Little by little, the dark purple carapace that covered Cricket’s body was becoming less weird to her. It also helped that she honestly liked the creature. “Do you miss being a person?”
He shook his head, his long horns swaying left and right as he did.
“You like being like this?”
A nod.
“Huh. Well, to each their own. I’m glad you’re not suffering.” She patted the side of his neck. “And I’m happy for the company. Otherwise, I guess I’d be stuck dragging this guy in a cart. I’d make it all of ten feet before I got eaten.”
“Twenty.”
She jerked at the sudden and unexpected voice. Turning, she looked down at the man that she had tied, face down and draped over the back of the horse. “Rxa?”
“You’d make it twenty feet.” He coughed. “I have faith in you.” His voice sounded weak and strained, but he was certainly awake.
With a long breath, she turned to face forward. “Damn it. Shit.”
“What?” He groaned. “I can’t lift—lift my head far enough to see. What’s wrong?”
“You.”
“Huh?” He paused, clearly confused. “This…hurts a lot…can you let me down, please?”
“No.” She cringed and put her hand on the handle of her long dagger. She debated stabbing him. But she had effectively stabbed him twice so far, and neither time even gave the man pause. Fuck, having his heart torn out only put him down for a few minutes.
What was she supposed to do?
Rxa went silent for a long time. Maybe he passed out again. Maybe he—
“Pretty please?”
She sighed and winced. “No.”
“Why not…? This really”—he coughed again—“hurts very badly.”
That time she refused to answer him. She didn’t like ignoring his question, but she didn’t know how to answer in a way that would get through to him. And besides, it was probably better not to encourage him. Hopefully, he’d just pass out again and she wouldn’t have to deal with—
“Pretty, pretty please?”
Wincing, she didn’t answer.
“Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty—”
“No!” She twisted to glare down at him. Not like it did much good. The man was tied on like saddlebags. “No. You stay like you are.”
“But it hurts,” he whined. “I can’t feel my toes. Do I still have toes? I’d just grown them back! I don’t want to lose them again.”
Gritting her teeth, she faced forward and ignored him.
She tried.
He wouldn’t stop talking.
“This hurts and it chafes, and I just grew new skin, and I don’t want to rub it all off again. One of the horse’s plates is digging into my kidney and—oh! I have a kidney. That’s nice. Wait. Kidneys are in the back, aren’t they?” He coughed, then moaned in pain. “Now it’s in the back...I think it just moved.”
“Cricket, stop.” I’m going to lose my mind if I have to listen to him whine for however many weeks it’ll take me to get to the Temple of Dreams. She dismounted, and without any pomp or circumstance, she untied the rope that lashed Rxa’s bound wrists to his ankles and dragged him off the animal and dropped him to the ground. That time, she didn’t try to slow his fall.
He landed in a heap at her feet. “Ow.”
Rxa was a king. But he looked like a beggar, covered in dirty, bloodstained bandages. His hands were still bound, and he pushed himself up onto his elbows, only to collapse back to the dirt. “What did you do to me…?”
“I told you. You did this to yourself. I had nothing to do with it.” She rolled him onto his back and held her knife against his neck. “I should cut your head off. That’s the important bit, right? The part with the whatever-the-fuck you people have on your faces?”
“Soulmarks,” he said through a grunt. “And yes.”
The moment hung in the air. She hesitated and swore under her breath in the old tongue.
“Go on.” He tilted his head back, exposing his throat. “Do it, little dove.”
“You aren’t going to stop me?”
“Can’t. Feel like—feel like I’m dying.” He shuddered. “Again. Why…?”
“My blood. It’s poison to the drengil. I guess it’s poison to you, too.” She glared down at him. “That’s what you get for biting me.”
“You liked it.”
She smacked him hard. She assumed it hurt her just as badly as it hurt him, since he was wearing a mask. He groaned and rolled his head to his cheek. “You hypnotized me!”
“—still liked it…”
“It doesn’t count if you—” With a loud growl, she stood and paced back and forth. “It doesn’t count if you make me like it.”
“Didn’t.” The word was so quiet, she barely heard it.
“Excuse me? Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t make you like it. Just…took away your fear.” His masked face turned to her. “That’s all.”
Lyon had done the same thing to her—just taken away her fear. “Where did you learn to do that? Hypnotize people?”
“Learn it? Please, I invented it.” He chuckled weakly. She watched as he was overcome with another tremor, his body shivering as if he were in the early stages of hypothermia. He hissed in pain.
“I’ll tell you what I told Lyon and Ini. Stay the fuck out of my head, or yours goes in the bag.” She pointed the blade of her knife at him.
He laughed. It was a pained sound, and he tried to roll onto his side only to fail and wind back up on his back. He looked too weak to move. “Lyon? I can’t imagine that stale fart hypnotizing anyone.”
“It was my fault.”
“Damn. Here I thought he finally learned how to be sexy…some gifts just can’t be taught, I suppose.” He finally gave up trying to roll onto his side. “I like the dirt more than the horse. Can you just leave me here?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Not really. You’re trying to destroy this world and everyone in it.”
