The world came back in a rush. Tierri's eyes darted around the chaotic ballroom. The Knights were working their way through the resisting guards. Bodies littered the floor, noblemen and rebels, guards and servants. No one had been spared.
“Go,” he said to her, pushing himself to his feet and pressing the bloody dagger into her hand. “The spells will be down. She'll be exposed. You have to be the first one there.”
Edlyn. She didn't know if Tierri wanted her to protect her sister or to kill her, but either way, he was right. She hadn't seen Wido, but she knew he had to be there. If he beat Rayne to Edlyn, he would use her to steal the crown. The crown that Rayne had finally decided did not belong to him. She didn't need to ask Tierri what to do. She would figure it out when she got there.
“Wait,” Tierri said before she ran off, his hand around her arm pulling her back. His lips found hers with an intensity that made her ache, and it was over too soon. “I don't know what you did but—”
“We'll figure it out later. When this is over,” Rayne promised.
Tierri nodded and she wondered if he had the same vision she did—the two of them ruling Hail together. Malstrom and Crowheart. Hail's past and its future. A country restored and united.
“Go,” he said. “I'll watch your back.”
And he did. She fled from the ballroom and he bellowed a challenge to the Knights that would follow her, fierce in his newfound freedom.
✽ ✽ ✽
The silence in the corridors was eerie compared to the commotion of the ballroom and the courtyard beyond. Rayne's feet slapping the stones was the only sound as she flew up the stairs and pushed open what had once been a Crowheart door with no resistance. With Danyll gone, his enchantments had dissolved.
“Danyll?” Edlyn's voice came down the hall, and Rayne skidded to a stop in time to see her sister emerge from her room, resplendent in a red gown. No wonder she wore pastels all the time. In this bright jewel tone, she was blindingly beautiful, as radiant and as dangerous to look at as the sun. As soon as Rayne caught sight of her, she felt her resolve crack. “Rayne, what are you doing here?”
She was scared, but Rayne couldn't blame her. The last time they'd seen each other, Rayne had attacked her and been revealed as the Iblia assassin. Everything Edlyn had thought she'd known about Rayne was a lie.
“I wanted things to be different,” Rayne said. She kept her distance, staying a good four or five yards away, but Edlyn still backed away until she collided with the doorframe. “When Father killed Madlin, my heart broke. Not just for her, but for everyone whose lives he had ruined.”
Edlyn drew herself up, squaring her shoulders, much as she had done when faced with Seloue's harsh words. “He did what he had to do to keep us safe. To conquer countries and pave the way for a Crowheart empire.”
“An empire built on the bones of its people?” Rayne took a few hurried steps forward but stopped just short of touching her sister, who had turned her face away, cringing like a dog expecting a kick. “Is it really an empire if he has to enslave half of the people to keep them under his rule? If he has to kill twelve-year-old girls as an example for others daring to step out of line?”
“And you will kill me so that you can rule Hail from atop my bones? Add me to the pile?” Edlyn pushed away from Rayne and stumbled into her room. She began frantically searching drawers, rifling through papers on her desk. Rayne knew she was searching for a weapon, but she also knew she wouldn't find one. Danyll wouldn't leave something like that lying around in her room to be used against either one of them. The only weapon was the knife gripped in her fist, Danyll's blood dripping off the blade and leaving a path on Edlyn's fine rug.
“I don't want to,” Rayne said, moving farther into the room and placing the knife on an end table. “I thought I did. I thought Hail would be better off in rebel hands. But I don't believe that anymore. I think together, we can make Hail into the peaceful and prosperous country it once was, and then spread that throughout Casuin.” She thought of Merek's map book, of the five countries crowded together on their little piece of Casuin, sandwiched between the Silver Hills and the Impassable Strait. Maybe someday, the Crowhearts would continue to expand and cross those borders. But never without the support of the people, and never without each other.
“Together?” Edlyn asked. She had migrated back to the door but her back was to it, her eyes on her sister.
“We don't have to let what happened to Madlin happen to anyone else. We are not helpless. We do not have to stand by and watch our people suffer. We are princesses, queens. Leaders.”
