103. Rorax
“Enna just got back to camp with her chrysalis, alive and all in one piece.”
Rorax blinked away thoughts of golden panther eyes, her shoulders sagging in relief as Milla crossed through the Healers’ tent. She sat next to where Rorax was perched on the edge of a cot, sitting opposite an unconscious Jia. The healers were carefully stitching the skin together where the long claw marks that had raked through Jia’s side.
Milla watched the healer for a moment before turning her body to Rorax. “Rorax, that was the most reckless thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been friends with Ayres and Cannon for over 500 years.”
The reminder of Ayres was unwelcome and painful, but a slow, proud smirk found its way across Rorax’s mouth anyway.
“I”m sorry about what Ayres did, Rorax. Truly. We wanted to tell you who he was but . . .”
Rorax looked up at Milla and they stared at each other for a long moment. Rorax studied the lines of regret and sorrow etched in Milla’s face, before nodding slowly. “I believe you.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to forgive us?”
“I think I can forgive you, Cannon, and Piers. But Ayres . . .” Rorax’s stomach curled as she ran her fingers over the leather where the horizontal scar was on her upper arm where Ayres’s Blood Oath was. “I don’t know.”
Milla shifted forward in her seat. “It’s dangerous for us to tell anyone who he is. If that information ever gets into the wrong hands, they could use it— use him—as a weapon.”
“I understand, but Ayres and I . . . after we . . .” Rorax swallowed a painful lump in her throat. “After everything, he didn’t trust me. He felt like he had to force me into a Blood Oath.”
“And that upsets you? Why?”
“Because I don’t know what else I can do to prove to him that I’ve changed. That I’m not the Pup. I don’t want to have to die for him, again, for him to feel like he can trust me.”
Milla studied her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry, Rorax. He trusts you. He does.”
“Not enough.” Rorax gritted her teeth and rubbed her thumb furiously over her ring, wishing she could have Glimr back. She felt on edge. Milla had thrust the Black Box into Rorax’s hands the minute they arrived back at camp, and Rorax had grudgingly slid Glimr into it, suddenly feeling naked. Isgra would be fine; she had that blue inferno that always raged just under her skin. But Stella? Briar? The gods would decide if they survived or not.
“She’s all done,” one of Tressa’s underlings said. “Tell her to be careful with her stitches.”
Rorax got up and sat next to Jia, gently shaking her shoulder.
Jia’s eyes peeled open, and she groaned. “Gods, I feel like death.”
Rorax’s laugh was tense, but something in her chest eased as Jia pushed herself up.
The three of them left the Healer’s tent and moved to a waiting tent. Enna, Elios, and Kiniera took up three out of the ten chairs that had been set up in a half circle in the middle.
Enna looked up at Rorax with bright eyes and a smile. “You survived!”
“Barely,” Kiniera smirked. “Rorax asked the King of the Felidra for a ride on his back.”
Enna and Elios’s jaws dropped open at the same time, and Enna’s eyes went huge. “You’re serious?”
Kiniera snickered and nodded her head. “He gave her one, too.”
“I picked the wrong chrysalis,” Rorax said, sliding into one of the chairs.
Jia gingerly slid into the chair next to Rorax. Milla sat in front of Rorax, leaning her back into Rorax’s knees as she looked over her shoulder at her with a hopeful, but hesitant look on her face. “Braid my hair please, Rorax?”
“I still have blood on my hands,” Rorax warned, but Milla waved her off.
“It will blend right in.”
Rorax snorted, and with only a moment’s hesitation she got to work, sectioning out Milla’s long wine-colored strands.
“Do you miss him?” Milla asked.
Rorax’s fingers froze in midair, and Milla peaked over her shoulder to offer Rorax a small smile.
Rorax went back to braiding. “Ye-Jun and I decided to be just friends a long time ago, Milla. You can bed him if you’d like. Just know that eventually I might hear every detail of your sex life in excruciating detail.”
Milla reached over and pinched Rorax’s leg. “Ayres, Ror, I meant Ayres. You might as well not try and deny it. You have been moping for over a fortnight now.”
Rorax opened her mouth to lie, when Jia—casually cleaning her nails in the chair on Rorax’s left—piped up, “She wore the ribbon he gave her in her hair today.”
Milla and Enna laughed out loud, and Rorax scowled.
Jia just smirked, not bothering to look up from her knife.
“It doesn’t matter if I miss him or not. Until he removes the Blood Oath, he is dead to me,” Rorax snapped, feeling defensive.
That shut them up. Everyone was quiet for a moment, with nothing but the sound of silky strands sliding over each other between Rorax’s capable fingers, until Milla asked, “Is being connected to him really that horrible, Ror?’
