“You can do it, Kazi. Go with the current.”
“Not without you, Jase,” I whispered. “Not without you.”
“You’re awake?”
The pearls vanished, and I gasped as I sat up. An apple-cheeked woman sat in a chair in the corner of the room. She rose and lifted a tray from the table beside her. “Broth,” she said as she came toward me. “King’s orders. He wants you to eat and get your strength back.”
I looked around the beautifully furnished room. Where was I? Had it been a dream? I instinctively assessed the woman and my surroundings. She was unarmed and there were no guards, but my will to run was gone. I felt the swollen flesh on the inside of my cheek with my tongue. It wasn’t a dream. What did it matter? Run where? To whom? Into what other nightmare?
Her jumble of words were just coming together in my head.
“The king? The king is here?”
“He’ll explain. I’ll let him know you’re awake.” She set the tray down on the bed beside me and left.
I felt for the push knife in my pocket, and the nails I had pulled from the settee. They were gone. Was she the one who took them? I sat in the middle of a four-poster bed, surrounded by luxurious linens. Was I in a room at the inn? I stared at the glistening bowl of broth. Instead of feeling hunger, bile swelled in my throat. I swung my feet over the bed, but with one step, my legs collapsed beneath me and I fell facedown onto the floor. Jase’s ring tumbled from my palm, the clink of gold ringing in my ears again. It was a sharp sound, a knife running under my skin. Deeper, I thought, cut deep. I wanted to die. I wanted to sink into the floor and disappear, but old habits and rules surfaced.
Tomorrow, Kazi, die tomorrow.
“No,” I choked. “Not this time.”
Pain rumbled through my chest, and I inhaled sharply, struggling to hold it back. Don’t, Kazi. Don’t. He is not dead. If I sobbed, it would be an admission that it was real, but my chest tore open anyway, a flood of dying sounds pouring out of me, and it seemed there was no question, I was dying. I had taken a risk and lost. Everything I had finally allowed myself to feel these past months spilled through the room, disappearing. There would be no tomorrows, not ones that mattered. I was empty, and I would never be full again.
Make a wish, Kazi, one will always come true.
My wish had already come true, and the jealous gods snatched it away, just like they had taken away my mother. There would be no more wishes, no more stars, no more anything. I lay there, staring at the ring just out of my reach, the floor icy against my cheek, too afraid to get up. I couldn’t do this again. I couldn’t drag myself back to a place where I cared to go on.
The ring glowed on the floor, reflecting all the light the world held, the shine of Jase’s eyes, the glint of his hair in the sun. A ring that was not just a ring. The general had called it a worthless piece of jewelry, but he was wrong. It was the reworked gold of countless Patreis. Its worth was not in its scratched metal but in its history and honor. Its promise. I made a blood vow to protect them, Kazi. And the Patrei’s vow is his family’s vow.
I forced myself to my feet and retrieved it. My hand shook as I slipped it on my finger. “You made a vow to me too, Jase. You promised me a lifetime of—” My voice broke. I had also made a vow, that I would keep him safe always. And I had failed.
The door opened, and the king walked in. Just as the woman had said. King Montegue, the bumbling King of Eislandia who didn’t know Hell’s Mouth from his own ass. But he’d apparently managed to find it today.
He stared at me, his eyes dark and deep, contemplative, a hesitation in his step. His oafish grin was gone, but neither was he the sly king I had glimpsed at the arena. His shoulders drooped. He appeared to be a very tired king. He raked back his hair, unruly like the first time I met him, loose strands falling forward.
“This was not how I hoped to cross your path again,” he said. “I am truly sorry. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. I’m afraid General Banques can be crude and harsh, especially after everything we’ve been through. I’ve spoken with him. I apologize for his treatment of you, but these are very hard times.”
My mind was fuzzy, still trying to navigate through something thick and suffocating. I spun the too-large ring on my finger. Hard times? I finally looked up, “Why are these hard times?” I asked. “What have you done? Why is Banques hanging people? Who is he hanging?”
