Chapter Thirty-One #2
If I’m right . . . so many people in the palace could be in danger! The king, Ani, Ziba, Maxur, all the guards, my handmaidens . . . Gods, does Darrius know of the snake in his house?
I exhale a breath, and the sudden silence of the cave is deafening.
“Dare?” I whirl in a panic, looking for my manticore, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
Maybe he needed some air, or maybe the screaming was setting off his protective instincts. It could be anything. He’ll be back.
Checking that Razulek’s body is out of immediate danger and on the mend, his own natural healing magic kicking in after a significant boost from mine, I crawl my way to the front of the cave, weak from the expenditure of magic.
I’ve never felt the drain this badly before, but I’ve brought Raz back from the brink of death.
Not quite necromancy, but certainly a hefty level of healing.
My eyelids are so heavy, fatigue setting in.
Stars, I want to sleep for a week.
But first, I have to find the king.
I make it outside, blinking in the bright sunlight as my eyes adjust from the gloom of the cave, and to my intense relief, I spot my manticore’s tail.
But then I realize he’s panting uncontrollably.
He turns his giant head, only to whine and collapse.
What’s wrong with him? Panic lodges in my stomach.
I don’t know if I have any more akasha left in me to heal him.
“Dare, are you well? Dare! Darrius!”
My own senses whirl, breaths coming in short bursts much like his, and then my legs give out. I’m so depleted, I can barely keep my eyes open. Even my simurgh has gone quiet. I know I shouldn’t, but maybe just for a short while, I can rest.
Then I’ll fix him . . . and myself.
***
YAWNING, I STRETCH my arms upward, and then frown at the sharp rocks cutting into my back.
Where am I? Did I fall asleep on the floor of the forge?
But when I crack open my eyelids, I see a twilight sky and the tops of thick evergreens.
The sun is just finishing its descent, spearing red-gold fingers over the steep rises of the mountain.
The last thing I remember is healing Razulek and falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.
I blink and attempt to roll the cricks out of my neck with a wince.
Then I remember Dare, in manticore form, collapsing, and terror blasts through me as I come awake fully.
I scramble to my feet, looking for the cave and Dare and Razulek . . . but I’m somehow in a completely different location. I spin around, desperate to find any markings that might tell me where I am.
It’s still the Barrin Mountains, as far as I can tell, but I’m on some type of plateau on one of the highest peaks.
The view of Everlea is breathtaking, but when I swivel, I gasp, because Oryndhr is visible on the other side.
I can see the edge of the flat Dustlands and even the start of the rolling desert dunes of my beloved Coban to the south.
“How nice of you to finally wake up,” a voice I instantly recognize says from behind me.
Whirling, I reach for my dagger behind my back, but the handle is not where it should be. I don’t remember removing it, which means that someone has disarmed me—perhaps the same person who brought me here.
But I don’t need a weapon to defend myself.
Revenant Laleh stands on the other side of the plateau with a small army of spidery-eyed soldiers—all in various stages of decay.
And my father is slumped on his knees in front of her.
Oh, dear gods. Papa. I don’t even care that I was right about the rot and the army. I just need to make sure that my father hasn’t been harmed.
Or worse . . . isn’t one of them.
Please no, please no, please no.
A guttural moan rips from him, but he won’t lift his head, and I can’t see any part of his skin or his eyes to know if he’s been infected with the rot.
I need to get closer! I snarl as knots of fear tighten in my stomach and lurch forward only to smash into an invisible barrier that nearly throws me onto my ass.
Charcoal smoke blooms at the point of impact and then dissipates.
This must be part of Darrius’s wards between Everlea and Oryndhr.
“Papa,” I call out, crouching down. “Can you hear me?” But he doesn’t look up or even act like he knows I’m here.
I clench my teeth and meet Laleh’s dead, purple-veined eyes.
“If you’ve hurt him, I’m going to tear you apart and spread your corpse to the winds so you can never come back in one piece. ”
“You wound me, Starkeeper. I suppose I’ll just have to retaliate the only way I can.” She grins and kicks my father in the back. He groans and crumples into a heap.
Shit. I can’t detect if he’s breathing, and terror fills me. I pound at the barrier, more bursts of smoke appearing at the contact. “What do you want?”
“Take down the barrier or he dies.”
