The worst thing about a death was the realization that life went on afterward, in one excruciatingly painful cycle that showed the mortal flesh they all were made of.
A twig snapped.
He put the arrow to the bowstring.
The forest around him grew silent. Diaz held his breath, scanning the trees and the bushes in his immediate vicinity.
Come now. He was ready for it.
He saw the boots first and drew the bowstring back.
A wight with dark brown skin stood among the trees, head cocked as though listening, spear in his hand. Diaz could see the scrawl of the runes on the back of the warrior’s head, down his arm. It would have been a good shot—from behind. If there hadn’t been a tree between them, he would have loosed the arrow without thinking. The way the wight warrior stood, though, Diaz would have to move. He waited without letting the arrow fly.
The wight lifted his head, took a step away from the tree between them. Diaz let loose, aiming for the throat—but the wight turned suddenly, now facing him, and Diaz saw him rip open his eyes wide as the arrow’s head buried itself in his larynx. The warrior thrashed about in the bushes, snapping twigs as he died, pink frothing on his lips. Diaz dropped the bow and unsheathed his sword. Others were coming, alerted to his position by their dying comrade’s noise. He grabbed the hilt of his second sword and drew it. Three wights came running up toward him, fast, fanning out to circle him, victory assured for them. Victory against the half-breed. He couldn’t help grinning. He was no longer twelve. Let them come. His weapons in hand. His mastery ingrained in his muscles through years of training. Comfort was to be had in that slowing of breath, ignoring that pounding heart, the slow dance of battle. No thoughts, no anxiety. Only motion.
He sprinted and met the first warrior head-on, his swords an extension of his arms. As that one fell, he spun and cut down with both blades, tearing into the chest of the next wight, opening his side. By the time Diaz turned on the third warrior, the two others were dying at his feet. This fact made the third warrior wary. He skidded to a halt and swept his long curved blade back in retreat. Diaz lunged after him, driving him farther back with a flurry of blows, giving the wight not one moment of respite.
At the back of his mind, though, Diaz was counting. One he had shot with the arrow, two lay dead in the brambles, one more before him—that meant there were still two, maybe three wights nearby from that same patrol. He would have to check on Shade, make sure the young man had not yet been found. And what about Bashan? What about Nora?
The wight before him stumbled over a root and fell backward, exposing his chest. But Diaz was distracted by his train of thought. So instead of chopping down and ending the wight’s life, he stepped back, allowing his opponent to find his balance again. This in turn spared his own life. The stumble was only played. The warrior had let himself fall, only to roll to his left and rise up in a crouch. With a flash of steel that would have cut through Diaz’s calves, rendering him utterly helpless, the wight slashed through nothing but thin air. The execution was nonetheless deadly beautiful to behold.
Unfortunately for Diaz’s opponent, it hadn’t worked.
He looked up at Diaz, mouth open with surprise. Diaz shrugged. Such was life.
The wight sprang up and came at Diaz, who parried a number of hard blows. He heard a crash through the winter heather and tensed, bracing for another fight. Better to finish this one fast, then. He caught the wight’s curved blade on one of his own twin swords and with a sweeping downward movement, used them to disarm the other fighter. Again, the wight’s mouth hung open. He gasped breathlessly as his weaponless hands rose to deflect. Diaz back-swung for the final blow but checked himself as the wight gasped again.
He knew that sound. The shock of breath a person made when stabbed in the back. A struggling gulp of air as the lungs deflated. The body jerked one last time, then crumpled lifeless to the ground.
Swords still held in midair, Diaz felt his heart skip a beat.
Nora stood in battle stance, knife in her hand, drops of blood streaked across her face. Not her blood. Her eyes were wild, darting to and fro, and she was breathing rapidly. Her clothes were torn and still bloodstained where Garreth had managed to cut her. She looked feral, a wild thing. But since the cave, she had never come so close.
“Nora?”
