“That’s a gift.”
He grinned. “Still can’t believe I’m gifted, huh?”
Nora hid her smile behind her mug.
“Think they’ll attack at dawn?” Shade nodded toward the coastline.
She shrugged.
“That’s what we’re here to see, isn’t it?”
Shade nudged her with his elbow. “I’ll protect you. So don’t be worried, eh, Briar?”
Nora snorted. Briar again. She looked him up and down. When exactly had he reverted back to using that nickname? After the fight in the arena, sure. After Suranna had taken control of his mind and body. But what did that mean? Did Shade remember what had happened? Or had Suranna swept his memory clean? She had never asked. Maybe it was too late now.
“Cocky, aren’t you?” she said instead.
He lifted a shoulder. “Just well rested.”
“Good, because you and me are going to escape from this island before dawn breaks fully.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“What?”
“We’re eloping.”
“What?”
“Are you going to keep on saying what? Drink up your tea. I’ll go wake Owen and we’ll be off.”
Shade’s lips were already forming another what, but he quickly changed it into: “Why?”
“We’re trying to save your life and foil your father’s attempt at world domination in one fell swoop.”
Shade stared at her, half-raised mug forgotten in his hand.
“Oh…that’s what you mean. Yeah.” He cleared his throat, then took a sip of his tea. “You think I don’t know that he was planning to make me the sacrifice.”
“But…you…you knew?”
“Yeah. All along.”
“And you’re…just fine with it?”
“Sure. It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not!” Nora clapped her hands to her forehead. Gods, this was getting difficult. They were running out of time to discuss this. Soon the weak sun would drag itself over the horizon, leaving only a little darkness left to use for cover on their escape. And she still had to wake Owen. “You can’t just offer yourself willingly for your fuckwit father to get the Blade, Shade. You can’t just…just die for him and be fine with him fucking using you like that. You can’t!”
She grabbed his arms and shook him. He turned his head away.
“But the sacrifice has to be willing, else it doesn’t work.”
“And you’re willing?” She grasped his jaw and turned him back, but he wouldn’t look into her eyes. “Why?”
Shade took hold of her wrist, caressing the skin on the back of her hand with his thumb.
“To…to protect the ones I love.”
She slapped his hand away. “Oh shut up.”
“I mean it.”
“You don’t love me, Shade.”
“And how would you know?” He spoke softly, his eyes gentle and full of concern, but shallow cuts stung the worst.
“Fine. Go fuck yourself, Shade.” Nora threw up her hands in surrender and made to walk off, to wake Owen, to walk head on into the line of wights who were surely waiting for them on the opposite shore. Walk away, and die. Anything but stay there.
If Shade wanted to die for his father, hell—it wasn’t really her problem. None of this was really her problem. The only reason she was even on this stupid quest in the first place was because Owen so desperately wanted to be here. So desperately wanted to know. Well, she didn’t. Ignorance was fucking bliss, thank you very much.
Shade was close behind her. He grabbed her wrist to make her stop, and she whirled around to face him, relishing the lick of heat burning within her, the blast purifying her. Giving her anger, releasing the fury.
He planted his mouth on her open lips, though, startling her. She shoved him away, forearm raised in defense.
“Shade?”
He caught her arm again and pulled her toward him as she struggled against his chest.
“I-I love you, Noraya.” He breathed into her ear, nuzzling her neck. “Stay with me.”
“And you love me so much it makes you stutter? What is wrong with you?”
“Don’t go. Please.”
She rolled her eyes and resumed her struggle.
“I’m not going anywhere. Just waking Owen so we can leave this shithole island together. You, and me, and him. Together. And I won’t take no as an answer, Shade. You’re not sacrificing yourself on my watch.”
“I wish we could.” Shade squeezed her tightly. “I really wish we could.”
“We can. You just have to let go for a moment, and we’ll be off.”
He released her partly, a hand over his face, squeezing his temples in a pained expression. “Gods, why are you making this so hard? He made it sound like it would be easy.”
“What’s easy? Who told you something would be easy?”