Why have you killed the Patrei? But that was a question I couldn’t ask aloud. It was an impossible thought.
The king glanced at my untouched broth and sighed. “You deserve answers, and you’ll get them. But first you do need to eat.”
“I can’t—”
“Please.” He came over and took my hand, gently nudging me forward. “I have a lot to tell you, but it will take strength to hear it all. You’ll feel better once you eat. I promise. And I understand you were wounded. I’ve called for our healer to come take a look.” He guided me to the chair and table in the corner, then brought the tray of broth to me as if he were a servant.
He sat on a stool opposite me, his eyes creased with concern, waiting for me to lift my spoon.
It will take strength to hear it all?
I didn’t want strength. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I used to know. I wanted what Jase wanted. A home. A family. Answers. Did any of that matter anymore? Would answers bring Jase back to me? I’d thought I wanted certainty, that it would be freeing, but now certainty was the anchor that pulled me under. I stared at the broth, still drowning, lost, that girl wandering the streets again, weak and not sure where to turn.
“Please,” the king repeated.
Go with the current, Kazi. Keep your head up.
I picked up the spoon and ate.
* * *
I had almost finished the bowl and was ready to hear the explanation he promised me, when there was a tap at the door. He stood. “I’m sorry. That’s probably the healer. I’ll give you two some privacy. I’m sure she’ll need you to disrobe.”
“But you said—”
“I’ll be back. As soon as she’s done.”
If someone could be the opposite of General Banques, the king was that person. He was soft-spoken, and his movements were quiet, pensive. Apologetic. Had something sobered him since our first meeting? These are hard times. Did he really comprehend what was going on here? A tyrant was on the loose, hanging people. Was this another case of the king being oblivious to whom and what he ruled?
As he left, the healer entered, a woman I had never seen in Hell’s Mouth before. Somehow I was expecting, or maybe hoping, to see Rhea, the healer who had treated my dog bites.
This woman was pinched and angled, with a stout leather bag clutched in her fist. I realized she might become suspicious when she saw how well my wound was healing … unless she was the one who had slipped me the medicine? A healer. Of course. Who else would know about a poultice to treat an oozing wound? Who else would even know the likely state of a wound without examining the patient?
“Thank you,” I said, hoping to prompt some admission from her.
“For what?”
“For coming, of course. Treating me.”
She looked down at me, her lips tight against her teeth, and offered a curt reply. “King’s orders.” She rummaged roughly through her supplies, a hiss escaping through her teeth.
Was it me she didn’t like? Or was it the king? Or maybe it was the whole state of affairs outside the inn. How far had this madness spread?
“Who was hanged?” I asked.
“Traitors,” she answered. “Now show me your wound. I have other duties to attend to besides the likes of you.”
The likes of me? She stared at me as if I were a roach crossing her path and she was the high queen of everything. Did I have something written on my face? Street trash? Vermin? Or was it just Vendans she disliked? Those mysterious barbarians who wore tethers of bones at their sides? I was used to insults, some even from my own countrymen who looked down
on me. When you are on the lowest rung of society, you are a comforting reminder to those just a bit above you that life could always be worse, that they are not you. The healer’s movements were sharp, efficient. She was here unwillingly at best, and certainly not my benefactor.
I lifted my shirt, and she gave the wound a cursory glance before applying stinging tincture and a bandage. Her hands were rough and the wound still tender, but I hid a wince behind a clenched jaw. She scribbled something out on a piece of paper, then frowned as if she remembered something. “I’d rather not have to come back. Do you know how to read?”
My shoulders pulled back. “I’m afraid only in three languages,” I replied. “Fluently, that is. Five altogether.” It was only a small stretch. “Caz ena, beetch?” I added.
Her brow squiggled for a moment, uncertain what I had said, but I was sure that the unsettling familiarity of at least one word confounded her. She put the piece of paper on the table along with a small vial of tincture and left. I watched her walk out the door unaware that her bag of remedies was one small item lighter.
