31. Reznyk
Chapter 31
Reznyk
YOU HAVE WHAT YOU WANT
T he ground slams into my feet. My vision flashes white, then crimson. Magic screams all around me, howling like it’s in pain, a grisly echo to the agony inside my chest.
I cut my heart out, the old song goes. Gods, if only that were possible.
There’s a crack, then a boom, like a roll of thunder. My legs tremble. The ground sways beneath me. Exhaustion hits me like a punch to the gut, and I stagger backward.
Dragging Kira with me. She gasps once, then again, and finally I manage to force my hands to let go of her wrists. My vision swims as I fill my burning lungs.
Trees. I’m staring up at a dance of interlaced branches, soft pine needles filtering the rising sun. Magic shrieks under my skin, hissing and spitting like it’s been injured. I stare at the trees, then drop my gaze.
I can’t look at her. Instead, my eyes fall to the metal amulet in her hands. It hums with magic it’s just pulled from my body, an obvious trap waiting for someone foolish enough to fall in.
Just like Kira.
My eyes sting. I clench my teeth and force my hands into fists. Where the fuck are we? What in the nine hells just happened? I step back, then back again. Water chatters in the background, a river going about its daily business as if nothing in the world has changed. Pine trees whisper overhead. Birds sing.
Did she trap me? Drag me somewhere horrible? Am I just now waking up?
I risk a glance at the woman who just ruined me. She’s gasping for breath, her eyes wide, the amulet clutched to her chest. Exactly like she looked this morning, when I opened the door of my home and realized who she really was.
No. Kira didn’t do this.
I look down at my own hands, at my skin hissing and burning with magic.
Travel magic? That’s a myth, a story to tell children. I’ve watched the old god for months, and I’ve never seen them use anything like travel magic. Hells, the Towers stalked my victim for years. If travel magic existed, wouldn’t the old god I slayed have used it to escape the silver crossbow bolt I fired into their heart?
My hands tremble, then blur. Silver blood pours down my fingers, pooling around my wrists, dripping to the pine needles below my feet.
Shit. I’m falling apart. And the woman who ruined me is right here for it.
I force myself to step back, gasping as the forest spins around me. There’s a sort of path behind me, leading through an opening in the trees. I stagger toward it, see what’s below us.
And suddenly I know exactly where we are.
Oh, gods. I’m going to be sick. I force it down, then turn back to Kira with a snarl I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.
“Go!” I scream, stabbing my hand toward the opening in the trees as silver blood drips from each of my fingers.
“W-What?” she stammers.
“Go!” I snarl, as my voice cracks. “You have what you wanted! Leave this place and never come back!”
She turns toward the opening in the trees, toward the path that will take her down the slope and into the Golden Peaks Hunting Lodge that’s sitting like a jewel in a ring in the valley just below us.
Somehow, the magic inside my body combined with the amulet and made something entirely new; travel magic that brought Kira exactly where she wanted to go. Perhaps the amulet wants to go home, some distant part of my mind whispers.
I turn on my heels and force my body to run.
Branches whip my face. Behind me, Kira screams my name, over and over, until it has no more meaning than the whisper of the wind or the shriek of the birds.
I run until I collapse, vomiting on my hands and knees, and then I push myself up and stagger forward until I collapse again, gagging on my empty stomach, every part of my body singing with pain.
Time folds in on itself. I curl into a ball, dragging my cloak around the tattered remnants of my body as memories beat against the inside of my skull. A river of silver blood flows over the grass. Sparks, carried by the wind, rain down on the roofs of Blackwater. The murky water of the bay reflects the pyre, until the entire world is burning.
And through the flames, I see Lenore’s face when she met me at her window.
I moved slowly through Silver City, careful to avoid any places that might recognize me. Still, I couldn’t betray my vanity entirely. I stole enough shills to visit one of the tailors Syrus always talked about, using the old god’s trapped magic to cast an illusion over my face.
So I looked good when I climbed the steep road to Fyher’s Landing and stole into the Castinac estate. When I used my new magic to lift myself to her window, the same window I’d climbed into a dozen times as one of the Elites.
But that was when I wore black. Before I had the magic of an old god and a new suit in scarlet and gold.
Now, I looked like the type of man who would be allowed to approach a daughter of the Castinac family, like someone with the money and power and sheer arrogance to claim Lady Lenore for himself.
I’d crushed the boy I once was into the dust, burned him in the ashes. Now nothing could stop me.
But Lenore didn’t smile when she opened her window and found me waiting for her. She didn’t kiss me, as she once had, or unbutton her gown or lead me to her bed. Instead, she stared at me with her hand over her mouth until my dreams began to leak out of my chest, dripping to the cobblestones like silver blood.
“Reznyk,” she finally said, in a hushed whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“I came for you,” I answered.
She stepped back, away from me. Her eyes widened with something that I could not bring myself to admit was fear.
“They’re looking for you,” she whispered, as if I didn’t know. “The Towers. They said you stole something, and—and killed something.”
“I did,” I said. “Lenore, I’m powerful now. More powerful than I was. More powerful than the Towers.”
She stepped back again, until there was an empty room between our two bodies.
“Come with me,” I said.
I wanted to sound powerful, confident. But I did not.
Lenore shook her head. “No,” she whispered, her eyes darting to the thick burgundy carpet and then back to me. “Reznyk, you know I’m betrothed.”
“But,” I stammered. “I love you.”
I’d never told her before. Hells, I’d never said those words to anyone before.
She shook her head, then tucked her hair back behind her ear.
“I know,” she whispered. “But I won’t leave Silver City. This is my home.”
I opened my mouth, but she spoke before I could embarrass myself any further.
“I don’t love you,” Lady Lenore Castinac said. “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes met mine. I took a step forward, reaching for her, my queen of light and beauty, the woman I dreamt of in the forest as I struggled to control the magic inside my body, to escape the men sent to kill me. Lenore was the reason I dared sneak back into Silver City, even with all of the Towers on my tail.
“Stop,” she said. “I will scream, Reznyk. The guards are just outside my door.”
Our eyes met again, but this time, there was nothing soft in her expression. She had become a stranger, beautiful and untouchable. I could spend what was left of my life throwing myself at her feet, like the ocean against the rocky shore.
It would break me. And she would remain unchanged.
Even now, years later and with an entire mountain range between us, that memory tears something out of my throat. It’s a harsh, barking sob, and I cover my head with my hands to hide it.