seeing him, and Elohl knew that he was there with her, as much as she was here with him. Though his body hewed down foes, Elohl’s consciousness wrapped around his beloved. Pouring through her like molten light, opening her. Lighting her up as bliss flowed from his heart through hers and back again. Their touch was fire. Their lips were breath. Their passion rose, cascading up into a tower of light, and Elohl felt their bodies merge across the long leagues – him becoming her; her becoming him.
Elohl was bliss in battle, his body pure movement and righteousness, and he was bliss in her arms, his soul pure devotion. As she poured her love through every part of him, Elohl’s Goldenmarks blazed, alive. In that moment he felt the Marks expand. Roaring into the lancing conflict of Fenton. Twisting into the burning passion of Dherran. Devouring the drowning dusk of Ghrenna.
Drinking Elohl’s own sorrowful dawn and exploding through the room.
With a striking thunderclap, the Goldenmarks concussed. Elohl was struck to his knees by the force as Fenton went down with a cry beside him. The shockwave spilled men to their knees all through the blasted-out hall, swords and spears spinning away from dazed hands. Halting the fight, men gaping as if their minds, hearts, and souls had been sundered.
The Goldenmarks shone like runnels of lighting in the sea, the war-riven throne room deathly quiet except for a chunk of marble falling from a shattered pillar. Elohl shivered in that immense space, to feel such power breathing through him. An uneasy silence devoured the hall, even the groans of the dying becalmed as the Goldenmarks blazed. Hard breaths echoed into the domes as warriors were stopped. Elohl saw their faces, and knew he could possess them. Dherran, green eyes wide, blood-splatter marring his blonde mane as he clutched his useless sword hand. Merkhenos, a searing readiness in his copper eyes, his garb crimson with other men’s death. Fenton, standing tall with lightning snapping between his fingertips. Elohl knew he could thrust this bright wyrria through each and every one of them, not producing just this shock, but binding them. Taking their freedom and making his Rennkavi’s marks do what they had been created to do – unite them under his yoke, forever.
Elohl took a deep breath and let it out, slow. Eagerness to finish the binding tingled in his every sinew, making his skin itch and his muscles surge: he wanted to use this magic. Some part of him wanted these men – all men – to understand everything he had endured since the Kingsman Summons. A military post he’d not wanted. A command he’d hated. A life that had taken him away from everything and everyone he’d ever loved.
Some part of him wanted to bind them, so that they would feel the desperation he had endured.
Not like this. Ghrenna’s whisper filled him, and Elohl startled. The fresh-wind scent of her hair devoured him, the touch of her fingertips arrested him. The drowning beauty of her dark blue eyes pushed back the Goldenmarks. Not like this, Elohl. The Marks have a will of their own, but they obey your choice. Would you unite us? Or ruin us?
Elohl came to stillness, feeling the beat of his heart, seeing the steadiness of Ghrenna’s eyes. Gradually, the Marks quieted within his skin and the moment passed. As his urge to bind sighed away, the Marks died until they were only golden inkings once more. People began to shift and blink, gazing around at the wreckage; some moaned, taking stock of wounds. Elohl caught Fenton’s glance, then Dherran’s. Then his gaze fell upon the fallen Vhinesse, clutching her chest and gazing up at him from the foot of the dais. An expression of fury twisted her features, even as blood soaked her white lace gown and pooled around her.
Elohl would not enslave men this day, but something had to be done about her.
Stepping down the dais, his bare feet touched the blasted marble of the main floor, warm with blood. Kneeling before the fallen monarch, he gazed into the Vhinesse’s pale eyes with their ring of blue. Her face contorted, ugly. Elohl felt her energy expand in desperation, surrounding him with poisonous tendrils as she slid her palm, slick with her own blood, over Elohl’s bare chest.
“You’re mine,” she spoke, her melodious voice ringing with bells as she pressed her sapping weaves deep into Elohl’s heart upon the mark of her crimson blood. But her wyrria was hollow to Elohl now. Hollow like the sound of sleigh bells upon a winter wind.
