by Cara Witter
A cry ripped from her as guards grabbed her and forced her to her knees. He caught sight of a fistful of blond hair in a guard’s hand as one of them pulled her head back and drew back a blade.
His heart lurched, a pain far sharper than the cut scoring across it.
I’m sorry, Perchaya. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.
I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.
Another blade caught him in a too-slow dodge, this time biting into his upper arm, and Kenton knew.
They weren’t making it out of this throne room alive. Not any of them. Each movement he made, each thrust he blocked and every step he was forced back, brought him closer to the one that would inevitably be his last.
He would never kill Diamis. He wouldn’t lead the other bearers to take their godstones.
Kenton parried another blade, flinging backward with all of his might and tossing the guard off balance. But the bearers, the four of them—they weren’t here. They still had a chance.
Kenton shuffled around the guards and felt his back hit the wall. More guards closed in on him.
He’d brought them this far. For him, that would have to be enough.
Fifty-two
As Saara approached the queen’s bedchamber again, she listened carefully for any noise from behind them. She heard only Sayvil’s footsteps beside her, so Nikaenor must have led those guards effectively away. She shuddered to think of what would happen to him if the guards caught up to him, but the best thing she could do for him now was to get the stone. It was what they’d come for, what they’d all put their lives in danger for.
Saara wasn’t about to fail now.
She did what she should have done the first time and paused at the door to her aunt’s rooms. She thought the guards had left it open when they’d escorted her and Jaeme away, but now the door was closed. And even through the thick wood, Saara could hear scuffling inside.
“Someone’s in there,” Saara whispered. “Probably more guards.” She drew her daggers, but Sayvil put a hand on her arm.
And handed her a thick, gauzy cloth. “To breathe through,” Sayvil whispered. She pulled a wad of dry moss out of an envelope in her belt pouch. “I think this got mixed with the pepper. But that’ll only make it burn more.” She produced a flint and striker from her boot, sparked the moss, and the whole wad went up in flames.
Sayvil shoved the moss under the door and pressed her own bit of gauze over her mouth and nose. Saara did the same, waiting while Sayvil counted on her fingers. Five, four, three, two—
A shouting noise came from inside, and the door pushed open.
Saara launched herself inside before it could open fully, the gauze still pressed over her mouth. A guard tried to emerge—though not one Saara knew—and Saara caught her in the stomach with her dagger, shoving her back into the room. Thick smoke filled the room, and Saara could hear two more guards coughing and gagging somewhere in the mist.
Behind her, Sayvil stepped in and shut the door. Saara moved toward the sound of the other guards, dispatching them quickly. It would have been more merciful to attempt to knock them out or bind them, but there wasn’t time. If Saara had to choose between the lives of her aunt’s guards and the lives of her own companions, her priorities were clear.
The moss extinguished—Saara thought she might have stepped on it on her way in—and the smoke began to thin. Saara’s eyes burned and watered, but she found herself standing in her aunt’s room, which even through the gauze now reeked of something one of the priests might have burned ceremonially. Three dead guards lay at their feet, and beyond that, against the side wall, the chest.
Good, the god said.
No thanks to you, Saara thought back.
She took a step toward the trunk, wondering at the wisdom of sassing the very god she was supposed to worship, when the door to the bath chamber opened behind her.
Saara swung around, dagger at the ready.
And found herself face to face with her cousin Talia, Daughter of Nerendal.
Heir to the throne of Tirostaar.
The tap room was smaller than Jaeme had imagined—more of a closet filled with jugs and bowls, stacked up on a few carts used to carry them. There were also several barrels set beside a bronze faucet affixed to one wall. Saara had told them that the palace water was supplied from a retaining pool on top of the cliff and flowed down through taps in the city below. The wheel was positioned at the far east end of the city, so as to pick up the city’s drinking water before it was polluted with the flow of sewage and other contaminants from the city drainage. From rooms such as this, servants would bring bowls of water to various rooms in the castle for cooking and laundry and flushing refuse.
The room would be accessed often, and the door didn’t have a lock. Jaeme rolled one of the heavy barrels of water over to block the door, then loosened the bolts in the large floor drain, grateful for the practice that allowed him to do so quickly.
Jaeme lifted the grate and dropped down into the sewer tunnels. He didn’t have time to replace the bolts—which would have been tricky to do from beneath it—but he did replace the grate and leave the bolts down below. Hopefully any servants who passed through here wouldn’t immediately notice.
Not that he’d seen a single servant since the ringing of the gong.
Jaeme moved through the tunnels in the direction the guards had been running, the stench of ammonia newly pungent to his nose. He had no idea what he would find in the throne room. For all he knew, the others were already dead. And while he didn’t want any of them dying here, the image in his mind was one of Daniella, lying broken and bloodied, reaching out her hand for help.
Gods. Did he think she needed the likes of him to save her? He’d been sent to seduce her, for the gods’ sakes.
This tunnel quickly branched off into one he’d traversed with Saara before, and he followed his own boot prints in the moss up to the grate below the throne room.
