Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
I shook away sleep fast, sitting up immediately. Atrius didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stood just within the entrance of the tent, staring at me. I had no idea how long he had been there.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Sylina,” he said.
“You didn’t,” I lied. I didn’t react to either his presence or his use of my name. I’d show him nothing.
I rose, drawing myself up to my full height. Even with Atrius across the room, it was clear that he loomed over me. I didn’t like how small I felt around him.
I still could not quite make sense of his presence. Alone in a room with him, it was overwhelming all over again—contradictions that I had never before experienced within a soul, and all of them roiling constantly. This was a man that was never at peace, and yet was so steadfast in his singular cause that he managed to force it all into a tightly controlled box. I had met few people who could hide the truth of their presence so well, even Arachessen.
He approached me, and I had to remind myself not to move away. My instinct was to cringe as he reached out, but his touch against my wrist was gentle and nonthreatening. He unlocked one shackle, then the other.
This close, I could sense his features more clearly. They were rigid and strong, as if carved out of stone, albeit imperfectly—his nose slightly crooked, as if it had been broken and poorly set once, his brow low over deep-set eyes, mouth thin and serious. The scent of snow was overwhelming.
He dropped to his knees. I stiffened as he lifted my skirt and slid his hands up my calf. Mission or no, I’d kick him in the face if he?—
“I’m not going to rape you,” he said flatly. “I prefer my partners willing.”
He said that, but I’m sure he saved that for the teenage daughters of the homes he burned when he conquered. I’d experienced war before. I knew what it was like.
With him kneeling, his horns were right in front of me. They were black and ridged, curving toward the back of his head, stark against the smooth silver of his long hair. I carefully reached for them with a thread of magic, testing them. They felt foreign and unnatural, like they weren’t of this world. My line of work had exposed me to many curiosities, but none quite like these. How, I wondered, had he gotten them?
He finished unlocking the shackles on my ankles. Then he rose again and offered me his hand.
“Come.”
I didn’t take it.
“I’ll follow,” I said, and took only a step before he grabbed my arm, hard enough that his fingernails—sharp, black claws—dug into my wrist.
“I know the Arachessen are skilled,” he said, “but I have lived your lifetime six times over, and I’ve spent all that time becoming better at killing. If you run or fight, it won’t end well for you.”
His stare was unyielding, hard, cold. When most people stared at me, they seemed to just look at my blindfold, where my eyes would be. But Atrius’s went deeper than that, like he was grabbing my soul itself and turning it to him, making sure I understood.
I didn’t like that. It felt like a challenge, and I, petty as I was, disliked being challenged. Another flaw the Sightmother frequently pointed out.
We held that stare for a long, long moment, a silent battle of wills playing out in the inches between our faces.
“Fine,” I said primly. “You don’t rape me, and I don’t attack you.”
The sound he made was something between a grunt and a scoff. “Did the Arachessen like that sense of humor?”
He took my arm and I decided not to fight him this time. His touch was barely there, light over my sleeve. He led us to the tent door and opened it.
The moment we stepped outside, the camp went silent. Attention was unblinkingly, unwaveringly on us. I could feel all those threads of presence wrapped around our throats as clearly as I could feel Atrius’s hand on my arm. Their curiosity. Intrigue.
And… hunger. Unmistakable hunger.
The hairs rose on the back of my neck. These were vampires, after all. Blood drinkers. Corpses of drained deer had been piled along the outskirts of camp, but I knew that human blood was the most enticing to them.
Atrius didn’t address anyone, and no one addressed us, as we walked through the camp. When we reached the outskirts, he leaned down and murmured in my ear, “Never leave your tent without permission and me or Erekkus with you. Understood?”
I wondered if he sensed what I had. The hungry intrigue.
“In case I get eaten?” I asked. “You don’t train your men to have better discipline than that?”
His lip twitched with distaste. “My men have impeccable discipline. But there will be difficult times in this war, and is there any amount of discipline that will stop you from crawling to water in the desert?”
I was the water in this metaphor. But did that mean that Glaea, a country populated by many humans, was the desert? That didn’t make any sense.
He took me far beyond the outskirts of camp, out into the rocky plains, where the grass was so tall that it tickled my thighs. The ground beneath it was rocky and uneven. “Watch for that,” he muttered, pointing out a particularly rough patch of gravel and guiding me around it.
“I know,” I said, stepping around it easily, and felt his stare grow a little more intense.
