"Where is she now?”
“She is dead. This woman was found over her body.”
Heat barreled through me, and I went rigid, balling my hands to keep from losing control. How dare he accuse me? How dare he misinterpret me to the king? I was not over her body; I cradled her in my arms as I wept. Anger lit my blood on fire, and I shook violently.
“And Sir Maledin,” called another. “He is dead or nearly that. This woman sent a tempest through the woods so powerful, several have been injured or killed. She must be punished!”
“Must she?” was the king’s stern reply. He stood. “Did her tempest kill Maledin?”
Questions murmured through the group. “No, my lord. Maledin was killed by his brother.”
“And what do we know of the brother?”
“If I may, Your Majesty,” came another. “The brother held Briar and this woman captive. There was a cage...”
“And yet you would have me believe this woman killed Briar?”
The room grew quiet.
“Have you no answer?”
Not a soul spoke in response. His tone commanded silence, which he let linger, until all that were present remembered their place.
“We will lose this war,” he said at last, “before a single life is saved if we cannot honor truth before justice.”
He knelt before me. I felt the weight of his hand on my shoulder and shrank away. I was not worthy of his kindness, let alone his touch. Lies had been offered, but not all the accusations were false. Great evil writhed in me, and now that it lived, I knew I must die.
“I have spoken to Etan,” the king said over me. “In truth, I do know your name. But I will not speak it here. If you wish, another can be given to you.”
My heart lurched at Etan’s name. What had he said of me? The question drew my gaze up.
Stars burned in his eyes, the palest blue I’d ever seen. Glittering in the firelight of torches. Attention fully on me. I was transfixed, and for a moment, I forgot we were surrounded.
“I can help you,” he said gently. “I know of what you suffer.”
Stinging tears blinded me. “No one can help me,” I whispered.
Without a flicker of doubt, he answered, “I can. If you’ll let me.”
Mutters rose from the soldiers. I sat speechless in the midst of them, deciding whether or not to believe him.
Desperation won out in the end, and I lowered my face to the ground, stretching my arms forward, revealing my palms and the truth of my curse.
“Please,” I pleaded on a breath. “Take it from me.”
His voice saddened. “I cannot take it from you, though I wish I could. But with understanding, I believe you can be free of its grasp. Come,” he moved to lift me, “it’s time you rest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ETAN
I paced the grass outside the healer’s tent, too afraid to face the woman being treated inside. Guard’s stood watch, and one threw an eyebrow up when my gaze moved again to the entrance.
“There you are,” came Aldred’s voice behind me, and I turned to greet him, relieved at the distraction. But the lightness faded as he trudged up the physician’s low hill with sagging shoulders.
“Maledin has died,” he told me frankly, but his stern eyes betrayed a deeper pain. The words hit like a kick to my chest.
“Has the king been informed?”
Aldred grumbled confirmation, setting hands on his hips and scowling toward the sleeping camp. “That will be the end of his line. Not a soul left of them.”
“Not even a mother to grieve him,” I answered gravely. The king made a habit of honoring the families of fallen soldiers, but for Maledin, there would be no one to offer tribute to.
Aldred gestured to the tent. “She’s in there?”
I turned again to face it. “Her wounds were many.”
“I hear you know her.”
“No,” I said fast. Aldred made a study of me, and I went on to say, “I met her as a child. But I don’t know her.”
He continued studying me, again with that hint of suspicion he’d shown when we’d inspected the cage. Aldred was a good man but was often taken with conspiracies. He was slow to trust, and when that trust came into question, he swung hard toward accusation before slowly making his way back again.
I broke into his thoughts, asking, “Where will he be buried?”
Aldred pushed a heavy breath out, looking away from me. I didn’t need an answer; I already knew Maledin would be buried here in the woods and given a stone marking. With no family to inform, moving his body made little sense. But I hated to think of him left alone in the empty woods, never again to set foot on the sunny streets of Talemet. Never to walk the market at midday to the warm, approving smiles of the people who’d grown to love him. He’d risen above the sordid patterns of his family. Earned the king’s trust, and with it, the respect of a kingdom.
Now the cool soil would take him, and the dense canopy cover his body in shadow.
“That’s why I’ve found you. His Majesty ordered him buried immediately. I thought you’d want to come.”
I glanced again to the tent. “Wait for me. I’ll not be long.”
Aldred returned to the fires as a chill moved through the damp forest. I approached the entrance of the healer’s tent, and the guards nodded their permission. Pushing aside the fabric, I entered into a small canvas room lit by candles, the light dim and flickering against the dark, drawing up long shadows. The space was rectangular, with trunks of supplies lining one side and a short row of beds on the other. The ground squished beneath my steps, wet after the heavy rain. But the hill kept the water from sitting.
Merek, the camp physician of middle years, leaned over Eris, where she lay on a simple cot of wood. Warm, woven blankets covered each bed, labors of love by faithful Omarian women. They'd done this for as long as I could remember, continually replenishing the storehouse to replace those bloodied in the aftermath of battle. Eris rested beneath a weave of yellow and blue.
