Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
W hen I rose with the dawn, Luther was already awake. He was in the same spot I’d last seen him, sitting out atop a large dune with his back to the rest of us.
While he stood watch, Alixe and I had taken Taran duty. We’d entertained him with laughter and teasing until he fell asleep, then curled into him on each side to keep his injured body warm through the frigid desert night.
I’d crept away to Luther once in the hopes of getting him to talk through what he was feeling, but he’d quickly brushed me off after forcing me to take his overcoat in lieu of my ruined shirt.
I’m fine , he’d insisted. Just worried. Get some rest.
Something in the tightness of his voice had warned me that he needed space, so I’d reluctantly agreed, though his shattered expression had stuck with me all night, haunting my troubled dreams.
“Did you get any sleep at all?” I asked as I plowed through the sand and knelt beside him.
“Some.”
I snorted. “Liar.”
“You’re one to talk. That was quite a show you put on last night.”
I raised an eyebrow at his curt tone. “Oh?”
“It was very convincing. I even believed it myself for a moment.” He gazed off into the trees, the muscles along his throat flexing. “But I know a bit about godstone, too. Years ago, I planned to use it to poison my father, so I researched its effects. I know how unsurvivable it really is.”
I steeled my face to disguise my shock. It was hardly a surprise that his relationship with his father was strained, but I hadn’t realized Luther’s hatred for Remis ran so deep—or so dark.
“If brewed into a poison, it is unsurvivable,” I agreed, “but cuts from a blade are different. The small ones can heal.”
“A quarter of them heal. The rest are fatal.”
Again, I clutched at indifference despite the sinking weight in my chest. My mother’s notes hadn’t been quite so specific on the grim odds. And with Taran having two wounds...
“A quarter is not none,” I chirped with false brightness. “Taran is strong and in good health, and he has his own personal healer to tend his wounds. His chances are surely better than most.”
For a very long time, Luther said nothing. His dark, unbound hair fluttered in the morning breeze, a light dusting of pale sand clinging to his ribs where Taran’s blood had soaked through the fine knit of his sweater the night before. His features gave away nothing, his walls too high for even me to see over.
“Is it right to lie to someone you love when you know death is coming?” he asked finally. “To let them believe the future might stretch on forever, when you know your time left together is far shorter? Or is that adding cruelty to tragedy?”
I shuffled closer to him until our shoulders touched. Though he made no move to embrace me, after a moment, I felt the faint press of him leaning into my side.
“There are many kinds of medicines,” I said gently. “Some of them are easier to understand, like herbs and salves, but others are unexplainable. Faith. Happiness and laughter. Confidence in a positive outcome. Skin contact with loved ones. I’ve seen these things make a difference in patients that I thought were lost forever.” I laid a palm on his arm. “I want to give Taran the best chance I can. If my lie could keep him alive, isn’t that worth it in the end?”
Luther let out a long sigh. “Yes. Of course.” He raked his hair back, then took my hand and pressed it to his lips. “You’re an incredible healer. If anyone can save him, it’s you.”
I forced out an approving smile. “Come and sit with us. Taran needs you, too.”
He nodded and stood, then reached down to help me up. Once I was on my feet, he grabbed me by the waist, pulling me in for a sudden hard, passionate kiss that left me breathless.
As much as I thrilled at the rush of fiery pleasure his touch always brought, there was a taste of sorrow on his lips that left my heart aching rather than racing.
“Are you alright?” I asked. I cringed as the words came out—how foolish that question seemed in light of all we now faced.
Out of kindness, or perhaps exhaustion, he didn’t call me on it. “I’m fine,” he said with a smile that felt even less genuine than mine. He tucked me under his arm and started toward the others. “Now I need you to hurry up and get Taran healed so I can stab him again for ruining my favorite sweater.”
Though my worries were far from soothed, he left me no time to push further. A moment later, we were back at Taran’s side, Luther arguing with him over who had fought better against the mortals while I gingerly changed the dressing on Taran’s wounds.
“How do they look?” Alixe asked quietly as she leaned in and watched me work.
I peered beneath the gauze. The wound itself looked normal, similar enough to the hundreds of mortal cuts I’d treated over the years. What twisted the knife in my ribs were the tiny black veins webbing out from where the skin had split.
“Hard to say,” I rushed out, quickly covering them up with fresh linen. “I really need water to clean them. Some of those herbs we saw in Arboros would be helpful, too.”
I glanced at the forest boundary, and my heart sank. Faces still lingered in the trees, watching and waiting.
“If my magic returns, I’ll sneak back over and get what we need,” she offered.
“We’re all going to need water soon enough. Food and shelter, too. If they’re planning to wait us out indefinitely...”
She nodded in bleak understanding. “How long until the flameroot wears off and your magic returns?”
“A few more days, maybe longer.”
“Can we...” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Can he make it that long?”
We shared a grave look. “I’d rather not find out.”
“We can hear you, you know.” I looked over to see Taran frowning at me. “I knew that whole ‘ You’re gonna be fine ’ act was a lie.”
I swore internally and flipped the switch on my cheery facade. “It wasn’t a lie. I just want to get you food and water so your body can heal.” I made a show of rolling my eyes. “By the Flames, Taran, I’ve treated newborn babes that needed less coddling than this.”
“I don’t think we should be calling for any Flames when we’re in fucking Ignios ,” he grumbled. “And isn’t that saying forbidden?”
I smirked. “I’m the Queen. I’m un-forbidding it. The Everflame was here long before Lumnos was. If the Descended and the mortals have to learn to play nice, the Old Gods and the Kindred do, too.”
He groaned and squinted up at the morning sky. “Blessed Mother Lumnos, I am your devoted servant. Please don’t punish me for her blasphemy.”