“Sure, but…you don’t need to say it like that.”
“Like what?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Like it’s a bad thing.”
She put her hands over her eyes and groaned. “Talking with you is pointless.”
“And frustrating.” When she responded to his comment with a glare, all it earned her was a small chuckle from him. “You’re adorable when you’re angry. Correction.” He paused. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
“Don’t make me gag you.”
“Threaten me with a good time, why don’t you?”
“Alhün.” Now she wanted to stab herself just to get it over with.
“Oh, what’s that mean? It sounded naughty.”
“Up.”
“Liar. That didn’t sound like—whoa!”
She grabbed him by the ropes around his wrist and yanked him up to his feet. He struggled to get his legs under him and fell several times as she dragged him back to Cricket. He was leaning on her more than she was pulling him by the end of it. “Get on. Right leg first.”
“I know how to ride a horse. If I get on with my right leg first, I’ll be facing the wrong way.”
“Exactly.” She scowled at him. “Right leg first.”
“I…don’t…understand.”
Taking in a deep breath, she held it. Patience. Grandfather and Grandmother—give me patience. “I’m not going to ride with you sitting behind me facing me.”
“Why not?” He tilted his head to the side.
“You have sharp claws. And I don’t want them anywhere near my kidneys—which, yes, are in the back. You can sit. But you’ll sit facing backward, and I’m going to tie you to Cricket when you’re on there.”
“You named the horse?” He snickered. “That’s a terrible name.”
Cricket snorted angrily.
“Oh-ho, is the horsie mad? I—”
“Shut up.” She jabbed him in the chest.
“And get on. Now. Or I’ll drag you behind us, and you can whine all the fuck you want while you’re back there.”
“Okay, okay…sheesh.” He leaned against Cricket and tried to climb on but was too weak to do it himself. She ended up having to half-pull, half shove him onto the back of the horse. When he was finally there, she began to tie the bindings around his wrists to his waist, and then tethered the rope around his waist around Cricket’s belly.
“I don’t recommend falling off. You’ll get trampled half to death before I can stop him. And I think he rather wants to trample you.”
Cricket snorted in the affirmative.
“Why does everyone hate me?” Rxa hunched his shoulders.
“Could have something to do with you trying to—as I said—kill the world.” She slung herself back up onto Cricket. That put her back-to-back with Rxa as they rode, with him behind her. It was odd, feeling him there, but it was much better than the alternative.
“You’ve been here a day.”
“Four.”
“Whatever.” Rxa leaned against her. She’d complain, but he was still shivering, and his voice sounded strained. He might not be able to sit up under his own power. “This isn’t a world worth saving.”
The manic, verging on innocent twinge to his voice vanished with those last words. It was as though someone else entirely had said them. She twisted to glance over her shoulder at him. His head was lowered, his messy blond hair hiding his shattered mask from view.
“What makes you say that?”
He sat there silently for so long that she wondered if he had passed out again. But finally, he answered her. And in two words, she heard his heartbreak. “Trust me.”
They rode in silence for a while. She didn’t know what to say. I shouldn’t be talking to him at all. But he had opened up such an enormous door with those words, she didn’t know how she could resist walking through it.
Muttering to herself in the old tongue, she shook her head.
“I like your language. It flows. What did you just say?”
“I was calling myself a moron.”
“Why?”
“For not cutting off your head and being done with it.”
“The rest of me would grow back, y’know.”
“Probably not faster than I could saw it back off.”
“That’s…fair.” He straightened, scooted down as far as he could go, and then leaned his head against her shoulder. “Why don’t you do it, then?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t shake him off her shoulder without either knocking him off Cricket or falling off herself. It’d be more trouble than it was worth.
“Liar. You keep lying to me. Why?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
“I haven’t done anything to you.”
“You’ve hypnotized me and bitten me.”
“And you liked it.”
“I’m not having this conversation again!”
“Another thing you could solve by just cutting my head off, like you’ve said. So why haven’t you done it?” He shifted. He was warm at her back, even through the coat she wore. “Please don’t lie to me. I’ve been lied to my entire life. Five thousand years of lies…I can’t take it anymore.”
Why don’t I cut his head off? With a breath, she debated her answer. It took her a few moments to find it. “It’s cruel.”
“Under is cruel. And from what little I know of you, little dove, so was your world. We trade in merciless violence. It’d be nothing remarkable. People would applaud you for it. Aon certainly would.”
“I am a graedari. I’ve spent my life in dedication to the old gods. I serve as a shield to protect people. I’m not…I won’t sink to barbarity. I’ve seen too much of it myself. It’s too easy to become the thing you hate.”
“Those are the words of a monk. Are you a priestess, my little dove?”
“I am.” With a cringe, she corrected herself. “Was. I don’t know if my gods still live.”
“They probably don’t.” At her long silence, he shifted to tuck his head closer to her neck. She leaned her head away, but it was hard to escape him on the back of a horse. “Sorry. That was heartless.”
“It’s true.”
“Still uncalled for. Since we’re trying not to be cruel to each other.” He nuzzled his head into her again. “Better that they are dead. That way, you won’t have to learn if they truly loved you or not. It’s better not to know.”
