32. Kira
Chapter 32
Kira
CRAWLING BACK
I scream for Reznyk until my throat gives out.
After that, I’m on my knees in the middle of the wilderness making strange choking sounds that aren’t even remotely human. I collapse onto my hands, dig my fingers into the pine needles, and gasp for breath as my mind continues to scream every curse I can imagine after Reznyk’s horrible, beautiful ass.
And then I just cry.
It’s a stupid reaction, this flood of tears. Because none of this is a surprise, is it? Reznyk told me he loves another woman, and I knew it, even as I teased him and flirted with him and rode him so hard I almost blacked out.
We fucked like gods. But that doesn’t change the fact that his heart belongs to someone else.
And I told him what I wanted. My magical potential, my link to the family I never knew. A chance to go back to the Towers with my head held high and claim the position my parents left me.
I rock back on my heels and drag my hands across my face, wiping tears, snot, and sweat on my sleeve. Reznyk saw me with the damned amulet. He must have thought I was going to steal it. Hells, he probably thinks that was my intention all along.
But I also touched whatever magic lies in the damned thing. Because here I am, on a hillside overlooking the Golden Peaks Hunting Lodge.
Reznyk brought me here. He’s furious. I get it. I’d be furious too, if I was in his place. But I told him I wanted to go back to the Towers once I found my magical potential, and here I am. The first step in a very long journey back to the Towers.
The amulet must have worked, then. Why would Reznyk have brought me here if I didn’t have any magical potential? He knows I won’t return to the Towers without it. Hells, without magical potential, the Towers would probably get Tholious to trade me off to some other loner who has something they want. But now I have what they want.
Hells, now I am what they want.
I turn to stare at the hunk of metal glistening in the pine needles next to me. It looks almost oily, like it’s shining with something I can see but can’t touch.
“I did it,” I whisper.
My voice sounds like it’s been dragged through the dirt for days. I clear my throat, gag, and try again.
“I have magic,” I announce.
The wilderness does not respond. From somewhere behind me, an insect lets out a long, shrill scream. I stare at the amulet in the dirt like I’m expecting it to do something. My gaze climbs away from the tug of the metal circle and drowns in the trees where Reznyk vanished. He ran like I was going to chase him, like maybe I had a crossbow and a bucket of arrows and I was going to shoot him in the back if he lingered.
My eyes burn. I sniff, then wipe at them with the back of my hand. I could follow him, chase him into the woods.
But Reznyk clearly doesn’t want to see me again.
Pain rolls through the great, throbbing emptiness in my chest. Even if I could find him, somehow, in this maze of trees, what could I possibly say that would convince him I wasn’t trying to steal this damn thing? Or that I don’t want to go back to the Towers?
I blink. That’s not true. I have magic, now. Of course I want to go back to the Towers. That’s my plan.
And he wants to be alone with his wolves and the last old god in the world. That’s his plan. I’ll bring the amulet back to the Towers and no one will ever have any reason to bother him again.
Look at that. We’re both getting what we want, aren’t we? I drag a ragged breath over my lips. I feel absolutely nothing. Shouldn’t success feel a bit more, well, victorious?
It takes me a long time to come to my feet, and even longer to turn my shoulders away from the darkness beneath the trees and toward the path leading down the hill. Tholious said someone would be waiting for me in the Golden Peaks Hunting Lodge. I try to imagine who it’s going to be as I drag myself down the mountain.
It turns into a stupidly beautiful day. The sky is brilliant, filled with thin wisps of clouds spinning overhead like they’re writing a message in some language I can’t understand. Birds cry and respond all around me, flecks of gold dance in the thick bands of sunlight slanting through the trees, and my shattered heart knocks on inside of my chest.
“This is what I want,” I whisper to the forest that looks like it came straight out of the pages of a children’s story book. “I have magic.”
The forest ignores me.
“Kira?”
