60. A Message
Chapter 60
A Message
19 th Day of the Blood Moon
West of Achyron’s Keep – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
“I found him following you after the executions.” Belina stood with her arms folded, a man kneeling at her feet with a rope tied around his throat and tethered to the trunk of a thin tree. He was awake, but barely, his head lolling. “Waited a while, watched him. Had a little conversation.”
Dayne looked down at the man, arms cleaved at the wrists, the wounds cauterised, red and raw. “Why does he have no hands?”
“I cut off one when he reached for his knife. And then… well, have you ever tried to put manacles on a one-handed man? Not easy. Impossible some might say.”
“That doesn’t explain the second hand.”
“If you think about it…”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Well, if I left the other hand, he could have just untied himself. I had no choice.”
Dayne pinched the bridge of his nose. “There were so many choices.”
“Look. You weren’t there. I made a decision, and I stand by it. None of that is important right now.” Belina knelt beside the man and patted his cheek. “Tell him why you were following him.”
The man grunted. “I was… I… I was sent by High Lord Loren.”
“For what purpose? To kill me while I slept?”
“No.” The man leaned his head back. “He wants you to meet him. He says if you’re not at the bank of the River Makeer tomorrow, by sunset, he will kill your brother.”
“Baren?” Dayne looked from Mera to Belina. “He’s lying. Baren is in the North. He’s in Berona.”
“No.” The man pushed himself backwards and up against the tree. “He’s not.”
“How can you expect?—”
“He’s not lying, Dayne.” Belina stared into Dayne’s eyes in a way she rarely did, and Dayne’s heart sank. She swung a small cloth sack around from her side and reached in to produce what looked to be something akin to a thick piece of parchment, its edges rough and jagged. “When I found him, he was carrying this.”
Belina reached out her hand, letting the parchment catch the moonlight. The sigil of House Ateres was marked in black ink across the centre. It was only when Dayne reached out to touch it that he realised what the parchment truly was: a patch of flesh carved from Baren’s chest where the sigil had been tattooed over his heart.
Dayne took the piece of carved flesh into his hands, the blood long dried. He drew in slow breaths, then knelt before the handless messenger. “Is my brother alive?”
The man nodded. “I only saw him the once, right before I left. That was three days ago. He was alive then.”
Dayne swallowed hard. “And Loren wants me to meet him at the River Makeer?”
“By the old fort on the east bank. Alone.”
Dayne nodded slowly. “Is this how you thought this night would go? Did you think you could just walk into this camp carrying flesh from my brother’s chest, wave it in my face, and walk away?”
“I’m just a messenger. You can’t?—”
“I can’t what? You are no messenger. A messenger comes with words. You come with a piece of my younger brother and a tongue painted with threats. No.” Dayne stood, turned to Belina, grabbed a knife from her belt, then dropped back down and drove the blade into the man’s stomach. The man gasped and grabbed at the blade with his arms, the blood flowing around the steel. “You will die here, slowly. You will feel the pain my brother felt as this sigil was carved from his chest. I have no mercy for the likes of you.”
As Dayne stood once more, Mera grabbed him by the shoulders. “You’re not going.”
“He’s my brother, Mera. I won’t leave him there.”
“It’s a trap. Loren is just going to kill you on sight.”
“Of course it’s a trap. But no.” Dayne shook his head. “Loren gains nothing from that. If he kills me, this army will march on Achyron’s Keep. Thousands will die. Loren, for all that he is, doesn’t want more Valtarans dead. He wants control. That’s what he’s always wanted. He knows I will come for Baren. He will keep me alive to use me, to force Alina to stand down.”
“Then why would you do exactly what he wants? Dayne, this is madness.”
“Because Loren thinks he’s smarter than he is. He thinks he knows me, and he doesn’t. He has no idea what I am.”
“Dayne—”
“No.” Dayne rested one hand on Mera’s shoulder, the other on her belly. “I will never leave my family again. Never. And I refuse to allow my child to live a life like we did. It’s all different now, Mera. There is no more room for mercy, no more room for mistakes.” Dayne moved in closer and stared into Mera’s eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“With my life.”
Alina leaned on the table at the back of the command tent, her thumbs tucked inside her fists. Her jaw trembled. Savrin and Olivian stood at her side, while Mera and Belina were on the opposite side of the table.
“And you just let him go?” She drew a sharp breath through her nose, slowly out through her mouth. “Just let him walk away…”
“His mind was set, Alina. You know what Dayne is like.”
“How could you let him go?” Alina hadn’t felt this way since she was a girl, since she’d realised Dayne was gone and wasn’t coming back. She hated it to her core.
“Alina—”
“Loren destroyed my family! He hung my parents’ bodies on hooks until the birds picked the bones clean. And now he will take Dayne too?”
Alina roared, unleashing the fury within her heart. She slammed her fists into the table, cracking the wood, then swept her hands across the surface, knocking everything to the ground, paper flapping in the air, stone markers thumping into the dirt. And when it all settled, she just stood there, her throat tight, each breath shaking. “He is my brother, Mera. I cannot lose him again. I only just got him back. We only just got him back. And you let him walk right into Loren’s hands like the fucking idiot he is? For what? For Baren? No. I will not allow it. That monster cannot have any more of the people I love.”