“You speak from experience?”
“Oh, yes.”
An animal overhead made a squawk, and she looked up to see something that resembled a crow, if it had been perfectly inverted. Its bones were on the outside, and its feathers were on the inside. She wrinkled her nose. “This world is…strange.”
“Mmhm.”
“But it’s also beautiful. My world was ugly, Rxa. It was dying. There was nothing left but rot, and gore, and death. I’ve seen what happens when the drengil are allowed to have their way. I’ve seen children torn to pieces in front of their mothers. I’ve seen a man cradling the body of his dead wife, refusing to let her go, even as he’s being eaten alive.” She swallowed thickly at the memory, and then wound her hand into the strap of her golden spear. It was one of the only gifts that had been given to her, freely, out of friendship, in…her entire life. She had received more kindness in a few days on Under than she had in Gioll in her twenty-three years. “My world had no hope. This place does. It has love—it has kindness—it has meaning. It’s alive. And it’s worth saving for that reason alone.”
Rxa snored loudly.
She elbowed him in the ribs.
“Ow! Still healing, not fair, still healing—” He groaned.
“You’re an ilhál.” She smirked. “And yes, that’s a naughty word.”
He laughed weakly. “Can I ask where you’re taking us, little dove?”
“You can.” She fought back a smile as she didn’t give him anything more than that. He’s dangerous. He’s a madman out to destroy the world. Remember that.
“We’re going…” He lifted his head from her shoulder. “South, it looks like?” He sighed. “Ah, shit. Well. I guess that answers that question. I suppose I’m not surprised.”
“What?”
“There’s only one place you could be taking us. The Temple of Dreams. Am I right?” He leaned his head back onto her shoulder, craning his neck to try to look at her. She turned her head away from his. Sitting this close to him was unnerving at best, and his freakish mask lurking over her shoulder didn’t help, even if he was facing away from her. He snickered at her silence. “I’m right. Well! There’s good news, then.”
“Which is?”
He hummed and snuggled into her. “We’ll have weeks to get to know each other. Won’t this be such fun? You and me…together.”
Ember’s eye twitched. She stared straight ahead at the road and debated cutting off his head again.
Really debated it.
3
Evie wiped the blood from her hands as she walked back indoors. The shambling corpses of the dead had been beaten back—at least for now. She was sure there’d be more. There were always more. “Never seen monsters like that b’fore.”
“Easy pickings. Our archers are going to get bored.” Oanr was sitting by the wall, cleaning the blood off his large sword. Oanr had been Edu’s second in command and was happy to continue serving as Elder of the House of Flames. Evie enjoyed the company of the gruff Viking. His presence made it feel a little bit like Edu might still be there, just around that next corner. That she might find him sharpening his weapons or whittling a little hunk of wood into a rabbit or a dragon.
He never was. He was gone.
But sometimes, when she shut her eyes, she could pretend.
Four hundred years. You’d think I’d be over it by now. Oh, well. Too much to do, too little time. “Well,” she slung her axe onto her back, “tell them to hold a contest. Whoever picks off the most of those bitey bastards g
ets a prize.”
“What kind of prize?” Oanr raised his eyebrow at her. Half his face was one huge red swath of ink. Her own markings were similar. She just had a few more lines than he did.
“I don’t know.” She snickered. “You pick.”
“Hey,” someone called form the other side of the entryway. Turning, she saw a man in a black leather coat with bright silver zippers leaning against the wall. “Evie?”
Shrugging out of her heavy coat, she slung it on the wall. “Yeah, Tim?” Nobody around the castle called her queen. She liked it that way.
“Spider’s looking for you in the throne room.” He sniffed dismissively. “I hate it when she’s here. I wish she’d just look normal like all the rest of you freaks.”
Evie laughed and headed away from the door and toward the throne room. It really wasn’t used for that—she only ever sat on the stupid chair when there were political matters or ceremonies. She had a new one made for her and had Edu’s old chair put in her bedroom. Namely because she was short—and he had been very, very not. She was sick of looking like a toddler in her dad’s armchair.
She patted Tim on the arm as she passed. “If you could wander around like a giant purple spider, you know you would.”
The man shuddered dramatically. “No, thanks. No fuckin’ thanks from me.” He lowered his voice to a mutter. “I hate spiders.”
She laughed again as she tucked her hands in the pockets of her oversized hoodie and headed into the throne room. Tim was a good friend, even if he was an “unmasked servant” in the House of Flames. They had different rules than the other houses. He had beaten enough masked competitors in a fair fight, and therefore outranked them. Only Dtu’s House of Moons operated in a similar fashion. They cared little for the ink a person bore; it was how they used it that mattered.
As she crossed into the vaulted room, she peered up into the rafters. There, lurking in the shadows, was a giant, dark purple spider. The creature filled the space effortlessly, balancing on eight long, powerful, but deceptively thin legs. The spider had a victim—a human body wrapped in silk, dangling upside down from the rafters.
Grave of Words (Fall of Under Book 2) Page 2