I loved that about him. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself otherwise, he truly believed the world could be a better place.
But now, a knot formed in my stomach. I looked over my shoulder and gave him a weak smile, but all I could look at were his hands as he wiped the blood away, and those dark veins trailing up his arms that now seemed so much darker.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Aefe
I wasn’t sure how long we flew. My blood dripped down, down, onto the treetops far below us. My vision blurred. Every so often, I would blink, and suddenly the sun was higher in the sky. I didn’t remember closing my eyes, but they snapped open again when the branches sliced my cheek and the ground rose up beneath me. Ishqa and I lay there, exhausted. The bolt was still protruding from my back. Every time I breathed, pain slithered through my ribs. I didn’t care.
“No one trailed us.” Ishqa was beside me, but he sounded as if he was very far away.
I blinked and saw Ashraia toppled over, Siobhan’s dying gasps, Caduan falling.
“Get this thing out of me,” I said.
I rolled over, my face pressed into the dirt. I heard Ishqa’s movement. Then felt the faintest pressure on the arrow, and my throat released a whimper. The pain was breathtaking.
“This arrow was cursed,” he said.
“Athalena is a Wielder.”
“Was, I suppose.” Ishqa said it as if it were supposed to be some dark, humorless joke, but it just made my stomach turn.
“Just—” I ground out, but I didn’t finish speaking before the pain overtook me, so intense that it blinded my every sense. I thrust my face into the dirt so it would muffle my scream.
“It’s done,” Ishqa murmured, as I pushed myself up to my elbows, but I didn’t hear him over the sound of my own vomiting. When I was finished, I fell back onto my stomach, weak.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
They were all dead. Only Ishqa and I remained. Compared to the agony of that wound, the one between my ribs was a welcome reprieve.
“Are you going to kill me?” I murmured.
“Why would I go through the trouble of saving you if I was going to kill you?”
I craned my neck far enough to look at Ishqa. He seemed tired. Weak. Sad.
For perhaps the first time, he looked as if he were made of flesh and blood, not marble.
“The treaty,” I said. “Klein said—”
“I think we need to finish it,” Ishqa said coldly. “Regardless of what the treaty is or isn’t.”
Finish it. Finish the humans. I closed my eyes and slipped my hand into my pocket, where the letter Athalena had given us remained. It felt like a lifetime ago.
And what would we do, if we went there? Kill them all? Could I do that, this weakened? The thought seemed impossible.
Yet…
It was Caduan’s face that was seared into my mind. There is so much more than this, he had told me.
My fingers curled into fists, clenched so tight they trembled.
He had watched everyone he loved die. Those people deserved justice.
He deserved justice.
I couldn’t hold myself up anymore. I fell back down into the dirt.
“Rest,” Ishqa said. “You’re barely conscious.”
But I held myself up just enough to look at him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “For Ashraia. For… everything.”
Something I couldn’t read shifted in his face. “Rest,” he said again, and by the time the word left his lips, it was no longer a choice.
I dreamed of the dead. But instead of their corpses, I dreamed of sunshine. Siobhan was sitting beside me in the pub, back in the Pales. We were in our typical spots. She held her typical drink. She was laughing at something, but I couldn’t remember what. In this world, Siobhan was not dead. The humans were not a threat. But I sat there and looked at her and felt this strange, eerie feeling, like the wind was whispering in my ear, It’s already lost.
I dreamed of Caduan. I dreamed I visited him in the House of Stone, if it had not fallen. I dreamed of it as it appeared in my fuzzy, half-remembered childhood memories. It was a beautiful city built of tiered stone temples with plants spilling over their sides. There were flowers growing on the vines — orange lilies, as striking as the sunset. There were grand balls and beautiful banquets, held by the nobles of the House of Stone. They were kind, and beautiful, and they never stopped smiling.
But it wasn’t there that I found Caduan. I found him in the library, surrounded by books. When I approached, he looked up and smiled at me as if I were a pleasant surprise. But then I settled beside him and his expression darkened.
“I don’t know why,” he said, “but I think that something terrible is going to happen.”
Don’t be silly, I tried to tell him. It’s a festival. Everyone is dancing. Let’s go.
But he simply shook his head, lost in thought.
“It isn’t over,” he said. And then his gaze found mine, suddenly alert, sharper than everything else in this dream world. “It isn’t over,” he told me, again, “and I don’t have enough time.”
He reached out and touched my face, as if to see if it was real. But I was already fading, even though I tried desperately to cling to the dream, to his touch, to his aliveness.
“I wish I had more time,” he murmured.
I did too, I thought. There would never be enough time.
My eyes opened. The sun was bright and hot. My neck ached. I was on my stomach.
It took a few wonderful, horrible moments for me to remember what had happened. All of the deaths. I closed my eyes and let them hit me all over again.
Then, slowly, I pushed myself up. I was still in pain, but this, at least, was manageable. Ishqa was a few feet away, leaning over a fire, over which he was cooking a small rabbit. His hair was windblown, his clothing dirty, his eyes tired.
“You healed me,” I said. My voice came out in a ragged croak.
“I did my best. It’s not my strength.”