“Leaders.”
“Will you fight with me?” Rayne asked. “Can we stop fighting each other and being pawns to other people’s whims?”
A flash of uncertainty crossed Edlyn's face and then she relaxed with an audible exhale. “You always were a terrible chess player.”
Rayne smirked but couldn't deny it. The relief she felt was tremendous. It was a weight that maybe wasn't lifted off of her shoulders, but which she could now share with someone else. Someone she loved and trusted, because she did, in spite of everything. She didn't know how to defeat the Knights, how to overpower or outwit their father, but she knew that together, and with Tierri's counsel, they would figure it out. There was a sound in the corridor behind Edlyn, something like a distant shout and a bang, that snapped Rayne back into the present.
“We have to go,” Rayne said, realizing that Edlyn didn't know anything about what was happening at the gathering. “I'll explain later, but it's not safe here anymore.” Rayne found a canvas bag in the wardrobe and pulled it from its spot on the top shelf.
Edlyn took a step forward, moving to help her sister, when she stopped mid-stride, her mouth dropping into a shocked O.
“What—?” Rayne started to ask, but her eyes fell to Edlyn's chest where a crimson stain was darkening the already red dress. “What?” Then Edlyn jerked, and the very tip of a sword peeked through the center of her chest. Edlyn looked down at it, then back up at her sister. Rayne was frozen in place, her feet as heavy as stones.
Someone pulled the sword back and Edlyn took one stumbling step, catching herself on the edge of a table and going to her knees. Behind her, a man's face smiled, a slash of white in the darkness. And then he stepped forward.
“My little Crow,” Wido said. “Isn't this a nice surprise?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Rayne
Edlyn fell in slow motion, choking and gagging on her own blood. She landed on her back, her chocolate curls fanning around her head, the tips blending in with the blood that leaked from her chest. Rayne ignored Wido and the sword and ran to her sister, pulling her head into her lap.
“No, no, no,” she said.
“I knew you were too weak.” Wido circled them. “I told Imeyna. And look where loving you got her. The same place it got this one.” He poked Edlyn's leg with the tip of the sword but Rayne swiped at him. He laughed and stepped away.
“No,” Rayne repeated. She tried not to listen to Wido but his words had a sting of truth to them. Edlyn was still alive but barely. Her heart fluttered; Rayne could feel it where her hands pressed uselessly against Edlyn's chest, blood seeping through her fingers.
“I think I'll leave Innis his daughters' bodies and take their heads.” Wido stabbed the sword down into the floor beside Rayne but she didn't flinch. Edlyn was shivering, her teeth chattering as the warmth left her body with the blood. Her eyes were distant, focused on something Rayne couldn't see. “Trophies. And when I kill him, his head will be my most prized trophy of all.”
As the breath seeped out of Edlyn's heaving chest, the words sank into Rayne's consciousness but were eclipsed by the five most important words of all. They were the ones that made it past her lips. “Madlin. Merek.” Edlyn jerked and gasped and Rayne drew her closer, burying her nose against her neck and inhaling. Behind the iron scent of blood was something sweeter, like fields of wildflowers. “Tamsin. Imeyna.” Edlyn gave o
ne final, wheezing breath and grew still. Rayne pulled her sister’s eyes closed and laid her head gently on the floor before standing and facing Wido. “Edlyn.” These were the names of her ghosts. The specters that would haunt her until her dying day, whether that day was today at the end of Wido's blade, or eighty years from now.
Wido faced her, raising his sword and pressing the tip against the base of her throat. Rayne didn't move. She had thought she owed this man something, that by not killing her he had given her a loan that had to be repaid. She had trusted him. She saw now that trust was a fragile thing to be guarded. Love was too expensive to freely hand out.
“I suppose it's time to take my prize,” he said.
“You won't touch me. Or my sister. I'll kill you first.”
Wido laughed but didn't drop his sword. “You and what army?”
There was a shout from the corridor. The sound of pounding footsteps. “My army.” The stone door at the end of the hall slammed open and Wido hesitated. It was all she needed. Rayne lunged for the knife by the couch. He followed her and when she turned, blindly swinging, the knife grazed his face. Blood welled at the corner of his mouth from a gash that had opened his smooth skin from ear to lip. He pressed a hand against it, his eyes on her and then on the door, where the sounds of running guards grew closer.