When the door banged shut, I looked at the scalpel in my hand, not sure why, at this point, I even took it from her bag. A habit of survival? On the streets of Venda, I had never passed by an easy steal. It all added up to something that could help me survive for one more day. Even if it was something I didn’t want, it could be used for trade later. I couldn’t trade this scapel for anything, and a thousand slit throats wouldn’t give me back Jase.
An ache gnawed beneath my ribs, like an animal trying to escape. I remembered my last frantic seconds with Jase, but they only amounted to disconnected glimpses that I couldn’t put together. What had been my last words to him? Stop? Run? Those minutes had been stricken with fear and anger. Rewind it, Kazi. Make it all different. One more chance. But the moment was gone. Someone had stolen the last words I wanted Jase to hear from me. I love you. I will always love you. I had tried to save him. I had fought for all I was worth, but it hadn’t been enough.
I turned the scalpel over in my hand. It gleamed sharp and deadly. It was meant to slice flesh so cleanly you barely felt it. I nicked my fingertip, and a bright red bead bloomed against my skin.
A blood vow. And the Patrei’s vow is his family’s vow.
The bead grew larger, like a glistening red ruby, and I lifted my finger to my lips, rubbing the warm blood across them, tasting it with my tongue. The saltiness, the centuries of vows, the promises. And Jase.
You are my family now, Kazi.
I wiped the blood from the scalpel and slipped it beneath the chair cushion for safekeeping. This weapon would not be taken from me.
The Patrei’s blood vow was my vow. Protect at all costs.
And I had nothing left to lose.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KAZI
Instead of returning to see me himself as he’d promised, the king had me brought to him. But not before I was given another change of clothes, curiously complete with leather vest, high boots, and a weapon belt—minus the weapons. I looked almost like a real soldier again. My escort was unarmed. The king had a very different regard for my talents than Banques and his goons. As I padded forward, a fog ebbed in and out around me. It wasn’t hunger, but memories and words I couldn’t flush from my head. I squeezed my eyes, trying to make horrific images vanish. Animals got him. I made myself focus on a distant point down the hall. The faraway point was all that mattered. It kept the world from turning upside down.
The guard stopped at a door, and I was led into what appeared to be the king’s private dining room, the drapes drawn against the bright of day. Tall candles glowed atop golden candlesticks on a table set for two.
The king turned as I entered the room, his hand absently pressed to his side, and I wondered if there was a pocket inside his vest that held treasure—or were his ribs simply aching? These are hard times. Had he been injured? His eyes swept over me, and he smiled. “I see they brought you proper clothes this time. Good. You deserve to look like the premier soldier you are.”
“You mean the premier soldier who was stabbed, starved, and held in a dark cell for countless days?”
He grimaced. “Fair enough, but if I could explain.” He pulled a chair out for me to sit.
I shook my head, refusing his offer.
“It was a mistake,” he said. “They didn’t know who you were.”
“I screamed it through the door every day.”
He looked down and sighed as if dismayed. “Prisoners scream a lot of things, I’m afraid.”
“Why do you have prisoners? Why are you here?”
He stepped from behind the chair, walking closer to me, taller than I remembered. “I mean no disrespect,” he said, “but if you don’t mind, that’s a question I would like to ask. Why are you here? At the arena I saw you slug the Patrei in the jaw, and then shortly after that, you arrested him at knifepoint and hauled him back to Venda to face trial for harboring fugitives.”
“At knifepoint? How would you know that last part?”
“Oleez, a servant who was there, told General Banques about the confrontation.”
Had Oleez been there that night? I didn’t remember seeing her, but she could have been hanging back in the shadows. It would explain her sharp look in my direction.
I studied the king. He was an enigma. Different. He was still the tall, broad-shouldered king I had met at the arena, though more well-groomed now, and with an air and presence about him I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t his clothes or how he carried himself—it was his demeanor that had changed. The king before me was brooding, almost meditative, his words calm and even. Thoughtful. Where was the clueless buffoon who shrugged and grinned and tapped his fingers together like a child? Was it the hard times he had mentioned that made that king disappear?
