Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Callum was quiet as he walked alongside his training partner. He hadn’t seen her since the morning in the infirmary.
After Aaron, he had been crazed with bloodlust. He had to find the creatures responsible. He begged Theo to allow him into the eastlands, to meet them head-on, alone. Theo wouldn’t allow it. He refused to lose a member of his Troika to some rageful suicide mission.
Callum had cursed him out until his throat was hoarse. In the end, he obeyed. Despite every fiber of his being telling him to kill and maim and torture, he had obeyed.
They went as far as the border, for weeks on end searching back and forth. They returned with absolutely nothing to show for it.
“What did you do to him?” Callum inquired as their boots crunched on the crisp grass. It was getting colder; the merciless winters of Ash Cliff would be here soon.
She looked up at him in alarm. “Why? What did he say?”
Oh yes, something had happened between the princess and his captain. For as long as he’d known him, Theo had been a brooding bear. For their monthlong journey he was downright intolerable. That little interaction back there showed him why.
“He didn’t say a word, so I thought I’d ask you.”
“It’s nothing. He just . . . hates me.” Her steps grew more hurried.
“Hm, if you say so.”
“What? He’s been completely horrible. Under the guise that he is trying to motivate me somehow. He could be nice. Instead he’s . . . that.”
“I’m sure many were ‘nice’ to you before we found you. Kindness didn’t make you stronger. It wasn’t kindness that pulled you from despair. Was it?”
She glanced down at the ground, trying to keep in stride as the elevation changed.
“You don’t have to answer. I know I’m right. Kindness only works for some, not for those like you and me.”
Some needed warmth and affection to bring them back to life. Helaina wasn’t like that. She needed someone hard as stone to not let her waste away, to shove her headfirst out of that misery. She had needed someone like Theo.
“He has been here a very long time. His intuition is rarely wrong in these instances. His actions have great intention.”
He heard her breathing getting a tad strained. “Was he always this way?”
Callum pulled his lips in tight. He wasn’t sure this was his place, but there was something in Theo when he regarded the girl, some sort of longing anguish he had never seen before. Callum needed her to understand him.
“Since I’ve been here, yes. It’s what is required of him.
No one would pass a trial without him. He works on all of us to the point of breaking.
He was one of the earliest descendants—when the gods walked among mortals, he was here.
He was raised by parents that were not his own, but he loved them all the same.
He never knew his birth mother and father; only the ancestral connection to Valhoor was made clear. ”
“How? If Valhoor was banished, how did he create an offspring here?” Helaina asked.
“I’m not sure. Theo has never spoken of his birth mother, if he knew her, only the mother who raised him. But the marks on his back are a clear sign. There aren’t many paintings of Valhoor’s likeness, but the ones that still exist show the Death God possessing the same tattoo.”
Callum noticed a change in the girl’s breathing. “He said he came here alone to build Elkron. What about his family?”
“Murdered. He didn’t have anyone after that, until us.”
From the look on Helaina’s face, he could tell her heart broke as soon as the words left his mouth.
“What did he do?”
“He went to Brahm begging for a chance to go back and save them. Asked if the God of Creation could simply bring them back, create them again. Brahm refused. Instead, he offered Theo a cause, a chance to save others. He gave him the bone dagger, with the condition he would use it to defend the innocent when the gods returned to their own realms. Theo accepted. He sees his being here as a kind of restitution. To save those he can, to make up for the lives he couldn’t. ”
Beads of sweat were building on her forehead as she fell deep into thought. He had to applaud her—there was no sign of the fragile creature he had threatened in that tent. “That’s why all this started in the first place? A way to make amends for his family?”
Callum nodded. “Some of you have the audacity to waste our efforts, waste the very life he lives to protect. Gambling, whoring, murder . . .” He gave her a side-eyed glance. “. . . forfeiting your own life.”
Her brows knit together.
He didn’t say another word about it. He could tell she understood.
Helaina stopped, bracing her arms over her thighs as she tried to catch her breath.
“Do I need to carry you?” he teased.
She remained crouched, shoving at his hip with one hand. “Not happening.”
He laughed as she glanced up, heaving in oxygen as quickly as her mouth would allow. “How much further?”
“Well, at your pace . . .” He put his hand above his eyes to scan the horizon. “We should be done at dusk.”
“Can we just tell him we made it to the top?” she groaned in annoyance.
“He senses lies, Helaina. You must know that by now, come on.”
Her forefinger and thumb hugged the bridge of her nose like she was stifling a headache. “Of course he can.” She pushed herself forward, sweat trickling down her neck, crossing over that thin, faint scar Callum had given her.
His mouth turned downward. He had harmed her, threatened her with torture. He had almost hit her when she spat at him. Theo had held him back. Yet how had she returned that savage behavior? By saving the one being he couldn’t live without.
Manos had told him all he had missed while in his coma-like state. That she had fought Breyer’s fire drake form. That her swordplay actually held up against one of their own.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she replied, still breathing heavily alongside him.
“Why were you going to do it? When we found you that night on the road.”
She ambled over to a boulder and sat down, wiping her brow. Callum handed her a small waterskin from his belt. She drank and ran some along her neck.
Callum waited patiently as she collected herself.
“I used to think sadness was the worst thing a person could feel,” she began. “That there could be nothing worse than misery. Then I found out how wrong I was. The worst thing you can feel is nothing—cold, hollow nothingness. I wanted . . . I needed that emptiness to stop.”