Nora jerked her head back. Her vision narrowed on Shade’s face, the edges of fury a red blaze, and her skin tingled with the force of the restraint.
“I can’t. I can’t say.”
“Who?” She seethed, pressing the words through her tight throat. “What’s going on?”
Shade shook his head, lips pressed together.
“I can’t,” he repeated.
She stared at him and he broke.
“Owen.”
He leaned over to grab her arm. She had unsheathed her knife; she saw it with surprise when she looked down through the warping, twisting world.
“Owen?” she whispered, watching her own reflection in the blade. Her iron twin.
Of course.
Owen.
Of course.
Ignorance is bliss. Owen knew her too well.
I think I know how to save Shade, he had said.
And she had believed him. All this time.
All this time, she had believed—
Shade was still talking, but she couldn’t hear a word. Silence weighed on her ears. She couldn’t even hear her own heartbeat. She turned slowly, looking over to the campfire, eyes searching for her brother’s shape sleeping among his furs.
But he wasn’t there.
She blinked.
Neither was Bashan.
Another blink.
Nor Diaz.
She gasped a burning lungful of air. And then she was running.
Chapter 15
A touch on his shoulder woke Owen. He had closed his eyes for a moment after Nora left, and he must have briefly fallen asleep. He rubbed his tired face and looked into the inky blackness of Diaz’s eyes. The half-wight was crouched next to him, a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked Owen.
Was he? Was he sure he wanted to die? It was a philosophical question that was probably treated somewhere in a book he had never managed to pick up. All things died. From the minute you were born, you started dying. Maybe even in the moment you were conceived you began to die slowly, beginning with the death of what could be in favor of what was going to be. But was that because all things wanted to die? Was it force of will that shaped fate? If you didn’t want to die, could you just stop it and live forever? Was that how the Living Blade worked? Well, he’d find out soon. In less than an hour, probably. He groaned. The far more important question was why his mind always worked like this, even when he didn’t want it to. He hadn’t even been awake for five minutes! They didn’t have time for a long answer, though, so he simply nodded at Diaz and rose.
Diaz led him to the northern face of the cliff, where he could just make out Bashan waiting, leaning against the rock wall.
“You’ll look after her, right?” Owen lowered his voice. “See that she won’t be killed.”
Diaz stiffened before him.
“She’ll be…very angry,” the half-wight answered over his shoulder. “I’ll try my best.”
“Good.”
Nora was always angry, though, Owen thought as he followed the two men. Very angry would just give
her the extra edge she needed. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, sudden doubt knifing an ice-cold wedge in his mind. He watched as Diaz and Bashan lit their torches and pushed through a small opening in the rock. On the way deep down into the innards of the earth, they squeezed themselves through numerous narrow tunnels. Soon the space widened, and Owen could stand erect once more. The rock here was moist, and he heard the thunder of the waves against the island as a giant heartbeat from the earth’s womb, slow and slumbering but powerful.
They entered a chamber that seemed carved by human hands, or maybe wight hands. Instead of the gnarly, natural rock, this chamber had smooth walls and sloped downward like a teardrop, drawing the eye to a point. Owen saw what looked like a stone coffin, wrapped with intricate patterns much like the swirl of wightish runes. It was sealed with a stone lid. Diaz took Bashan’s torch and placed both in the iron holders on the wall above the coffin. He turned to face Owen.
“This is it.”
He waved Bashan over to heave the stone covering aside. Rock ground on rock, and Owen felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. Under the slab, the stone coffin revealed a shallow grave, much like a large washing trough. Owen bent closer to look and saw liquid shimmering like mercury. It rippled without being touched, as though reacting to the nearness of the people.
“What now?” Bashan asked quietly. “Is there some sort of ritual we must perform?”
Owen licked his lips. “I don’t think so. That’s not how it works.”
Diaz cleared his throat. “Strip your clothes first. Where you are going, you will not need them.”