“I’m here because I had orders from the Queen of Venda to escort the Patrei back to his home,” I answered, still uncertain how much truth was safe to share. “She said I had overstepped my bounds by arresting him. There was no evidence he knew who the fugitives were that he harbored. Some of them didn’t even have warrants.”
“So hunting down fugitives is what you were really here for all along? Not treaty violations?”
I nodded.
Color flushed his neck. “And you didn’t think to tell me?” His eyes were hard steel looking into mine, and his words clipped. “I am the king, after all. But maybe you only saw me as a simple farmer shopping for Suri.” He looked away and a deep breath filled his chest as if he was trying to shake the resentment I’d heard in his tone. But where there was resentment, there was awareness. He wasn’t completely oblivious. He knew how others viewed him and his reign.
“Please,” he said, walking back to the chair. He pulled it out a little farther. “I thought you should have a more substantial meal. You have some catching up to do.”
I eyed the chair, and then him. I remembered the luxurious bath and the fine bed linens and didn’t move. “Why am I feeling like a goose being fattened up for a holiday dinner?”
He sighed. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m trying to make up for overstepping my boundaries? For the egregious break in protocol? For being busy with other matters and not paying attention to who was taken prisoner and how she was treated?”
Had he only been juggling—and dropping a few balls in the process? I knew from Jase that Montegue had become king unexpectedly a few years ago when a draft horse crushed his father. He was only a little older than Jase, who would be—
An angry fist grabbed my heart and shook it. I still expected Jase to walk through a door. I couldn’t stop thinking of him as alive, busy, vibrant, taking care of what needed to be done, already scouting out borders, drawing up new trading rules, explaining to his family about me. None of that was going to happen. I felt myself being pulled under the current once more, everything about me unsteady, trying to breathe. I reached up and felt his ring on my finger.
Don’t fight it, Kazi,
lean back, feet forward.
His voice, so clear in my head. So close. So determined.
The king’s eyes remained fixed on me. Curious. And, strangely, patient.
I walked over to the chair and sat, but it felt more like I was collapsing into it. Every word, every effort, drained me. Jase was not coming through that door. Not through any door ever again. He’s alive, Kazi. He has to be alive. My head ached with the battle going on inside. I had lived through this battle before. I couldn’t do it again. Did anything the king had to say even matter?
Head up. Breathe. Jase pulling me up again and again.
“Explain,” I said.
“Please, let me serve you first.” He lifted a silver cover from a dish and spooned some perfect, tiny roasted potatoes onto my plate that were delicately coated with herbs, and then beside them he set three boiled quail eggs. He drizzled a smoky golden sauce over it all, making it look like a piece of artwork rather than something to be eaten. It made me want to laugh. It was a glaring contrast to the grim news coating my mouth.
As he returned the silver cover to the dish, he hesitated, spotting my hand on the arm of the chair. “You’re wearing the signet ring?”
“Your general pulled it off the—” I blinked away the sting in my eyes. “He gave it to me. He called it a trophy.”
His brows pulled down and he shook his head. “He shouldn’t have done that. I can dispose of it if you’d like?”
I stared at the ring. Dispose of it? It’s only a cheap piece of jewelry to me. Did either the king or his general have any idea of the history this ring held? It’s been in my family for generations. Once it’s put on, it never comes off. I spun it on my thumb.
“Are you all right?” The king stared at me, waiting for my answer.
“I’ll keep it.”
He sat opposite from me and explained that almost two months ago, Hell’s Mouth had come under siege by miscreants who raided businesses, burned homes, and preyed on its citizens. He was in Parsuss, and by the time news reached him, the lawlessness was out of control. A league run by a fellow named Rybart was conducting an all-out war, trying to gain control of Hell’s Mouth and the arena. Citizens were panicked. Some were dying. Worse, the Ballengers were doing nothing to help them, instead demanding more protection money first.
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