“It’s my duty to bring the people of Malikar out of darkness. They’ve endured here too long, and for no good reason other than our own inability to find fault within ourselves. And, after that, I’ve another obligation: I have to make damn certain that something like this can never happen again. That is my duty. That’s why I’m here.”
Softly, he added, “I’m sorry, Meiran. This isn’t my life to live any longer. I gave that up.” He lowered his chin, staring up at her through tousled strands of hair.
“How would you define Chaos?” His words were little more than a whisper.
Meiran shrugged, not knowing how to respond. Frowning, she uttered the first words that came to mind. “Disorder, mayhem … evil.”
Darien nodded. “That’s why you’re confused. You can’t simply chalk everything up to disorder and mayhem. Good and evil. Those notions are entirely too simplistic.”
Defiant, she lifted her chin. “What’s your definition, then?”
He looked away. His expression was remote. “It’s not what you’d think,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t know that I can.”
“Try.”
Darien scowled as if daunted by the task. He took a moment before speaking, as if carefully framing his answer.
“Things happen the way they do because they’re set in motion by our actions. And then, from there, they tend to follow a certain trajectory. Every decision we make has consequences. Tremendous consequences, so many that we have no way of foreseeing them all or anticipating what direction they’ll take us in. Everything that happens, happens as a result of our own actions, our own decisions.
“That’s what Chaos is,” he said, leaning forward. “It’s the sum of the consequences of every decision we’ve ever made coming back to haunt us in the end.”
Meiran stared at Darien with profound sadness in her eyes, her heart quietly breaking.
They’d remade so much more than just his flesh. They’d reimagined everything about him that had once defined who he was. They had harnessed Darien’s boundless passion for duty, turned it against him, corrupting it to their cause. Transmuted his guilt into a collar to constrain him. They had taken the pureness of his soul and worn it down into a soiled, gritty thing that justified ends with means.
She understood him better, now.
She also understood she couldn’t leave him like this.
This was the man who had saved her when her soul had been past any hope of salvaging. Meiran took a deep breath, closing her eyes against remorse. She took his hands in hers.
“This is not your responsibility, Darien,” she said, gazing into the shadows of his face. “It’s not your fight any longer. That’s what death is for. It releases us from our obligations, relieves us of the burdens life places on us. Only in death are we truly free.” She added in a whisper, “If you deny Xerys, you can have that kind of freedom, Darien.”
“You want me dead,” he said dully, eyes flat and leaden.
“You’re already dead.” It was such a cruel thing to say. Nevertheless, it had to be spoken. “Now … I just want you safe. I want you someplace they can’t hurt you anymore.”
He turned away. “In my entire life, there’s been only one person capable of hurting me. Thank you for the pain.” The cold way he said it, combined with the raw depth of hurt flooding into her through the link, acted on her like a kick in the gut.
She couldn’t hold back the tears. They spilled down her cheeks like rain. She brought her hands up and wept silently into her palms, face hot with scalding shame. Her shoulders shook with the quiet force of her guilt. All the while she could feel the heat of Darien’s anger condensing, cooling, as the link between them faltered. To her dismay, she realized he was walling his emotions away, shutting her out.
The cell door creaked. Then it shuddered open.
“No!” Meiran shrieked, panicking at the sight of the thin strip of light that suddenly appeared, widening into the span of a doorway. She scooted back away from it until her back was pressed up against the chill wall of the cell. Her fingers clawed at the ice for traction.
At the sight of the first guard that entered, Meiran shouted, “No! Please! I need more time—!”
A group of men streamed into the chamber, surrounding them. They went for Darien first. They threw him down onto his stomach as one man knelt on top of him with a knee pressed into his back. They bound his arms behind him with a set of iron manacles. Then they grappled him to his feet, maneuvering him out of the cell.
