Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

27. RHYDIAN

27

RHYDIAN

“ Y ou look pissed, why are you pissed?” Wade noted when we reached him on the bridge.

“I distinctly heard the tone,” Sal added.

“There was no tone,” I assured her as the rest of my men joined the meeting. I was loath to call them my Generals but when their use of my title had turned from joking to serious, it had become a kind of tactic. A reason to give our enemy pause before striking. If we shared the same titles as the Kensillans, perhaps they would take us seriously as a threat.

But right now, they were making my job as their leader much harder. When we were young, they used to expect me to announce the start of the Resistance Leadership meetings, as though it made our efforts official somehow. Now all it took was for Jordry and Mal to close the doors to the carriage and I would have ten sets of eyes on me awaiting orders. No, nine eyes…

“Where’s Anika?” I asked them.

Sal leaned into Wade, taking his hand in hers. “See there is that tone again. You’re definitely pissed about something.” Sometimes I resented her ability to read me. There wasn’t much that she didn’t notice.

Simon, who sat atop the rail to stretch his multi-coloured wings over the edge, answered. “Anika has school, I’ll fill her in later.”

“So why are we here boss?” I looked over at my reconnaissance officer and found her once again in a sorry state. Amida sat atop the opposite rail, her purple hair twisted atop her head in such an uncharacteristic way, with dark circles under her eyes, and lounging against her husband’s back, her arms draped over his shoulders. Jordry caught the sympathetic way I looked at his wife and squeezed one of her hands, both of us knowing that our mission was becoming more important by the day.

Unlike most Brutes, Alatus need open space to thrive, and when they don’t get it, their bodies suffer a melancholy that their minds don’t. Historically on the Kensillan Territory Rail, it shouldn’t happen for decades—Thralls at least get government-mandated recreation time to prevent this occurring—but since her sister’s death, and her refusal to be anywhere that Jordry wasn’t had caused it to strike Amida early. She would last another year before her muscles would begin to atrophy.

I cleared my throat to address them but found myself cut off by Eleen. “I hope it would be because you have changed your mind about my proposition?”

Mal, Si’mon’s Growler husband and the best of my fighters was startled by this statement. “One fight does not constitute proof of conception Eleen, regardless of how skilled the fighter may be.”

“I will admit, there are merits to the proposition now that did not exist this morning.” I snapped my focus to the speaker. Lera, who was usually my most stringent ally, was not someone who I expected to take Eleen’s side. They’d been friends for decades, and they would kill for one another, but I’d never heard them agree on a single thing, not even the time of day. She would much rather spend time with Sal, who was her best friend, and whom she now shared the same expression with as they stood beside one another staring at me. They thought I was being unreasonable.

I tried to contain my frustration as I spoke. “There are no merits to it.”

“You’re the one who said we were running out of time,” Eleen snapped back bitterly.

“Not that you’ll tell us why,” Amida mumbled under her breath, her wings flittering behind her, a sure sign she needed to get into the open air soon.

Eleen gripped the rail before her tightly, her knuckles turning white as the water in the pipes below us began to rumble louder. “I just don’t understand why you won’t see reason.”

“BECAUSE SHE IS MY WIFE!”

I’d raised my voice at Eleen, something I had never done. But it hadn’t deterred her. As strong as a river she shouted back.

“And she’s a T'eiryash! You told us. She killed the hunter. Inside a Void Trap. Her taint is not inhibited like ours are,” she said, indicating to the other members of the circle. “All that is Steady, Rhydian. She speaks the language of the fucking gods. She is the answer.”

I knew Eleen was right. But I just couldn’t bring myself to agree with her. I remained silent, which only made Eleen grumble at me in further frustration, pacing down the walk bridge.

I stared around at all their faces, realising that the expressions I was seeing were resolve.

“You all feel this way?” Eight hands beat over their chests in the Seja way. “Yes,” they said.