Jaeme’s heart hammered in his throat as he moved the grate away. He hauled himself up, rested his elbows on the floor, and listened.
In the throne room, he heard the scuffling of feet and the clashing of steel and yells in Tirostaari. And then the sound of Daniella’s voice—the only sound he wanted to hear—but not speaking. Screaming.
“Please,” she cried. “Please, no.”
Panic flooded through Jaeme, a panic like he’d never felt in his life. And that’s when Jaeme knew, deep down in his core:
He was in love with Daniella.
Jaeme scrambled from the hole and leapt to his feet, hoping desperately that he wasn’t too late.
Daniella was still holding a dagger and a sword when the guard she’d taken them from knocked her back and shot the queen.
The room erupted in chaos.
A guard behind her shoved her to the ground and she hit the tile floor hard, pain lancing up through her right arm. The dagger slid away and was swiftly grabbed by another guard.
She’d been right in the middle of a dozen—at least—kneeling guards, and now she was caught amidst the crowd. Only now she was the one on the ground, and she had no leverage holding them at bay.
Fortunately, most of the guards were more concerned about procuring their weapons and getting at Kenton, which gave her an opportunity.
Daniella pushed herself to her knees and swiped out with the sword at a guard who lunged for her. The guard dodged all too easily, and Daniella cried out as a sharp kick in her side knocked her back to the ground.
The guard who’d kicked her planted a booted foot on Daniella’s wrist, forcing Daniella to release the sword. The guard she’d tried so inexpertly to attack pried the weapon from her rapidly numbing fingers.
“Get up,” the guard commanded in Tirostaari, removing her boot from Daniella’s wrist. That brief relief from pain was soon ended as the guard wrenched Dan
iella to her feet and roughly pinned her arms behind her back.
Daniella wheezed as she was pulled up, her side aching from the kick. She could see Perchaya struggling against the hold of a guard who had her pinned in the same way. Several of the guards were opening the throne room doors for those outside, yelling that the queen was down, yelling for aid, dragging her limp body from the room.
Up on the dais, by the throne, Kenton was a blur of movement against a group of guards too large for even someone like him to fend off for much longer.
We’re going to die here.
Please, gods, don’t let us die here.
Terror coursed through her, and all at once the fear was the only thing that felt real. The knowledge that these guards weren’t going to let her live. They wouldn’t let any of them live.
She knew there were hot tears streaming down her cheeks, and her pleadings had turned from thoughts to outright begging. “Please, no,” she heard herself cry out, over and again.
But even these were as distant a sensation as the yells echoing across the room, as the ring of steel against steel from the dais, or the boot steps of even more guards flooding the room. As distant as Perchaya’s own cries as the guard forced her to her knees and yanked her head back.
Even the pain began to feel more and more like a distant memory, replaced by the sensation of something crawling under her skin, like thousands of tiny spiders scrambling up through her muscles.
She’d felt this before, though she had no idea when.
The guard dragged her several steps towards the wall and kicked the back of her knees so that she buckled to the ground like Perchaya had.
Between the press of bodies, she saw Jaeme in the doorway to the antechamber. He met her eyes, and his were wide, panicked. He couldn’t reach them, not in time.
Run, Jaeme, she wanted to tell him. Run.
The guard grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back.
Another guard nodded to the one behind her, placing a sweaty hand on Daniella’s forehead. To steady her, she knew. So that the cut across the neck would be clean and quick.
“No,” she whispered. “Please.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed as she raised the dagger to Daniella’s neck, and the skittering under Daniella’s skin became a flood of heat and desperation and sudden, bitter hate.
The dagger pierced her skin, and the entire world flared red.
Perchaya waited for the moment when the blade would bite into her throat, gritting her teeth and fighting the urge to scream.
A loud ringing met her ears, then a blast of some kind of pressure that shook her to her bones, even as an orb of blue light pulsed around her.
And then she knew true horror.
Daniella flung her hands up to her face and screamed into her palms, her hair a wild tangle pulled upward with some kind of force.
A force that radiated outward from her like a wave.
The air turned red. The guards nearest Daniella didn’t even have the chance to scream. They collapsed, blood streaming from every orifice, rising like a red mist from every pore, even erupting from sudden gushing fissures along their inner arms and legs. Their bodies, barely distinguishable, became lumps of cloth and twitching flesh.
Perchaya’s hands went to her face, as if to block out the nightmare. Her own body remained untouched, even as the wave of power churned outward from Daniella and over the guards holding Perchaya. Those guards did scream, their cries bubbling with blood that choked them as they fell. More blood poured out of their ears, their eyes, soaking their clothes.
Perchaya cried out, stumbling backwards, but the wave had already passed over her, breaking around the blue light.
The ring. The ring was protecting her.
No one else would be so lucky.
She spun toward Kenton, who had drawn a group of guards behind the throne. Thankfully, he was still standing, gaping wide-eyed in horror at the sudden fury of violence. The guards he’d been fighting looked much the same, several of them fleeing toward the staging room door.
