Dark Skies

by Danielle L. Jensen

  “Are you all right?”

  Instead of answering, Lydia dropped the sword and threw up. Over and over her stomach heaved, the vomit burning. Twisting away from the mess, she pressed her forehead against the cobbles.

  “If you’re finished, we need to go.” Killian reached down to retrieve his weapon. “I’ve already lost a chunk of flesh to one of these bastards, and I don’t aim to lose any more.”

  He started walking, then swayed, catching his balance against the wall of a building.

  Wiping her mouth, Lydia hurried to his side, noting that the sleeve of his coat was soaked with blood, a constant stream of droplets falling to splat against the cobbles. “Let me help you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not. And if your ego is so delicate that you insist on arguing otherwise, you deserve to be eaten.”

  His laugh turned into a growl of pain, but he didn’t resist as she pulled his uninjured arm around her shoulder, staggering as his weight pressed against her.

  Their progress was nerve-rackingly slow as they shifted from shadow to shadow. Lydia kept an eye on the dark skies, muscles twitching at every sound, certain they were being watched. That the deimos were waiting for them to falter and then would attack. When they reached a blue door centered in the front of a large building, Killian extracted a key, trying three times to insert it into the lock before Lydia took it from him. She had just turned the key when the door swung open, revealing the tallest woman Lydia had ever seen.

  The woman’s eyes widened at the sight of them. Reaching down, she grabbed Lydia’s arm and jerked, sending her toppling across the floor into the house.

  “Don’t you dare!” Killian’s strangled protest followed her in as the enormous woman picked him up like a child.

  Ignoring Lydia, she kicked the door shut and hurried up the stairs. “Garrem,” she shouted. “Get your arse upstairs.”

  An old man shuffled across the front entrance and up the stairs, past where Lydia huddled in the shadows. Trailing him was a group of girls, none appearing past twenty. All six of them wore dark trousers, knee-high boots, and dark blouses held tight to their bodies by leather corsets.

  “Someone’s hurt,” a girl with a thick blond braid said, crouching to touch one of the many droplets of blood splattered across the floor.

  “I’m sure I heard the captain’s voice,” another with copper-colored hair said, and the lot of them exchanged glances. Lydia debated extracting herself from her hiding place but decided she was happy enough where she was.

  “Not him, surely. He’s…” the blond trailed off, and the girl with the copper hair took her hand.

  There was a heavy thud, and the large woman’s voice boomed from above. “Gwen, have the cook put water on to boil and tell her I need more bandages. The rest of you get back to your dinner. There’s little enough in this cursed city without you letting it go to waste.”

  The blond disappeared into the hallway, but the copper-haired girl asked, “Who’s hurt? Is it the captain?”

  The enormous woman hesitated long enough that a denial would obviously be a lie. “He ran afoul of a deimos.”

  The girl’s hands balled into fists. “Is he…?”

  “He’ll be fine. Go eat your dinner, Lena.”

  “I can go get a healer,” the girl—Lena—protested. “I know the sewer tunnels—”

  “No.” The woman’s voice was not unkind. “You will stay here unless I say otherwise, do you understand?”

  The girl-soldier reluctantly nodded, then disappeared after her fellows. Lydia leaned her head against the staircase, inhaling the smell of wood polish. Everything hurt. Her feet were a raw mess, and she bled from countless small injuries on her arms and legs.

  She did not know what to do.

  She did not know where she was.

  She did not know how she was going to get back home.

  What she did know was that Killian was bleeding to death from injuries gained saving her life. And for that reason, even if the night were safe, she couldn’t walk away.

  Taking the steps two at a time, Lydia followed the woman’s voice until she found the room where they’d taken him.

  On silent feet, Lydia stopped at the doorway, taking in the sight of Killian stripped to the waist and lying on a bed. The old man—Garrem—was inspecting Killian’s ruined shoulder, the skin lacerated down to the bone from the deimos’s fangs.

  “You need a healer,” the large woman said, pounding a fist against one of the bedposts. “I’ll send two of the girls to the temple.”