The one person who didn’t answer was Lex, Lera’s twin brother. He usually kept his opinions to himself since he’d been part of the ground contingent of the Resistance. Whilst his sister had chosen to remain on the train when they were sixteen, he’d chosen to leave to join Filora and her Runners outside the train. “And what about you, do you feel the same, that my wife should join the resistance?”

The young Skin Weaver was more expressive than his sister. “In all honesty boss, if your wife truly is a T'eiryash. I’d let her bespell me into a rat if it meant getting off this godsdamned train.” He then paused. “Rieka is invaluable, Rhydian, and I know Filora would agree with me.”

Jordry, ever the voice of reason in the group, stepped forward, though his hand never left Amida’s. “I get that she’s your wife, and considering you two have only been reunited for a few days—you’re not willing to put her life at risk. But we all saw her fight. She is not helpless, Rhydian.”

“Exactly,” Eleen added, re-joining the group at our tactician’s words. “We can take her on the next supply run, test out her capab—”

“Absolutely not!” I flatly refused to even entertain the idea of Rieka leaving the train. It was an insane idea.

“I’ll do it.”

Everybody on the platform went into a state of alert at the sound of her voice. I rushed to the rail. Standing in the shadows of the bridge looking up at us, with a look of determination on her face was Rieka. “What are you doing here?” I asked as she approached the pipes of the machine below.

“Exploring my new home.” It had to be a lie. She had no reason to be this far down the train. Rieka climbed atop the pipes, stood, and climbed higher, jumping when she could reach the bridge then hauled herself up and over the rail. She was still dressed in the clothes she’d fought in. Her feet were bare and soot-covered—how long had she been down there?

With a determined look in her eye, she attempted to push past me into the circle. I grabbed her to stop her from entering, to hold her in place outside the group. I instantly regretted my actions, but not why. It was too damn dangerous. I knew the second her hand began to wriggle in my grasp that I had committed a trespass, but I just could not let her go. Grateful for this talent of hers, I spoke to her silently once again, “No, why are you here, in this carriage?”

Her eyes flicked over to Wade momentarily. Whether she meant to reveal that much I don’t know. Wade certainly hadn’t expected anyone to react the way Rieka had to his collar claiming, but judging by the way he’d positioned his body, blocking Rieka’s path to Sal, he certainly wasn’t taking anything regarding my "wife" lightly.

Rieka closed her free hand over mine, those icy greys holding my gaze contemptuously. “I want to help. Why won’t you let me?” Her tone felt wrong, caring. Adoring. Her inner voice, on the other hand, its tone matched the gaze. “ You’re the one who told me to see my own worth.”

I looked around at my friends, at the Runners who I trusted with my life, with the lives of every passenger on this train. And I looked to Rieka. How could I trust her?

“Am I still your leader?” I asked them without taking my eyes off hers.

“Of course.”

“Always.”

Sentiments shared by all of them.

I lingered on Rieka a moment longer than was probably necessary. There was something in her eyes that held my gaze, some desperate plea that I doubted even she knew was there. I gave my order. “My answer is no.”

With her wrist still in my hand we left, Rieka making no attempt to stay.

I pulled her into Confinement Cells two carriages over, led her into the last cell and released her. She spun to face me, as though expecting some kind of attack on my part, instead finding me standing inches from her, my hands braced on the wall on either side of her head. Confined in the cage that my body had formed, she raised her chin. Defiantly. “Planning on locking me up, husband?”

I knew she meant the cell, and if I was honest the thought had occurred to me. It would be easier. But she’d already garnered a reputation for herself. My "wife" suddenly being locked in the cells would arouse too many questions.

I regarded her face. That expression remained unyielding and perhaps a little warranted. Her lips pressed into a hard line, instantly drawing my eye. A tightness rose in my chest. An urge I couldn’t shake to press my mouth to hers in an attempt to shut her up, silencing both her voices if only for a moment.

This woman, who was as infuriating as she was beautiful, had a bounty on her head so priceless that I’d been allowed to ask for anything in return for her retrieval. Someone who knew what she had done, what she was, what she was capable of wanted her caught alive. No one since the Fall had held the title God Killer. That name was as infamous as T'eiryash was. Someone capable of killing a god—They could be a mighty prize to the one in possession. Or a dangerous war-igniting weapon.