“No.” Elohl reached out, cupping her face in his hands. “You’re mine.”
Leaning in, he brought his lips to hers. As they touched, he poured himself into her. His calm. His peace. His desire to cease fighting. As Ghrenna’s eyes lit his soul, Elohl’s Goldenmarks flared, bright like the dawn.
When he drew away, the Vhinesse’s face had fallen into a terrible peace – the peace of drowning under a highmountain lake, where all was darkness and silence. She wasn’t his servant and she wasn’t his slave. It was worse. She was his, united to the Goldenmarks in a way that could never be broken. But it was something Elohl had to do, to win this day, to save far more people from the oppression she would bring.
Slipping his fingers down her face from brow to chin, coated in the blood of the fallen, he whispered three words.
“Be at peace.”
With a sigh, her pale eyes rolled up in her head. The Vhinesse of Valenghia collapsed to the white marble in a puddle of crimson. Dead, to the Rennkavi’s command.
CHAPTER 24 – DHERRAN
Dherran stared at the scene, his maimed sword-hand forgotten even as he pressed down upon his wrist and ruined leather bracer to slow the bleeding. His eyes were wide in the sundered throne hall, bearing witness to the stuff of legends. Elohl, blazing with righteous light, had walked down the broken steps of the marble dais like some elder god. With a kiss, he’d sundered the seething power of the Vhinesse, cut it as neatly as a blade slices a thorny rose – and she had collapsed, dead at his feet.
Dherran knew that he’d been a part of that light. He could feel it still blazing through his body, commanding his passion. As if Elohl’s golden inkings called to the ancient power in Dherran’s veins, and knew what to do with it; Dherran shivered. Coated with blood, shaking with battle-fatigue, it wasn’t his regular let-down after combat. It was this sundering command breathing all around him – through him. Spearing his heart like a thousand suns, making Dherran’s passion flare and spin like a sand-funnel. Gripping deep into his heart, it left Dherran afraid, in a way he had never been afraid before.
Afraid of how it might use him.
&nb
sp; “Who is he?” Khenria’s words were soft as she bound a length of cloth around Dherran’s slashed wrist, putting pressure on the wound that left his fingers useless.
“A friend. From my youth.” Dherran pulled Khenria close and she gave a peep of protest. She was as blood-stained as he, and looking down, he saw the deep sword-gash on her outer shoulder that she’d already ripped her shirtsleeve off to bandage, the other sleeve sacrificed for Dherran’s wound.
“Khen...” Dherran marveled down at her, his gaze lingering on her shoulder. “Aeon! I thought you were dead. I thought I saw – I thought the Vhinesse’s lunge pierced your heart, for a moment there.”
“I’m ok. She just got my shoulder. It’s nothing.” Khenria shuddered, looking back to Elohl, her brows in a tight line. “I feel him, Dherran. Your friend. Like he could make me do things—”
“I feel it, too.” Dherran pressed his lips to her brow, tasting iron upon her skin, grateful that she was alive. He could have sworn he’d seen her die, seen her pierced through the chest, but he was just as glad she wasn’t, that it had been some fever-mirage of battle and not the truth.
“What is it? Wyrria?” Khenria murmured against the thick hush. Valormen were moving now, tending wounds, helping the dying. Though the Vhinesse’s poison had cleared, the throne room was red with massacre: bodies lay everywhere, crimson uniforms seeping with a deeper red, pools of filth slicking the floor. Dherran wondered if anyone would ever get all that gore scrubbed off the alabaster and marble, or if it would sink in, staining forever.
