Chapter 40
There’s a line of blood along my throat. We have matching marks, now.
A reminder of my weakness, Raker called his, and I think that’s right. It’s a reminder that Raker—as much as I see him, as much as he sees me—is still my enemy.
An oasis awaits at the edge of the desert. It’s an entire cliffside of waterfalls that glimmer like diamonds are threaded through its liquid. They spill into various lopsided, bright blue pools, one larger than the rest.
I rush to one of the falls, drinking directly from it, water soaking my body in a rush of welcomed cold. I groan. When I turn around, Raker is just standing there, lost in thought.
“I’m getting in,” I tell him. He blinks, knocked out of his mind, then turns around. I turn too. Slowly, I begin to remove my clothing, sand spilling onto the rock beneath my feet. My skin has been rubbed raw. It’s an effort to take each piece off.
Behind me, I hear Raker doing the same. I hear every piece of armor come off.
Without a look in his direction, I slowly sink into the biggest pool. I test for the bottom and feel that it’s shallow. It takes a few steps to wade into where the water reaches my waist.
I hear the water part behind me. I can feel his presence. My markings glimmer beneath the sun. It’s strange, being out in the open, with them on full display.
But I’m not hiding anymore. I see him. He sees me. We’ve made it close to the end, together. Only one more day stands between us and the Land of the Gods.
I duck into the water to wash my hair and face. When I emerge, I turn—
And there he is.
Without a hood. Without anything on. For a moment, I forget to breathe.
The water is dark enough that I can’t see anything beneath, but I can see his wide shoulders, and part of his broad chest. I can see parts of the thin, dark tattoos threading across his pale skin, down his muscular arms, to where they run down each of his fingers.
I want to know what they mean. I want to look closer, so I can see the shapes they make.
His hair is wet, small droplets falling from the dark strands onto his sharp cheeks, dripping toward his jaw, and I don’t know why that simple fact makes me feel like I’m losing my mind.
He just stares at me. Only a few strands of hair keep me decent, but … he sees everything else. My bare shoulders, and collarbones, and the shapes of my breasts, and the silver markings. I remember how he traced his thumb down them, like I was his favorite constellation.
His eyes darken, like he’s remembering too. Then his gaze shifts. He winces.
He’s looking at my throat.
I reach up and tense. The skin is tender but not painful. That doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t seem to matter that he has a matching mark, fully healed, a thin line across his neck, from my own blade.
At my small grimace of discomfort, Raker’s entire face melts back into that unfeeling mask. I open my mouth—
But he lifts himself out of the water.
I wash the blood away. Fill my pouch. As much as I want to spend hours in this pool, the desert leeched me of energy.
We collapse inside the closest cave, starlight sparkling through the darkness.
When I wake up the next morning the sky is still dark, and Raker is still sleeping. He’s frowning, as if reliving a fraction of whatever he saw in that desert.
Whatever he saw … it’s still haunting him.
Even devils have demons.
It’s still early. I let him sleep. He’ll need his rest. I carve the rest of the map into the rock. We’re close, so close.
Today’s the day.
We’re lucky the cavalry wasn’t waiting for us here, beyond the desert. But maybe the gods will be at the entrance of their lands.
Maybe they’ll strike me down before I can even step foot into them. Maybe I’ll actually kill them.
Either way, there’s no going back now.
We need more water. I take our pouches, and head back to the oasis, drinking in the beauty of the waterfalls until the sky loses all hint of darkness, melting into flames.
Time to go. I’m about to turn back to the cave, to wake Raker, when I see it.
A dark smudge weaving through the clouds. I squint. It gets closer. Closer.
A dragon.
I know that dragon. It nearly burnt mine to a crisp.
It lands just beyond the hills of the oasis.
My sword is in my hand. Somehow, I know. I know what I’m going to find. I’m walking toward it anyway, led by pure and utter desire for vengeance.
I remember the words I spoke in the desert. I am not afraid of anything. I meant it.
I’m not afraid now. But I am filled with an anger that might burn me up from the inside out before I’m able to even reach the end of this journey.
The dirt is crusted orange and red. I don’t walk far before something sparkling catches my eye.