Rieka’s breath escaped her in a hurried rush, a single lock of her hair billowing as she exhaled. The strands had fallen from the braid that encircled her head like a crown, the white wisps, the roots black for no more than a few days fallen like silk threads across her brow. Her bust, wrapped in nothing but that shirt, rose and fell in an intoxicating motion as she breathed heavily. Those lips held in a daring snarl. Lips that were pink and full. And soft—the memory of a kiss by a hearth resurfaced.

I pushed off the wall with a groan, stepping aside. Slowly Rieka peeled herself from the wall. She kept her eyes on me as she took a step towards the door. When I didn’t move to stop her again, she stepped over the threshold. I finally found my voice as her dangerous figure silhouetted the doorway.

“These people are my family Rieka. I’ll protect them with my life. Whatever you were planning on doing back there, forget about it. I’ll kill you before you ever hurt them.”

Lingering on the door’s precipice, her back towards me, the curves of her body on full and deadly display, Rieka replied. “I guess I’m not that important after all, or would the buyer accept a dead slave instead of a living one.” Then aloud she added, “Find somewhere else to sleep tonight. I’m sure that family of yours will be able to accommodate you.”

Within the hour, the train thought we were having a lover’s fight.

When I turned up to training the following morning, having slept on the sofa in my room, Rieka wasn’t there. She had chosen to avoid the class entirely. And due to some sense of morality I held when it came to this woman, I couldn’t bring myself to track her with the arrowhead—even if I did carry it around in my pocket—I’d been forced to search for her on foot.

After training, I went to The Bathhouse , but Anika informed me that Rieka had changed back to the original work roster. She was working the laundry shift. To make certain, knowing she would have to come to The Bathhouse to collect the towel trolley, I stayed in the pool for over an hour, my skin pruning as I waited for her to show.

It was midday when she walked into The Bathhouse . Once again she ignored me, fuelling the gossip fire. And it wasn’t like she didn’t see me in the bath. She walked a full circuit of the pool checking no towel had been missed, and she stopped right in front of me, picking up my dry fresh towel from the edge of the pool and deposited it in the trolley. She said nothing to me. Neither aloud nor in my head. Then she left just as nonchalantly as she had arrived.

Jordry who had waited with me patiently, his brown curls frizzing due to how long his loyalty had kept him here said, “And you’re certain she’d never been this mad at you before?”

“I’m sure,” I told him. Obvious reasons aside, we hadn't been around each other long enough for there to be something to be mad about. We knew nothing about one another except what had transpired between us this last week. And those circumstances were not exactly ideal for getting to know one’s fake wife. And the little I did know of her, I could count on one hand. And that was exactly why I couldn’t say yes to Eleen’s suggestion. I would be trusting their lives and the lives of everyone on the train to a woman who wanted nothing more than her own freedom.

It might sound like those two things aligned, we all wanted to be free of this place. But every one of the Runners would die for one another to achieve that goal. I didn’t even know Rieka’s real name. How was I supposed to trust her with something as important as a supply run?

I didn’t see her again until the evening meal. I was sitting with the twins discussing the latest intelligence Jonah had provided, the files turned over before we’d left the cave in the Deadwood.

Gala and Amida, best friends for the last twenty-one years, sat opposite us eagerly chatting away over the baked goods on their plates. To their left Si’mon, whose tone was one of disbelief asked, “And the council just let her make them?”

“Mmhm,” Gala hummed with a mouth full of food. “Lily told them sweets would boost the train’s morale after the Hunt, so they let Rieka use the leftover flour and stuff.”

I dared to look across the table, the smell of sugared pastry finally too hard to ignore. A slice of pie, already half eaten, sat on the petite blonde’s plate. Another slice sat in Amida’s who was happily feeding spoonsful to Jordry as he looked over the mission files.

Gala looked up at me, a crumbed smile on her small face. “Aren’t you going to get one Rhydian? I’m sure Rieka’s saved one for you.”

