67. Sybilla
Chapter 67
Sybilla
I woke to the smell of spiced cologne and smoke, feeling more sore than I’d ever experienced. Could I move?
I tried to run my hand over my face, but found my arm constricted in a sling. I winced. At least the grime of the arena was gone.
Someone had dressed me in a nightgown and tucked me into familiar divinely soft silk sheets.
I felt his presence.
Turning my head was painful. I did it anyway to watch Krait sleep in a chair beside our bed in Umber House.
He had cleaned himself up, too. There was a furrowed line in his brow as though he’d not left the battle in the pit behind him. My heart sank as I realized there was someone we had left behind in the amphitheater.
Visions of my silver-haired friend glowing, levitating, hit me. That was before…The next memory nearly made me choke.
“Krait,” I croaked out and pushed up onto my good elbow. I needed to hold him—needed to know he was really there.
His smoky, iron eyes snapped open, and the lines in his forehead softened. “You’re awake.”
“How long have I been out?” I asked. He rose and leaned over to place a glass of water to my lips, making me drink before he’d answer.
“A couple of days,” he finally said. He sounded as though those were the first words he’d spoken in just as many days. Knowing him, they might have been.
Tears ran before I could say anything more, and when I reached out and grabbed his shirt, he softened and slipped beneath the sheets to hold me. I clung to him with my good arm, not wanting to face the day, not wanting to understand the gravity of what had occurred, not wanting to hear what, or who, else we may have lost.
As though sensing my concern, he smoothed the curls away from my temple. “Everyone else made it out.”
“Everyone else is safe?”
He nodded, but his expression seemed guarded.
I shoved my face into the space between his neck and shoulder, breathing him in. We lived, so many did not. “He killed them all ...All the civilians of Sahlmkar.”
He hummed sadly. “They will be memorialized. The people of Sahlmkar long ago promised themselves to Death’s bidding...As I told you, they were not bad people. They placed their faith in a cruel Origin.”
I sobbed into his shoulder and said through the tears, “I tried to get to Ryn. I should have gotten there quicker. I could have stopped him.” The image of my friend’s body turning to dust made my stomach twist and nausea build. During our last interaction, we’d been short with each other. I’d taken that time for granted.
He squeezed me tighter and kissed me on the top of my head. “Don’t do that. There is only one person to blame.”
Meeting his gaze, I whispered, “Is Caym gone?”
Krait offered me a sad smile. “Yes. For now. It seems you aren’t so shit with a sword anymore.”
Choking back a weak laugh, I shook my head and said, “I got lucky.”
Isleen’s words haunted me. Stop. Not kill. How would the Death Origin come to rise again? It couldn’t be predicted by any prophecy. We’d reached the end of those pages unless another scribe stepped forward.
I winced against the pain in my ribs.
His jaw tightened as he ran a hand through my hair and gently brushed my temple with his lips. His eyes stayed closed, and he rested his forehead against mine. “You did get lucky. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking failure wasn’t an option. I saw a way to stop Caym from taking this city, and others, and that seemed worth dying for. Lymrasi said at all costs.”
He shook his head against my forehead. I raised my good arm to take a fistful of his hair and brought his lips to mine in feverish gluttony. Having him here with me was the only thing tethering me to this reality—the one where Death had risen, where I’d stopped him, where we’d lost a friend and had nearly lost another city.
He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue across my lower lip, as though he too was drinking in the moment. Humming with relief, I grasped the back of his neck, feeling him, anchoring to him.
When he broke for air, my cheeks tingled from the rub of his stubble. He commanded, “Never do that again.”
“Kiss you?” I retorted.
He let a half-hearted growl build in his throat. “No, risk your life. I won’t have it.”
I spun the wooden ring on my left hand, and answered, “That is not a promise I can make. You fight, I fight.”
He grunted in response, and I claimed his mouth once more.
He broke to say, “You’ll never let me win one, will you?” For once, he didn’t seem annoyed about it.
My heart swelled. I’d happily fight with and for him until death parted us. I couldn’t imagine living what remained of my life any other way.
“I may forever be unwilling to give you the higher ground, but I’d be happy to face a hundred more battles so long as at the end you are by my side.”