“How do I even know it’s him?” I counter. “It could be one of your revenants.”
She stoops to yank on his hair, and his beloved bearded face comes into view. I exhale, searching for clues that she’s manipulating me. It looks like him, without any marks of rot on his features, but she’d fooled me before, too.
Laleh nods thoughtfully. “He’ll make a good soldier soon, I think, but not just yet. I want to have my fun first with this clever leader of the insurrectionists.”
I blink in confusion before the realization dawns. There’s rebellion in Oryndhr? And my father is leading it? I feel a spike of pride, but fear quickly erases it. Laleh will no doubt want to make an example of him.
She winks and grins. “Now, break the wards or I start with each of his teeth.”
Horrified, I shake my head. “Only the king of Everlea can remove the wards.”
“Not true, according to our loyal friends.”
I sense people behind me on the Everlea side before I hear marching footsteps.
My magic roars to my fingertips when Masi?ta and his merry band of Karkad assholes come through the trees.
There are even a handful from Rakh and one or two from Chamros.
I notice my dagger tucked into his waistband. So he had ferried me here.
“You snake, I should have fucking killed you,” I say through my teeth and lift my palms, letting coils of starlight weave through my fingers. “But I can remedy that now.”
“Put your claws away, Starkeeper, or I take a chunk out of the old man,” Laleh chirps from where she stands.
“I’ve become quite adept at removing bones from live bodies.
Quite the surgical exercise, I tell you.
” She presses the tips of her fingers of one hand to her lips. “And the cries of pain are divine.”
“You’re sick,” I say.
She nods sagely. “It’s the rot. Eats away at any humanity. But it’s better in the end, I think, to give in to our natural impulses. So freeing. You would love it, Sura.”
Masi?ta sneers at me as the parody of my best friend lets out one of those annoying giggles. Gods, that sound grates on my nerves. My Laleh would never make such an asinine noise. Her laugh was full-bellied and real.
“Touch me and I promise you will die an excruciating death,” I snarl to Masi?ta and his men before insolently giving them my back.
My magic will warn me if they attack; I feel my simurgh casting a protective shield around me.
“I don’t know what you think you know, but I cannot break these wards. Only the king can.”
“You’re the king’s soul-fated,” Masi?ta says.
“We are not bonded,” I say, and slap the invisible barrier for good measure. The air reverberates in ripples of pale gray smoke, but the wards stay active. “I don’t have the power to do what you want.”
“A pity,” Laleh says, and puts her foot across my father’s neck.
A groan emerges from him. “Peapod?”
The nickname makes me falter. Stars, maybe it really is him. Dread rushes in on the heels of doubt as she presses down harder on his spinal cord, making him cry out. Powerless fury lashes up my spine as my eyes sting with unshed tears. Fuck!
“Laleh, please,” I beg. “If there’s any of you left in there, don’t do this. You don’t have to do this. He loved you. He treated you like his own.”
She cocks her head. “And why would I do you any favors? You left me to die in that tower, didn’t you?”
I open my mouth, but no sound emerges. She’s right. I saw Morvarid cut her throat, but maybe . . . is it possible she had survived? I hadn’t even checked her body. I’d left her there when the tower collapsed. Guilt ravages me. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were gone. Please don’t hurt him . . .”
“Break the wards.”
With a half sob, I force my power into the barrier, but I’m still not recovered from healing Razulek, and the magic I have replenished is eaten up by the swirling smoke.
I’m aware that I am weakening any chance I have to defend myself from the men at my back, but I can’t let my father die.
Or if he is already dead, I have to give him peace.
I won’t leave him to be defiled and corrupted.
I scream, shoving more magic at the wards, but they don’t budge.
“I can’t!” I cry, feeling my shield flicker at the strain of magic. It’s my only defense.
She removes a knife from her belt and grins. “This is going to hurt him, Sura. Badly. I hope you’re prepared for what you’re letting happen.”
“Laleh, no!”
Darrius, wherever you are, I need you. Please.
I don’t even know if he can hear me, as I’m not sure what happened to him after we’d both collapsed.
But before Laleh can do anything, I barely process the arrow flying in my peripheral vision from the woods behind her that lodges right into my father’s skull.
An involuntary scream tears up my throat. No!
Only . . . it’s not my father, but an illusion that shatters the minute the jādū-forged arrowhead explodes.