“I did hear she only made a couple dozen. So it was first in first served,” Amida added with a knowing smile, sweeping a strand of purple hair behind her ear. Being a sweet tooth connoisseur herself, she knew exactly how I felt about baked goods.

I looked around and found several tables had obtained slices of pie and were sharing them amongst themselves, ensuring everyone got a taste. Gala was either lucky she got a slice for herself, or she’d nicked it without anyone seeing. A handy skill under any other circumstances.

I contemplated for a moment. Mal offered me a sympathetic smile as I looked over to the serving trollies where a line of passengers was still waiting. The sliver of hope I’d held that this facade of hers reached my stomach, vanished when I arrived at the trolly and Lily informed me that the last piece was just claimed.

Damn Gala and her contagious optimism.

I returned to the table in silence. My mood was enough to keep their comments to themselves.

“May I join you?” I looked up from the map a few minutes later to find Rieka standing at the table.

Any words I had for her, any cocky retort fled the moment I took in her appearance. There wasn’t anything special about it. She was still dressed in her kitchen apron, her long white hair was plated down her back, and she was once again wearing her gloves. She looked—and I sensed from her blood—quite exhausted. Yet the smile on her face as she examined all the empty plates on the table was one I’d only ever seen once before. When she noticed Gala wiping her plate clean with her fingers she turned her head.

She had flour dusting the edge of her jaw. I almost reached across the table to wipe it off. Oh steady, what is this woman doing to me?

When no one objected to her joining us, Rieka sat down beside Mal. As she did she placed down a plate. With a slice of pie on it.

My mouth began to salivate. The scent of golden butter-baked pastry filled my nostrils, the smell of something dark and sweet beneath it.

She pulled a spoon out from the front pocket of her apron and cut into the pie. As she brought it to her mouth, her eyes caught my gaze and she paused, eyes glancing down to the contents of her spoon.

“You won’t eat this,” she said with a soft smile. “You don’t like strawberries.”

She languished in the taste of the pie as my friends tried to contain their amusement at my expense. Rieka had no intention of playing the dutiful wife. She was going to make this as hard for me as she could.

“You’re being petty, ” I told her across the silence of our minds.

She took in another mouthful; her face entirely void of any devious intentions as she stared at me. “Can’t imagine why you would think that,” she responded in a playful tone that was as enticing as that damn slice of pie.

After the fifth bite, I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood abruptly, startling everyone but Rieka. “I’ll see you at one-on-one training later.” Before I could leave she replied, “No” then ate the last mouthful of pie.

My inner voice reiterated. “Condition #2, remember.”

She slowly licked the spoon, watching me from over those long, almost iridescent lashes. “Revocable on being able to defend against Eleen in a hand-to-hand fight. Consider that condition met.”

I clenched my jaw. Rieka wasn’t seducing me. She was simply adding to the list of reasons why I’d never choose her.

I’d marched three steps from the table, wanting to put as much distance between the two of us as possible when the alarm whaled. Every heartbeat in the mess instantly increased, the blood pressure of the room elevating to fear levels.

Silently, two thousand passengers began to count and I found myself looking at Rieka. She had a powerful taint, but that taint couldn’t wash away the trauma of what the Hunt had made her do. The look in her eyes told me enough. She dreaded being selected again.

So I counted with her. “Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. ”

Her collar remained, for all intents and purposes, dead. Relief and colour returned to her features.

“Rieka!”

A desperate and angry voice, one on the verge of hysterics moved towards our table. The redheaded she-wolf marched to a stop before Rieka, the blue glow from the collar around her neck turning her dark features into a ghostly grey.

“S’vara,” Rieka said in an anguished fearful tone. But her bunkmates’ features were not fearful, they were determined. And searching. She surveyed the Runners halting abruptly when she saw me. S’vara climbed right over the table and stood before me. “Ree tells me the best way to survive is in pairs, is that true?”

I returned my gaze to Rieka who was startled to see another of her bunkmates approach. The sun-kissed Drake’s collar was aglow, his face a false calm I’d seen on many a man before their first Hunt. Some even their tenth.

