33. Kiera
Chapter 33
Kiera
I run for seemingly hours. I run until my legs burn and my lungs threaten to collapse within my chest. Still, I run. Deeper and deeper into the woods that were once my home.
Everything is different now. I know what this place really is thanks to Makeda. The Hinterlands were not left alone because of the Gods’ benevolence . The mere thought has me baring my teeth as I come to a halting stop at a ledge, looking down into a deep crevice carved in rock.
To my right and left, two Darkhavens come to a standstill as well, their harsh breaths drifting into the cool mid-morning air. There are so many threads, but the one that I’m following is fast—faster than most others. Already, I’ve watched as thread after thread has been severed and disappeared from my mind.
They’re dying.
“What the fuck are we doing?” Theos demands, a rough hoarseness to his voice as he doubles over and puts his hands on his knees, panting.
I toss him a look. “You’re a fighter,” I remind him. “You should have more stamina than that.”
He flips me his middle finger before straightening. “I fight in arenas,” he replies tersely. “I don’t race through uneven terrain for hours on end searching for…” He arches a brow. “Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? I don’t know what we’re searching for.”
Not bothering to answer him, I glance back over my shoulder, finding Kalix lounging back against a tree as a snake curls down from one of its branches, reaching for him. “How many serpents can you call?” I ask.
He arches one dark brow. “As many as you wish for, Little Thief,” he says. “I assumed you would not be interested in a quick fuck in the forest though.”
I ignore his insinuation. “Call them,” I order.
Kalix’s body doesn’t move, doesn’t react, but his demeanor changes completely, going from relaxed and casual to focused in an instant as his jade eyes sharpen on me. “How many?”
“All of them.”
And he does. Just like that. If I can count on Kalix for one thing above his brothers, it’s not to ask me questions. It’s a blessing because a third voice in my ear, demanding to know what’s going on and what I’m planning is going to drive me over the edge of the cliff and down into the ravine below. I don’t answer them as I stare out across the vast dips and hills of the Hinterlands, memorizing their hollows and curves. Once, I’d thought that coming back here would make me feel free and safe.
Freedom isn’t a place though. It’s a person … maybe people, perhaps. Minutes later, Ruen and Theos have given up trying to get answers out of me and moved away to scout out the surrounding areas. Kalix sits on the edge of the cliffside a few feet from me with his legs dangling up over the edge as a collection of snakes begin to make their trek to him.
Small, baby snakes with hardly a scale to them. Massive long serpents with hissing fangs and black shimmering bodies. They come, one after another, called to him by the invisible pull he has.
Without looking back at me, Kalix whispers. “Your turn.”
My lips curl upward. I step up, my shins meeting his back as I settle my hands on his shoulders. He sighs and reaches up, but I rise, not letting him touch me as I move my fingers to his hair. Darker than a raven’s wing and silkier than my spider’s thread, I weave my hands into the locks as I follow his command and I call my familiars to me as well.
Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of spiders dwell within these woods. Spiders so small that they’re nearly invisible to the naked eye. Spiders that can jump and fly. Spiders that burrow and hide. I signal to them all, entreating them to come to me. Some are curious and some are resistant, but they do. They come.
When Ruen and Theos return a short time later, it’s to find Kalix and I in the same position. My hands in his hair, his head tilted back against my abdomen, and our bodies surrounded by a sea of snakes and spiders.
So many threads linger in my mind—each of them shivering in terror and confusion. See not with your eyes. In one rush, I shove the image into my spiders where they rest upon Kalix’s serpents. The rush of my mind melding wreaks havoc on their smaller minds and the fierce army of spiders I’ve called to this place scatter at once, their bodies vibrating as they skitter over scales and tails, trying to escape what they see as a threat. It takes a moment for them to calm, but when they do and the brave ones chance to venture out from beneath their serpent brethren, I take a deep breath and perform the next part of my plan, hoping it will actually work.
I grip Kalix’s head hard and bend him backwards so that his face is pointing to the sky. A small snake circles one of my ankles, not yet sinking its little fangs into my skin, but warning me with its body that if I hurt him, it will retaliate. I can’t help but smile at that. Even in our loneliness, he and I—our insanity— we still have our little monsters to keep us company. To protect us.
Bending, I take Kalix’s lips with an untapped fury. Green eyes remain on mine as he opens his mouth and receives me without a hint of fear. His pupils pulse and then narrow, lengthening as the kiss draws out longer and longer. He reaches for me, his hand coming up to cup the back of my skull, holding me to him as the strands of my silver hair fall over one side of my face, blocking out Theos and Ruen’s confused faces.
Hear not with your ears. I repeat Makeda’s words like a mantra in my head. Over and over again until the words sink past my mind and into my bones and muscles, spreading power throughout my body. The tips of my fingers begin to tingle and I know the moment that Kalix feels it too as his fingers contract on the back of my head and he opens his lips wider.