The remaining guards spun Meiran around against the wall, holding her pinioned against the ice. One man forced her arm up over her head, holding her wrist with a crushing grip as he brought the other arm up, as well. They lashed her wrists together over her head, tugging fiercely on the rope. They shoved her backward. Hands grabbed her, forcing her through the doorway and down to the ground of the passage outside.
She fell to her knees beside Darien, who was crouching with his arms shackled behind his back. In front of him stood a man Meiran instantly recognized.
It was one of the Zakai officers Nashir had ordered to the headsman. Apparently, the man had chosen to ignore the command. He leaned forward, stooping down until he was almost at eye level with Darien. His brow was broken out in beads of perspiration despite the icy chill of the air. His expression was rigid, intense. His dark eyes simmered with brutality.
“You said you can give us back the sun. Tell me how.”
Darien glared up at the man through wet strands of hair. She could feel the scorch of his anger even through the faltering link. Meiran heard every breath he sucked into his chest, the sounds sharpened by the intensity of his wrath.
“There’s two options,” Darien said through gritted teeth, looking up at him with an unwavering gaze. “First, I’ll try to break the curse over the Black Lands. If that fails, then I’ll escort your people southward into the Rhen. With the strength of my power and my knowledge of their command structure, their armies won’t stand a chance.”
Meiran gaped at Darien, her eyes widening in disbelief. Horror seeped into every crevice of her being, her stomach clenching into a hard burl of knots. Even after everything Darien had said back in the cell, the way he’d argued so passionately about Chaos, Meiran was still shocked. She would have never believed him capable of embracing such treachery.
He never even looked at her.
He crouched on the floor, gazing up into the bearded face of the Enemy officer, calmly awaiting a response. No emotions came back to her through the link. No remorse, no regret, no anger, no shame. Nothing. He was completely empty.
More men spilled into the corridor around them. One leaned forward and whispered something into the officer’s ear. The bearded man nodded, righting himself. He glared imperiously down at Darien, hands on his hips.
“He sends for you,” the officer announced, stepping back. “If you can defeat Nashir Arman, then you will have the support of the Tanisars.” He turned and strode briskly away down the corridor.
Hands gripped Meiran by the arms, hauling her onto her feet. She resisted, thrashing frantically, struggling to break free.
“Don’t!” she screamed back at Darien as they dragged her brutally down the corridor away from him. “Don’t give them what they want! Please! Don’t do it! Don’t let them destroy you!”
25
Blood for Blood
He could still hear the shrill sounds of Meiran’s screams echoing down the passage: frantic, pleading, hysterical. There was a sharp, scuffling commotion. Then silence. An eerie calm descended on the passage, clinging to the walls.
Darien knelt with his knees drawn up against his chest, wrists crossed behind his back, restrained there by cold iron manacles. He was naked from the waist up, his body trembling more from horror than from cold. He stared down in misery at the blue-ice floor of the cave beneath his feet as waves of shock, revulsion and despair broke over his body in rapid succession, one after another. He clenched his jaw until it
shook, biting his lip against the despair trying to claw its way up from his insides.
They were going to kill Meiran.
Meiran, the woman he loved. The woman who wanted him dead.
That thought bore down on him like a cruel iron weight, crushing and brutal. He swayed over his feet, the muscles of his calves burning from the stress position they had him in. Someone slipped an arm around his neck, restraining him. Another guard shoved a filthy rag into his mouth, feeding it in all the way back past his teeth. He gagged and struggled, retching against the rough, dry taste of the rag.
They shoved a woven sack over his head, tying it with a cord around his neck. Not enough to choke him. Just enough to hold it in place.
With the rag in his mouth, the sack over his face, Darien labored just to breathe.
Panic seized him. He flailed against the unyielding grip of the guards. They threw him down hard against the ice, restraining him there with the weight of their bodies as he fought and squirmed, bucking and kicking. At last he went limp for lack of air and will to fight. Darien slumped against the ice, struggling just to draw breath, gasping at stale air and rotten fabric.