They were caught in the blast, along with Rakal who still stood by the wall. The guards crumpled, clutching their eyes, their mouths, their chests. Rakal leaned back against the stone wall, looking down at his hands as blood dripped from his eyes, then collapsing to the floor with the others.
In the doorway to the side, Jaeme stood, shielding his face with his hands and stumbling backward. Perchaya cried out to him, afraid of what she would see when his hands fell.
But he stayed on his feet, staring open-mouthed at Daniella—apparently outside the lethal range of the pulse.
Kenton had flattened himself against the far wall, also far enough away to survive.
At least for now.
Kenton’s eyes met hers and he stepped toward her, mouthing her name—or maybe saying it, she couldn’t tell over all the noise. Blood gushed from his nose.
Perchaya paused to draw in a steadying breath, to think amidst the screams and blood and death. Kenton had so far survived, even though he had no protection from the blood magic.
Sweet gods. The blood magic pulsing from Daniella. It had to be—blood magic was what Lukos had used on Perchaya when he’d activated her ring.
Think. Perchaya alone could move through the maelstrom, and she wanted to shake her frozen self, make her see what needed to be done.
“No,” Daniella cried, over and over and over again, intermixed with a keening sound like her voice was being ripped from her throat.
Blood now churned above her head like storm clouds, buckets of it roiling and swirling in the air while the bodies twitched on the ground as the last dregs of their souls fled them.
“Dani!” came a cry from the doorway to the antechamber, and Perchaya turned to see Jaeme clutching the door frame, having shoved his way through the blocked door. Blood trickled from his nose and down his neck from his ear. “Dani, stop!”
“Stop stop stop,” Daniella echoed in that keening, begging cry. Her eyes were wide and sightless, staring at some empty point in the air, her body trembling.
Perchaya’s heart turned to ice. Daniella couldn’t stop. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. If she didn’t, and soon, Perchaya would be the only one left standing.
Which meant Perchaya had to help, or be the one to stop her. She picked up a dagger from the floor, holding it to the side where Jaeme wouldn’t see, her hand slick with sweat on the hilt.
She began walking, slowly. Carefully stepping over bodies and streams of blood. Walking towards the epicenter of the terrible blood storm was too much for Perchaya to contemplate. Instead, she was walking to her friend. A woman she’d traveled with, laughed with, shared meals with.
A woman trapped by a power she couldn’t control.
Perchaya reached the bodies closest to Daniella, the ones who looked the least like people anymore, their faces sunken, their limbs shriveled and torn. Sour bile rose up in her throat, but she forced it down.
She focused on her friend.
Tears ran down Daniella’s pale face as she moaned. “What am I? What am I?”
Perchaya reached out with her free hand, keeping the dagger out of sight at her side. She touched Daniella’s arm lightly, and Daniella jerked back.
Then her wild green eyes seemed to see Perchaya, and her lip trembled.
“Help me,” she whispered.
Perchaya stood in front of Daniella. “I’m here,” she said. The ringing in her ears, constant ever since this started, had grown stronger the closer she got to Daniella. And though the Drim ring was protecting her from the effects of Daniella’s power, she could still feel it pushing out from the woman in front of her, reverberating against her bones.
“I can’t stop,” Daniella said, and the last word came out as a sob. “I can’t—”
She shook, the blood in the air ab
ove them churning faster.
Perchaya drew in a deep breath and tightened her grip on the woman’s arm. “You can. You have to.”
If she didn’t, Perchaya knew what she had to do.
Perchaya put both arms around Daniella, pulling her friend into a tight hug, praying to all the gods that this would work. Daniella stiffened in her arms, and Perchaya held tight. “You can do this, Daniella. Please. Believe it like I do.”
The storm raged, blood above, blood all around them.
“I’m here, Daniella,” Perchaya said. “You’re not alone. Not anymore.”
Another sob, and Daniella wrapped her own arms around Perchaya, clinging to her like a lost child.
And then the power was gone, the storm dissipated as quickly as it had come.
Perchaya held onto her as the blood dropped from the air, drenching them and everything around them. She held onto Daniella, as her friend shook with great racking sobs against her shoulder.
Letting out a long breath of the deepest relief, Perchaya dropped the unused dagger to the tile floor behind them and held her friend as she cried.
Fifty-three
Saara held her dagger out, ready to move toward Talia, but her cousin held up her hands in surrender. Saara wasn’t fool enough to believe Talia unarmed, but she also wasn’t prepared to kill her unless she attacked first.
“So it’s true,” Talia said. “You really have come back to take the throne from my mother.”
Saara positioned herself between Talia and Sayvil—and the chest containing Nerendal. “She tried to have me killed,” Saara said. “She betrayed me first.”
“Because she believes you to be the bearer of Nerendal. Do you think it’s true?”
Saara blinked at her. She’d expected her cousin to be as ignorant as she was about the complete version of the Chronicle. Saara had made Nikaenor recite the relevant passages to her over and over. She’d been fooled once, and she never wanted to forget it. “You knew about the chosen?”
“No,” Talia said. “But my mother told me too much when she was explaining why she was calling for your head, and I did some research of my own. It seems those parts of the Chronicle were lost, but in other languages—”