From across the table, she spoke to me, her inner voice pleading. “Please help them.”

Silence filled the train like fog. A heaviness laced the goodbyes and desperate pleas for reunions that may never come. It was the hour after a Hunt had commenced. When passengers tried and failed to sleep, when their bodies refused the call of fatigue. It was the only time of day, of any day when the train was quiet.

Twenty-four hours. That was how long a full rotation of the train took. Twenty-four hours, give or take a few minutes when the rail would circle back around to the same station. That was when Rieka and her bunkmates would know if their friends survived the Hunt. If they made it back to the platform.

I’d told S’vara and Farox, the Drake as much as I could. I answered any question they asked me in the limited time we had, and Rieka, much to my surprise had looked thankful. Perhaps that was why I’d chosen the seclusion of the bunks where she would return to instead of sleeping in my office.

Tira, the teenage Terrestrial was the first to return. I got the distinct impression she intended on climbing into Rieka’s bunk until she saw I was within. She proceeded to then crawl into the bunk she shared with S’vara, the sound of sniffles coming from the space for several minutes as she petted the stray tabby that slept on her bunk.

Rieka arrived with the men nearly an hour later. If they were surprised to see me in her bunk, they kept it to themselves. She paused when she saw me, her eyes trailing my figure as I lay there in the bunk. I expected her to tell me to leave. I honestly would have if she’d asked me. Too many of my friends’ lives had been lost to the Hunt. I’d understand if she didn’t want me anywhere near her right now. But I’d declared myself her husband. This is where I was expected to be.

As though some decision had been made, Rieka began untying her buckskin, her apron gone. “Can you pass me that?” She indicated to the shirt folded at the end of the bunk. My shirt. Because obviously why wouldn’t my "wife" wear one of my shirts to bed.

I held onto it as she stripped off her blouse and singlet, her nipples hardening in the chill of the cabin air. My shirt, once on her slight frame fell well below her knees, the material flush against her pert breasts. Rieka rolled up the sleeves just enough that her hands showed and then she climbed into the bunk beside me in silence, unfurling the blanket at our feet and pulling it over herself.

After what felt like an hour of just listening to her breath, convincing myself she was asleep, her voice cut through the silence. “Thank you.”

I knew she was talking about her friends. “I’d have done it for anyone.” It wasn’t an entirely true statement. But when she had asked me, the desperation I saw in her face—

I shifted trying to get more comfortable and noticed a shadow block the light of the window. Tira stood awkwardly in the middle of the alcove, chewing on her bottom lip and looking down at myself and Rieka in our bunk.

“Are you all right?” I asked her. She remained silent, nibbling a little harsher on her lip.

“She wanted to sleep with me tonight since S’vara’s on the Hunt,” Rieka’s inner voice informed me. “Members of her commune sleep in groups so she doesn’t like sleeping alone.”

“I’ll leave. ” But instead of agreeing with me, Rieka invited Tira into the bunk between us. The young Terrestrial climbed around me and snuggled under the blanket, nuzzling into Rieka’s side. I looked at the horns still on her head, at the jagged way in which they had been cut. As though she had pulled the words right out of my head, Rieka’s inner voice found the need to comment. “Don’t worry, Tira sleeps like the dead. You won’t get stabbed in your sleep.” She paused before adding with a smirk, “Not by her at least.”

I stared up at the bunk ceiling where someone, a former passenger perhaps had begun to etch tallies into the metal, counting the days they had been aboard perhaps, or more likely, the lives that had been taken since arriving. “Who gave it to you, that blade you carry in your boot?”

I expected her to tell me to mind my own business, but she didn’t. “That friend I told you about. I received it after her death.” I turned my head to look at her, my eyes skimming the curve of her neck where the collar rested. Where her scar was.

Using my arm to rest on, I rolled on my side to look at her. Tira must have assumed I was cold because she wriggled from her position to adjust the blanket and draped it over my legs before returning to sleep.

