Chapter 32
Iwake to the crushing impact of a boot striking my ribs.
The kicking eventually ceases, and a gasping cough erupts from my chest, blasting blood and snow into the wind.
I’m lying several yards from a fire where a few dozen men sit laughing, watching, and cheering.
I’ve been stripped of my gambeson, my tunic wet and freezing to my skin.
I can’t see out of my right eye, my throat feels like two hands are clenching it, and my body aches like someone rolled me off the cliffs and let me crash at the bottom of the ravine.
Deep inside me, Neri rages in his cage, rattling my bones.
Another swift kick—this time to my stomach—followed by a stomp to the bend of my knee, sends fresh, hot pain radiating everywhere, enough that the misery nearly sends me back into unconsciousness. Still, I cling to awareness—with desperation.
Raina. She’s alone, and she will search for me.
I cannot let that happen.
“Finally coming to,” a deep voice says.
A booted foot nudges my side until I’m forced to roll over, collapsing on my back. I cry out. My leg is damaged, my knee possibly broken, and my body is weighed down. Above me, that same red sky looms while flurries swirl and descend.
A figure leans over me, obstructing the view. I blink away snow and tears to see him.
“You really should’ve killed me when you had the chance.” A cruel smile simmers on his lips.
I close my eyes and clamp them tight, if only to memorize the merciless regret coursing through me. I knew he was important—by his armor, his flag, his horse.
And still, I didn’t take the time to destroy him.
That long, braided gray hair holds the sparse remains of war paint, the vermilion lacquer washed away by snow. His armor is gone, but he wears the bronze leathers of his men and the stench of death.
When he squats beside me, I instinctively reach for the God Knife. Again, my body doesn’t move like I will it to, my hands awkward, my movements constricted.
“Looking for this?” He holds up my weapon, twisting his wrist as he scrutinizes the blade.
He cuts a sidelong look at me with eyes the color of a snowstorm.
“I dare you to try to take it from me. I’m not supposed to kill you until after I have the God Knife and the woman, but seeing what you did to my men, I’m feeling rather ruthless. ”
“If you saw what I can do,” I grit out, spitting blood at his feet, “then you should be terrified right now.”
He tosses his head back and laughs. “There’s nothing to fear. You’re bound, Collector.”
I feel it then, the cold weight wrapped around my neck, my wrists, my ankles. I drag a heavy hand up to touch my throat and trail my fingertips over the short length of iron there, pressing into my gullet. Tight cuffs cut into my wrists and ankles, linked together by chains.
Neri isn’t raging. He’s in misery thanks to the iron.
And I’m powerless.
“I know who you are, Un Drallag, and what’s inside you,” the man who must be General Vexx says. “The prince knows, too.”
“That’s impossible.” But obviously, it isn’t.
“You’d be amazed by the tales wraiths are willing to share of their homeland.
Like Un Drallag traveling into the Nether Reaches when he meant to journey to the Empyreal Fields, and coming out with a god weaved into his soul instead.
It took the wraith tasting you and entering your memory to be sure it was right about who you were.
It was three hundred years ago. The prince sensed something unusual on your lady friend, but once the wraith was certain about you being Un Drallag, it made sure the Prince of the East knew exactly what we were dealing with. The dead tell all, my friend.”
The Prince of the East knows about me. About Neri.
All because of a damned wraith.
The general leans close. “I wonder what stories you’ll reveal once you cross the Nether Reaches’ dark shores.
Because that’s where you’re going. You know that, I’m sure.
The prince has a plan, and it does not include your interference, nor does it include Neri being set free.
We need him back where he belongs. In the Shadow World.
Thankfully, he’s still caged, because you somehow survived the prince.
” He jerks up the side of my tunic. “Without any wounds, I might add.”
My mind sticks on two parts of what he just said. When the prince spoke to Raina about needing the thing he sensed on her back where it belongs, he wasn’t talking about the God Knife as I’d believed. He was talking about Neri. He sensed Neri all over Raina because of me.
Second…
“What plan?” Again, I spit blood onto the ground, my mouth beginning to refill instantly.
He smiles, like he knew I’d ask. “The plan for the prince to harness the magick at the City of Ruin. The gods’ remnants must be reunited with their bones.
We’ll resurrect them from the Shadow World and keep them contained, all while the prince siphons their power.