  “No.” Killian’s voice was weak but adamant. “The deimos aren’t normal beasts, Bercola. They’ll be watching this house, and I’ll not have anyone risk their lives by leaving it.”

  “It’s their job to risk their lives!”

  He shook his head. “For Malahi, not for me.”

  “Then let me go. You are my responsibility.”

  “Bercola, I said no,” he said. “Even if you made it to the temple, Quindor wouldn’t allow any of his healers to go out into the night. Not for me. You’ll have to wait until dawn.”

  “Dawn will be too late.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He turned his head and caught sight of Lydia standing in the doorway. His face was ashen except for the smear of blood across one cheek, but he still managed a crooked smile. “Not a damsel in distress, after all.”

  Pretending she didn’t see Bercola’s glare, Lydia made her way to the side of the bed. “That’s kind of you to say.” She tried to smile while taking in all the blood. “My confidence has taken quite a beating lately, and your gratitude has bolstered it immensely.”

  He laughed and then ground his teeth. “Gods, that hurts.”

  “Apologies.” Lydia glanced nervously at the woman looming over her.

  “Leave her alone, Bercola,” Killian said. “Better yet, go make sure no one is thinking of doing anything stupid.”

  A thousand arguments were written across the enormous woman’s face, but she only shook her head and left.

  With the aid of a monocle, Garrem had finally managed to thread a needle and set to stitching up Killian’s shoulder. “Your field dressing skills have not improved, I see,” Killian said through clenched teeth.

  The old man sniffed and bent lower over the injury, which had already soaked the sheets with blood.

  As he winced, Killian’s gaze shifted back to Lydia. “I don’t even know your name.”

  Garrem stopped his stitching. “Lord Calorian! That’s appalling, even for you.”

  “It isn’t like that,” they both said at the same time.

  The old man eyed Lydia, grunted, and then returned to his work, which Lydia watched with fascination. She’d never seen an injury so severe before, and she mentally catalogued how the old man drew the bleeding muscle together, the type of stitch he used, and how swiftly the bandages soaked with blood. Killian winced with each pass of the needle, but he never once cried out.

  “Are you going to tell me your name or do I have to guess?”

  The question dragged her attention from the injury back to his face. “It’s Lydia.”

  “Unusual name.”

  It wasn’t. Not in the Empire. “I’m from somewhere else.”

  “Should’ve stayed.” His jaw clenched again, and to her surprise, he grabbed hold of her hand. His fingers were like ice. Then he sighed, eyelids slipping closed and fingers going limp in hers.

  “Blast!” Garrem rose swiftly to his feet. “This is for naught—he won’t last another hour much less the night without a healer. I’m going to find Bercola to see what can be done. Try to rouse him, if you can.” Then he shuffled out of the room, leaving her alone with Killian.

  “My … lord.” She stumbled on the unfamiliar honorific, then gently shook his arm when he didn’t respond. “My lord, you must wake up.” His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t move. “Killian, please!”

  “Poor boy is in a bad state.”

  Lydia�
�s head snapped up so fast her neck cracked. A stooped woman with wrinkles layered on top of wrinkles stood on the opposite side of the bed, seemingly having appeared from nowhere. She wore a brown dress, and a long white braid hung down her back. “Who are you?” Lydia demanded, glancing over her shoulder to find the door still closed. “Are you a physician … a healer?”

  The woman chuckled and rested a hand against Killian’s forehead, stroking back his hair fondly. “Not as such, Lydia.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I haven’t seen you in a very long time,” the woman said, clasping her hands in front of her. “Only my sister sees clearly through the haze of the East, and she is rarely forthcoming. Though it is her I must thank for bringing you back.”

  “Who are you?” Lydia demanded again. “What do you know of Celendor?”

  The woman grimaced. “More and less than I would like. However, that is a distant threat for another day. I’m afraid we’ve more pressing concerns, my dearest girl. This boy was chosen years ago, and my brother does not wish to see him lost just yet. Nor do I—I’ve always been fond of this one.”