“My blasphemy? Taran, I’ve heard you say ‘Lumnos’s tits’ at least ten times.”
“Yes. Devotedly .”
“If you two are done,” Luther interjected, “I think I have a solution.” He gazed off to the north. “I’ve seen old maps of Ignios from before they expelled the mortals. Their Mortal City was by the sea, near the Arboros border.”
“We can’t be far from there now,” I said. “The rebel camp was close to the coast.”
He nodded. “There could still be a freshwater source nearby, and we may be able to find shelter and scavenge for other supplies. The journey will be a hard one, though...” He glanced at Taran, then back at me, a question in his eyes.
“It’s just a few hours of walking,” Taran groused before I could answer. “I can handle it.”
“Are you sure?” Alixe asked him, though her eyes were fixed on me.
Taran shoved our hands away and grunted as he stiffly climbed to his feet. He grabbed his discarded clothing and marched off into the sand. “Let me earn my manhood back before Her Majesty calls me a newborn babe again.”
As it turned out, none of us were prepared for what a few hours of walking would demand in the desert.
Despite the winter season, the climate was unrelenting. Our faces turned pink and tender under the blazing sun, and even the chill in the air could not stop the sweat from pouring down our backs. Combined with the brutal aridity and lack of water to drink, the signs of dehydration set in alarmingly fast. By midday, we were all sporting cracked lips and throbbing, woozy heads.
I learned quickly that although our fortified Descended skin was difficult to pierce , it was not difficult to irritate . Fine granules of sand worked their way into our boots and clothes, grating painfully against our flesh.
The walk itself was torturously slow. The powdery terrain sucked down our heels and refused to let go, making every step a battle. We stayed near enough to the Arboros border to avoid getting lost in the open desert, but our desire to stay out of arrow range forced us to stay in the steep, hilly dunes.
The worst of it was the sandstorms. Every so often the wind would pick up, surrounding us in a blinding cyclone of grit. Each time, in terror of what the whirling sand might do to Taran’s wounds, I would rip off the overcoat and fling it onto his chest, prompting Alixe and Luther to throw themselves on me to protect my bare flesh. Together, we would huddle and pray we came out alive.
Perhaps the most rattling aspect of the journey was that we weren’t alone. In the harsh light of the sun, the Guardians’ vigil was on full display as they marched easily through the woods at our side. It was a constant reminder that we were trapped, with death chasing us from the left, from the right, and in Taran’s case, from within.
We kept a slow pace for his benefit—a fact he griped about for at least half the journey, though he endured it well. When the sun disappeared with neither a sea nor a city in sight, and we were forced to settle in for another night among the dunes, Taran was panting the least of us all. Despite my fatigue, it put a true smile on my face, my first real glimmer of hope that he might truly make it through.
But when I peeked beneath his bandages and saw that the mass of black veins had grown by an inch, my glimmer darkened to shadow.
While the battle raged on in his body, a different battle was taking place in my heart. I spent the evening telling my wildest stories, teaching Taran mortal drinking songs, and trading lighthearted ribbing about their very privileged upbringing and my very unrefined one. When eyelids finally began drooping, I jumped to volunteer for first watch, climbed over the nearest dune and out of sight, and collapsed into tears.
Or what passed for tears, when your eyes were too dried out to weep.
Every smile I shared with Taran was a nail lodged in my heart. I’d meant what I’d told Luther about joy being its own kind of medicine, and even if it did nothing, I wanted Taran’s final days to be happy ones. He deserved to go out laughing.
But it had a cost. The constant effort to conceal my true feelings was eating me alive, and when I dared to look Alixe or Luther in the eye and see past our shared mask, I could tell it was killing them, too.
I despised Vance for what he’d done. I wasn’t proud to admit that I’d spent half the journey recalling his screams when Sorae’s dragonfyre had burned him or imagining all the gruesome ways I might make him pay. I both relished and feared what I might do if he was still in those woods when my magic returned.
And if we lost Taran... I wasn’t sure I would be able to wait on my godhood to avenge him.
But I also knew my loathing was a mirror of what festered in the hearts of those mortal men, the same hate that had driven them to attack us in the first place. After all, how many of them had watched a loved one take their last breath at the tip of a Descended blade?
For at least one of them, that blade had been mine.
They had taken their revenge on Taran, and it had birthed a new hatred in me. If I took my revenge in return, it would only create new grudges, new blood feuds. Around and around we would go, hating and killing until no one was left standing. There was no good that could be borne of it.
And yet I hated them nevertheless.
I’d been fretting over how to convince the mortals and the Descended to choose peace over vengeance. But how could I stop a war between them when I couldn’t even stop it in my own heart?
I reclined back onto the soft sand, gazing up into the inky, star-flecked blanket of night.
“Listen, Grandma Lumnos,” I muttered, “I see what you were trying to do here. A Descended raised as a mortal, a Queen who doesn’t want her throne. It’s all very poetic. But you might have mucked it on this one. I really think you’ve got the wrong girl.”
My nose wrinkled. “Why not Luther? He knows how to avoid making an enemy out of every Descended on the continent, which I seem entirely incapable of doing. If peace is your goal, surely he would be a better choice to wear your Crown.”
I narrowed my eyes, head cocking. “Do you even choose anyone? Maybe all this talk of you choosing someone worthy is a lie made up by greedy men to convince the world they have divine permission for all their evil deeds. Maybe you’re not handing out blessings at all, and it’s up to us to decide whether we become villains or heroes.”
Groaning, I rubbed my face. “Why am I talking to some dead lady who doesn’t care? The desert is drying out my brain.” I climbed to my feet and began plodding back to wake Alixe for her turn on watch. As I climbed up the dune, I paused and looked skyward one last time. “You don’t get my prayers yet. Save Taran and get us home. Then we’ll talk.”