His lips turned up. “I love you. More than I ever thought myself capable of loving again.”
Letting my hand rise to meet his cheek, I offered him a weak smirk. “I know.”
Krait tried to tell me I was too injured to go down to the dining hall.
He knew better. I glared at him in a way that made him let out a deflated sigh.
Wyeth had done great work stitching my head and then had used Source power to heal as many of my injuries as she could. To avoid scarring, she’d recommended not healing everything all the way and letting my wounds scab over.
She’d cast a charm to speed the healing of my broken arm. Sources, the bone rapidly growing back together hurt.
I dressed in my new favorite cream-colored linen dress and woven-leather mules. Krait wore an equally light tunic and breeches. Though he was heavily armed with his broadsword strapped across his back, two daggers poking out from each of his boots and another dagger holstered on his belt.
He still seemed tense despite there not being an immediate threat. Krait sported dark circles below his eyes, and the wrinkle had returned to his brow line.
Asterie was the first person we came across in the halls—Vangard trailed at her heel, panting. Her eyes lit up when they landed on us. She smiled. “You’re awake, Sybilla.”
“I am—if you can call this awake. ” I reached out and scratched Van between his curved horns. He kicked up one back leg. “Where is everyone?”
“Most are gathering for tea.”
“Who is most?”
“Well, all but Elsie. She sent a note down that she would not be joining us for breakfast. And Emmerick told us that Firose was not found after the fall of the amphitheater. She is presumed dead. I cannot pretend that I am not glad we do not need to face her.”
There was a pang of sadness in Asterie’s voice as she spoke of her former mentor. I could feel that she longed for closure, but she knew a reunion between Firose and Fenris outside of the chaos of that arena would have been catastrophic.
My thoughts exactly—hence why we hadn’t originally told them she had lived.
“Never presume,” I warned. “We’ve done that once before with her. The woman is like a roach—she just never seems to die.” Callous as it sounded, I still couldn’t separate the good and bad in the Fire-wielding enchantress. The damage she’d inflicted had scarred the realms too deeply.
“You spoke with Em? He’s well?” I asked her and noticed Krait’s grasp on my hand tightened.
Asterie’s face fell, and she looked uncomfortable.
“He hasn’t told her.” Asterie was still shit at warding her thoughts.
My head snapped toward Krait. I spat out, “What haven’t you told me?”
“We have temporarily placed him back in the holding cell for monitoring,” Krait answered. I pulled my hand out of his, ready to huff a response but he spoke again. “Sybilla, he was one of Caym’s envoys. Destroying the Death Origin’s true form may not have cut those ties. Caym has acted without a body before.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I snapped. “It is me he’s after…”
Krait’s jaw stiffened. He wanted to argue—I could tell by the hard lines on his face. Why did he have to look so damned attractive when he grew angry with me?
Caym’s other envoys were dead, and he had been within his true form when I killed him…he couldn’t still have Emmerick.
He will rise once more. But do as you can to delay him until your child has all the relics.
Remembering Isleen’s words, I asked, “Where have Lymrasi and her children gone?”
I’d tell him later of meeting my ancestors—of my mother’s help. There was too much to unravel now.
“They were creatures of Caym’s creation—they, too, were free as soon as you struck his heart.”
My pulse quickened, and I shook my head. I needed to understand so much more from Isleen. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around what had happened in that cavern.
“I want to speak with Emmerick.”
“I go in alone,” I demanded. Krait glared—it was a definite filet me expression. “Stay right outside.”
He growled, “If he makes one wrong move against you—”
“Then I can handle myself. Keep your Shadows to yourself, husband dearest. Marriages can be easily annulled if not consummated.” I laid a hand on his chest and rose to my tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips.
Krait softened against me and pushed a stray curl behind my ear. “That would be a hard technicality to hold up.”
He reluctantly stepped back, allowing me to open the door to the stairway. It surprised me that he hadn’t fought harder to come with me.
Guards led me down the dank-smelling stairs to the cell. Emmerick sat against the wall, staring down at the floor. He wore a fresh tunic; his stubble had grown out but his face was clean, wounds tended to.
“Leave us,” I instructed the guards after they let me into the cell.
