Chapter Twenty-Eight
It seems like an eternity until the toxins finally start to flush from my system. My eyelids flutter open to flashes of light. I try to touch the back of my head where there’s still a dull throb, but my arms are tied. I can smell the metallic odor of blood, however . . . a lot of it. Mine?
My body jostles uncomfortably as I take stock of my position and realize I’m moving in a covered cart, with my hands and legs bound. I listen, the sound of horses accompanying the crunch of the cart wheels. A gag is tied over my mouth, but I inhale through my nose, scenting salt on the damp wind.
Painfully, I shift upward, peering through the gap in the back. A sparkling blue horizon greets me; we’re on a cliff, and I can hear the sound of gulls and the crash of waves far below. Where am I, and how did I get here in this wagon?
Confusion drains away to be replaced by fury.
Someone fucking took me! And hit me! And . . . I glance around the cart, panic rising. Laleh isn’t here.
Darrius! I scream mentally, half expecting the same barrier from earlier, but it isn’t there.
Suraya, where are you? His internal voice sounds panicked even as relief fills me. Indira came to me, told me what you said before you disappeared.
Not sure. I see the ocean. Someone captured me.
Did they hurt you?
I’m alive.
Rage crackles down the bond. I will find you.
Darrius had been right to worry. I had not expected a brazen abduction during the feast, when all acts of war are supposedly forbidden. And now, I’m without a weapon, trussed up like a goose, and my magic is restrained. I am completely exposed and vulnerable.
I wiggle toward the opening at the back and wince. Rolling from a moving cart is going to hurt—but better than the alternative. And it’s not like I haven’t done it before.
I grit my teeth, roll to the edge, and brace for pain.
“She’s awake,” a raspy voice says, as the wagon stops abruptly, but it’s low-pitched and distorted somehow.
“Already?” Now that deep voice I recognize. Masi?ta.
“I told you she’s powerful,” the disguised voice says. “Even basilisk venom won’t stay long in her system. You are lucky she’s magically cuffed.”
Basilisk venom! Gods, is Laleh alive? The venom might not harm me, but it will definitely kill her.
Footsteps approach and familiar green eyes assess me as she yanks the gag from my dry lips.
“No worse for wear,” Raissa Tabiti pronounces, and I want to kick her in her teeth.
So I do, jerking my legs out toward her. She ducks the strike and grins.
“Where’s Laleh?” I grit out. “What did you do with my friend?”
She ignores me. Dread pools in my stomach when Masi?ta joins her with a booming laugh. “The king will dismember you,” I snarl.
“The king is drunk and fucking my daughter,” he says smugly, and I suck in a breath. In our mental exchange, Darrius hadn’t sounded drunk or distracted; he’d sounded unhinged. “As it was supposed to be,” Masi?ta goes on.
“You need to hurry,” the other voice commands. “Then deliver her through the portal as agreed.”
Deliver me where? As agreed with whom? With a wild lurch, I fling myself off the edge of the cart to identify the speaker, groaning at the bite of stone, and peer around the side past the dozens of Karkad and Rakh warriors surrounding us on horseback.
But the only thing I see instead of who is speaking is empty space.
My simurgh roars inside of me as if she knows someone is hidden there.
An illusion!
“You’re a dead magi, whoever you are,” I shout loudly.
“Who’s going to kill me, Oryndhrian? You?” Ghostly laughter echoes on the wind as the presence dissipates. I frown. Why did that sound so familiar?
I have no time to figure it out, recoiling in horror as Masi?ta approaches.
I need to fight! I need to do something, anything!
I struggle wildly, fighting against my bindings.
Runes explode down my arms in a blinding explosion of light as my bracers flare, brutally suffocating my magic.
My simurgh shrieks her fury at being so starsdamned powerless.
Tabiti crouches, a fingertip trailing over the iridescent runes on my arm. “Beautiful. Too bad. The oracle advised your magic would have been useful against the rot. But it’s not as valuable as azdaha eggs or hatchlings. Our clans will ride the winds.”
Who is this fucking oracle? Laleh had mentioned the same name before she’d been poisoned. Who had promised them such an impossible prize? Is it the owner of the other voice?
“You will never be worthy of them—azdahas choose their riders, they know their hearts,” I say, tears of impotent rage spilling from the corners of my eyes. Unwilling to give up, I focus on surreptitiously working my thumb through the knot at my wrist. “This oracle is lying to you!”