She took a deep breath and her gaze focused on him.
“I missed this,” she said and threw herself into his arms.
Her head buried itself against his chest as his arms tightened around her instinctively, inhaling the woodsmoke scent that lingered in her hair and on her skin. Her arms snaked around his waist and he felt the cold steel of the tip of her knife through the back of his shirt, sending a chill down his spine. No. Wait. The chill reached his heart.
She had spoken those words in wightish. Perfect fluency. Only now Diaz’s mind was catching up, and he leaned back to look at her, loath to step fully out of her embrace. She gazed up at him, lips parted.
“What did you just say?” he asked slowly in wightish.
She laughed quietly, reaching up with her free hand to touch his lips. A jolt of heat passed from her fingertips to his skin.
“I said I love you, fool.”
Again, wightish. He thought of something to say in response, but her lips suddenly crushed against his, and he forgot all about words and, indeed, language as desire flooded his body, waking an answer in hers. The need to have this, to have her, surged within him, and he fought for control as her tongue flickered against his lips, teasing, yet tasting of blood.
She certainly looked like Nora, this wild thing taking his mouth in storm, but she wasn’t her. Nora couldn’t speak wightish. She couldn’t forgive him his part in her brother’s death so easily. Gods, he didn’t want her to stop—but didn’t she remember Owen’s death? Had it no effect on her? Or was this the effect? A temporary derangement to cope with the loss? But why the language skills?
I do not deserve this, he thought. I do not deserve these kisses. She should hate me. Try to kill me. I was prepared for anger, not for…lust.
She moaned into his mouth and he shivered as he pushed her away.
“What is it, my love?” Her voice had changed, huskier than usual.
But maybe that’s what her voice sounds like when she’s aroused…
He held her at arm’s length, careful with his sword, and ran a hand over his face to clear his treacherous mind. Staring into her face made it easy—the image of Garreth’s blood spilling from her mouth quickly cooled his craving.
“Who are you?”
She smiled and reached for him again. “You want to wax philosophical now?”
He turned away from her grasp.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked next.
For a moment, confusion rose behind her eyes.
“How do you know how to speak wightish?” He drilled further.
She raised the heel of her knife hand to her temple as though in great pain. He watched her shake her head slowly.
“I don’t…” She spoke in Kandarin now, but still not her native Moran.
He stepped back and sheathed both blades, giving her a moment to find herself. She clutched at her upper arms, embracing herself, and after a short while she grew still. He watched her closely, heart aching. It took all his strength not to walk over to her and draw her back into his arms as she stood there alone, shivering, frail, and lost. She lifted her hands before her face, eyes wide at the blood on the knife. She let them fall to her side. He licked his lips, savoring the ghostly imprint of hers.
“Nora?”
She nodded, still staring at the ground.
“Can you understand what I’m saying?” He spoke in wightish.
No reaction.
He leaned over.
“Can you—”
He jerked back as her blade slashed through the air where his throat had just been.
She lifted her head and screeched something in a language he c
ouldn’t understand, the whites of her eyes showing, bloodshot, eyelids fluttering. As she closed the gap between them, he reluctantly unsheathed his own knife.
Chapter 2
You don’t truly know someone until you fight them. Diaz’s mother had always told him that, and it echoed in his mind as he parried Nora’s incoming blows. He had often wondered why his mother would say such things, when she was as far removed from being a warrior as he was from being full wight. However, he realized much later in his life, fighting meant using one’s weapons of choice against the other, even if in some cases those weapons were words and contentions. Or powers of seduction.
If her newfound language skills hadn’t shown him that the young woman opposite him wasn’t Nora, her fighting style convinced him of the fact. His Nora leapt into a fight with a blatant disregard for her own vulnerability; she preferred a style that was straightforward, hard-cut hammer blows. Whereas this Nora…did not. Not only did she seem faster, much faster, but she was also subtle and cunning, skilled at feigning strikes from one angle, then cutting down using another, playing up weakness only to unleash a powerful blow. At the same time, she grappled with him with her free hand, never letting him use his greater reach to her disadvantage, trying to grab his wrist and nail him down, her fingers distracting him with caresses like a whore. He had taught her none of these things.