I drew Merek’s attention when I entered, but Eris remained still...her eyes closed. How the years had changed her. The small child I’d met had been a beaming ball of light, too brilliant for the world she belonged to. Now evil used her body as a shell.
Merek moved quickly to greet me. “She’s sleeping now. I’ve given her a draught to help her rest.”
He was an odd man...uncomfortable, I think, in the company of others. But his skills were matched by few. He looked into my eyes only a moment before they settled somewhere near my shoulder.
“May I sit with her a moment?”
After some thought, Merek gave a single nod and pushed past me, wrapping a cloak around his shoulders for warmth. Without looking back, he told me, “I’ll wait outside.”
Alone, my chest tightened.
How did one speak to a diavok? Would I find the girl beyond the dark creature she’d become? I had little hope that I would. I wanted only to finally battle the grip of fear she held over me.
I stood a moment hesitating...regretting, even, that I’d spoken in her defense so quickly. It had been a rash decision, made to honor my friend. Maledin believed so forcefully that the good in her outweighed the violent evidence stacked against her. But now standing alone, I’d be lying to say I wasn’t tempted to draw my blade—to destroy the evil I’d seen before more damage was done.
After all, every other diavok had a history. Families and friends who loved them once...or still. It made them no less a threat.
She sighed gently, stirring, and I remembered the girl, clothed in a sack cloth, black hair matted in clumps. My eyes slid away from her, and as my fingers curled around the memory of a yellow flower, shame drove through me.
A tired voice reached my ears. “They still let you wear them.”
My gaze flicked to hers, and she winced. Tossing a glance to my boots, she looked at me so earnestly, I almost believed in her goodness right then.
I knew the memory she drew
from. I’d worried for years over her bare feet.
“As they do all knights,” I answered, startling even myself at the harsh arrogance of my tone. The hope in her drowsy eyes dimmed, and she turned away.
I closed my eyes for a brief second, scolding myself. “Merek has treated you well?”
Her gaze avoided me, touching every point but where I stood. “Better than I deserve,” she murmured.
With her eyes drawn away, I studied her openly. In the soft glow of a flame, I caught the raised edges of a lump on her temple, colored in black and blue shades. More color marked down the center of her forehead, and bindings covered her arm above the elbow. I knew her wounds were greater than what I could see; her feet were surely bound beneath the blanket. But despite it all, I couldn’t deny her beauty. What I’d acknowledged on the field as deception now pierced my heart with sorrow.
She was beautiful. But she was also wicked.
“There’s a man here who claims to know you,” I said into the silence.
The wooden bed creaked under her shifting; my words unsettled her.
She answered quietly, “I don’t know why he’s come.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Her face jerked up, and her eyes were sharp. “I don’t care what you believe. You know nothing about it.”
“I know his arrival preceded yours. And you’ve both managed to find shelter within our camp.”
Eris pushed up on her elbows. “It was your horse that brought me here. And your words stayed my punishment. Ask your king why he shelters me.”
A warning sounded in my thoughts; I’d seen what her temper could do. I should have backed off then, but there was something else driving me. I stepped closer.
“The king has his own mind, and I won’t question it. But you must know this: I won’t let anything happen to him. Whatever your purpose here, you will fail.”
Her eyes grew watery in the glistening light, but her jaw was hard as she rose to meet my challenge. The blanket fell in a heap at her bandaged feet, and she teetered only a moment before straightening. I braced myself for something fierce, but the words came softly, brittle and pained.
“I have only ever wanted one thing. And he has nothing to do with it.”
“And what is that?” I asked, pushing closer. Her chin rose to hold my glare, and in the tilting movement, tears slipped free and down her cheeks.
“Why would I ever tell you,” she whispered, “when you cannot see me as I am?”
Pain blossomed deep in my chest. Maledin’s voice resounded in my memory, urging me to see her as he did. But he was dead, and I was thick in grief.
“Perhaps,” I said, my voice faltering over the word, “what you wish me to see is a lie.”
She fought the lip that quivered, clenching her teeth to stop it. If not for our nearness, her answer may have never reached my ears.
“Why have you come to me?” she asked. “To be sure I understand my guilt? Never fear, Etan. I understand it well.”
They were the same eyes peering up at me. First in the meadow, tucked away in a small clearing within the flowers. Then in the market, surprised and confused that her trick had been thwarted.
Now here, rain soaked and weary in the king’s war camp. A different setting all together, but the eyes were the same. And this tripped me. I couldn’t answer. I’d come to face her at last, but now I struggled.
She seemed as small before me now as she had at our first meeting.
I wrestled for something to say. At last, I asked her, “How did you come to be with the drifters?”
She broke away from me, severing the connection and returning to the edge of her cot.
“We were attacked that night.” Her eyes found mine again. “The night after we met.”
“Were you harmed?”
Her head shook, and her gaze slipped to the ground.
“I escaped—” she began, but something in the memory grabbed her throat. “I escaped with my friend on the back of a horse, and I was carried to the drifters’ camp. They took me in.”
“And your friend,” I assumed.