He was interested in me.
That was good—to capture curiosity. It couldn’t keep me alive forever, but it would keep me here long enough to earn his trust. Maybe curiosity was the real reason why he was willing to take the risk of having me join him.
It was a powerful thing.
He led me down a steep incline through narrow openings in the rocks, the grass now gone in favor of jagged stone. I knew this area—I’d killed his last seer not far from here. He brought me to the edge of a lake, all the way down to where the water lapped at shores of gritty sand.
At last, he released my arm and leaned against a sheer stretch of rock. “I need you to seer for me.”
Atrius, I was already certain, was not a man who liked to have things handed to him easily. If I wanted to earn his trust later, and make him believe that he had earned mine, I would need to make him work for it. People did not believe in the value of what was too freely given, and I needed him to believe in me.
So I said, “What makes you think I will?”
He let out a rough exhale, almost a laugh. Then he stared out over the lake.
“Can you see this?” he said.
“In all the ways that matter.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I know the water is still and flat. I can sense that there are no ripples in it. I know that there are rocks on the other side, more on the west, and grass on the eastern edge.”
“Those are facts. That’s not the same as seeing it.”
“In what way?”
“When you see the moon rise, some might say there’s something more to it than coordinates in the sky.”
For some reason, I found myself unwillingly thinking of my little painting of the sea.
It’s the ocean.
No, it is paper.
The memory hit me with an uncomfortable pang I didn’t want to look at too closely. I shrugged it away.
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Just wondering if you’re smart enough to know the value of things that can’t be quantified. Like the value of the offer I made you.”
“I don’ t think it was an offer. Offers can be accepted or rejected.”
“You can reject it.”
“But you’ll kill me after.”
He didn’t say anything. Just gave me a grim little half-smile.
“I don’t like forcing people to do things,” he said. “Bad way to earn loyalty. And I do require your loyalty, and your services. I can take them permanently, or you can offer them temporarily. I can get them by your fear or your choice. I’d rather the latter, but I’ll do either.”
“So why do you care?”
He shrugged. “Seems a shame for my generosity to go unappreciated.”
I was silent for a long moment. I let him believe it was because I was considering his words, but instead, I was considering how much I should let him win now.
I should give him something. Not all of it—that would be too easy. Plus, the thought of rolling over for him…
It made me think of his entry on our shores. Raeth’s body beneath his armies.
I was supposed to be the good actress, the perfect spy, playing my role without complaint. My personal feelings shouldn’t matter. And yet… I couldn’t shake that anger when I considered the possibility of complete acquiescence.
No. Not yet.
But I’d give him something.
“The Arachessen are more effective and persuasive than you can possibly know,” I said haltingly.
“I’ve had plenty of experience with cults.”
I hated how dismissively he called us a cult.
“They’re worse,” I bit out. “Worse than you can imagine. They see everything. As long as I remain in Glaea, it’s only a matter of time before they find me.”
“I already told you that?—”
“You can’t protect me from them.”
He laughed.
Outright laughed , from deep in his chest, like what I’d just said was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. The sound was rough and unpracticed, like he did it very rarely.
I was a bit offended on behalf of my Sisterhood.
“You laugh because you don’t know them,” I said.
“I laugh because you don’t know me.”
He straightened, crossing his arms over his chest. “I told you, Sylina, I do not lie. If I say it, it is true. I protect my people. If you’re one of mine, the Arachessen will not touch you.”
Such hubris. And yet, he didn’t say any of it with the boastfulness of a bragging commander. He said it as if it was nothing more than fact, and his presence radiated not cocky showmanship but steady truth.
He believed it.
That was strange to me, that a man who recognized the power of the Arachessen—recognized their ability to make trouble for him—would still be willing to cross them on my behalf.
It was confusing.
I let out a sigh, showing him all my reluctant consideration, carefully measured. “I don’t understand how you can make that promise.”
“You don’t have to understand. You just have to seer.”
He stepped away from the rock, extending his hand, the question silent but obvious: Deal?
I drew my lips thinly together. The thought of taking his hand sickened me.
But those were the feelings of Sylina, Arachessen spy. Not Sylina, desperate fugitive.
I took it. His grip was rough and calloused.
“Good,” he said firmly. Like that was that.
He released my hand, and I felt his skin burning against my palm long after. He leaned against the rock again, arms crossed, taking me in.