A paladian dagger, its markings more familiar to me than the lines on my palm, sticking right out of the dirt, hilt-up. Waiting for me. Teasing me.
Beckoning me.
Pain and rage nearly blind me. I swallow. It’s a trap. Of course it is. He wants my sword. Maybe he wants the bounty. But I’m not the same person I was at the beginning of this.
I take a step toward the blade. A boot sounds behind me.
“Still alive? I’m impressed,” Cadoc says.
I turn very slowly, fury and satisfaction rushing through my veins, my hand gripped tightly around the hilt of my sword. He killed Stellan. And now I’m going to fucking destroy him. My metal hums, as if ready for the bloodshed. My mouth opens—
Then closes.
He grins as my eyes find his belt. And one of the many swords hanging there.
“No,” I breathe.
Purple. The stone is purple. I know that carving, the flowers, the vines.
Kira’s blade. Which only means one thing.
“No.” My voice breaks on a sob.
“I want you to know that she almost made it,” Cadoc says, taking a step forward.
“And with an injured leg, no less.” He clicks his tongue.
“Very impressive. She was just short of the gates when my friends caught her. She fought hard … kept mentioning, apparently … a sister?” Rage explodes behind my eyes.
I bare my teeth, but that only seems to please him more.
“They dragged her to me, keeping her just barely alive …” He smooths a finger down the metal.
“So I could claim this.” He shakes his belt, and the dozen swords clang together. “It was so fun … so fun to break her.”
“You’re—you’re lying,” I say, trembling. The world is slipping away, but I use anger as a tether.
“Am I?”
Fury gathers in my bones as I step forward. My voice is pain and purpose woven together. “Then it looks like I’m about to have too many blades to carry.”
At that, Cadoc smiles. “Or I’m about to add a new one to my collection.”
He takes his stance. He holds up a weapon he must have claimed here, one of sparkling immortal metals.
I unleash everything this side has taught me, bellowing with bone-deep fury.
My arms might have trembled the first time I lifted this blade.
They do not shake now.
His sparkling metal meets mine and cracks.
Sometime during this journey, through all the dangers, through the training, through the lessons, I got better.
I see it now. Every inch of that skill, magnified by my rage.
I grip my sword using both hands, slamming over and over and over until the blade completely shatters.
I lift my weapon one last time, to finally slay him, but he’s fast. He pulls another blade from his belt, and his new metal clashes against mine.
It seems I wasn’t the only one who improved during this quest. Or changed.
I see the jagged mark of a wound down the side of his throat. The skin is raised. Twisted.
He tries to go for my leg, but I pounce away, then swing for his sword-wielding arm. He barely deflects in time, but my blow is hard. The gold splinters. One more hit, and it’s in pieces at his feet.
“Aris.”
The word, the distant voice, distracts me.
The clash of metal must have awakened him. Raker is coming, any moment now.
Cadoc seems to know it too. He lunges for the dagger behind me. Stellan’s dagger. I go after him, but he turns, blocking me with a new sword from his belt. He pockets the dagger, then fixes both hands on the hilt of his weapon.
“Aris.” Raker’s getting closer. I can hear the clanging of his armor. He’s running.
Cadoc bellows a name I don’t recognize, and then a sky-splitting roar rattles my bones. I turn, and my vision is wholly blocked by a monstrous shadow. His dragon is rushing right at us. It isn’t stopping.
There’s no time to move. Before I can take a single step, we’re both knocked off our feet, and onto the dragon’s back.
My head hits its jagged ridges, pain exploding behind my eyelids as my body skips down its spine. I barely manage to grip one of its many spikes, before it turns skyward, my feet kicking nothing as it spirals toward the clouds. I scream. My nails splinter as I fight to hold on.
Wind nearly rips me off its side, then the dragon steadies.
My body slams down against its hard scales.
My bones scream beneath my skin. Bile rushes up my throat.
But there’s no time to retch. I claw my way up to a more stable position.
Cadoc is yards away, on his stomach. Staring at me with unflinching focus.
He stands. Slowly, I do too, on the other end of the creature’s spine as it continues its flight through the fiery dawn.
My head is pulsing, ears bursting with the rapid ascent.
I swallow the pain and panic down, until only rage remains.
