Chapter 35
AMAIA
In the early hours of morning, I still couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning on my firm mattress, which I’d dragged to the floor of my sleeping quarters again.
Belatedly, I’d realized I hadn’t minded sleeping on a raised bed with Alaryk. Those nights, as long as his heat had been seeping into my skin and his presence had been strong and certain behind me, I’d felt perfectly content and at peace, lulled to sleep by his even breaths.
A sharp pain in my chest made it hard to breathe, and so I tried to forget, rolling again on my mattress, feeling the hard press of stone just beneath it.
I wondered how much longer it was until dawn.
I could get the morning chores done now because I knew that sleep wouldn’t come.
Maybe it would exhaust me enough so I wouldn’t constantly think of Alaryk’s magic, like a striking serpent, seeking in my mind.
It wasn’t the magic that made tears drip down my temple, onto the pillow.
It was the betrayal. The shock that he would willingly and knowingly do something that he knew would hurt me.
I’d hidden something from him, yes.
But he’d gone too far.
He’d thought he could control me. Thought he could control me like he’d controlled Kamora.
The realization was heinous. Cutting. It would fester and ache for a long time, especially when my heart had been involved. Especially when he had splintered it apart with a single decision.
Tap, tap, tap.
A series of soft thuds at the window. My breath hitched, and I tilted my neck back sharply to peer through the darkened glass.
Was it him?
I cursed myself for thinking it might be Alaryk.
Come to apologize. Come to…take me back to his bed, when all I wanted was to forget that this night had ever happened.
I wanted him to wrap me in his arms and tell me that it’d just been a nightmare, that it hadn’t been real, that he would’ve never done that to me or that he didn’t think of me as a whore, slipping into his furs for his secrets.
That he didn’t think I was as wretched as Kamora…
a vicious person who’d hurt him, who’d preyed on him, who’d used him.
A weak part of me hoped for that. That none of it had happened.
But the face I spied through the glass, cut sharply in moonlight, wasn’t Alaryk’s.
My heart gave a lurch when I shot straight up, my mind reeling.
Ryak.
He tilted his head, his meaning clear. He was out on the courtyard behind the hatchery. Had likely scaled the half wall.
Dread crept in my belly. For a moment, I debated even going out there. For a moment, I debated waking Tarkosh, who would undoubtedly find Alaryk. Ryak could be captured again tonight.
I could prove my loyalty to the people who I called my friends.
Not to a murderer, who’d threatened my family.
But it was the memory of that that had me quietly tugging on my boots by the door…and sneaking out into the hallway, heading toward the bolted door that led to the courtyard. I only prayed to Kakkari that no one was awake at this quiet hour, in the dead of night.
I winced when the door hinges creaked, but I left it open a smidge after I wiggled through the crack.
Ryak was waiting for me beneath one of the trees, away from any of the other hallway windows, just in case someone woke and decided to peer out at the moonlight.
And he wasn’t alone.
Nevin was with him.
There was a tightness to Ryak’s face, a mottled bruise over his cheekbone that had me thinking his guards might’ve taken their frustration out on him during his imprisonment.
I felt like I was walking into my own.
“Listen to me carefully,” Ryak said, his voice hushed like a whisper but somehow even more frightening. “After I’m done speaking, you will go back inside the hatchery and you will take three eggs.”
I stiffened, all the blood rushing from my face as I felt rooted to the stone beneath my feet, unable to move. Behind him, Ny’am seemed to spin.
“One I will carry. The other Nevin will carry. And the third you will carry,” Ryak said softly.
I swallowed, my nostrils flaring, panic rising though I tried to keep it from showing. I tried to think, willing my sluggish mind to churn.
How could I stop this?
“Ah, ah,” Ryak murmured, taking my chin between his fingers, pinching hard enough that I winced. “None of that.”
His hand smelled metallic, like blood. When the moonlight flitted over his knuckles, I saw they were raw.
“And don’t you dare think of waking your friends,” Ryak said. He looked at Nevin, who grabbed me by my arm and pulled me—roughly—over to the half wall. “Because if you do, we’ll finish the job and kill him.”
Nevin had me look over the wall. Behind the hatchery, there was nothing to see. No road that led anywhere, only the mountain. And there, half-slumped against the wall I peered over was a dark mass. A familiar figure.
“Brune,” I breathed, though it sounded like a whimper in my throat.
His face was bloodied and beaten, some of his clothing torn, like he’d tried to fight back. Maybe the bruise on Ryak’s face hadn’t been from the guards.
Anger and horror and desperation rose.
“What did you do?” I demanded. Nevin jerked me back around so that I glared at Ryak. “What did you do? Is he okay?”
Ryak’s eyes narrowed. “For now. We’ll let him return to his little Karag whore if you do what we say without a fight.”
I peered back over the wall at Brune and could only feel a spiral of relief fill me when I saw the rise and fall of his chest.
Ryak’s tight grip tugged my back, and I gasped.
