“We need to talk.” Vedhe led the way to a small space away from the others.
“What is it? What did you find out from the Lady?”
Vedhe shook her head. “Not about that.”
“But what did she tell you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Not right now.”
K’lrsa bit into one of the sausages, relishing the way the skin burst under her teeth and the delicious combination of spices and meat. “Then what is it?”
“Lodie.”
“She’s still in the labyrinth.” K’lrsa popped a slice of orange into her mouth, sighing in contentment at the sweet burst of flavor. She’d hated the Daliphana, but she did miss their food…
Vedhe nodded. “We need to bring her out.”
“But she didn’t want to leave. Shouldn’t she be allowed to stay there if she wants to?”
“She’s been there for weeks with nothing but her imaginings of what her husband and child were like. She can’t…” Vedhe frowned. “I don’t have all the knowledge I should, I just have fragments, and the Lady won’t tell me the rest. But…” She shook her head. “Staying there, in the labyrinth this long…It jeopardizes everything. It’s not a safe space. Not like the rest of the Hidden City. If she doesn’t move on soon, she’ll never be able to.”
“But what’s there to move on to? The Promised Plains? By herself?”
Vedhe frowned and looked into the distance as if searching for something just out of reach. “It’s what’s beyond that that matters. She can truly be reunited with them there. But not here.”
K’lrsa forced herself to take a bite of the porridge. It turned out to be surprisingly tasty. Someone had drizzled honey on it and included small berries that burst with flavor. “What happens if she stays in the labyrinth?”
“She’ll disappear.”
“And? So?”
“We can’t let that happen.” Vedhe furrowed her brow. “I can’t explain it, but I know we have to help her.” She grabbed K’lrsa’s arm. “Lodie helped rescue me from the slavers. She didn’t have to—she was comfortable where she was—but she did it. For me.”
“I don’t know…”
Vedhe stepped closer, her blue eyes pleading. “Please. I can’t do this without you.”
“Why not? How are we going to save her anyway? We can’t go back through the labyrinth, can we? And even if we did, we wouldn’t see her because she wasn’t traveling it with us.”
“We can enter the labyrinth.”
K’lrsa clenched her jaw, remembering how awful it had been the first time. She didn’t want to go back. Even to save her friend. “I’m not killing another dragon.”
“You won’t have to. We’ll enter it from this side. The challenge isn’t the same, which is why I need you.”
“What do you mean?”
Vedhe bit her lip, but forced herself to meet K’lrsa’s gaze. “We’ll have to face our worst memories or deepest fears. And then we’ll be able to find Lodie.”
“No.” K’lrsa took a step backward. “I don’t…I can’t…”
She’d spent months reliving the day her father died, seeing his body staked to the sands, his eyes gone, his belly sliced open…She couldn’t do that again. She couldn’t live that moment a second time.
Vedhe stared her down. “How bad are your worst memories? Truly?”
“I…”
Vedhe stepped close enough that K’lrsa could smell the remains of breakfast on her breath. “My entire family was slaughtered. Even the little ones. I was burned by the desert sun until my skin cracked and broke and bled. And then…in that tent…after you joined us…” She held K’lrsa’s eyes, the fact that she’d been in that tent because of K’lrsa hanging between them. “What G’van did to me…”
K’lrsa looked away. She’d helped Vedhe escape. Wasn’t that enough?
But no. It wasn’t. It would never be enough. Because Vedhe carried those memories with her every single day.
And K’lrsa still owed Lodie for not telling Harley, the leader of the slave caravan, that her injuries were self-inflicted. “Okay. Fine.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“Now?” K’lrsa looked around, trying to find some reason to wait, but there wasn’t one.
“Yes.” Vedhe stalked down the hallway, not even bothering to look back.
Reluctantly, K’lrsa followed.
She was going to regret this, but she had to do it, or she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
Chapter 32
They made their way back to the center of the labyrinth. The Lady was waiting for them. K’lrsa glared at her, wondering if she knew about what had been done to K’lrsa’s parents, but didn’t say anything. That conversation could happen later.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked in her melodic voice.
“Yes.” Vedhe stepped up to the door leading to the labyrinth. “Open it for us. Please.”
The Lady looked to K’lrsa. “And you?”
K’lrsa shrugged and moved to Vedhe’s side. “I guess.”
The Lady looked as if she wanted to say something, but instead she waved her hand and the door to the labyrinth disappeared, replaced with a gaping, black hole.
Involuntarily, K’lrsa reached for Vedhe’s hand. Last time she’d stepped into the labyrinth she’d almost been burned to death by a dragon. And when she’d stepped out of that door she’d been brought to her knees in agony.
She did not want to go back there.
Vedhe squeezed her hand gently and pulled her forward until they stood side by side directly in front of the black, empty space. “Ready?”
No.
K’lrsa shivered, reminding herself this had to be done.
She nodded, chewing on her lip to hold back the fear.
“Then let’s go.” Vedhe sounded so confident, so sure of herself, but the way her hand shook as she stepped forward showed that she, too, was scared.
K’lrsa followed her into the darkness.