  Killian’s breathing had grown ragged. Lydia took his hand, but his fingers remained unmoving. “Can you help him?”

  The old woman shook her head. “That is not my way.”

  Lydia sank her front teeth into her lip to silence a nasty retort. At the best of times, she despised vagaries. This was not the best of times. “Then he’s going to die.”

  “Not if you help him.”

  “I’m not a physician. I don’t know how.”

  The woman smiled. “It’s more a matter of will than knowledge. The question is, are you ready to take all the hardship that will come along with it?”

  “Tell me what to do.” Lydia squeezed Killian’s hand, feeling the callus across his palm from what must be endless hours of holding a weapon. He was dying on the bed between them and the woman was talking prophetic nonsense. Lydia could deal with the gore; all she needed were the appropriate instructions. What to stitch and how.

  “If you help him, you’ll be starting down a hard and lonely road—”

  “I’ve walked a lonely road all my life,” Lydia interrupted, tired of the unnecessary chatter. “Tell me how to help him or get out.”

  “Oh, there is no mistaking you. You are just like your father.” The woman beamed, and Lydia barely had the chance to register the woman’s words before she reached out, fingers brushing Lydia’s forehead.

  A shock ran through her, and she staggered back, momentarily blinded by bright light. When the stars receded from her vision, the woman was gone.

  And everything was different.

  The air was filled with a shifting, swirling mist. It drifted toward her, clinging and absorbing into her skin. Panicked, Lydia tried to brush it away, but it only latched on to her hands. More and more of it floated toward her, like iron filings to a magnet, and the dying man was its source. It poured out of his injuries like blood, but the flow was diminishing.

  It was life.

  And he was running out.

  Stumbling forward, Lydia clapped her hands down on one stitched wound to stop the flow.

  The moment their skin touched, her fingertips burned as life seared out of them, leaving behind a growing void deep in her chest. Lydia’s heart labored, her lungs wheezing, each breath a greater struggle than the next. Exhaustion swept over her, and with a strangled cry she jerked backward and fell, joints rattling with the impact against the floor.

  Lydia lifted her hand, terror clawing through her like a beast as she took in the gnarled fingers with paper-thin, age-spotted skin. Climbing to her feet, she stumbled toward a mirror on the wall, barely able to see through her clouded vision. Her outline sharpened as she approached, her image clarifying even as her stomach twisted, bitter and foul. The face that looked back was hers.

  Hers, fifty years from now.

  Lydia screamed.

  20

  LYDIA

  The sun shone through the open window and Lydia blinked blearily, strange scents filling her nose, the fabric of the pillow beneath her cheek not the familiar silk of those in her own bedroom.

  “Good morning.”

  Lydia sat upright, yanking the blankets around her bare shoulders. Killian sat in a chair, looking remarkably hale and healthy for someone who’d been on his deathbed. He had a half-finished plate of food balanced on one knee, indicating he’d been watching her for an uncomfortable length of time. “You’re alive,” she stuttered.

  “I noticed.” He took a bite from a strip of bacon and leaned back in his chair. His shirt sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, revealing a multitude of faded scars on his olive-hued skin. “Shoulder’s as good as new, though you should show more caution when healing someone who’s marked. We take a fair bit more to kill, and therefore take a fair bit more to heal.”

  An image of her face, aged nearly beyond recognition, flashed across Lydia’s mind, and she jerked her gaze to her own hand. Fingers straight and slender, skin unmarked. The hand of a young woman, not an aged hag.

  Had she imagined it?

  No, she decided, noting that her own minor injuries had entirely healed. As improbable—as impossible—as it seemed, none of it had been a dream.

