Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“Temper, temper. Perhaps, but not before I carve through her pretty neck,” my captor taunts. “Choose wisely, Your Majesty.”
I exhale. My simurgh can’t save me from a severed neck, but maybe I can hold Masi?ta off long enough for the king to strike. I’m no stranger to pain. I gather my magic, watching as Darrius splits into six identical versions of himself, surrounding us.
“Kill him!” Masi?ta bellows to his remaining men, at least the ones from Karkad who haven’t fled yet.
The copies of Darrius might be illusions, but it’s a testament to his vast wellspring of power that they are also able to wield magic.
I’ve never seen anything like it as they take out the remaining Karkad warriors in a combined attack that is almost too quick to watch.
Then they surround us in a menacing semicircle, looking so alike that I’m not sure at first glance which is the real king.
“Stay back or she dies!” Masi?ta bellows, panic lacing his tone as if he knows there’s no way out for him.
Fingers tighten at my throat, and I conjure a magical shield inside me, turning my skin diamond hard.
It won’t last because of the cuffs, but it’s something.
Masi?ta snarls and squeezes harder as he drags me backward toward the cliff’s edge.
More ice spears form around me in every direction.
I brace. Those are going to fucking hurt.
The standoff is interrupted as a popping noise bursts through the air and the smell of ash and ozone of a portal fills my nostrils. I frown when a nearby small army appears out of nowhere in my peripheral vision. But whose?
Don’t the wards prevent portals into Everlea? Then again, Laleh came through as well—so maybe the wards are somehow vulnerable?
“Took you fucking long enough,” Masi?ta crows.
I turn, the movement of my wounded throat making me yelp. And freeze as a familiar face comes into view. Gladness fills me to see my best friend alive and well, even though she, too, had been poisoned with the basilisk venom.
Laleh doesn’t look too sickened, though her complexion is oddly waxy and those purplish lines beneath her eyes are evident in her ashen skin.
Possibly, a reaction to the venom. I’m so busy checking her for signs of injury, deliriously grateful that she survived, that it takes me a moment to notice the imposing, gorgeous man standing beside her.
A man with a golden crown on his dark hair.
A rush of unexpected feelings invades my chest, tightening it impossibly.
So much love . . . and so much heartbreak.
I wheeze a breath as a strange pressure around me builds and pops.
Runes on the underside of my cuffs flare and the persistent fog in my mind fractures into stardust. It feels like a spell or enchantment has been lifted.
And suddenly, a flood of memories rushes in to fill all the gaps in my brain.
I know exactly who the stranger is because I remember everything.
I remember who did this to me . . . the man standing right in front of me.
A man I once loved, Roshan Acharia, the king of Oryndhr.
***
ROSHAN STARES AT me with those beautiful, expressive brown eyes in his breathtakingly handsome face, and for a heart-stopping moment I can’t control the deluge of conflicting emotions barreling through me.
Love, hate, hurt, anger.
Sorrow for everything lost.
“Starkeeper,” someone whispers, and I flinch.
My gaze flicks to the people surrounding him, and I recognize many of the faces: Aran, Clem, Hamid, and my old guards.
I cherished them once, too, but they all stood by and did nothing while their king put me in irons.
Aran was my teacher, Clem was my friend, and Hamid was a mentor, until they chose him .
. . and abandoned me. Bitter rage blooms on the heels of my recollection as my heart shatters anew.
And then my stare lands on Laleh—my very fucking dead best friend—who has been with me here in Everlea. My heart quails in my chest, and I’d lift my hand to rub at the phantom pain if the rais of Karkad weren’t holding me in place.
“I saw you die,” I whisper hoarsely, feeling my eyes burn and my mind fill with horror. Who would be so cruel to play a trick like this? “You died.”
She laughs, the macabre sound chilling me to my bones. Her eyes, including the sclera, bleed to dark purple, those ugly veins stretching wider until she looks monstrous. “I suppose I did. But I have a new lease on life, thanks to a little corpus magic from this realm.”
“Who?” Darrius is back to a single version of himself, his voice dark with fury.
“I’ll never tell,” she singsongs with a giggle.
Aghast, I stare, remembering what Ani had shared with me about the unlawful, dangerous side of necromancy, death magic, and reanimation. Laleh is nothing more than a fleshly husk, animated by corpus magic, not the girl she’d been. She’s not alive and she has no soul.