Their spirits can’t be mucking about all over Loria’s creation, or we’ll never capture them.
Which is why we must send Neri back to the Nether Reaches.
For now. There is a method to the prince’s strategy.
Also, we will soon have the Frost King, a way to weaken Fia Drumera.
The citadel will fall, the Prince of the East will claim the Grove of the Gods, and Tiressia’s broken empire will have one all-powerful ruler. ”
“One ruler with the power of Thamaos, Neri, Asha, and Urdin?” I say mockingly. “Are you so foolish as to think that this is possible? And even if it somehow is, that it’s wise?”
I figured the prince wanted to raise Thamaos from the dead, but not all of Tiressia’s gods, and certainly not because he thought he could rule them. How the fuck does the prince think he’s going to contain four gods? What an utterly ignorant notion.
“I’m no fool,” Vexx replies. “A fool would believe that Tiressia can thrive divided. The prince means to unify the lands.”
I spit blood again and force a laugh. “Or so he tells you. Power corrupts, and he’s already corrupted as it is. If he manages this, and I can’t imagine how he can, what do you think he will become without limits?”
After a weighted moment, the man stands, ignoring my last words.
“Get him up. Let’s find the woman and get this over with, once and for all.
” Only half-seeing, I spot the red-haired man—Rhonin—striding my way.
With the camp and Vexx at his back, he reaches into his collar and pulls something from behind his bronze leather jacket.
Something that dangles from a thick chain around his neck.
Our stares meet, and he winks.
An iron key.
“If this was a favor,” I whisper, “don’t ever help me again.”
Rhonin lets a smile tempt his mouth, but then he kills it and stuffs the key back to its hiding spot. He and a woman grab me beneath my arms and haul me to my feet.
Nearly choking from the iron band around my throat, I vomit on the snow. It’s impossible not to once the world tilts. I don’t know how many times Vexx kicked me or what he did to my knee, but he made certain that I wouldn’t forget him.
And I won’t.
Some warriors keep their seats near the fire while others take up swords or hatchets. A few reach for torches that lie tossed in a pile. Most of the pine knots have burned down to half their original size, but they’re the very ones the Eastlanders used in the vale. They’ve been conserving.
They set the torches alight in the campfire’s flames, hand one off to General Vexx, and a small band of us walk, Vexx leading the way. His tall, slender form moves like a phantom, his ashen hair whipping in the wind, blending into the wintry landscape.
If I survive this, I’ll have his head.
With Rhonin at my side, we make the trek in silence, save for the awful clangor of my chains.
The snow muffles the sound when I stumble, which is nearly every step, thanks to the sharp pain stabbing my knee.
My chains are burdensome, but I’m no god and thankfully feel no burning agony searing my skin.
There’s only an unsettling vibration in my chest, a trapped windstorm whirling around my heart.
I summon energy, my magick, anything, but the iron smothers Neri’s power to ashes and my magick along with it. After all these years, the two are so entwined that I can hardly tell them apart anymore.
There are eleven warriors and their general—if I don’t count Rhonin—headed to find Raina. I’ve no means to fight them. No recourse. And they know it. There isn’t an ounce of trepidation in their midst as I’m led deeper into the ravine toward the caves.
Eventually, the smell of woodsmoke tints the air. I force myself not to react, but it doesn’t matter. Vexx throws up a fist, nose to the wind, and we come to a halt.
I’m probably going to die soon, because I will never tell them where Raina is, and if they find her on their own, I will end my life trying to save her.
Vexx turns to me, his movements slow and stiff, his eyes hard and cold as he shines his flaming torch in my direction. “Call to her.”
The other Eastlanders face me, too.
I glare at their leader and scoff. “You might as well end me, because I refuse.”
Vexx stares for a long moment before closing the distance between us in a few long strides, until he’s mere inches from my face.
“Call to her. Or I will cut out your three-hundred-year-old tongue. And I’ll take my time, making you scream while you can.
Until your woman comes running because she hears your mindless misery. ”
“She can’t reply,” I tell him, my throat working against my binds. “She was born voiceless.”
He arches a brow. “I don’t need her to reply. I need her to show herself. I’ll take care of the rest.” He unsheathes the God Knife from his thigh and presses the flat of the bone blade to my cheek. “Now call her, or I’ll render you as silent as she.”
“Just kill me. It doesn’t matter how you threaten me. I will not be the reason you find her.”