She held her breath, tensed, waiting for pain or fire to strike her down.
All she felt was cold. Bitter, bitter cold, worse than anything she’d ever experienced before. There were trees—monstrosities as big as three men across that stretched high into the leaden sky. Their branches were heavy with a white substance that also covered the ground and the building ahead of them.
K’lrsa stared, her mouth hanging open. “Is this…?”
“My home. Yes. They came for us in winter. They knew we’d all be there and wouldn’t be able to survive if we fled.” Vedhe’s voice was flat, like she had shoved every bit of emotion away somewhere else.
Her hand trembled, as she stared at the building ahead of them. It was a low, sturdy building with a sloped roof and small, narrow windows. A large wooden door dominated the front of the place, and smoke escaped from two spots on the roof, one at each end.
K’lrsa tried to move forward, but she was frozen in place. “What do we do now?”
Vedhe took a shuddering breath and raised her chin. “We endure.”
“Endure what?”
“Our memories. Our fears.” She clenched her jaw, her gaze fixed on the building in front of them.
“How many of these do we have to go through before we reach Lodie?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was soft and low, full of fear and determination.
K’lrsa stared at Vedhe in horror. What had she agreed to?
She glanced behind them. The doorway was still there. It wasn’t too late to leave. Lodie wanted to be here, why not just let her stay? Why put themselves through whatever was coming?
Just as she was about to suggest that they go back, the crunch of boots through snow brought her attention back to the house. Men appeared from the trees, covered in layer after layer of animal skins to the point that they were barely recognizable as men.
Vedhe hissed as a man stepped forward, and her fingernails dug into K’lrsa’s hand like claws. “That’s Ivan.”
&
nbsp; “You knew him?”
She nodded, tears already in her eyes. “Yes. He was my father’s friend. They’d traded together for years. Broken bread together just the week before. He knew all of us by name. We knew him. We trusted him.”
K’lrsa shivered as Ivan signaled for his men to spread out alongside the house so they wouldn’t be visible from the door. After they were in place, he called out a greeting and knocked. A man answered, smiling and laughing, holding his arms out to hug his friend, the warmth of the fires that burned inside shining bright on his pale hair.
“Papa,” Vedhe whimpered.
Ivan ran him through with a sword and shoved his body to the side as he stepped across the threshold. His men rushed after him, swords drawn.
From where they stood, K’lrsa and Vedhe couldn’t see what was happening, but the sounds of screaming that filled the air told their own story. Women and children, crying and begging for mercy. Men shouting about betrayal and being damned by the gods.
A young girl, her clothes covered with the bright red of freshly-spilled blood dashed outside, dragging an even younger girl with her. “Go. Run.” She shoved the younger girl towards the woods and turned to fight.
“Is that you?” K’lrsa asked, scared to break the silence, but desperate to know.
“Yes.”
Vedhe-in-the-vision looked so young, so vulnerable, standing there in a simple dress, two long daggers clutched in her hands as the first of the men came for her. He laughed as he reached for her, but she ducked under his grasping hand and buried her dagger in his belly, slicing hard to the side. He stumbled backward, clutching at his guts as she stepped back into the doorway, ready for her next opponent.
As the men came for her, she slashed and parried and ducked and screamed in wordless rage. She should’ve been defeated immediately. They were men—twice her size—and they had swords, but she fought with the unbridled fury of a berserker with nothing to lose.
Two fell, then three, then four as she cried and screamed and fought.
Vedhe’s grip tightened on K’lrsa’s hand until it felt like her bones were grinding together. “My family were all dead. The only one left was Anya. I knew I was going to die, too, but I was going to take as many as I could with me before I went. Give her as much of a chance as I could.”
Vedhe-in-the-vision fought on, slashing and screaming, the ground at her feet slick with blood, until the men withdrew, eyeing her warily. She screamed at them to attack her, to end this. But they hung back.
And then K’lrsa saw why. A man snuck around the edge of the building, moving silently from shadow to shadow.
Vedhe growled low in her throat, struggling to move forward and rescue her younger self. But they were trapped, powerless to act as the man crept up behind Vedhe-in-the-vision and struck her. She collapsed across the threshold as the men inside cheered.
“What should we do with her?” one of the men asked.
“Save her for the slavers. They’ll pay a pretty penny for a pure one like her.” He nodded towards the woods. “And find the one who fled. We can sell her, too.”
K’lrsa glared at the man, memorizing every line of his face. If she was ever given the chance, she’d kill him—without remorse or hesitation.
From the way Vedhe trembled at her side, only if Vedhe didn’t get there first.
As the scene finally dissolved into mist, K’lrsa allowed herself to breathe again. “Did Anya get away?”
Vedhe shook her head. “No. They found her.” She clenched her jaw and turned away from K’lrsa, her hands balled into fists.
“Was she…Was she sold with you?” There hadn’t been a young girl with the caravan when K’lrsa found it. Which might mean that Anya had died on the journey.
“No. She was sold to someone else.”
“Who—“
Vedhe shook her head, cutting off the question, as a swirling mist formed around them, finally resolving itself into a desert scene.