Tierri rounded the corner just as Wido threw open Edlyn's window—no longer sealed with spellwork—and leaped. The blade flew out of Rayne’s hand but disappeared soundlessly into the night. Tierri followed it, leaning out into the night, his eyes on the ocean waves below.
“He's gone,” he declared, turning back around.
Rayne's shaking knees dropped her to the floor, where she buried her head in her hands. It was over. It was finally, finally over, and she had gotten what she wanted.
Hadn't she?
Her sister was gone. Wido was gone. Tierri was free. The country would be hers. So why did she feel so hollow? There was no triumph in this, only a great, aching void that she didn't think she would ever be able to fill. Five names that would bounce around in her head for the rest of her life, five people who had sacrificed themselves for the good of the many. A sacrifice that, Rayne decided, wasn't worth it. She would give it up—all of it—to have them back.
Tierri knelt beside her. “We rallied and ran them off,” he explained. “The Knights are gone.” Then he lowered his voice and leaned closer, his breath hot on her ear. “We have a chance, a real chance at this now.” He put a hand on her back but she shrugged him off, not looking at him, not wanting to see the hurt there. But she couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't care for anyone else, not when she could lose them so easily. Not when loving her would cost them so dearly.
“Go,” she whispered to him.
“But—”
“Go!” Her voice echoed in the stone room, bouncing off the walls, sounding like it came from a hundred different places at once. “Just go.”
And he did, taking the guards with him, and Edlyn's body, wrapped in a white sheet and draped over his arms, the tulle of her dress dripping to the floor like a ribbon of crimson blood. Then they were gone, and she was finally alone, surrounded by her ghosts. By Madlin, small and soft-spoken, blood creeping around her sides. By Merek, with his ever-present smirk, his hands bound behind him. Tamsin, kind-hearted and gentle, killed by a soldier's wayward blade. Imeyna, fierce and protective, her lips blackened by poison. And Edlyn, impossibly stubborn and loyal, blood like a blooming flower staining her chest. And Rayne, the old Rayne, the one who only ever wanted to love and be loved, with a gaping hole in the place where her heart should be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sibba
Sibba's boot crunched on the fallen leaves that coated the forest floor. A breath of salt wind teased the short hair at the back of her neck and she turned her face into it. The bow in her hand was heavy but familiar, the wood worn smooth by use.
But that couldn't be right, could it? She had broken the bow, fallen on it when—
Through the trees, she saw a flash of sun on a golden hide, the five-point horns of a buck frozen in place, his wide, glassy eyes on her. Behind him, the skinny brown trunks thinned until she thought she saw a slash of gray-blue ocean. She was on Ey Island, she was sure of it. But that was also wrong. This was all wrong.
A branch snapped and she turned, expecting an attack. Expecting Gabel with his meaty hands ready to wrap around her throat. Or Evenon with an arrow pointed at her heart. But it was neither of them. Instead, not two yards away, stood Tola, her red hair looking like fire in the sunlight that streamed through the bare overhead branches. The kohl around her eyes was smudged and ran in rivulets down her freckled cheeks.
“There you are,” Tola said. She wore her black cloak clutched tightly around her.
“Where am I?” Sibba asked.
Tola closed the distance between them. “You brought me here.”
“No.” Sibba shook her head. She had purposely not called to Tola, had purposely shut her out to keep her out of danger.
“You can't control everything,” Tola said as if in response to Sibba's unspoken protests. “Especially not my mother.”
“Your mother.” The woman with the shadow staff, the one who had looked so much like Tola, only dark and wicked, powerful in a way that Tola seemed to keep locked up inside of her. Sibba had seen it once, as the waves had reared up against her, in a vision of a flame-haired girl on a cliff. A girl who had controlled not just the water or the wind but the very night itself.