Owen nodded, and with shaking fingers he started to undo the fastenings. He put everything neatly folded in a pile next to him, and when he was finished, he looked at the remains of a life at his feet. It was pitiful. There was nothing there that was truly his. The clothes had been given to him along the way. He had left his books with his sleeping gear at the campsite. No material possession he couldn’t bear to part with. He shuddered with the cold and crossed his arms to stay warm.
“Step closer.” Diaz beckoned him forward.
Owen complied.
Next to Diaz, Bashan was smiling warmly at him. The emperor-to-be extended his hand to Owen and grasped his bare forearm.
“You’re doing a great thing, Owen Smith of Owen’s Ridge. A great thing. Through your sacrifice, the Kandarin Empire will be made new, and countless peoples will benefit. I thank you. And I will honor your name for the rest of my life.”
Owen nearly didn’t dare speak. Not when Bashan raised a scary long knife.
He flinched away. “Er…I need to be alive when the dormant Blade envelops me. Remember? I told you. A few times.”
Bashan ran his dagger across Owen’s forearm.
“Just making sure it knows who the sacrifice is.” Blood welled forth from the stinging cut, and glancing down at the wound on his arm, Owen felt nauseous. Bashan gestured for him to move his arm over the basin. “Think of this as an introduction.”
The blood dripped into the basin, and the silver fluid moved sluggishly.
Owen sucked air audibly through his clenched teeth and clutched his arm to his chest, smearing blood across it as though drawing a target on himself. Diaz and Bashan took a step back as the liquid rose out of the basin. It writhed, serpentine, uncurling after a long sleep, gliding toward Owen as though tracing his scent.
Owen thought of running. He also thought that it had been exceptionally bright of him to empty his bowels before coming in here; otherwise he would do so now. But curiosity and wonder overtook those unimportant concerns. How was the fluid animated? How did it sense its surroundings?
By the torchlight, he saw his reflection in the forming silver sphere, his face distorted by the languid movements. The liquid had a life of its own, and it seemed as though it knew what was about to happen, lapping eagerly against the stone surface as though beckoning him closer.
He stood watching it, mesmerized. Then Owen broke his stare, and shaking his head to free himself of the questions that crowded it, he leaned in closer. He was shivering all over now and clenched his teeth together so they would not chatter. The time was now. It had to be now, or else his courage would fail him and he would run.
“Ready?” He heard Diaz’s voice as though from far off.
Owen nodded, wondering how many more times Diaz would ask a variation of the same question. Are you sure? Are you ready? How was he to know?
He took a step toward the basin and extended his wounded arm toward the silver. Tentatively it reached out and slid over his bare skin, licking the wound, sealing it. He gasped at the numbness spreading up his arm as though through his veins. Maybe it was. The ice cold ran into his chest and had him heaving dryly before he could think further.
“So…cold,” he managed between ragged, sobbing breaths.
The silver licked at his naked legs and reached up to his knees in tongues the color of steel. Struggling for air now, Owen felt the silver move against his naked heaving stomach. Its tendrils spread from his chest into his head, exploding in a thousand frozen fractals just behind his brow, pulling all the warmth from his body as it explored him like a lover, and his pounding heart slowed painfully.
He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. Nor his arms. Couldn’t move. Black and silver motes danced before his eyes as the Blade crystallized into his view as a double-edged sword, piercing both flesh and marrow, probing deep as it split his thoughts and cracked his bones, the dry crunch reverberating sickeningly through his skull.
“Who are you?”
A chorus of thunderous voices hit him with a deafening roar.
The cold. The cold had him. He tried to breathe but couldn’t, his lungs squashed together as his rib cage flattened.
He tried screaming anyway, but the silver poured into his mouth, burning his throat.
The pressure in his head was a stabbing pain. The seams of his skull creaked.
“Who are you?” One voice standing out among the swarm, curious, like a child.
“Owen!”
He thought he heard Nora shout his name. He felt the Blade’s laughter as his mind imploded under its force. His eyes burst, blazing ice running out from their sockets.
And all he saw was silver.
Chapter 16
Nora ran.
She ran into Garreth.
She ran into Garreth forcefully.