All around us, his snakes writhe and move as if sensing the tumult of what I’m trying to do to him. Open for me, I practically beg in the silence as I lick at his lips and delve into his mouth with my tongue.
Breaths become scarce as I refuse to release him until I’ve made it through. Almost … there! At the first instance of an opening, I shove the image into Kalix’s mind. He jolts as the series of threads and strings collide with his own mind. Were I not holding him so tightly, he might have slipped completely off the edge.
What have you done to me, Little Thief? Kalix’s words in my mind aren’t angry, but curious and suspicious.
I’ll tell you later, I reply, releasing his mouth finally to gasp for air. For now, share that image with your serpents and command them to follow the trails.
Damn arrogant bastard doesn’t even seem winded, though his cheeks are redder than before and the tent in his trousers tells me he’s not completely unaffected. I find myself smug at that as he turns and gets to his feet, eyeing me.
I take a step back as I assume he gives his snakes the order, and our familiars scatter into the forest, slipping up trees and through the underbrush. Kalix moves forward and I take another careful step back. Our eyes are locked, and his chest rises and falls with slow precise breaths.
“What did you just do?” Ruen’s voice breaks the spell between us, stopping Kalix in his tracks.
I release a sigh of relief and turn towards him, but before I can open my mouth, a high-pitched squeal—like a screaming pig—sounds nearby. Fuck.
I dive for the trees, rushing forward as I hear the rough and unhidden sounds of bumbling legs in the woods. Breaking branches, crushed bushes, male and female laughter. None of it comes from behind me where I know the Darkhavens are following. My legs eat up the distance until I come crashing out of two trees into a clearing where a group of Mortal Gods wielding their weapons are cheering around the man from earlier, the one that had demanded a prize from Azai.
A wounded boar huffs where it rests on its side, and inside my mind a thread wavers—the silvery fabric of its strength growing dull, fluctuating with each breath the animal takes.
“Stop!” I call out, running forward. No one hears me as the man lifts his blade over the boar’s prone body. The closer I get, the more blood I see coating the animal’s side, matted into its fur. “Stop!” I try again as he lifts the sword higher.
He’s not going to stop, I realize in the next instant. Even if he does hear me, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know or realize what he’s doing. None of them do. They cannot see what I do.
As the sun hits the flat steel of his blade, crimson flashes over my vision. With a cry of outrage, I unleash the built-up wrath inside me, and in an instant, black smoke tears away the red haze and turns the rest into dust.
Screams echo back to me as I continue running towards the boar. The thread in my mind is not getting any better and I have mere moments to save them.
“What the—” From the shadows, Kalix surges past on my left, going straight for the Mortal God that had faced Azai. The darkness clears enough for me to dive over a few of his friends where they fell on the ground when my shadows seized the area.
Collapsing to my knees next to the creature, I put my hand over the deep cut in its side. Confused as they are, both Theos and Ruen are at my side. “What do you need?” Ruen demands.
“Water,” I say quickly. “Gauze. Something to wrap the wound.”
“It’s not going to stop bleeding, Dea,” Theos says, but Ruen doesn’t bother arguing. He’s gone in the next instant, likely to double back to a creek we’d jumped over to collect water—I don’t know how and I don’t have time to think about his methods as I lean down and press my ear to the boar’s smooth underbelly which is facing out to the side. So damn vulnerable.
I hush the creature when it whines. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, sensing a softly feminine presence within her. The thread in my head weakens, growing thinner. Her breaths are coming too fast, too irregularly. Ruen isn’t going to make it back in time. Tears burn the backs of my eyes.
“Kalix!” Theos’ bark is followed by his disappearance and I glance over to find that Kalix is holding the other Mortal God up by his throat.
“Did you not hear her tell you to stop?” Kalix demands, his face a mask of annoyance.
“Don’t kill him,” I bark out, earning a bit of that annoyance turned my way before he shakes his head.
“Put Maral down, Kalix,” Theos demands, and at least now I know the man’s name.
Glancing over my shoulder, I bite out a curse. They’re already gone. I catch sight of two of them—one being the girl who’d been wearing a blue tunic earlier—as they disappear into the trees.
Closing my palm over the wound and turning back to the boar, I hold my hand steady as blood surges out from between my fingers. She whines, so many emotions encompassed in that one sound that it nearly breaks my fucking heart. Fear. Confusion. Hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, bending closer as I stroke her soothingly.
Not sure what else to do, I press harder on her wound and focus on the split pieces of the flesh. There’s no willing them to knit back together; I am not Maeryn and that is not my gift. Instead, I press inside her, letting tendrils of my darkness ease into her body through the open wound. One by one, I find the hurts—the bruises, the cuts on her body—and I cover those areas with my shadows, deadening the senses. It’s temporary, but will at least take the pain away.
Almost immediately, the boar’s body sags as if it’d been waiting for such a thing. This time when she whines, the sound is more relieved and grateful than anything else.