I jump, startled by the sound of my own name. The Golden Peaks Hunting Lodge comes into bleary focus. I’ve been staring at my own feet for so long I didn’t even realize how close I was to the lodge’s front door.
A man who was sitting by the fence comes to his feet and tucks something into his belt. It takes me a moment to drag his name from my memories.
“Matius,” I say.
My voice sounds exactly like I’ve spent most of this past morning screaming obscenities into the woods. Tholious’s one-time lover doesn’t seem to mind. He meets my gaze. There’s something shadowed and broken in his eyes that echoes the hollow ache inside my chest. He walks over to me, and together we stare at the amulet cradled in my hands.
Maybe this is what magic feels like. Crushing emptiness and regret.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Matius says.
I look up at him, but he turns away. There are shadows under his eyes, and a tight, almost angry set to his jaw. At the beginning of this idiotic journey, he and Tholious couldn’t stand to be separated. Hells, they’d make up all sorts of flimsy excuses to bed down together somewhere out of sight from the rest of us and make muffled moaning sounds for hours.
But Tholious left Matius at the hunting lodge with that haunted look in his eyes. It doesn’t take a tactical genius to figure out what must have happened between them after all their fighting.
Great. Two walking romantic disasters, side by side.
“You don’t have to tell me anything either,” I reply.
He nods. The corner of his lip twitches in what might be a half-hearted attempt at a smile.
“You want to leave now?” he asks. “Or wait until?—”
“Now,” I say.
He nods again. The look on his face makes me think he understands everything I haven’t said. I tuck the amulet into my pocket, then follow Matius into the hunting lodge. He brings me a glass of wine, which I down in a few massive gulps despite the fact that it’s the middle of the day, then vanishes into some back room. I stare through the windows and try not to think until Matius reappears and announces that our horses are ready.
I’ve never liked horses. We couldn’t even afford to look at horses in the orphanage, so I never got the hang of standing or walking around those massive, deadly beasts, let alone riding one. But Matius stares at me like riding a horse is the very least one could ask out of another human being, and between the bone-deep ache in my chest and the glass of wine I just chugged, I can’t even summon my usual horror of all things equine.
I manage to clamber onto the horse, which shifts and snorts like it can tell I’m a bad person, and then I cling to it for dear life as Matius leads me down the road. We ride in silence as the world goes on around us, following a river that threads its way out of the Daggers.
At some point, Matius stops his horse, and we share a lunch of bread and cheese that tastes like sawdust on my tongue. When the light begins to leak from the sky, Matius leads his horse away from the road and into a little patch of beaten-down grass.
“You want a fire?” he asks.
It’s the first thing he’s said since we left the hunting lodge. I shake my head. He unties something from the back of my horse’s saddle that turns out to be a bedroll, then hands me another bit of bread, some hard cheese, and half of a peppered salami. It all tastes like ash. Finally, he pulls a flask from his hip pocket, takes a deep swig, and passes it to me without a word.
I drink something that burns going down and makes my sore legs go numb. Matius takes another pull, then stares at the stars as they dance above us, cold and silent.
“I didn’t even like him at first,” Matius says, in a voice that’s so quiet I’m not entirely certain he’s talking to me. “Tholious, I mean. I thought he was a prick. Stuck up. Stubborn. Far too devoted to his precious damned Towers.”
He laughs. It’s a rusty, sad sound, like the hinge in an abandoned building creaking open in the wind.
“Turns out, I was right,” Matius finishes. “Tholious is a prick. And nothing will ever drag him away from the Towers.”
He drops his head to his knees and makes a sort of snort that he probably wants me to think is a laugh and not a cry. My gut twists around the few bites of bread I was able to stomach. I think of Reznyk in his tower, waiting for us to climb his mountain and steal his amulet. Welcoming me even though he knew who I was and where I came from. Healing my ankle, sharing his frost wine. Telling me his secrets.
And now, he must feel just like Matius.
Because here I am, crawling back to the Towers.