Rieka smiled down at the girl as she too took the opportunity to get more comfortable, choosing a position not dissimilar to my own.

“Was that friend the one who taught you how to use it?”

Nonchalantly Rieka unfurled her arm from beneath her head and draped it across the pillow where she began playing with the fabric of my shirt. The shirt on my body, rubbing and pressing it between two long fingers. She shifted to rest her chin on her shoulder, giving no pained indication of the injury it had recently sustained. I let her make the contact. Some chivalrous part left in me by my father told me it was what she needed at that moment.

Rieka took a deep breath, eyes still focused on my shirt as she spoke. “My father is in the Celestial Guard. An Apex Brute. Wolf-Blessed. I used to visit his barracks as a child and watch the guards train on the obstacle courses. Watch my father run them.

“One night when we visited, I snuck out to try it. He caught me after I fell from the rope wall. I didn’t have enough strength in my arms then. My father took pity on me. My blessing wasn’t presenting as it should have at that age, but he thought perhaps training me as he did the cadets might help me control it. Knife work was one of the first things he taught me.”

“But it hasn’t anything to do with your tai—” I corrected myself, using the word familiar to her. “With your blessing.”

Her fingers paused their motion, and I found those ghostly greys looking upon my face with something I couldn’t quite place. Curiosity perhaps. “I’d been having issues keeping Gods ’ Tongue from slipping out since I’d grown frustrated with my inability to control my blessing, he thought knife training would teach me discipline. He’d said 'Better to defend yourself with a blade than die without one'” her inner voice said, almost happily.

“So you were a guard for the Celestial Offices?”

The Deogn Ecclesiarchy were thought to be quite selective when it came to their choice of warriors. Especially when those warriors would be serving both the Priesthood and The Celestials. The Guard were said to have perfect precision control over their taints. Able to make split-second decisions. And except for certain leadership positions held by humans, my understanding was that they were all Brutes. It would explain how Rieka had gotten close enough to a god to kill one.

“My father trained me for the guard until I was fifteen,” she continued quite casually. “I was assigned a non-violent vocation for my Civic Duty and I apprenticed under my mother in our family bakery after that. She taught me how to wield eggs and butter like my father did claws and steel.”

I raised a brow in disbelief. “Eggs and butter as a weapon?”

She quirked a brow of her own. “ I recall only a few hours ago that pretty face of yours had turned quite sour because I’d withheld pie.”

My inner voice failed to hide its amusement. “Oh.” I nodded. “That kind of weapon.”

“My mother always said, food is the path to a man’s heart, but pastry is the path to his mind.” The comment reminded me so much of my mother that I couldn’t help but chuckle. It caught me off guard. I rolled back over, the movement removing her hands from my shirt. The sudden lack of contact was a strained sort of discomfort.

“You should get some sleep. Being sleep-deprived won’t help them.”

“And what will?” she asked mournfully.

“Turning up for morning training.” Rieka’s inner voice groaned at that response. “You agreed to the conditions, wife.” I emphasised the word to remind her of our deal.

“Come to think of it , ” I rolled back around to look at her. “Condition #3. Should I require any information about you, to alleviate any suspicions others might have about our relationship, you will provide me with a true and honest answer.”

Rieka’s eyes narrowed, her lips pursing in annoyance. “Fine. So long as you do the same for me.”

But I couldn’t do that. Not when she was going to be leaving the train eventually. I couldn’t let certain information leave the train with her, not with so many lives at stake. So I said, “Only questions we’re willing to answer.” When she opened her mouth to object, I quickly added, “And for any question you refuse to answer you have to spend an hour training with me after evening meal.”

The corners of her mouth perked up. “OK. For every question you refuse to answer, I get to bathe in that tub.”

Lily’s tub? I couldn’t agree to that. Pregnant Lily was terrifying when she didn’t have her tea baths, I couldn’t imagine what angry pregnant Lily would do to me if I commandeered her tub for the sake of my wife. Rieka’s expression said she wasn’t letting this one go.

I grumbled out my agreement to her terms.

I would have to figure something out.