When Ruen returns, he makes no sound. There’s no loud, bumbling crashing, just an empty patch of grass at my side one moment and a dark body on one bended knee in the next. “Here.” He holds out a canteen and when I frown at him in confusion, knowing damn well I hadn’t seen him carrying it earlier, he grins lightly. “I took it from one of the others,” he admits, answering my unspoken question.
I take it and upend the contents, dumping the water over the wound, trying to clear the blood away to see how bad the damage is.
“It’s bad.” I don’t need Ruen’s words to know that what he says is true, but somehow I’d hoped it wouldn’t be. The cut is too deep and almost as soon as we clean away the blood with water, more comes gushing out.
A thump disturbs my chaotic thoughts enough for me to drag my eyes away from the animal to see Maral on the ground, cursing as he twists and gets to his feet. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demands. “You think you can come up and take my kill? Go kill your own beast.”
“She is not a beast,” I snap.
Maral’s dark eyes turn towards me and then they roll. “Ugh,” he scoffs. “Don’t tell me you're some sort of animal lover. This is a Hunt .” He says the word as if it’s supposed to mean something to me. All it means is death to me.
Maral grunts and scowls at the four of us—five including the boar on the ground. I do not doubt that his next words are spoken only because his group abandoned him. “Fine then,” he snaps, holding his hands up and taking a step back, more specifically away from Kalix. “Keep the damn thing, but know that I will kill another. I will kill more than any of you before the Hunt is over.”
“What if they aren’t animals?” I demand. “What if they were like you or me?”
Maral looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Makeda had said it would happen. That no one would believe. She was right. He merely shakes his head at my questions and doesn't answer them as he moves to where his fallen sword lies and picks it up, returning it to his side before jogging off to rejoin his friends.
When he’s gone, Theos drifts closer. “Kiera?”
Biting down on my lower lip, I look back to the boar whose labored breathing is slowing with each passing second. “It’s dying, Kiera,” Ruen says. “You should have let him put the creature out of its misery.”
“It’s not a creature,” I say. “It’s not a beast.”
“What do you mean?” Theos asks as he comes up alongside me, going to his knees on the grass and dirt. Blood turns the green around us a rusty red color.
I swallow back the ache in my throat as the boar’s eyes look at me. There’s no hope in them. She knows she’s dying and that I can’t help her. All I can do is take away the pain, make her not feel it quite so much as she takes her last breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, the words a croak in my throat.
“What are you sorry for?” Ruen asks, but I don’t answer. The words weren’t for him anyway. They were for her.
With both hands pressed to her bleeding wound, I bend my forehead over the boar’s side and close my eyes, locking back the tears that wish to flood my cheeks. How can I make them see? How can I tell them in a way that they will believe? How can I make them understand?
The last part of Makeda’s oath to me echoes in my head.
Sense not with your flesh.
My eyes open. The pulses of blood from the wound have slowed to a trickle over my fingertips—as if it’s no longer flowing in response to a heart trying to beat past its capacity. I glance at the boar’s face, finding her eyes open and unseeing. Empty. I clench my jaw hard enough that I feel something crack and pain shoot through the bone beneath my ear.
She doesn’t change but continues to maintain the form beneath us. It pisses me off. This isn’t her. She isn’t an animal.
Sense not with your flesh.
I am no great warrior like Caedmon wants me to be. I am no emotionless assassin as Ophelia tried to make me. But I also can’t leave her like this either. I don’t know what I’m fucking doing when I let my shadows out again. They withdraw from her cooling body to wrap around her flesh.
Ruen and Theos get to their feet and back up when I compel the shadows to lift her in the air. I reach down and pluck the dagger at my waist free while leaving the two strapped on either side of my chest in place. Turning my palm over, I sense a collective silence fall over the clearing as I drag the tip of the weapon over my flesh, watching the well of crimson blood that appears in an instant.
The sound of wind ceases. The rustle of leaves, the chirping of actual animals and insects—it all goes quiet. Even the Darkhavens don’t seem to be breathing behind me as I hold out my offering to the shadows. They take it willingly, consuming my blood—sucking it into the darkness I have wrapped around the boar’s body. They move faster and faster, all hints of the animal inside hidden from view as they converge on the body.
My heart thuds wildly in my breast as I lower my hand. A single drop of blood falls to the dirt before the wound finishes knitting—far slower than it should. By the time it lands on the soil, the shadows are lowering the once animal back to the ground. I suck in a breath and call them back to me.
They disperse in an instant and reveal the truth that Maral wouldn’t understand or believe.
“By the Gods…” Theos’ whisper is horrified at the sight before him.
Booted feet move forward until all three of them are at my sides, staring down at the fresh image before them. Going down on one bent knee, I reach for the naked girl’s open eyes—the same color as her boar—and close them.
“This hunt is nothing more than a farce.” Though they know as much, I can’t help but speak the words that rise up from my throat. “We might be hunters in this realm, but we should never forget…” I lift my gaze to theirs, “how quickly the hunters become the hunted.”