Anger arose, pulsing through his veins. He found no way to quickly stop her. And the longer their fight took, the more whoever this was annoyed him, easily being his match, playing him. They broke apart and then imposed upon each other again and again, like feral cats arching their backs as they circled closer and closer. Until he was unable to stop the violence bubbling over, laying at her with all his might.
Her knife whipped across his dagger, the flat blade pressed against his forearm for protection from one of her blows. He felt her try to disarm him with the backswing, her blade nearly slicing into his arm as the antlered hilt of her knife hooked with his hilt. He put up a struggle at first, then let the dagger fall free, and in that second as she moved to balance herself and attack once more—fatally, this time—he lunged for her knife hand with a snarl. He twisted her wrist, tucking it safely under his arm, and heard her cry out in pain as he bore her down, ungently, into the thorny bed of heather, waiting for the dull crack of bone. Her bone.
His grip faltered for a moment at the shock of what he was planning to do to Nora. But it wasn’t really her, was it? Whatever had crept out of that cave, it wasn’t the Nora he knew.
She shouted something into his ear. A curse, maybe. Some language he couldn’t understand. He pushed her down harder as she rose to meet him, all her strength locked against him. She spat words between her gasps, and he wrestled with her, panting, sweat stinging in a dozen cuts all over his body, but especially in the grazes of her nails on his face. Twigs snapped under them as they rolled together, he cursing under his breath, she full of venom, hissing in that heathen tongue.
He came out on top and slammed her wrists above her head, holding them both in one hand. His free hand slapped against her cheek, shutting her up. Her cheekbone glowed red, and her eyes sparkled in the early morning light as she turned to him, making his heart stop. Blood pooled in the corners of her lips.
“Where’s Nora?” he shouted.
She laughed then and tried to kick him in the face. He grabbed her leg and moved to hold it down with his own.
He grunted with the force of the next slap.
“Where is Nora?”
A lock of her dark hair had fallen over her furious eyes, and for a short moment he wished he could brush it out of her face, tuck it gently behind her ear. Both their breaths came hard, mingling into one cloud between them. Then she spat in his face.
“Shut the fuck up, you half-breed son of a bitch.” She spoke Kandarin now. “Oh, Nora!” she hollered in mockery, arching her back as she laughed. “Nora? Where the fuck is Nora?”
“Silence,” he said coldly and wiped the spit from his jaw with his shoulder, hand raised for the next slap.
“Go ahead, hit me all you want if it makes you feel better.”
It did make him feel better. A little bit at least. In a nightmarish turn of things.
“So much interesting stuff you could do with this girl—”
His hand stung.
“In this position.”
Her lip split open.
“She wants it, you know? You could do all you’d choo—stop! Stop, please!”
She had finally switched to Moran. Her own language. He hesitated. She jerked underneath him, trying to curl together to defend herself from the next blow.
“Master Diaz! It’s me.”
His hand hovered in midair.
“It’s me. Owen.”
But it couldn’t be. His hand settled on the soft skin of her throat, ready to squeeze. It was just another trick.
“Owen?” Diaz couldn’t believe it. Owen was gone. He had sacrificed himself to become the Living Blade, and Diaz had been there to witness the young man’s destruction.
“It’s the Blade.” Nora’s voice, but Owen’s inflection. “I can’t stop its influence. There are too many of us.”
Us. The word sent chills down Diaz’s spine. How very true. He was holding down one body, but there seemed to be a crowd of people beneath him. Diaz felt a headache coming on. He hadn’t slept much the last few days, and the fight just now had cost him a surprising amount of strength. Gazing down at Nora’s bruised face, he watched Owen move her lips, only half hearing. Take a deep breath. A muscle in his arm twitched under the strain, and for a moment he felt like simply letting himself collapse on top of the prostrate body beneath him, breathing in that charcoal scent of hers and falling asleep, throbbing brow resting on her shoulder.