“No,” Eris whispered. “She fell.”
Silence stretched. This wasn’t going how I’d planned. With every answer, my anger softened. I pushed the last hours to the front of my mind, reminding myself what I’d witnessed on the field. What carnage she’d wrought. What death had come in the end.
I paced a short stretch, as if winding myself again for battle, and asked her, “Why did you leave the drifters’ camp if they offered you such care?”
Her eyes shot to mine; I’d hit on something. But I quickly regretted my tone. The look she gave made clear that I’d somehow belittled her experience, diminishing the truth of what she’d lived.
An apology sat dying on my tongue.
“Had they cared for me but a little,” she said, “I might have stayed with them forever.”
“You left because they were unkind to you?”
The drifter, Danior, had spoken of a wrong done and his mission to make it right.
Her fingers brushed the line across her palm. “I am the enemy, am I not?”
Without thought, my mouth answered, “I’m not sure.”
Her hopeful eyes flicked up.
I asked, “What was done to you in the end? What made you run?”
“They believed I’d poisoned the camp. That by sorcery I made foul the deer.”
Her words knocked the wind from my lungs.
Softly, she continued, “Had they known what I was, they’d have killed me in my sleep long ago. Who knows, perhaps I am to blame, and I simply didn’t know what my power was doing.”
Was such a thing possible? She’d been a child when we met, still small and naïve, but the scars were there. The curse was set.
If the drifters suspected her power to be responsible for sickness, could she have enchanted me unknowingly all those years before? Sent me home to infect my family?
I grew quiet, no longer able to summon words worth saying.
“I didn’t do it,” she said emphatically, clearly catching my shift in mood. I couldn’t look at her.
“Etan, I swear it. It was a trap set to run me out.”
My stomach turned. Had I been the vessel that killed them?
I answered numbly, “Maledin has died. He must be buried.”
I moved to leave.
Her voice followed. “You don’t believe me?”
I stilled by the door. She spoke my name again, her quiet voice holding it gently.
With great effort, I turned back, taking in her sorrow and worry. Seeing the pain my reaction had caused.
But I didn’t know her. Neither did she know me. We were simply strangers who’d met.
I didn’t know how to believe her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ERIS
I tried to sleep, but though the draught made me drowsy, the ache in my heart wouldn’t let me.
Cool midnight air breezed past the billowing entrance, bringing with it a scent of damp earth, and I pulled the thick woven blanket further up my shoulders.
The physician dozed in a corner, propped uncomfortably on a narrow wooden chair, his cloak gathered about him as a blanket. He was a brave man to sleep so near a creature like me. I watched him through the blur of tears burning my eyes, my head resting against a thin pillow of straw.
I saw no hope for my future now. The king’s kind words were only that. This was an army at war, and in the coming days, they would advance into Sithia...and my life would be meaningless. Or suspicion would drive them to kill me.
Etan remained in my mind, and I pressed at the burn in my chest. I’d been foolish to think of him all those years. Pining after a friendship that had never been. Finding hope in a boy who’d all but forgotten me.
Behind me came the soft brush of fabric as someone entered the tent. Merek stirred, slowing pushing himself upright and yawning.
“I’ve brought a meal for her,” said a soft
voice. It was the same voice that had called the room to silence as the king approached the tent. I turned to see.
There stood a small man holding a bowl of food, not very old and not built for battle. He was thin and delicately featured. By his simple clothes and shapeless arms, I knew he must be a servant.
“Yes, come in, Cedric,” Merek answered sleepily, waving a tired arm for the man to enter.
I sat up on the cot, attempting to arrange my expression into something inviting and kind. But all I felt was weariness, and my efforts slipped.
“You must be hungry,” said Cedric. “I hope I didn’t wake you, but His Majesty felt a meal was in order.”
I thanked him and took the wooden bowl in my hands. It held a mound of meat and small charred potatoes.
The servant watched me with interest as I sunk my teeth into a potato’s tender center. A frenzy of hunger began in my belly at the taste, but with his eyes studying me, I took my bites slow.
“You don’t look wicked to me,” said Cedric. I glanced up, and he was smiling.
I swallowed back a mouthful and answered, “Perhaps I deceive well. Isn’t that what the wicked do?”
His lips fell into a frown “Say what you want, but I see no deception in you.” He shrugged, and the smile peeked back. “Maybe I’m a fool. Some say as much.”
His sweetness won me quickly. I smiled too. “If you’re serving the king in his war camp, you’re no fool.”
This drew out a small laugh, and he sat boldly at the end of my bed, cupping his hands over his knees. What harm could it do to relax, when he was a serving boy and I, a criminal? I sat up farther to make room.
“I met a diavok once before,” he said to me. “He was scarred like you. We were only children.”
“Did he…was he powerful even then?”
“Oh yes. I’d crossed him, you see. But not on purpose. I was carrying food to my father in the fields when the boy appeared from the trees and demanded I give it to him instead. I told him it was for my father, but he only grew angrier.”
A chill touched me. “What did he do?”
Songs in the Night: Book One Page 14