Chapter Twenty-Five
Dietan
A pit of dread like an icy maw swallows my heart.
Marcus swears. Aren leaps down from the cart and grabs her rucksack, as if she means to rush in to help. “What happened here?” she asks, her voice small.
“Nothing good,” I say as I lead the way toward the village. “Get back in the wagon,” I add.
She doesn’t.
We search for survivors, but all is deathly quiet except for the occasional sound of popping wood. Embers glow beneath piles of rubble. Smoke lingers in the air, and the stench of burned flesh turns my stomach. I clamp my mouth shut.
Marcus kneels in the soft earth, one hand on his blade as he studies a set of boot marks in the mud. He locks eyes with me, and a quick nod tells me all I need to know. We can’t stay here long—the prints are fresh.
Whoever did this is still around.
But we can’t leave until I’m sure there’s no one alive who needs help.
We stumble through the ruins, upending fallen carts and charred barrels. Warehouses of wattle and daub have collapsed. My men thrust logs beneath fallen rafters, lifting what they can to crawl under the wreckage, searching for survivors.
Where the streets narrow to the width of a man, a large house has toppled over onto the smaller one next to it. Marcus and I slip through an open doorway. Aren follows close behind instead of remaining with soldiers standing guard outside.
Inside, the air is thick with dust. Shafts of sunlight pierce through a jagged hole in the ceiling. My boot comes down hard on a charred beam, splitting it in two.
A rattle echoes from the back of the room. Whispers drift through the air.
I stiffen, my hand reaching for my sword, ready for an attack. But then I see a family—a woman and her children—huddled in the dark.
“Please, come out. You’re safe now,” I say, lowering my blade. “We are Loegrian soldiers, not raiders from Penrith.”
From the shadows, the woman stumbles forward, her face caked in ash, eyes wide. She gasps when she sees me, flanked by Marcus in his well-worn uniform. “Are you…?”
“Prince Dietan,” I say with a dip of my head.
She curtsies as her children hide behind her legs.
“What happened here?” I ask.
The woman shudders. “They came without warning—so many of them, in black armor, wearing the Usurper’s emblem.
Our village tried to fight back, but any man who survived was rounded up and herded into the woods.
You could hear their screams. I think—I think they burned them alive.
” She starts sobbing but wipes her eyes and forges on.
“Then they—they took the remaining women and children. My children and I hid in a secret compartment in the wall that was built during the wars between the four kingdoms.”
I think fast. “My soldiers will take you and any other survivors to Lundenwic, where you’ll be safe,” I say, nodding to Marcus. “Is there anyone else left?”
She shakes her head. “It’s been quiet. I went out—I tried to find others. There’s no one. We were going to leave, but…”
“But?” I press.
“But it wasn’t just the Usurper’s raiders who did this, Your Highness,” she whispers. “There was something else.”
“Tell me.”
She trembles, terror etched into her face. “It wasn’t… It wasn’t human.”
“Kilandrar,” I say softly. “You saw one?”
“Many, Your Highness.” Her voice drops to a whisper, as if she’s afraid she might summon them. “I think…they’re still here.”
A great whirlwind roars through the narrow street outside, tearing apart the remains of the wrecked houses, sending debris hurtling through the air.
The woman screams and gathers her children back into their hiding place. I pull Aren behind the smoldering remains of the hearth. Marcus and the rest of the company fall back and take cover.
I press a finger to my lips at a low hiss outside the crevice concealing me and Aren. She clutches my arm in frozen silence. The Kilandrar passes within arm’s reach. I will myself to remain deathly still, even as the Rings vibrate in recognition, as if calling to the dark creature.
I know it senses me nearby.
I can’t be fearful. If I am, the Whisting will rise and the Kilandrar will see us. But if I stay quiet and calm the Rings, it might go away—just as it has before. Be still, I warn, grasping for control, but the Rings writhe inside me, reaching for the Kilandrar’s magic, itching to be free.
If it senses the Rings and calls them, will the Kilandrar tear them straight out of my body and deliver them into the Usurper’s hands?
But I can’t do anything but hide this power and hope the Kilandrar passes us by.
Aren presses closer, the wall behind us growing hotter by the second as the Kilandrar’s wind stokes the embers. The crackle of fire reverberates through the plaster. We should move, but we can’t. Any sound would draw the Kilandrar’s attention.
We hold our breath, and for a heartbeat, it’s as if time itself freezes. The Kilandrar prowls outside the ruined home. Its presence is a storm of malice, reaching for the Rings with its dark power.
Smoke chokes the air as the Kilandrar whirls through the broken windows. My eyes burn, and I close them.
The Whisting threatens to rise within me, but then Aren suddenly takes my hand. In the darkness, she’s my only link to the world.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. Sweat beads on my forehead, and my hand is clammy in the warmth of hers.
At the sound of her voice, the Rings stop humming. The Whisting is calm inside me, and I can breathe again.
Slowly, the thick smoke dissipates, the hissing sound recedes, and after an excruciatingly long time, there is silence at last. The Kilandrar is gone.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“For what?” she whispers back. “I didn’t do anything.”