K’lrsa glared around them. “What’s the point? Why do the gods always have to torture us like this?” she asked as the sun beat down on them, chasing away the chill of Vedhe’s homeland.
“It tests your will. Do you want it enough? See?” She nodded towards the door which still stood behind them. “We can leave anytime we want. We just won’t find what we seek if we do.”
Vedhe glanced around as the scene continued to resolve itself. “This is yours, not mine.”
K’lrsa’s stomach clenched as she recognized where they were—the cavern where she’d found her father.
But earlier in the day.
She tried to move forward, but she was stuck, forced to watch, unable to act. She screamed her rage, hating the gods, wishing she could leave before the vision started, but knowing she’d stay and watch.
One, to save Lodie. Two, to repay Vedhe. And three, because she wanted to know what had happened to her father before she’d arrived. To see if L’ral had told her the truth.
No matter how much it hurt.
She held her breath as her father and L’ral rode over the crest of a nearby dune, her father alert, scanning the horizon, not knowing that the man he needed to fear most rode by his side. L’ral was fidgety, his horse jerking sideways as he handled it too roughly, glancing around for the men he knew were waiting for them.
K’var stepped out of the shadows of the cavern, his bow drawn.
K’lrsa shouted, trying to warn her father, but he didn’t hear her.
Even though it was pointless, she screamed and struggled and beat her fists against the air as K’var pointed the bow at her father and released.
L’ral saw it before her father did—because of course he’d known K’var would be there.
He moved his horse into the path of the arrow, shoving her father’s horse to the side. The arrow buried itself in his horse’s side and it cried in pain. L’ral pushed at her father, urging him to run, as he turned his horse towards K’var and the men who’d flooded out of the cave behind him.
K’lrsa fought back tears. She hadn’t known he’d done that. She’d known he’d betrayed her father by bringing him here, and that he’d changed his mind at the last moment, but she hadn’t realized that he’d put himself between her father and his attackers. That he’d sacrificed the horse he’d raised from birth to try to save the man he’d betrayed.
She swallowed heavily.
She still hated him. He’d still brought her father to his death.
But…Not quite as much.
What happened next was swift and brutal. L’ral was struck by three separate arrows, one after the other thunking into his flesh. K’lrsa’s father tried to flee but they shot his horse out from under him and dragged him from its back before he could recover.
The horse staggered away, bleeding and wounded, disappearing over a nearby dune.
K’var’s men forced her father to his knees at K’var’s feet and K’var spat in his face, yelling at him for daring to stand against the future and believing he, one man, could oppose a tribe as powerful as the Black Horse Tribe.
Her father met K’var’s gaze, defiant and strong. “You can kill me, K’var, but it won’t stop what I’ve begun.”
“We’ll see about that.”
As K’var’s men carried her father over the dune to the place where he’d been staked out to die, Vedhe and K’lrsa seemed to follow them although they were still rooted to the same spot.
Her father fought the men, struggling and kicking and screaming. He never quit, never stopped, even as they held him down and drove long metal spikes through his hands and feet, and he screamed in agony.
Only when they took his eyes did he stop fighting.
K’lrsa wept seeing the moment her father realized he wasn’t going to survive. He sunk into himself then, finding the Core, disappearing somewhere they couldn’t reach.
They kicked him, they taunted him, they stabbed at him, but he remained untouched, relaxed and calm.
Finally, K’var had ha
d enough. “Die old man,” he spat as he sliced open her father’s belly and pulled the two flaps of skin wide, exposing the glistening organs inside to the hot desert heat.
He and his men stood aside, keeping the grel at bay as they waited for the fire ants to appear and crawl all over her father’s flesh. But even as they swarmed his body and bit and tore at his body, her father remained calm. His chest rose, slow and steady, showing he was still alive, but the tortures they’d inflicted on his body didn’t touch him.
K’var and his men left, abandoning her father to die alone on the hot desert sands.
Time passed.
Her father twitched if the grel came too close, but otherwise he lay there, silently suffering his fate, waiting to die, detached from the pain.
Until K’lrsa arrived.
Until she brought him back to his broken body with her tears and her cries and the water she tried to pour into his mouth.
K’lrsa of now stood above them and watched, sobbing, as her younger self pulled the stakes from his body and fought with him over her desire for revenge.
She forced herself to watch as her younger self pulled her dagger and plunged it through that gaping wound and into his heart, fulfilling his last request—to die at last.
Only then did she turn away, sobbing. Vedhe held her close as she wept.
As they both wept, remembering how powerlessness they’d been in the face of evil.
It wasn’t right.
What had been done to her father.
What had been done to Vedhe’s entire family.
It wasn’t right that men like that could exist.
“They should die,” Vedhe whispered.
“K’var is dead.”
“All of them. They should all die.”
K’lrsa nodded.
She was right. They should all die. No matter what it took.
Chapter 33
The horrors continued as Vedhe and K’lrsa stood there, powerless to act.
Rider's Resolve (The Rider's Revenge Trilogy Book 3) Page 12