But Dherran had no more time to ponder, for Elohl was moving to him, leaving the body of the fallen Vhinesse behind. The man was captivating: intricate golden inkings still simmered over his blood-slicked frame, breathing with power. Not just the power Elohl had shown today, but a commanding presence he’d always held. As he approached, Dherran felt the weight of not just years between them, but wyrria. Of two lives, each desperate and wreathed with magic in their own way. He could feel command in Elohl’s stone-hard gaze, in those lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Eyes of sorrow. Of battles won and lost, not the least of which were etched in the countless blade-scars that decorated Elohl’s skin along with his rippling golden sigils and script.
He’d led a hard life, since that day they failed at Roushenn.
But a life that had honed whatever Elohl truly was.
“Elohl.” Dherran breathed it, awed. His old friend was close enough in the stretched silence of the throne hall to hear now, and Elohl’s lips quirked. His humor was still there, even if it was only a shadow of what it had once been. Dherran found himself smiling back as Elohl extended a hand – Dherran clasped Elohl’s wrist with his good hand, feeling blood slick between them.
“Dherran den’Lhust.” Elohl’s opal-grey eyes sparkled. “Your passion for battle was welcome today, my friend.”
“How were you—? I mean, what—?” Dherran had no words. It was beyond description, everything that had just happened. They had won the day with magic: with wyrria – a resonance between them that wasn’t even spoken of in Alrashemni lore.
“Later, my friend. But it’s damn good to see you.” Elohl clapped a hand to Dherran’s shoulder and gave him a shake with surprising strength in his lean frame. This man was battle-hardened steel: a commander in every way, like Arlen den’Selthir. The mostly naked fellow who stepped down the dais to Elohl’s side was no less so. And though his gold-brown eyes were calm, a smile of ready humor gracing his plain-yet-handsome face, Dherran was not fooled.
That man, whoever he was, had shot lightning from his bare hands.
The fellow stepped close, clapping a hand to Elohl’s shoulder. “Fuck, it feels good to be free of that bitch!”
“You seem quite free, really.” Khenria chirruped beside Dherran. It struck Dherran that she was staring at two gloriously naked men covered only by the triumph of battle, strange jewelry, and blood-soaked loincloths. Khenria grinned, her gaze taking in Elohl and his wiry companion.
“Hey!” Dherran gave her a little shake.
“What?” She retorted. “I can ogle. Your friends are handsome, Dherran. Deal with it.”
“Handsome.” The wiry fellow cocked his head, his gold-brown eyes flashing. “Now that’s a word a man likes to hear. Fenton den’Kharel, milady, First-Lieutenant of the Roushenn Palace Guard. And you are?”
“Khenria den—” She hesitated. Then smiled. “Oblitenne. Khenria Oblitenne.”
“Oblitenne?” Fenton whipped back the hand he was extending. His face held a battle-fierce darkness, his former placidity vanished.
“Stand down, wyrric!” A woman’s voice suddenly boomed through the hall. Dherran glanced over to see Delennia Oblitenne in her bloodstained Red Valor gear rising from her dead sister’s side. Moving toward them with a scowl on her fierce face, she whipped her blood-streaked silver braid back over her shoulder.
“And who are you?” Fenton hesitated, uncertainty moving in his eyes.
“She’s the new Vhinesse.” A wiry Cennetian approached, dressed in Red Valor battle-leathers. His copper waves were streaked with grey, his eyes piercing. Grump had pointed the man out earlier as High General Merkhenos del’Ilio, their ally in the Vhinesse’s court. Fenton moved into a guarded stance before Elohl as Delennia approached and Dherran felt the air shiver, like a gathering thunderstorm.
Delennia cocked a regal eyebrow at Fenton, her lips set in a hard smile. “Impressive. If I’d had a wyrric like you in my cadre eighteen years ago, our coup in this very same room might not have failed. I am in your debt.” She gave a regal nod to Fenton, who straightened from his ready stance, then gave a nod to Elohl. “And am I in your debt as well. Whatever a Vhinesse may do for her new allies, she will. So do I promise.”
“You’re the Vhinesse’s sister?” Elohl evaluated Delennia, no fear in his eyes.