“Are you done?” someone above him growled. The sound of the voice was muffled by the sack.
He couldn’t respond.
They lifted his dead weight, hauling him forward. His heart surged, the sound of his pulse a careening thunder in his ears. He couldn’t walk, so he let them drag him down the corridor. He felt consciousness slowly leaking out of him.
The sounds around him were muffled, distant, disorienting. He could see only darkness. His mind groped through a haze, desperately fumbling to cope with his situation. There was nothing he could cling to; his senses were deprived, the magic field just a memory. The fickle Hellpower had betrayed him, fleeing from his touch. There was nothing for his mind to latch onto. They had rendered him utterly helpless.
The guards halted, propping him upright with the force of their bodies. There was the sound of chains. Someone jerked his arms upward behind his back until his shoulders screamed in anguish. They held him there, securing his wrists above his head. Darien clenched his teeth against the pain, feeling the tendons of his shoulders starting to give. Behind, he could hear a sharp, metallic clank. Then another, much more ghastly sound.
The noise of gears going click, click, click…
His body began to stretch as his weight was lifted off his feet. Pain like molten fire seared down his arms and into his shoulders, radiating across his chest. He could feel the joints of his shoulders starting to give. There was a dull popping sound.
Darien howled against the rag.
He could still touch the ground with the tips of his toes. They left him there, dangling, twisting at the end of the chains, the tissues of his shoulders slowly separating. Darien groaned, gasping through clenched teeth, biting on the wadded fabric stuffed in his mouth. It didn’t help. The pain was acute, relentless. It worsened by the second.
He could see nothing. Hear nothing except the sound of his own muffled groans and the sharp hiss of breath wheezing through his nostrils.
A disembodied hand rested softly against the skin of his back. It caressed him, the way a rider strokes the muscles of a horse. The sensation raised goosebumps on his flesh. A sense of appalling dread clenched his throat, terrorizing him from the inside.
He fought for every strangled breath, his consciousness reeling.
A deep, familiar voice addressed him from the darkness:
“I told you I’d have my revenge. ‘Flesh for flesh. Blood for blood.’ That’s been the unwritten law of the Khazahar for thousands of years. It’s still the law today.”
The hand on his back moved, stroking downward across his naked flesh. Darien shuddered against the awful feel of it. That deep, emotionless voice resonated in the stifling darkness:
“Your greatest mistake was taking Arden away from me. Your last mistake was thinking that you might actually get away with it. What hubris you must have.”
The hand lifted, moving away. There was a shudder in the chains restraining him.
Click … click … click…
Darien screamed into the rag as both of his feet lifted completely off the floor. The hand was back, this time resting against the back of his head. It clenched the material of the sack in a fist, drawing the suffocating fabric tight against his face.
Instead of sucking in air, his nostrils sucked only dust-filled cloth. His lungs spasmed, burning.
Darien thrashed, making the pain even worse. His arms were going numb, but his shoulders seared with fire. Spent, his body went limp. He sagged in his chains as the world faded little by little. Nashir’s voice murmured something in his ear. Darien didn’t have enough presence of mind left to make out the words.
The hand released its tension on the fabric. He drew in a desperate gasp of air through his nostrils. Head throbbing, he labored for breath, sucking fabric against his face.
“Does that hurt?” Nashir’s voice echoed through the darkness of his horror. “Trust me. This is nothing compared to what I’m about to do to your Meiran.”
Darien growled. He groped for the Onslaught like a drowning man scrambling for a length of rope. But the Hellpower was like a sadistic taunt, dangling just within reach before jerking back away.
From across the room came a frantic, muffled sound.
Meiran.
She was in there with him. Somewhere in the chamber. Panic seized him. Reflexively, Darien fumbled again for the Onslaught. Of course, it wasn’t there. His body spasmed, shaking all over, his muscles quivering in terror and agony.