I take a deep breath. Then, with a growl, I race forward, and not even the wind can smother the sound of our blades meeting.
Our duel continues on his dragon’s back, in the air, and Cadoc’s fighting might have improved—but his stamina did not.
Of course. He had this dragon to take him across Starside.
I made much of the trek on foot. I learned not to tire.
I trained for this. As his movements get lazier, mine get more precise.
One after another, his lesser blades shatter against my metal, and he replaces them with the others he’s collected, slower each time.
I advance, fury fueling me. I block each of his clumsy movements.
Stellan taught me everything he knew.
Now, I’m going to use every bit of that training to fulfill my promise to him. I’m going to kill the person responsible for his death.
For you, I think, tears stinging my eyes. For everything you made me.
Cadoc tries to kick my legs out from under me, but I jump, and slice through the air, in a move Raker helped me perfect. He turns his face away—
But he’s not quick enough. When he turns back around, a deep gash slices across his face. Blood drips down into his mouth as he smiles. He takes a step forward, and it’s as if the injury has invigorated him.
Suddenly, I’m hit with a wave of heat.
The City on Fire. It really does burn, and we’re flying right above it. I can hear the flames, crackling, as if waiting to be fed.
Burning. Endless burning and—
I take a step back, burying the memories. The pain.
Cadoc tilts his head at me as though he can see my inner injury. Like that’s what he’s best at—finding someone’s wound and twisting his inferior blade into it to win. Is that how he got so many other competitors to work with him?
That smug look grows. Eyes never leaving mine, he throws his sword over the side of his dragon, into the City on Fire, then reaches for another.
Kira’s sword.
He smiles as I stumble backward, his teeth gleaming with blood. “What’s wrong? Don’t want to fight against your dead friend’s blade?”
Memories flash. I see Kira, jumping into the water, desperate to keep that sword. I can hear her words like she’s saying them right now, like she’s still here.
I’ve—I’ve never been chosen by anyone. Or anything. This—this blade chose me. I can’t leave it behind.
I didn’t forget my promise. I’m going to reach the gods. I’m going to take a cup of their magic. I’m going to find a way to get it to Kira’s sister.
Anise should have this sword. Not Cadoc. Anyone but him.
Silver overtakes my vision, and I stumble out of the way of his strike, not wanting to break Kira’s blade.
A few brushes with mine, and it will shatter.
Fuck. The bastard’s plan is working. I duck as he slices right at my throat, then lurch forward as his dragon jolts again.
This time, the movement brings me to my knees.
I nearly lose my balance and grip its spikes with one hand, my blade in the other, as the dragon rapidly descends. My teeth clench together.
It’s in freefall. The heat of the burning city swells up like a wave. Sweat spills down my brow. It’s like Cadoc knows the fire is bothering me. He’s telling his creature to get closer.
All at once, the dragon goes still, and I almost lose my balance.
The fire is crackling right below us now. I peer over the side and see only a sea of flames. Memories rise up. So does panic. My ears are ringing. My mind is pounding.
I stand on shaking legs.
“How she screamed,” Cadoc says, advancing, eyes glimmering with the thought. His face is bright red. “For anyone to help her. For her friends. But where were you?”
Where were you?
I let her down. Just like I let down my family. I’m blinded by the memory. That night. The fire, overtaking the room.
“Aris. Aris, it hurts.”
But I was helpless. I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t save her—
The advance is so quick, I don’t have time to move out of the way. I have to lift my sword. Kira’s blade crashes into mine with so much force, it rings through my blood. A long crack spirals down its designs, splitting the flowers in half.
The memory—it cost me. It hollowed my grip.
At his strike, my sword slips from my sweaty hands, landing against the dragon’s back.
Everything moves so slowly. I watch as Cadoc’s eyes slide down to my sword. As the metal glimmers in warning, in pleading to pick it back up. I try.
But before I can bend to reach it, or call to it, Cadoc turns. He moves in a flash. He kicks me off the dragon’s back—
Right into the City on Fire.
I think I hear a distant bellow, a sound scraped from the sky itself, of pure and utter agony. But it’s too late.
I’m swallowed by the flames, and when I hit the ground, my body breaks.