“Alina, where are you going?” Mera grabbed Alina’s arm as she made to storm from the tent.
“I’m taking Rynvar to the skies, and I’m going to stop my brother before he gets himself killed. If we’re going to die, we’re going to do it side by side, fighting.” She held Mera’s gaze. “I will not let him die alone with Loren standing over him. He’s spent too long alone. I will not allow it.”
Alina turned back to towards the tent flap, finding Belina Louna standing between her and the exit.
“You will not lose him,” the woman said, her stare unflinching.
“And what do you know? Belina Louna . You are not Valtaran. You are not of this House. Why are you even here?” As soon as the words had left her lips, Alina regretted them. Her anger was not at this woman, or at Dayne, but at the world, at the gods and whatever unseen powers deigned to rip away everything and everyone she loved.
Belina remained silent for a few heartbeats, then spoke with as soft a voice as Alina had ever heard. “I know that there is nothing in this world that means more to Dayne than his family – than you and Mera and Baren. You and I do not know each other well, but I know that when you’re angry, you tuck your thumbs into your fists.”
Alina looked down at her hands and yanked her thumbs free.
“I know that your favourite smell is that of freshly peeled orange. I know that when you were a child, you wore a sapphire pendant around your neck that your mother gave you. I know that you used to climb the trees at the farm in Myrefall and then realise you couldn’t climb back down, and your father would send Dayne to get you. I know that you had seen twelve summers when your mother and father were killed.”
Belina stepped past her, bent down, and collected the loose sheets of parchment and a small map from the floor, laying them on the table.
“I know all these things because Dayne never stopped talking about you. For twelve years, all I heard was ‘Alina, Mera, Baren. Alina, Mera, Baren.’ He loves you with a ferocity I’ve never seen in my life. He loves you in a way I had always wished my family would have loved me. And that love is what made me love him. Now, seeing as I know so much about you, let me tell you a little bit about me.
“I was brought here from Narvona as a child by my father. My father who murdered my mother. My father who trained me to kill from the moment I could hold a knife. He abused me, he beat me, he tortured me, all to make me ‘stronger’. He sold my life to the Hand when I was twelve. I was raised in blood, to kill without question, to not be human, but to be a tool, a weapon. Dayne broke me free of that, and he showed me a kindness I didn’t deserve. And I would kill the gods themselves if it meant protecting him. I believe all three of us have that in common.”
Alina held her tears at bay, clenched her jaw, and shook her head softly. “All this and you let him walk to his death?”
“That man never does anything without a plan.”
“And what is this plan of his, as he walks right into Loren’s jaws?”
“Us.” Belina looked from Mera to Alina. “The three of us. The three people who would give anything and everything to keep him alive. He wants you to assault the keep.”
“Oh, that’s all. And how do we go about doing that? Because last I checked, we were still outnumbered by nearly twenty thousand and Aeson is yet to arrive with his promised reinforcements.”
“It will take Dayne at least a day to reach the river and another two for him to make the journey to Achyron’s Keep. Loren will attempt to use Dayne as leverage to force your surrender. Once he does, we can drag out negotiations to buy time. With any luck, Aeson will arrive before we have need to attack.”
“Luck is neither something we have much of nor something I wish to rely on. We are now in the same situation we have been for weeks, but without Dayne at our side.”
“No, we are not. Now we have Dayne on the inside and the warriors in your army have something very real to fight for. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but your people love him.”
Alina closed her eyes, stood back, and put her face into her hands. “Why does he do this to me?”
It wasn’t Belina who spoke next, but Mera. “Because he is Dayne Ateres. Because, for better or worse, there is no world in which he would leave his brother in the hands of the man who killed your parents. And no matter what you say, no matter how much anger you feel in your veins, neither would you. Do you think I wanted to let him go? You’re not the only one who waited all those years for him to come home, thinking he was dead, thinking… He has a thousand flaws, but he is my world, Alina. My whole world . The father of my child, the love of my life. I would give every drop of blood in my veins just to hear his voice one last time. Now are you going to help me knock down the walls of Achyron’s Keep, or will I have to take the Wyndarii and do it myself?”
Alina’s breath caught in her throat. “Father of your child?”
Mera’s expression softened, and she held up her left hand. For a moment Alina had no idea what the woman was trying to show her, until she saw the sparkle of an orange gemstone on her finger.
“Mera…” Alina took Mera’s hand into her own. A beautiful, ornate golden ring sat on her finger, with engravings of wyverns twisting about it. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is. Now, can we please go and get my idiot husband before he gets himself killed?”
Alina nodded slowly. “If it were any of us in there, Dayne would sack the keep on his own. It was always going to come to this.” She drew a long breath and exhaled sharply. “Let’s burn it down. Let’s burn the whole thing to the ground.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d say that.” Belina turned and made to slip out the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Me? I’m going with Dayne.”
“What?”
“It will take you time to break camp and get the army marching. If I leave now, I can catch up with him.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“Kill anyone or anything that tries to harm him. And with any luck, we can open the gates from the inside. That might make the siege a little easier. It’s all part of the plan.”
“And how will we know when you’re in position?”
“Oh, you’ll know.”
“No, we’re not playing that game. How will we know?”
“Fuck. I’ll set something on fire. Something big.”