“Now,” he said, “about the seering.”
Atrius’s army was, apparently, so active right now because they were preparing to leave and continue on their conquering path. He told me this flatly, in simple fact. He withdrew a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket and flattened it best he could against the smooth side of the rock, revealing a map of Glaea. He pointed to a city-state just north of here: Alka.
“You know it?”
“Of course.”
I didn’t bother hiding my distaste. It was a bleak, dark place. The Pythora King had given most city-states to his cronies to rule over in absolute power, and the one that held Alka was a warlord, Aaves, who was among the worst of them. Like most of the Pythora King’s followers, he kept his population drugged and starving and his warriors drugged and strong. Worse, most of the city was built directly into the stone and sea, so the whole place was constructed of narrow tunnels and rickety bridges over brackish, pest-infested waters. I’d been sent on several missions there over the years, and all of them had been miserable.
I could understand why Atrius was concerned about taking Alka. It was so decentralized and so difficult to navigate that numbers alone wouldn’t be enough to hand him victory.
I told him this, and his brow lowered as he inclined his chin.
“You’re right. That’s why we have you.”
“You expect a seer to get you out of this situation.”
He smiled faintly. He said nothing, but his presence said, Yes .
Even if the Bloodborn liked to make use of seers, it was strange to use them in this way—for something so specific. Visions were cryptic and unpredictable. They weren’t instructions or even guideposts—nothing concrete. The images were often difficult to make out and even harder to make sense of. The best seers in the world might have strong enough connections to the gods to be able to ask specific questions and get specific answers—or something close—but I certainly wasn’t one of them. In fact, I didn’t like seering much. Too abstract. I didn’t like to relinquish that much control.
“If I ask the gods how you can conquer Alka,” I said, “they aren’t going to just respond by giving you a map and a set of instructions.”
“I know,” he replied simply.
That was all. He just waited, expectant .
“I gave you an order,” he said.
“Now? And you’ll stand here and watch me?”
“Yes.”
It felt wrong, to seer with him just staring at me, like I was doing something intimate with a very unpleasant audience. But while I was willing to put up a little bit of a fight just to make him trust his victories, I also knew which fights weren’t worth having, and this was one of them.
I sighed.
“Fine,” I said. “Help me build the fire.”
It took a significant amount of preparation to seer to Acaeja. She was a goddess that placed great value on ritual—she lorded over the unknown, after all, and tapping into the unknown took significant focus.
Atrius helped me without complaint, following my commands with surprising amiability. We built a fire on the beach, feeding it until it was a roaring blaze. I tended it with elements of the earth—a handful of sand, a sprinkle of flower petals, the roots of tall grass. When it was time to get the blood sacrifice, Atrius turned away and started walking, before I stopped him.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting the creature for you.”
“I can hunt.”
His presence shifted in the first hint of annoyance I’d seen all night. “We don’t have time to waste.”
That was almost sweet. Weaver bless him.
“Give me that,” I said, motioning to his bow.
I thought he might hesitate, thinking I’d shoot him with it, but he handed it over immediately. He really did underestimate me.
Animals were active at night. When I reached for the threads, I felt them everywhere, lurking in the rocks, in the tall grass. I settled on a rabbit, which crouched in the sparse greenery. If I was relying on eyes alone, I wouldn’t have a sightline to it. But I wasn’t.
One shot, and the rabbit was dead.
I retrieved it, yanked the arrow from its guts, and returned to Atrius. If he was surprised or impressed, he didn’t show it.
“Here.” I gave him back his bow, then opened my hand. “Your knife.”
He gave it to me, and I crouched before the fire, heat nipping at my nose as I sliced open the rabbit’s throat.
My goddess Acaeja, Weaver of Fates, Keeper of the Unknown, I silently incanted. I give you this gift of life. Open your doors to me.
The rabbit’s blood dripped into the fire. I rubbed some of it over my hands, using my thumb to draw it across my face—two lines, one under each eye, just beneath my blindfold. Then I cast the corpse into the flames.
The blaze surged and roared in a sudden burst, making Atrius take a half-step backwards. Good. That meant it was working.
I dragged my bare toes in a circle, all the way around the fire, until I returned to my starting position. Then I sat down before the fire, so close that sweat now trickled down the back of my neck.
“Be back soon,” I said to Atrius, closed my eyes, and fell back.
And back.
And back.
Into darkness.