“It helps. Thank you.”
I crawled towards the fire and settled beside it, wincing as all of my muscles protested in their own individual ways. My head was pounding. And my heart — my heart hurt.
Ishqa did not look at me. He pulled the rabbit off the fire and began to cut the meat with his knife, offering me pieces. I shook my head.
“If you don’t eat anything,” he said, “you are not going to be able to travel anywhere effectively.”
He was right. I begrudgingly took some, though I had to force it down.
“Where did you go?” I asked, and Ishqa shot me a look I couldn’t read.
“I woke up a few times,” I added, “and you were gone.”
He turned back to the rabbit, very focused on his task. “I flew north.”
“Why?”
“I needed to see what happened to the treaty.”
That got my attention. I discarded my attempts at even trying to have an appetite. “And?”
“Your war general spoke the truth. Your father turned on the Wyshraj that were living within Sidnee walls.”
I felt as if all of the blood had left my body at once.
Still, Ishqa did not look at me. “Most of our army was killed. Sidnee soldiers even marched on the House of Wayward Winds.”
My fingernails were digging into my palms. “Your sister?”
“She’s injured, but she will live.”
“And your son?”
“Safe.” Then he muttered beneath his breath, as if he had not intended to speak aloud, “And the Sidnee should thank the gods for it.”
Yet he did not look terribly relieved. I didn’t feel it, either. Instead, I thought of my father — my powerful, ambitious, selfish father.
For the first time, I thought of him and I was disgusted by him.
He looked at what had happened to Caduan’s home, and he had seen it as an opportunity to craft his own king and invite his enemy into his homestead, waiting to drive a dagger into their
back.
“Never again,” I said. “My father’s time is over. It is my blood that belongs on that throne. And when I claim my position as Teirness, you have my word that you’ll have the alliance of the Sidnee. As long as I rule, it will be yours.”
Ishqa gave me a strange look, one that I could not decipher.
My eyes were burning. “And I grieve with you, Ishqa, for the lives that you have lost.”
Ishqa finished cutting the meat off of the rabbit, looking down at the food in front of him and showing no interest in eating it. I could relate. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of what my people had done.
Ishqa stood and turned to me.
“I came back because our mission is not done,” he said. “Despite what has happened, Queen Shadya still believes that the humans pose an imminent threat. And I agree with her.”
I nodded. This was unequivocally true. “How long was I asleep? How much time do we have before—”
“The meeting is only four days away. It is a long way for us to travel.”
“We’ll make it,” I said, and willed it into truth, already standing. I was injured, but more powerfully than that, I was angry. I was tired of giving people chances. I was tired of letting them kill without consequences.
“We strike the leaders,” I said. “I have had enough of half-measures.”
Ishqa’s mouth thinned. “As have I.”
I forced my mind through the cloud of anger and grief, forced myself to be the methodical, calm-headed Blade that Siobhan had always hoped I could become.
There was only two of us. And we knew little about who would be attending this meeting, other than that it would include the humans’ highest-ranked commanders. We could be walking into a slaughter.
But I didn’t even care if I was killed, as long as I got to return the favor.
“Do you have Wyshraj soldiers to spare?” I asked. “Anyone who would be able to fly fast enough to meet us there?”
“Not many,” Ishqa said. “But enough.”
It would have to be.
My muscles clenched so hard they shook.
“Then let’s end one war,” I spat. “And then we will end another.”
I was so furious that I didn’t even notice that Ishqa turned away without answering, his face tilted to the sky.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Tisaanah
I thought, perhaps, I had dreamed the knock.
My eyelids fluttered open to see nothing but the silent sway of the flowers beneath the moonlight through the window.
I rolled over. Max was already sitting up, face tilted towards the door. His body had taken on a certain rigid stance that I had come to know well — the stance of a soldier.
Max murmured, “No one ever knocks.”
So it hadn’t been a dream.
We slipped out of bed. Both of us took our weapons before we left the room. It felt ridiculous to be padding down the hall barefoot, in nothing but an oversized nightshirt, holding a weapon like Il’Sahaj.
Max peered out the window and shook his head. Then he opened the door.
There was no one there. Nothing except for a wooden chest, sitting on the doorstep. It was plain, but finely made of polished wood and brass hardware. There was an inscription burned into the top of it, barely visible beneath the moonlight, written in flourishing script:
Tisaanah Vytezic
I placed Il’Sahaj on the ground beside me, kneeling in front of the box. I felt Max’s hand on my shoulder, felt the uncertainty that it communicated.
I opened it.
Max uttered a curse. I did not hear him. I could not move. My blood was rushing in my ears, pounding, burning.
I reached into the box and pulled out a hand.
It was wan and calloused, the fingernails torn and bloody. It had once clearly belonged to a man. There was a small scar between the thumb and forefinger. A brand. A wolf’s head, teeth bared. It smelled foul. The rough flesh where it had been hacked away from the arm was rotting.
That was what the box contained. Hands.
Hundreds of them. Belonging to men, women, children. Infants.
And all bore the brand between the thumb and forefinger. The sigil of the Zorokov family.