“I'm coming for you,” Tola said, pulling Sibba out of her reverie. She focused once more on the Tola that stood in front of her. Suddenly the vala's face was clear of kohl, wiped clean as Sibba had never seen it before. She was just a girl, just a stunning, stubborn, mysterious girl with eyes as light as field grass on a summer day. Sibba wanted desperately to touch her. She had tried to keep her distance, scared of being too close to someone, of opening herself up to the same kind of pain that Estrid had dealt her. All those chances wasted. Time she would never get back.
“No,” Sibba said, twisting her fingers together to keep herself from reaching for Tola. “It's too dangerous.”
Tola laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. “You think I don't know? I grew up in Ydurgat beside Isgerd the Younger. Those women raised us. I know exactly what they're capable of.”
Sibba remembered then. The fighting pits. Chief Isgerd and her daughter and the hardness behind their beautiful eyes. Her brother, Jary, and the way he had called out to Isgerd the Younger, the vulnerability on his face. Sibba wiped a hand down her face, trying to push the memory away. “I didn't mean for any of this to happen.”
“You shouldn't have gone without us.” There was hurt on Tola's face and it made Sibba's chest clench with guilt.
“Evenon left. He betrayed us again. I tried, Tola. I tried to trust him like you told me to, and look where it got me.”
Tola shook her head. “You got yourself there. But I will get you out. And maybe then you'll believe in me.”
She couldn't stop herself. Sibba dropped the bow and rushed forward to clasp Tola's face between her hands. Her skin was soft and warm in spite of the chill in the air. The vala lifted her own hands and grasped Sibba's wrists, but did not push her away. “I do believe in you. You don't have to prove yourself to me. You never will.” Her thumbs brushed the girl's rosy cheeks and Tola whimpered, closing her eyes. Her long, pale lashes brushed the tips of Sibba's thumbs like butterfly wings. A tear slipped from the girl's eyes, as black as kohl, staining Sibba's fingertips. “Don't come. Don't come here. Wait for me.”
Fear pulsed inside of Sibba at the idea of her friends in this dangerous place. She already had to get herself and her brother out; she couldn't be responsible for two more people. Sibba leaned her forehead against Tola's and closed her own eyes, listening only to their tandem breathing, savoring the feel of Tola's breath on her lips.
“You still don't believe in me,” Tola whispered. Their noses
brushed, their lips nearly touching. They were so close that when Sibba's heart beat against her ribs, she was sure that Tola could feel it.
“I do.”
“If you did, you would want me beside you.”
Sibba shook her head, not daring to look at the vala. “I can't.”
“You can't what?”
Can't lose you, too. Can't give myself up again. “I can't.”
Tola dropped her hands from Sibba's wrists, and Sibba opened her eyes. Tola was gone. The empty space in front of her seemed vast, and overhead, black storm clouds were moving in, rolling over each other and pushing themselves forward in a thick mass. The buck hadn't moved from its place in the distance, though its nose twitched when Sibba took a step. She bent to pick up the bow only to find it snapped in two, just as it had been when she'd laid it beside her mother in her grave.
Thunder shook the ground and the buck bolted, bounding through the forest until it was gone from sight. A torrent of rain pounded down around her as if the sky had ripped open. In moments, she was soaked from head to toe, but she couldn't move. What was it her mother had always said? I don't trust the rain. She hadn't liked the way it hid things, the way it washed away the truth of a place.
Be home before the rains fall. She could almost hear Darcey's voice, see the worry line between her eyes as Sibba walked away from their small cabin.
I always am, Sibba had answered every time. Until the one time when she wasn’t. But what did she do now? She spun in a slow circle, squinting against the rain that dripped down her brow into her eyes. What did she do now, when she didn't know the way home?
✽ ✽ ✽
Sibba woke, gasping like a drowning man. Above her, a thatched roof gray with soot blocked out the sun. She lifted her empty hands and stared at the black stains on her thumbs, left there by tears the color of kohl. Her clothes were dry, but there was a damp smell in the air, like the forest after a rain shower. Behind her eyes, her head throbbed dully and she brought a hand to feel the knot on the side of her head. Could it have been real, or just a hallucination, a dream brought on by the blow to her head?
When Rains Fall (The Lost Fields Book 1) Page 28