  Which meant that had been no mere old woman she’d been speaking to—it had been the goddess Hegeria; Lydia was certain of it. Treatise of the Seven gave no physical description to the gods, but it did describe their nature and what aspects of the world they had dominion over. Hegeria was said to be the most serene and kind of the gods with power over the body and spirit. She was whom the people of the Dark Shores prayed to for good health, for fertility, and for wisdom. But more important, the mark she bestowed on her chosen was the ability to heal even the most catastrophic of injuries, though doing so required the healer giving up some of themselves. Treatise had page after page of stories of famous healers making great sacrifices to save others, and it was not lost on Lydia now that said sacrifices were often their very lives.

  The gods were real.

  Their marks were real.

  And Lydia had been saddled with the worst of them.

  Killian set the plate aside and pulled down his sleeves, dragging her attention back to him. “You know I have to turn you in.”

  For what and to whom Lydia had no idea, but being turned in was never a good thing. And from the tone of his voice, he was in agreement. She stared at him, unwilling to speak lest she unwittingly condemn herself further.

  “I don’t want to,” he continued, resting his elbows on his knees and meeting her stare. “I’m not in favor of how Serrick treats the Marked—healers especially—but I’m in no position to cross him on this. I’m not in his good graces, and my head is only tenuously attached these days.” He drew a finger across his throat. “There’s only so much I’m willing to do for a girl I just met. Even one who saved my life.”

  Lydia swallowed the dryness in her throat, thinking fast. “Your chivalry is commendable.”

  Killian winced, his pride pricked as she had intended. “You would’ve been caught anyway,” he muttered. “Quindor investigates every whisper of a rumor of a healer across all corners of the kingdom. I have no notion how you managed to elude him this long.”

  Lydia considered his words, marking the way he avoided her eyes, his jaw working back and forth. Highborn he might be, but this young man was no politician—not with the way every emotion played across his face, most especially his guilt. “I eluded him,” she said carefully, “because until last night, he’d have had no reason to be looking for me. Before last night, I wasn’t … marked.” The word stuck in her throat, the admission somehow making it real.

  Killian went very still.

  “I’m not from here. I’m from Celendor, but circumstances drove me to escape using an unmapped”—she broke off, unsure of the translation—“xenthier stem. Xenthier’s a sort of crystal—”

  “I know what xenthier is.”<
br />
  The same word in both languages. That was interesting. Pushing away the thought, she continued. “It deposited me in a stream just outside the city, and I came looking for shelter. I’d been inside the gates only a matter of minutes before I fell and you came upon me.”

  “I see.”

  “When Bercola left me alone with you, an old woman came into your chamber. I’d never seen her before in my life, but she knew my name.” Knew who I was. Said she knew my father. “She told me that you’d been chosen years ago and her brother did not wish to see you lost. That she’d give me the chance to save your life if I was willing to take the hardship that came with it.” She leveled him with a glare. “Little did I know that this hardship would be visited upon me so swiftly. Or by the man whose life I saved.”

  His color rose. “You’re telling me that Hegeria marked you to save my life because Tremon asked her to?”

  Lydia nodded, silently cursing herself for taking the woman’s—no, the goddess’s—offer without thought of the consequences. If she’d declined, she wouldn’t be in this predicament—she’d be on her way to finding a route back to Celendor to help Teriana, to stop Vibius from poisoning her father, and to make Lucius pay for his actions. Back to a place where gods and their marks didn’t exist.

  “None of this matters anyway. As soon as I can find a Maarin ship, I’ll be on my way back to Celendor.” She’d smelled the ocean in the air last night, and there was little chance a city of this size wouldn’t have a port. And the Maarin went everywhere.

  “That’s quite the tale.” He leaned back in his chair. “But you have a set of problems. One, the Maarin don’t take passengers—”

  “They’ll take me.”

  He huffed out an amused breath. “Two, since the invasion and the deimos began fouling the skies, the Maarin have been bypassing Mudaire’s harbor. And three, even if the Maarin were taking passengers, Quindor is testing every person who boards a ship to ensure they aren’t marked healers trying to evade conscription.”

  Lydia’s stomach soured, and she viciously plucked at a loose thread on the coverlet, fighting back tears. “I’ll go by land to wherever the Maarin are making port then. I don’t care if I have to walk. I need to get home.”