I shake my head, unable to explain my gratitude. I needed her calm presence today, but I can’t let the Kilandrar get this close to her again.
…
I send the mother and her children off to the safety of South Dunston with a couple of my men. I send my fastest rider to Lundenwic with a dispatch of the highest priority for my father and his council. They must know that the Usurper’s army has breached our borders.
We are at war, at last.
I am out of time. My father needs the Rings. Now.
The rest of the company presses onward to Alba, putting as much road as we can between ourselves and the burning carnage. Marcus and I agree it’s too risky to travel past sundown. Now that we’re weeks away from the closest village or outpost, we’ll have to make camp.
We find a spot near the river large enough to accommodate a circle of tents. The soldiers race to set them all up before nightfall. I get the fire going in record time, my anger and frustration feeding the flames.
Marcus remains silent. I look at the men and wish I could tell them about my curse, about the true danger of our mission.
They all think that if we keep moving, the Usurper’s dark creatures won’t find us again.
They don’t know that I stole the kingdom’s most precious treasure, and the Kilandrar will keep pursuing me until I’m no longer in possession of the Rings.
I drag my tent farther away to separate myself from the rest of the party. I crawl inside and fall into a fitful sleep.
Alone.
My dream is not like the others, yet it feels exactly the same.
It begins with shadows and whispers, with movement out of the corner of my eye.
Something calls to me. It’s not a mortal language, but the sounds of life itself: the rustling of leaves in the wind, laughter bursting from healthy lungs, a gasp of pleasure from a lover’s touch, a whistle to call cattle home, the final exhale of a soldier on the battlefield.
It’s life, and it’s death. It’s the Whisting.
My kingdom of shining white stone high upon the mountain is surrounded by dark clouds. A power—evil, wild, and ancient—churns like a boiling cauldron, consuming all in its path.
It knows me.
It sees into my soul.
The storm howls like hungry wolves. Bodies are strewn in the open fields, fallen men at the feet of the once-great city. I stand over them—over my dying friends. Marcus and Jared lie prostrate, their open eyes clouded and skin gray with death.
In the dream, I know that using the Rings will kill me—and I don’t care. There’s nothing left for me.
I see Aren sprawled in the grass, her eyes sightless and her dark hair a cloud around her head.
Everyone I care for is dead.
And that emptiness, that hollow in my heart, fills with the Whisting.
In the nightmare, as always, I raise my arms, and the storm surges. The power within me finds a home in the whirlwind. The darkness roars like a great beast as the world around me explodes.
…
At dawn, I pack up my tent alone. We walk most of the morning with our bellies still empty, our feet still sore. After my restless night, the nightmare still has its claws in me.
Aren’s hand brushes mine with infinite gentleness. It’s like she senses my dark thoughts, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Sorry,” she says softly.
The moment it takes me to settle my heart back into my chest is excruciating, but I manage a smile.
“You okay?” she asks. She regards me so sweetly, with such genuine concern, that for a moment, I forget we aren’t actually betrothed. I almost kiss her then and there. And not on the cheek, either.
Can I claim that we need to keep up appearances for Marcus’s men?
I wave a hand with studied carelessness. “Yeah, nothing to worry about.”
She doesn’t press, and I wonder if she believes me. Instead, she pulls an apple from her pack, tosses it into the air, and flicks it off the end of her elbow. I catch it deftly.
“You need it more than I do,” she quips, grinning. “You’re all skin and bones. Losing your vaunted good looks a bit, and I know you pride yourself on that.”
My feet trail to a stop, and a smile tugs at my lips as I watch Aren walk ahead.
The way she looks at me over her shoulder, with a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before, makes the heat rise inside my skin.
With a delicate hand, she tucks a lock of hair that’s fallen from her bun behind her ear, and I can’t take my eyes off her.
Still smiling, I take a large bite of my apple, wiping the juice off my chin with the back of my wrist, then catch up to her. I walk close enough behind her that I can smell the warm scent of her hair. Somehow, she knows how to make me feel better.
But my loneliness follows me like a shadow. Even if Aren seems to be warming to me, I can’t let her get too close—not until these cursed Rings are out of my life.
My nightmares are a constant reminder that I’m on the road toward a lonely end. Maybe this does end with Marcus digging the Rings out of my corpse for my father to wield.
Maybe that’s the fate I deserve.
The path winds over hills, cutting across the field like a snake. I nearly walk into Aren when she suddenly stops, just around the bend.
She’s stock-still, frozen, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. The abject terror on her face stops me cold.
I follow her gaze to a body in the middle of the road. A body with wavy, black hair, sightless brown eyes, and blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Her hand is outstretched toward us like an eerie warning.
The corpse is that of Aren’s kidnapped body double, Lydia.
I haven’t escaped danger by simply braving the Bandai Bridge and crossing the border or even by evading the Kilandrar.
The enemy is here, and they’re close.
If the burned city wasn’t warning enough, this is their war cry.