Em wasn’t wearing binding cuffs. I found that a promising sign that Krait was only holding him as a precaution. Untouched, a tray of food and water was on his cot.
“Em.”
He looked up. I crossed the cell and crouched beside him.
I swallowed hard, fighting back tears, at a loss for what to say. His expression looked haunted—jaw clenched and stare dull.
He looked at me with shaking hands pressed to the stone floor. The jovial boy I’d once loved had hardened into someone I didn’t recognize.
I reached out and grabbed one of his hands. “It won’t ever be the same, will it?” I asked with visions dancing in the back of my mind of tree forts and the hunt for squirrels in the woods, our first kiss when he was a stable boy and all the firsts after that.
“No, it won’t,” he said, his voice full of unspoken sorrow. “But my hope is that maybe, someday, it will all make sense why.”
I’d given all of my heart to Krait, but I was certain that a piece of it had been carved out and gifted to Emmerick long before. That piece would always care whether he was well, safe and happy.
“I’ll get you out of here. I am going to skewer him for putting you down here again,” I ground out.
Emmerick met my gaze with a sad smile. “Syb, I need you to listen to him. I know you—you aren’t going to like what he tells you. You aren’t going to like your hand being forced.”
I bristled.
His stare pleaded with me. Then my dearest friend stiffened. His grip on my hand grew tight, and I gasped with a wince.
“He’s coming…” Em choked out. “Sybilla…You need to get out of here.”
Blood pumped in my ears. When I met his gaze again, his face was contorted into a cruel scowl that was not Em’s. His eyes gleamed that awful shade of green.
I tried to pull away, but he held onto my hand with crushing strength. Emmerick stood abruptly. He pulled me up with him and spun me to press my front against the wall.
“Did you truly think killing one part of me would stop me, Isleen? You’ll need to kill this one too, or I’ll simply rise again from the ashes.”
Straining against his grip, I shouted, “Guards!”
“You can’t, can you? I knew you wouldn’t be able to see this one fall.”
“Guards!” I screamed.
His hands slipped around my throat. I heard the clatter of armor, but before they arrived, Shadows pried the fingers from my throat. Krait had Shadowed in, and he pulled Emmerick’s possessed body away from me.
“Cuff him now,” he told the guards, who had finally reached the cell. Now? Why not before? When Krait’s eyes met mine, the same sadness lingered there that I’d seen at the top of the stairs, which made me pause.
He’d known.
“You needed me to see it,” I said through clenched teeth, and Krait nodded, a flash of shame crossing his features.
“I’d planned to be quicker to Shadow in—I’m sorry.”
I could kill him.
That seemed to be how my life would be with the King of the Sahlms—in a constant flux between wanting to kiss or kill him. Or both.
“We need to use the Sethe curse,” Krait said as the guards bound Emmerick’s wrists. Em slumped down against the wall, subdued again. Panting, he stared at the ground before he drew in a deep breath, warm brown gaze returning.
“No. The cuffs can keep Caym at bay,” I argued. But even I knew that was a risky plan. Cuffs could be removed.
Emmerick avoided making eye contact with me and said through a heavy breath, “He’s right, Sybilla. I am not safe for this world. Keeping me alive at all poses a risk. Darvanda offers the mercy to let me live. The curse will give you more time—and if, in the end, it is the only means to end Death’s reign, then you kill me.”
Our backs were against the wall, and all the Sethe curse gave us was delayed inevitability.
“How long?” I asked them, hating that it seemed like they were teaming up against me. The two men who cared about me most had discussed this—they’d gone behind my back while I was incapacitated.
“We agreed on twenty-five years,” Krait said, and Emmerick swallowed hard with a nod.
“Syb, this is the right decision—you know it. I’ve left a letter with all my requests for while I’m asleep. A letter for my parents too. I don’t want them to have to say goodbyes.”
I slumped in defeat. Twenty-five years of sleep.
Hopefully it was enough time to search for a way to wake Emmerick from the curse, to raise a child, and to find the relics needed to end Caym for good.
We had so much damned work to do.
Death would not take me. He would not keep Emmerick either.
“Fine,” I agreed. “But I have conditions.”