“You’re a revenant, not my Laleh,” I say, my voice breaking on her name.
She pouts. “But I have so many of her memories. I thought we could be friends.”
“My best friend is gone.”
“But I am still here, darling Sura,” she says. “I’m better and stronger thanks to the blessing of my lord Fero.” I blanch at the ease of her admission, cold terror filling me. “You can be, too, you know. A goddess, if you just accept him, as you were meant to do. He will reward the faithful.”
I gape in horror. Fero is here?
“No! What the fuck have you done?” I snap through my teeth. “I killed the queen and banished him!” My voice is wild, my hands balling into fists. “The god of death is the harbinger of eternal devastation, you stupid fucking fools.”
In anger, I move toward her and belatedly realize that Masi?ta’s arm is still banding me to him while I’m under the threat of his knife. “Let go of me!” I snarl.
“Release her,” the king of Oryndhr commands, and I hate the way that deep baritone feathers over me, opening wounds I had thought closed. My chest burns.
Masi?ta sneers. “The oracle says the beasts are breeding. We had an arrangement. Her for the azdaha eggs.”
Gasping, I blink in confusion that he had orchestrated that vile exchange, but then Roshan frowns. “I have no knowledge of that,” he says sharply. “Now let her go and leave before I end your miserable life.”
After a tense handful of seconds, Masi?ta shoves me to the ground and hurls himself off the cliff to the ocean below. For a moment I’m stunned. Then I remember that he controls water, so he will likely survive the fall into the sea.
Groaning, I push myself upright, wincing at the stones cutting into my knees as I stand.
My magic heals me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the bite of pain or the lingering numbness from the ropes.
Darrius shifts closer, his posture stiff.
This isn’t a dissenter from his own kingdom; this is a king from a neighboring realm.
Any aggression could be construed as an act of war.
Including said king’s act of showing up unannounced with a small army.
“You have come here,” Darrius asks in a silky tone, “without a royal decree?”
“I was invited by Rais Masi?ta and Raissa Tabiti,” Roshan says, and cocks his head, a dark purple flicker bleeding through his eyes. I study him, breath stalling in my lungs. I’ve seen that somewhere recently—Razulek’s memory! And I’d seen it myself in Coban.
Suddenly, I realize why he’d stopped looking at me what seems like a lifetime ago in Kaldari. To hide that something foul had been consuming the Roshan I knew.
The same foulness present in Laleh . . .
Stars. Is it truly Fero?
“Both traitors to the crown,” Darrius says. “Tabiti is dead, and Masi?ta soon will be. Why are you here, Acharia?”
“To reclaim my property,” Roshan says in an inhuman, dissonant tone that raises chill bumps along my arms.
That’s not his voice.
No, the man you loved was worthy of the gift of light you gave. I don’t know if that’s my simurgh talking or my conscience, but I do know one thing. Like Laleh, this isn’t my Roshan.
“I belong to no man,” I tell Not-Roshan, lifting my chin.
“Those cuffs say you do.” That awful timbre grates like a serrated knife over delicate skin.
He stares at his cousin and jerks his head.
An unhappy-looking Aran obliges, and suddenly, the runes on the bracers ignite and my magic flares obediently, shimmering coils of light curling over my fingers.
The sight of it, the violation of it, nearly breaks me.
“Stop,” I hiss. “I am not a thing to be controlled. Take them off.”
“Return to Kaldari with me and I will,” the king says, stepping toward me, hand outstretched. “I’ll forgive you for leaving if you only come back to me.”
Incredulous, I stare at him. “You’ll . . . forgive me?”
Not-Roshan stills and his eyelids flutter.
It’s as though a switch is flicked. The violet filaments in his eyes bleed away, leaving them clear.
“Please, Sura, I’m begging you, do this for me,” he says quietly, his voice shifting back to the warm cadence I know.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you. Come home. Please.”
Darrius bristles at the declaration, and jealous umbrage echoes down our fragile bond. I spare a glance at him over my shoulder and notice that his irises are still gold bright. From his bloodless clenched fists, it looks like he’s only holding on by a thread.
Stay with me, Dare.
I turn back to the Oryndhrian king. “No, Your Majesty, you are enamored with the idea of me. You love the Starkeeper. The weapon that can give you what you want: total dominion. I can’t go back to being used as a tool of destruction. I won’t.”