“It was against my will, so yes, it’s that horrible.” Her words were bitter and angry, and the familiar tumultuous feeling she always got when she thought about the Blood Oath made her stomach roil. She wanted Ayres, he had been her friend, and now . . . now it felt like everything they had built was nothing more than smoldering ruins.
She didn’t have time to lament it more.
Furious, lethal heat flashed up Rorax’s back and seeped into her chest. Rorax’s head jerked up to see Enna staring at her, her usually serene features twisted up in fury.
“Milla,” Rorax clipped. “Milla. An influx.”
Milla took one look at Rorax’s face, before scrambling to her feet and shrieking, “GUARDS!”
Rorax slowly stood, crouching forward to lean on the balls of her feet, needing to throw herself, needing to wrap her hands around Enna’s pretty, little throat to squeeze the life out of it, when Jia”s body slammed her to the ground.
Jia rolled, but Rorax rolled harder and threw a punch and Jia’s lip split open.
“Fuck off, Ror,” Jia hissed as blood started streaming down her chin.
Jia head-butted Rorax, narrowly missing her nose.
Rorax raised her hand to punch again, but her hand was seized and wrenched back behind her back. Rorax struggled as Milla dragged her backwards off Jia, but Jia lifted herself off the ground and threw herself at Ror’s other arm, latching on. Milla and Jia stretched her out, pulling her in a tug of war. They held her like this, immobile with her arms stretched, like a little puppet on their strings, dodging Rorax’s attempts to lash out with her teeth or her feet until Rorax felt the anger receding back into her mind.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she relaxed.
“You back?” Jia asked.
Rorax nodded at her friend, breathing hard. “I’m back.”
“Good.” Jia quickly dropped her arm and gingerly fingered her side. “Hell, you popped one of my stitches.”
“I’m sorry,” Rorax said.
Milla dropped her other arm and almost soon as the anger left, worry sunk in.
“Where is Enna?”
Milla jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Kiniera has her iced in the tent.”
Rorax and Jia shared an amused look.
They went back to the tent to find Enna now sporting a split lip where Kiniera had had to elbow her in the face. Her clothes were sopping wet, and Rorax grinned.
“Did she pin you in an ice cube?” Jia asked, grinning.
Enna”s face turned sour. “I was a solid block of ice all the way up to my neck.”
Jia and Rorax both chuckled, feeling her pain.
The smile slowly faded from Rorax’s face. “I wonder who just died.”
Jia and Kiniera didn’t look bothered, but Enna’s expression went bleak. “I hope it’s not Briar.”
Kiniera left the tent to see what she could find out from the others, and as they waited to hear more, Rorax paced at the mouth of the tent, praying, even though she didn’t know who she was praying for.
Rorax didn’t know and couldn’t decide who would be worse.
Isgra was her best friend”s sister, her last tie to Volla, no matter how much Isgra hated her. Briar was her friend. Gods, she prayed it was Stella.
Suddenly, the tent flap was ripped open, and Kiniera stood in the opening, her face grave. “It’s Briar. She is in the medical tent. She was hit. She’s . . . she didn’t make it, Rorax.”
Rorax pushed past Kiniera and ran. She ran until she threw open the tent flap, and there she was. Briar. Her skin cold and gray, a garish contrast to the red blood crusted thickly around a vicious laceration on her throat.
Rorax didn’t even make it all the way to Briar’s body before her muscles denied her and she fell to her knees in the middle of the tent.
As she stared at the body, her breath came faster and faster. Her mind started to buzz as agony and anger crawled up her chest, burning inside her lungs, inside of her chest, and up her throat until she couldn’t contain it anymore. More heat and anger and power thrust through her.
She could almost hear it as the barrier in her mind cracked. The wall that had been holding her magick back could no longer contain her.
Rorax threw her head back and screamed, trying to relieve the pressure and the heat in her chest, and like a dam holding a lake that had burst, her magick ignited. Flames, a column of pure, hot fire spewed out of her mouth. It felt like a volcano had erupted inside of her and all she could do was throw her head back and let it flow.
More, more, more. She wanted it to consume her.
The column grew, twisting and breathing and growing hotter in a kaleidoscope of different colored flames as they rose to the ceiling of the tent threatening to set it on fire.
More, more, more, more, more.
She felt another influx hit through her body and her scream intensified. She was going to burn up, she was going to burn everything up, and gods above she wanted it. She wanted it to hurt, to scourge away every shred of pain and regret and failure that was still inside her. She wanted to burn everything; she wanted to be hollowed out and emptied of everything so she could start again, try again.
Rorax stayed there on her knees, urging her flames hotter and bigger until something in the back of her head twinged in a familiar complaint, but she did not stop.
Sweat poured down her spine, but she did not stop.
She didn’t stop until something cold and hard smacked into her temple, and she was forced to tumble into the darkness.