“Quiet, now,” Nashir’s voice whispered. “Listen. Can you hear it? More softly. Yes. There it is.”
Darien listened, even though he didn’t want to. Inside, he was silently sobbing. He couldn’t hear anything. The sack muffled most of the noise in the room. All he could hear was the shuddering sounds of his own ragged breath.
From across the chamber, there came the softest whimpering sound. Then a startled, muffled shriek.
They were torturing her.
Darien howled and twisted, writhing against the manacles that held him up. The pain was ghastly. His shoulders were coming apart, the iron shackles sawing at the flesh of his hands. He bucked, fighting against them.
Another gruesome shriek filled his ears.
Darien collapsed in his traces, feeling the warm wetness of blood running down his arms, dripping to the floor. His mind groped in vain for the Onslaught.
“Katarya is very skilled with a knife,” observed Nashir’s patient voice.
Meiran screamed again, the sound curdling Darien’s nerves. The sack prevented him from seeing what they were doing to her. All he could do was listen and imagine.
His imagination was a powerful thing. A powerful, toxic, vindictive thing.
“You do have a choice, of course,” Nashir whispered, his voice very low. “Deny our Master and cast your soul into Oblivion. If you do this, I promise you, she will feel no further pain.”
The offer brought some small shred of hope. Darien’s thoughts went sadly to Azár. He’d promised Azár he would help her people. He’d had every intention of following through with that promise. But not at this price. This price was far too high.
Meiran screamed again, a horrifying shriek that trailed off into wracking sobs. Darien couldn’t stand it any longer. Beneath the sack, he could only envision what they were doing to her. In his mind, he saw the strips of flesh being peeled away from her body, curling like apple rind. The exposed, bloody tissues revealed beneath.
Nashir’s voice uttered softly, “I wonder how many days it will take to break you? How many screams? You will break … the only question is how much you will let her suffer before you do.”
Darien drew in a gasping breath, letting it out again in a long, shuddering sob. His entire body shook in violent spasms. Nashir was right. Better to let go now, before Meiran suffered any further. Much better than to wait.<
br />
Maybe, in Oblivion, his soul would finally know peace.
Isn’t that what Meiran had promised?
Only in death are we truly free. That’s what she’d told him.
Anger suffused him at the thought. Anger at Meiran. Meiran, who’d rejected him, despite all he’d suffered to get her back. His death alone hadn’t been good enough for her. Now she wanted his very soul torn to ash.
He would give her what she wanted. It would be the last damned thing he ever gave her.
One last time, Darien groped for the Onslaught. This time, the Hellpower responded. It rushed into him, filling him. It gushed through him with the violence of a flood, the fury of a maelstrom. It was as terrible as it was beguiling. It entranced him, bewitched him. Bewildered and comforted him. Darien shivered, not in pain, but with the violent throes of brutal ecstasy.
He turned his wrath on the iron shackles that held him up. A strange sensation gripped his wrists, like focused rays of sunlight. He could feel a warm wetness slick his skin as the iron melted and ran like searing, molten wax down the length of his arms.
Darien dropped to the ground, falling forward on his face. He tried to push himself up, but his arms didn’t work. He thrashed on the floor, somehow managing to squirm his head out of the sack. Vision assaulted him, confronting him with a macabre and gruesome scene.
Nashir’s face, pale, gaped down at him full of horror. Stunned guards ringed the walls of the chamber, a room made all out of jagged rocks, twisted hooks and dangling, rusted chains. Across the room lay Meiran, sprawled, strapped down by thick ropes. Her left arm was stripped of its tissues, completely denuded. He couldn’t see her face.
Beside her stood a woman wielding a long and gruesome knife. She stood frozen, gaping at Darien as if staring into the face of death, eyes full of revulsion and dismay.
The room was aglow with a terrible green light. Darien couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. It seemed to be seeping from every crevice all at once, shining through the mortars of the bricks, leaking from the shadows.
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