These were slaves’ hands.
I dropped the hand back into the box as I doubled over, vomiting into the grass.
Max swore under his breath. He darted from the door, looking around for whoever had left this here. Distantly, I became aware of a strange sound in the air. I didn’t look up. If I had, I might have noticed it was wings. There were dozens and dozens of birds overhead, circling.
I could not think of anything but this. Slaves’ hands.
Hundreds of people. Here. In front of me.
Max’s footsteps halted suddenly.
“Tisaanah,” he whispered. “Get up.”
I rose. I wasn’t sure how — my legs felt as if they had no blood in them. Somehow I had the presence of mind to pick up Il’Sahaj. Max stood just within the open doorway, his staff bared. Fire shivered along its length, casting a bloody red glow through the living room.
“I suggest you tell me what, exactly, you’re doing in our house,” Max said, “and who we can thank for such unpleasant gifts.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
And then I saw it: a figure standing in the center of our living room.
It was tall — so tall that its head nearly brushed the ceiling. And it was dark, as if made up of shadows, wearing a cloak of darkness that defied physical understanding. Yet, even through that shapelessness, I could tell that it had long, spindly limbs. Its fingers were so long that they just seemed to trail off into the air, like shadow dissolving into light, almost brushing the ground. Its legs were long, and footless, with knees that bent the wrong way.
No matter how long I looked at its face, I could not find its features. It was as if there was just a smear of nothing where the face should be.
And yet, I knew that it smiled.
The Zorokov family does not appreciate being lied to.
The voice was not a sound so much as it was a reverberation, expanding like a puff of smoke. This line came in Thereni, with the distinct accent of the Threllian ruling class — but it was hollow, like a mimicry.
Then another sound filled the room.
Screams. Screams of pain. First one, and then more and more, until it was a cacophony of voices pleading, begging, weeping.
I did not need to be told what I was listening to. I had been presented the hands of slaves. And now I was being given their death screams.
Something inside of me snapped. I didn’t think before raising Il’Sahaj — before I was lunging.
My slash made contact. I felt the satisfying bite of Il’Sahaj’s blade into flesh. Or— was it flesh? A spray hit me across the face, but it was not warm like blood, and seconds later, it began to burn.
The thing barely faltered. Its movements were choppy, as if it skipped through time, discarding half-seconds. Even up close, I could not see its face. But from within the strange shadow, I saw glimpses — glimpses of people screaming in pain and terror.
It went for my throat.
But Max lunged faster, staff alight with fire so bright that embers floated around him as he buried it deep within the creature’s body. The thing shuddered, as if moving in a hundred directions at once.
Max snarled as he unleashed a burst of flame, and I withdrew Il’Sahaj for another strike, and—
Suddenly we were alone.
The creature’s absence was so jarring that Max stumbled back. We found ourselves just blinking at each other, our weapons still raised.
Seconds of silence passed.
“What,” Max said, quietly, “in the name of the fucking Ascended was that?”
“It is still here, somewhere,” I whispered.
I didn’t know how I was so certain. But when Max inclined his chin, I knew he felt it, too. He lifted his fingers, and all o
f the lanterns in the house whispered to life, dim red light blooming over the walls.
Slowly, we paced around the perimeter of the room. And then, down the hallway. Max was ahead of me, the firelight reflecting a sheen on his bare back. With the tip of his staff’s blade, he nudged open the door to our bedroom, then lifted his fingers to bring fire to the lanterns. They illuminated nothing but the crumpled blankets on the empty bed and overflowing bookshelves.
It was utterly still. Utterly silent.
Max eyed the pile of sheets on the bed with suspicion, gingerly pulling them aside with his weapon. But I turned around, regarding the dark wooden cluttered bureau. Above it was a long mirror. Like many of Max’s belongings, it looked as if it had spent its better days in a much larger, much grander house, and now sat here in this messy cottage looking somewhat ridiculous.
I saw a reflection of the room and the flickering light, of Max’s back as he nudged aside a curtain. Of course, I saw myself.
Yet… something was strange.
I couldn’t figure out what, at first. Then I realized: my reflection was doused in shadow, like I was silhouetted against the light.
But the bedroom was lit.
“Max,” I murmured. My grip tightened around Il’Sahaj’s hilt.
In the reflection, I watched him turn and stand behind me. And then I watched myself step forward, fingers pressed to the mirror, face still blurred in shadow.
Except I didn’t. I didn’t move.
“It’s—” I started.
It lunged.
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. The creature was on top of me, intangible and yet so heavy I could not breathe. The face that stared back at me was nothingness, and then it was my own. I felt as if my mind was being rifled through, my memories picked apart like the bones of a carcass. The face became Serel’s. Max’s. My mother’s. Vos’s and his scarred, disfigured features.
I opened my mouth but could not speak. I felt as if everything was being drained from me. Like my life, my energy was being pulled away from inside.
I fought, trying to bury Il’Sahaj into its flesh, but my awareness was fading. Somewhere in the misty world beyond, Max was attacking it, too, trying desperately to yank it off of me. Its blood — if it was blood — rained down on me, burning and burning and burning.
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 42