“Twin.” Delennia gave a small, ruthless smile. “By minutes. We never shared the bond twins usually enjoy. She was a bitch, by all accounts, and my nation has been at war for decades because of her, fed by stolen foot soldiers from foreign lands. I aim to correct that.”
Dherran saw Elohl flinch at the word twins. The light of victory died in his eyes as they went flat, hollow. Agony twisted inside Dherran, seeing that look, and he knew that Olea was dead. The only one of them that Dherran had thought would actually survive all the tumult after the Kingsmen Summons. Dherran took a slow breath. Khenria must have felt it, for she snugged close, glancing up. He shook his head; they would talk later. Right now, there were more problems to sort out.
“This was not supposed to happen today.” The Cennetian approached, motioning his exhausted retainers back so he could come to the impromptu knot of rulership. Grunnach moved into the parlay also, wiping down the longknives he’d been fighting with rather than his rapier.
“And yet happen it did,” Delennia glanced to the Cennetian. “A stroke of luck.”
“A stroke of destiny.” Merkhenos’ sharp copper gaze took them all in, finally settling upon Fenton and Elohl. “In Cennetia, we say luck holds no coin, but destiny holds them all. But when destinies collect,” he glanced around them all again, with a thoughtful frown, “one must hold wariness in the heart.”
“The tide of destiny is a fickle thing,” Grunnach chimed in, sliding his knives away in twin sheaths on his boots.
“Indeed, Grunnach,” the Cennetian grinned. “Indeed. It’s been a long time. I hardly believed my eyes when Delennia pointed you out in the hall.”
“Time is crueler than destiny, my friend. All of my joints can attest to that right now. Good to see you again.” Grunnach reached out to clasp the Cennetian’s wrist and they shared a moment. It held much; far too much for Dherran to even begin to puzzle out. Grunnach den’Lhis was not just one secret – he was a bundle of secrets, wrapped in a shroud of more, sunken in an ocean of them.
“Come.” Merkhenos made an expansive gesture. “Destines turn, and we must decide what to do with a nation at war. We are
in luck – the Generals and Captains who might have opposed us have been barricaded in the war-hall by my men as soon as I saw what was happening. We must devise a united front, before too many tongues can wag.”
“Agreed.” Delennia flicked her fingers at Merkhenos’ men. One fellow with a band of silver at his collar moved up. “Seal the doors after us, Ghirano. None enter or leave. Let the corpses be, for now. Gather any others of you loyal to Merkhenos and round up all the healers from the palace infirmary. Bring them back here to attend the wounded. Ensure all these men are given food, water, and bandaged – but none are to leave this hall until you hear further instructions from me. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly, my Vhinesse.” Ghirano snapped his heels together with a quick, though tired, bow.
“I’m not your Vhinesse yet,” she murmured back. “But see that it’s done.”
“Yes, milady.” Ghirano moved off at a brisk clip, summoning others of Merkhenos’ guard as he began to organize the hall.
“Come. This way.” Merkhenos led and the rest followed. No one spoke as he took them quickly down side-corridors and pushed through secret stone panels into servant’s ways. As they maneuvered back-halls of alabaster stone, Dherran was amazed to find they came into contact with not a single servant. Clearly, the Cennetian didn’t want anyone to know about the coup.
At last, they arrived at an out-door and Merkhenos hustled them across a broad hall filled with carvings of lustful creatures. The Cennetian’s quarters were no less lewd, Dherran noted, as he and Khenria were shown to an opulent washroom, the others led elsewhere. A hot bath awaited in a large ceramic tub, with folded clothing in fine fabrics upon a gilded side-table. Avoiding his slashed wrist, Dherran stripped off his blood-soiled clothes, a stiff fatigue already settling into his muscles. Khenria was quick to the tub, stepping into the same white-slurried water from the Obelisk Quarter fountain, though she hissed as it sluiced over her torn shoulder. A lemony scent and the hint of basil wafted up from the steam.
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