He had boiled up like a dark shadow rising amid the swirling red before her eyes, and she slammed face-first into him, hard as a stone wall, dropping to the ground. Her head knocked against a stone, and her teeth clicked shut on her tongue. Blood poured into her mouth. She rolled over and struggled to her feet, head still reeling, hand still on her knife.
“What do you think you’re doing, girl?” he rumbled, blurring into view. “Get back to your lookout.”
“Where did they go?” Nora wiped the bitter blood from her lips, but more spilled over, so she opened her mouth and let it spatter to the ground.
“Do as you’re told.”
He didn’t say “or else.” However, he placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, and that was sign enough. Nora laughed hollowly, a trickle of blood dribbling over her chin.
“Fuck you, Garreth, you servile pig. Where’s Owen?”
The slap of Shade’s feet interrupted their grandstanding. As he skidded into the campsite, a wave of dry fir needles sprayed into the fire, making it crackle.
“Gods, Nora, you’re bleeding,” Shade said.
She was, and it was feeding the fury. She spat another mouthful of blood and grinned at Garreth.
“Grizzled old mercenary, huh?” She stepped to the side, circling him, knife ready. “What’s it going to be? This just some job for you? Main thing is, you’ll get paid afterward, and that’s it?”
The firelight reflected orange in Garreth’s blinded white eye. He shrugged.
“That’s right. All this ever was. One last job, then retirement as a knight of the empir
e.”
“But you could die here. Then how’s the blood money going to help you?”
Garreth laughed at that. It sounded like the phlegmatic cough of an old man, wheezing and wet. The scar on his face went livid.
“You? You against me? Pull the other one, girl, for it has bells on it.”
“Nora?” Shade inched closer, hands before him as though calming a wild dog. “Are you going insane? Put your weapon down.”
“Where is Owen?” Her voice cracked from her dry throat. Pain had finally bloomed in her mouth, delayed. It made talking hard, as though she had hot coals in her mouth, and moving them awkwardly, her tongue was not doing what it was supposed to be doing. “I’ll find him anyway, old man. I’ll find him even if it means tearing this whole godsdamn island apart with my bare hands.”
Another mouthful of pink spit.
“See, that I do believe.” Garreth smacked his lips. “You don’t want to fight me. Listen to Shade and drop your itty-bitty knife.”
Nora stopped and straightened, letting her knife hand drop to her side.
“You’re right.” Her heart was pounding in her ears; she could barely hear her own words. “I don’t want to. So just tell me where they took him, Garreth. For the love of whatever is holy to you.”
He sighed theatrically and opened his mouth to retort. But before he spoke his good eye shifted quickly to a spot where stones had fallen into a heap. That was enough for Nora. She leaped in that direction.
After a shout of surprise, he lunged after her, snatching her forearm, ripping her around. She lost her balance and let herself fall, pulling him with her, only to roll away from under his huge frame at the last second. With a speed she hadn’t thought possible for his age, he popped up to his feet, his sword gleaming between them, unsheathed, blood drops pearling on its tip. A stinging sensation under her ribs indicated he hadn’t fully missed his mark, and she gasped in pain, clutching at the gash.
“Get down!” Shade’s warning made her dodge a sweeping blow.
She used her momentum and barreled into Garreth, but not to knock him over or wind him. Her head was buzzing with an instinct older and deeper than words, and that feral wild thing whispered what to do next: charge in and scratch and bite and tear her knife into whatever flesh she could find. He grunted, twisting and turning away from her blows. Then he shoved her, and what felt like a sledgehammer blow to her chest made her kiss the ground once more. She kicked out blindly and heard his knee crunch, blood smearing her vision. He roared in anger, sword high above his head to cleave her skull in two. She arced away, rising. His high blow slammed down, whistling past her, a hairbreadth away. The power of his swing drove the tip of his sword into the ground, where it stuck. She completed her turn and slashed her knife across his throat. She backed off, blinking more blood out of her eye. Fingers touched to her split eyebrow came away red. The only sounds were her heavy panting and the crackle of the fire.
On the Wheel Page 18