Callum’s face grew somber. He knew that feeling all too well.
“I haven’t really done good for anyone. All I’ve done is hurt. I thought I could save everyone else the burden.” She smiled sadly. “You can’t fulfill a prophecy if you aren’t alive to do it.” Her laugh came out choked and nervous, like her loss of life was a joke.
Enough of that.
He crouched down to her level and gently reached for her. She flinched instantly, and he withdrew his hand, wishing he could take back their first encounter. His taunting, his malicious words.
He gave her space, placing his hands on the rock beside her.
“I will forever be grateful that Theo found you, that we found you. If you hadn’t been here . . . Aaron would be gone. And I’m not sure I could exist a day in a world without him.”
Her throat bobbed like she might start to cry.
Fuck, he was making it worse.
He scratched the back of his neck, thinking about how to make her see.
“If . . . it means anything to you, that is one life where your actions were not a burden. You were a blessing. I know it’s only one . . . but he is my one.”
She rubbed at her eyes before tears could actually fall.
“That night, when my mother forced us into that brothel, when I hid my brother and made him swear not to make a sound. That was the night I found my purpose. I waited, until I was bigger, until I was stronger. It took years . . . but I went back for those men. I went back to that broken town, and I waited in that horrid place. I spent days there, reliving the sounds and the smells of that night, but I refused to leave. Somehow, I knew they would return. Men like that don’t change. ”
He watched her chin quiver at the story he had pushed down into the pits of his mind.
“I was right, they did come back. Requesting the same service they had years before.”
Helaina looked like she might vomit. He almost didn’t want to continue, but he forced himself to get it out, even as the angry tears welled in his own eyes.
“They had been going back there, brutalizing others. So I followed them, found their room. When I walked in, they didn’t even know who I was.
I dreamed of them every fucking night, and they couldn’t even place my face.
I’ve never taken a lover because of what they did to me .
. . They changed my life forever, and they didn’t recognize me.
” His fingers dug into the boulder as he took a shaky breath.
“But after that night, I made sure they would remember, even while they rotted in the six, their souls suffering for every crime they committed. I made my face something they could never forget, not even in death.”
A maniacal smile bloomed on his face through the tears. “They begged for mercy. I didn’t stop. I took my time with them, just as they had with me. Then I burned that entire place and every guilty soul in it to the fucking ground. I erased every single one of them. As if they never were.”
He grabbed her hand, hauling her up. She didn’t back away this time.
“Callum . . . I—”
“My purpose through all that pain, Helaina, has been to make sure no one else has to feel that kind of suffering—no one else. Even if I have to spill a lot of blood to do it. There’s no righteousness in it, only coldhearted vengeance—but it’s my purpose. Mine.”
Not even Aaron knew where he had gone that night, what retribution he had achieved in that killing spree. But he needed her to understand it was possible. To survive that kind of pain and find a reason for its existence. Maybe she could do the same.
“I told you, I owe you my life, a debt I can never repay even with an eternity to try. But I will try. I can train you, I can stand with you through all this madness. I can be your friend. If you’re in need of one.”
Her expression eased. “A friend?”
“A friend.” His hands squeezed hers as the fresh mountain air whistled through the trees. He smiled.
“Would my new friend be willing to cut this hike short and head back?” She coughed dryly.
Callum gave her a knowing look as he pointed up the path in their intended direction.
“Not a chance. Get your ass moving, we’re reaching the top.”
They in fact did not reach the top. She had gotten close, but after watching her hurl up her stomach contents, Callum felt the effort had been made and then some.
They trekked down the steep trails, Callum offering her a helping hand when she stumbled.
“What did you do before all this? When you were mortal?” She stepped over a rotted log.
“Survived,” Callum replied coolly. “We stole what we could, lived off scraps from kitchens mostly. There wasn’t much else other than that.
Coming here meant everything to us. We’ve been here nearly two hundred years.
” They were almost back to the training valley.
Her eyes shifted back and forth between him and the ground.
“You have another question?”
“You said you’ve never . . . had anyone? Two hundred years is just such a long time . . .”
“Do you get this personal with all of your friends this fast?”
“I’ve never had a true friend outside of family. And to be fair, you did bring it up first.”
Callum laughed, though the sound was a bit forced.
“You’re right, I did. You’re easy to talk to.
” She smiled at that. “I’ve tried to get close to others, as a mortal and as I am now.
It goes well for a time but gets difficult when it comes to .
. . intimacy. Besides, once they find out the things I’ve done .
. . once they see what I’m capable of, well, I don’t think any amount of romance can change their opinion of me then. ”
He paused briefly, at the face he couldn’t keep from entering his mind. “There is one . . . if it were possible . . . there would be one, I think.” His sigh was heavy as he decided to pivot. “What did you like to do?”
Understanding this rather candid discussion had a limit, she followed the subject change.
“Reading, mostly, to pass the time. Lessons with tutors and our healers when my father allowed it. I used to ride horses. I wasn’t the best, but I liked taking care of them.
Listing it out loud makes it all seem really boring, actually. ”
“It’s not boring.” He wiped some of his own sweat from his brow. “We have horses here.”
She perked up. “Really? I haven’t seen stables or anything.”
Callum rubbed the base of his neck. “It’s more of a free-range thing with them. They come when they’re called. If you wish to ride, we can always ask Theo.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t . . . I don’t like riding anymore.” Her expression turned melancholy. There was a story there. He would not push her for it today.
“We should hurry. He won’t want you to be late.”