Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

59. RHYDIAN

59

RHYDIAN

Y ou climbed into my bed Rhydian.

Rieka.

Her name spread through my thoughts, a fever of ferocious magnitude.

On the day I win, the day you tell me you love me, you make me an oath.

Oh, gladly, my thoughts cried. Only if you agree to my conditions.

I still had one more condition I needed to tell her.

Share yourself with me.

If you wish it, I would give you my soul Rieka

I will never forgive you Rhydian Kanyk if you die on me.

There was blood in the air.

You die, I die.

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

The light stung. The drapes hanging over the bed canopy had a tear in them where an eight-year-old boy, given a sword for the first time had brandished it fighting an imaginary fire-breathing monster.

I was in my room at Gerhold Hall. How long have I been here? I moved to sit up and instantly regretted the choice.

The song of a thousand cuts my mother had called it. A worthy death for a Hemopath , she’d said. Which at ten I’d found hard to believe when I was being forced to watch as slice after slice tore through skin and muscle tissue, right down to the bone of my mother’s body.

And her only recourse was to ask her best friend’s son to transform her into something else.

I hadn’t understood until the moment before I’d sworn it to Rieka, until that first cut had broken the skin that the worthiness was in the exchange. My death was an acceptable sacrifice if it meant keeping her from the clutches of a god. It was the first truly selfish thing I had ever done. And I didn’t regret it.

My body was wrapped in bandages, and they smelled of rotten eggs which mean someone had used toam thistle to bind the wounds. I had a split cheek too which made me less inclined to talk since every attempt to open my mouth sent sharp stabbing pains up my temple.

I wasn’t dead yet. So at least there was something positive out of the situation. Though perhaps I would be when Rieka found out.

I slowly climbed from the bed, my feet finding the cold of the hardwood floor comforting since my body felt like I’d slept a few feet too close to a fire. I made it across half the room when a familiar face entered.

“Kodee, would you be so kind as to help me to that chair?” I asked, reaching for the young Organic. He’d been so helpful after the raid on the slave compound that he’d pleaded to be of more service, and since our resident medic could rarely leave the train, I’d accepted his offer. He’d fit in well, and the children liked him so I thought it a good decision on my part.

But right now he was failing at his job—he was just standing there in the doorway staring at me. Slack-jawed. “Kodee, all that is steady, come and help me.”

The young medic rushed to my aid, careful to place his support where there wasn’t a bandage and proceeded to help me over to my armchair. He stayed uncommonly silent.

“What under the sphere has you so rattled?” His heart was beating at an elevated rate, and he had looked me in the eye only once since entering. Even now as he fetched me a blanket, he would not look at my face.

I repeated the question. He swallowed hard before answering. “There was a death in the village Lord Kanyk, just this morning.”

That was what had woken me. The blood in the air. The death. I’d thought the news of someone finally dying here would feel worse somehow. I’d painstakingly planned for the safety and preservation of this place, that it would be different from the world of the train. I’d convinced myself death couldn’t touch us here. Though I knew it to be wholly untrue. And I honestly expected to be angry. But I could not find it in me to be.

Instead, I found myself thinking of the fact that there would be no sack their body would be placed in, no door opened to throw it out of. I thought of the cemetery that had been suggested, to be built at the top of the northern hill overlooking the village. A place where villagers could sit and speak with their lost ones, where their spirits, could watch over us, free and unclaimed by the gods of the old world.

The thought was surreal, but not unwelcome.

I thought I was prepared for his response when I asked who Veliah had claimed. But I was gravely mistaken. I asked him to repeat it, because I must have misheard him.

“Your grandfather. Lord Kosha. He has been killed.”

The pain in my chest constricted, as if it were caught between the straps of a winch and someone were twisting it tighter and tighter.

I demanded to be taken to see him.

Shocked expressions and stifled gasps greeted me as Kodee escorted me down through the castle to the schoolhouse where a crowd had formed outside. They parted the moment they saw me and I was met with the darkened features of my friend and his lover, my nephew bundled in her arms. Krisenya’s eyes widened at the sight of me.

“Jonah, where is he?”

The dark-haired Tahzi Brute stared at me for a moment, as if he were weighing his options. Upon realising he had no options, and relaxing out of that rigid stance he had been holding, Jonah moved his large frame away from the doorway and let me enter.

We’d contemplated tearing down the old worship temple, not wanting to be associated with any of the gods. Wade had even attempted to use his taint to wear away the floor carvings when it was clear the building couldn’t be torn down, but they had remained untouched. This was back before we discovered we couldn’t get the codes from the factory.

In the end, my grandfather had been the one to suggest we use the building as a schoolhouse. It could accommodate all the children, even if we didn't split the classes. He offered to oversee it himself since he jested he wasn’t much use as anything else. And the kids all love him.

Loved him.

He shouldn’t be here.

Wade’s tall frame shielded my grandfather from my view. When he turned and saw me, tears of grief trailing down his cheek, his jaw clenched. He’d lived with Kosha as long as I had. Perhaps I should take comfort in that fact, that I wouldn’t be the only one mourning.

My grandfather sat on the floor against the far wall, his body slouched. The light from the early morning shone through the temple window, the sun casting a soft white glow across his face. He looked as if he were staring out the window, caught in a moment of contemplation.

His blood had pooled below him, a small trail spilling into the Gods’ Tongue carvings in the floor. And in his chest, exactly where his heart was, glinted the black handle of a dagger.

I rushed to my knees, ignoring the way my body screamed at me. A note was in his hand. A piece of parchment torn from the page of a book. I retrieved it from my grandfather’s still-warm hand.

Both sides had been written on in neat handwriting.

Rhydian,

Thank you for providing me with a reprieve from my task.

I thoroughly enjoyed our time together. You were a satisfactory lover and a worthy adversary in my pursuit of freedom. But now that I have found the solution to my predicament you are no longer required.

If we ever cross paths again, as you can attest, you shall be treated as I have all my former lovers. Without recognition and with indifference.

And if you intend to pursue me out of some love for me, you needn’t bother. I’ve bound you to the train with the looper. You have 36 hours at best before you must return. And please do. It would be a pity to learn that magnificent body no longer walks the earth. Like your Grandfather said, the train doesn’t run without Imaris blood onboard.

Farewell Husband.

My grandfather’s neck was bare except for the scar where the collar had worn away at his skin. No collar lay at his feet.

As Rieka’s words finally sunk in, I touched my neck where I had felt what I’d thought was the heavy weight of damp bandages. Instead, my fingers touched warm metal, the fever in my body having pushed the cold from it, shielding me from recognising its presence. The looper disk was set on the underside.

My fist closed around the metal, and I pulled causing it to wake up upon sensing the threat.

She had done it. She had truly won. And it had been entirely my doing.

I felt numb. Hollow. The cuts on my body could have opened up, peeling the skin from my muscles, carving my sins into the bone and I would not have felt it. Nothing in my life could ever equate to the hands that were squeezing my heart, pulverizing it until it was a pool of liquid muscle and blood in my chest.

Rieka had done that. And I, the fool that I was, had let her.

I looked to the black handle in his chest, and though I knew the idea was fruitless, that it would bring me nothing more but pain I withdrew it.

My grandfather’s blood scented the air.

And a moment later that taste was on my tongue.