An unholy roar echoes across the space, rattling my bones as a furious crimson azdaha smashes into the circle of Karkad and Rakh warriors, scattering them like pins. I can feel the seething vengeance of the rider on her back and a wild, hysterical laugh bubbles up inside of me.
My king is here.
The next thing I see is body parts rolling across the dusty ground, one head with sightless eyes staring up at the sky, right before it is devoured in a vengeful storm of shadows.
Boils and pustules cover another handful of men as Indira’s poison rains down.
I could fucking weep with relief. My frantic attempts to loosen my bonds renew.
Shouts of the dying pierce the air as the remaining warriors desperately start to fight, ice and fire magic exploding. Darrius is a swirling vortex of shadows, magic blasting from him, even as he compels the men to turn on one another before dispatching them with his onyx blade.
Tabiti screams, a blazing fireball forming between her hands.
“Darrius, look out!” I yell as the knots securing my hands finally slacken and I tackle the ones on my feet.
Darrius dodges the missile and counters with a vicious ice blast. A deadly smile blooms as the darkness swarms around him, sucking in every point of natural light. His shadows promise death.
“You stole from me,” he says in a multilayered voice that makes my insides quail, even though it’s not directed at me.
“You do not know what is at stake,” the raissa snarls. “The rot spreads to our herds. We had no choice.”
“They don’t care about that, their price was hatchlings, Dare,” I say. “Azdaha babies. They’re in danger!”
Indira screams with rage and immediately takes to the skies after the king gives her a nod. She must warn the other azdahas and protect her own precious clutch.
“Who?” Darrius says coldly, but Tabiti only laughs.
“The oracle foretells a new god, and soon, your reign will be at an end.”
His lips curl. “So be it.”
With a howl, she rushes toward him, her body engulfed in flames. The king doesn’t hesitate. He disappears into a column of smoke, and I watch with rapt horror as it—he—pours down her throat until she’s gasping and clutching at her neck.
By the maker . . .
Her eyes start to bulge, blackened blisters forming on her skin that bubble and expand, moving horrifically across her flesh.
And then she explodes, leaving Darrius covered in the remnants of her blood, organs, and shattered bits of bone.
I hear one of the few remaining men behind him vomit and the sound of horses galloping away. Rakh, if I had to guess.
Darrius cocks his head like a gore-covered fiend, silver hair scarlet and dripping. My heart pounds, but not with fear. He’s a monster to everyone but me.
“One traitor down,” he says softly. “One to go.”
The ties around my ankles loosen, but then my body whips sideways as Masi?ta grabs me like a rag doll, pressing his knife to my jugular. A hundred ice shards dance in the air around me, ready to pierce every vulnerable point. “Move and she bleeds.”
A bloody Darrius prowls closer, his face a dead mask, eyes empty like the abyss. “For every second of pain you cause her, I will exact a hundred times its measure from you.” Magic pulses from him, his voice hypnotic with compulsion. “You will release her and turn that blade upon yourself.”
Masi?ta barks a laugh, tilting his arm to show a rune carved into his skin. “My mind is guarded from manipulation.”
I blink in shock. Is that the work of the psionic magi, too?
“You will suffer, I promise you, for touching what is mine,” Darrius snarls, rage bleeding from him as his shadows form pointed spikes.
“And yet you have made no claim upon her,” Masi?ta says, lowering his head to drag his nose down my neck. “Your bond is unsealed.”
I have no doubt that Darrius can breach the walls around Masi?ta’s mind, but he’s careful now, unwilling to risk my safety. Dare, I tell him, my simurgh will protect me from the worst of it. I will survive. Do what you must.
But the king paces like a territorial animal, eyes locked on us, and I can feel the wrath emanating from him in malevolent waves.
That black gaze shimmers from ebony to gold and back again, evidence that the curse of the manticore is riding him hard.
If he changes to the beast, he will be without his magic.
Not defenseless—the manticore is lethal—but in that form, he will be an easier target.
His lips part and nostrils flare as he gulps air, striving for calm, but it’s not working.
His facial bones are sharpening, a feral look overtaking his expression.
Darrius, control.
I. Am. Trying. The growl in my head sounds savage.
Masi?ta snickers. “Ah, yes, I see it. The beast comes. I always thought that was a rumor. If I cut her, will that make you angrier?” The blade slices into my skin, blood dripping down my throat.
I stiffen and try to keep any expression of pain from my face, so it doesn’t send Darrius into a tailspin.
But when the knife wedges deeper, I can’t quite keep in my whimper.
“I will rip the limbs from your body and feed them to you,” a seething Darrius promises.