Emotions flickered across Nora’s face like ripples in a pond caused by a stone. Her features settled into a frown.
“It’s the Blade,” she repeated. Or Owen repeated. Diaz was increasingly confused. “The proximity.”
She gasped and again arched her back in seizure, screaming in anger as he held her down. Abruptly, she flopped onto the ground, panting.
“Get Nora away from Bashan, Diaz,” she said between ragged breaths, clutching at his forearms. “The farther, the better.”
Then, in a blink of an eye, Owen was gone.
Nora sucked in air, struggling against his tight grip once more. Her eyes were wild, but then they sharpened, staring into his, and she stilled. For a few heartbeats, the rustle of the wind through the dried heather was all they could hear among the trees. Then she scowled and started to squirm, trying to wrench her wrists out of his grasp.
“Fuck you, Diaz! Let go.”
He sighed in relief, easing back onto his haunches. His head fell back. It was over. The tension in his muscles yielded as she stirred below him.
“Nora, so good to have you back.”
“Get off me.” She winced in pain. His leg still squashed hers under his full weight.
He started to withdraw, but a warning prickle held him back. After all that had happened in the last few minutes, he felt his grip on reality had somewhat slipped, but he trusted his instincts to keep him alive. And right now, they were shouting at him not to make sudden moves until he knew for sure where her knife lay and whether she could reach it. He stayed put while she looked around, eyes lighting on the dead wights, the wounds on his body, the sweat on his forehead. Her gaze seemed to linger on the rake of fingernails across his jaw.
“What were you just doing? With my body? In this position?” Her delivery was deadpan, but most definitely Nora. “Did we fuck and I missed it?”
He groaned and released her.
Nora sat up, carefully stretching her leg, massaging the life back into it. She pressed her lips together, stifling a moan, and shot him a dark look. He held out a hand to help her up and she took it wordlessly, knuckles whitening when she put her weight on the leg. This time she couldn’t hold back the moan, thoug
h she clenched her teeth. She wobbled and clutched his shoulder for support. He was sorry for the damage caused, but he felt weak himself, bleeding from at least a dozen cuts she or whoever had been riding her had graced him with. Tit for tat. That was how the world went, wasn’t it? But for this one moment, they simply held on to each other, steadying themselves.
Then she slapped him.
“You knew.” She jabbed her finger at him in lieu of a knife. “You knew, and you led him to his death anyway. How could you?”
She choked on the words and grabbed a fistful of his shirt.
“How could you?” she whispered once more.
The orphaned child, hands on the lapels of a cruel world, as though she could shake out an answer to the question. Why? He knew that feeling all too well.
“I—”
“Don’t fucking apologize.”
Diaz squeezed his eyes shut. “I was confident he knew what he was doing. Owen did little that wasn’t premeditated.”
She pounded his chest with her fists, shoving him away.
“Don’t mention Owen after what you’ve done. You’ve deceived me over and over again, Diaz, left me in the dark. You do not get to mention him, you fucking…half-wight.” She swallowed hard, the rage making her voice break. Her features distorted by emotion, she pulled a face, then suddenly she was crying explosive sobs hidden behind the palms of her hands. He stiffened, unsure what to do, his throat tightening at the horror of helplessness.
“Nora.” He reached out to pull her against him, but she knocked his forearm away, murder shining in her tear-kissed eyes.
“Don’t fucking patronize me.”
He held up both hands and stepped back, retreating. She followed him closely, her pain stinging more than his wounds.
“Not you!” Her finger poking him again with every word, a thrill running him through time after time. “You have no right. And where the hell is my godsdamned knife?”
On the Wheel Page 20