“Don’t waste our time,” he growled in my face. “Go get the eggs.”
Desperation was rising. “You…you know I can’t… It’s…”
Ryak let out a sharp exhale.
“They’ll die away from the hatchery,” I insisted, though it was a half lie. They needed the heat from the starstone, yes, but I knew that they could be transported in the satchels Syris had used during the Elthika attack. “They won’t survive the journey.”
I assumed that was what this was all about.
From the moment that the seed had been planted about the hatchery? When Kiron had mentioned me to the Dothikkar?
Had it all been planned, from the very beginning? Had Kiron known?
This had always been about the eggs. The Dothikkar wanted to steal Elthika eggs. And that was what he’d sent his guardsmen here to do.
Ryak’s grip on my arm tightened, pulling me more firmly against him. “Go get the fucking eggs.”
“Just listen to me—”
A sharp crack of pain exploded against my temple, and the breath whistled from my lungs. I registered the cool blood that was already covering Ryak’s fists, now smeared against my face.
I whimpered, cradling my face with one hand, hot and throbbing, as I stared at Ryak in shock.
As if he hadn’t just punched me—hard enough that my vision blurred—he said, “Go get the eggs, Amaia. If you say another word, I’ll tell the Dothikkar myself that you’re a traitor to your own people.
Kiron will be thrown into the dungeons. Your father, your mother…
well, they’ll be turned from their home, everything stripped from them.
They’ll be banished to the Dead Lands like the Market District filth they are. ”
My breath rattled from my throat.
“Don’t dishonor your family,” Ryak murmured, brushing his thumb against my throbbing face. “Because if you do what the Dothikkar wants, he will instead reward them greatly, for raising such an outstanding citizen as yourself.”
Hatred burned deep in my gut. Ryak nearly grinned, splitting his deceptively handsome face wide, when he saw it.
I had a choice to make.
To betray the Karag. To commit a crime they saw as comparable to murder itself, to steal Elthika eggs. To betray Syris, Tarkosh, Moak, Ulin. To betray Brune.
To turn my back on Samryn.
To betray Alaryk.
A bitter pain twisted my insides.
Or…I would save my family and Brune’s life.
I thought of the shimmering eggs in the incubation room. If I stole them, what future would await them?
A sound came from across the wall. Brune. A gentle groan, a wheezing breath.
“Shut him up,” Ryak ordered Nevin.
“Wait,” I pleaded.
But Nevin was already jumping over the wall, swinging his legs effortlessly before dropping down to the other side.
I heard the squelch of blood as Nevin hit him, the sound of Brune’s head meeting stone, a wet cough tumbling from his lips.
“Stop,” I breathed, glaring at Ryak through a veil of tears. “Enough. I’ll do it. Stop now!”
He help up his hand, and Nevin ceased.
“I’ll be right back. But don’t touch him again,” I hissed.
Ryak tilted his head back in an affirmative. “Be quick. And nothing funny, pyroki girl.”
I turned on my heel, my gut churning, making saliva pool in my mouth like I would be sick.
I had a choice…but I wasn’t strong enough to make the righteous one.
And so, I squeezed back through the courtyard door and slipped into the incubation room, the heat of it feeling suffocating.
I was crying as I gathered the satchels from a cabinet near the door.
The same ones we’d used to transport the eggs into the cellar.
I figured it was their best chance of survival.
I slipped my hands into heat-proof gloves, lined in hatchling scales, and scooped up starstone fragments from one of the empty alcoves, filling the bottoms of each insulated bag as quietly as I could.
If Syris woke…or Tarkosh or Moak or Ulin…Brune was dead. My family would be in danger back in Dakkar. I couldn’t afford that, so I worked as quickly as I could with shaking hands, determination feeling like a stone lodged in my breast.
When the satchels were filled, my gaze went to the Rythbacks. The other egg in the room was a Redback, I’d only discovered recently. I sure as hell wouldn’t give that kind of power to the Dakkari. The Rythbacks were the most logical choice.
But even as I stole the eggs from their pedestals in the quiet alcoves, I was still crying. I was thinking of Kyr. All the hatchlings I’d seen break from their shells. I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to remain here, to finish what I’d begun.
I wanted to see Syris one last time. All my friends.
I wanted to see Alaryk again.
And now I never would.
My vision was blurred when I tied up the bags, making sure the eggs were nestled deep in the starstone. When I straightened, I touched my pendant, hanging around my neck. My most cherished possession, from my family.
As though it was an apology, I tugged the chain from my neck and laid it in one of the alcoves. I hoped that, at the very least, they would know what I was trying to say. How sorry I was. How truly sorry I was.
The firestone in the pendant glowed from the heat. I felt disgusting, my flesh crawling. I felt empty, scraped from the inside out.
It felt fitting. It felt like I’d cut a piece of myself out, that I was leaving it behind here in the Arsadia.
It would be a beacon to whoever woke in the morning first, to find three of the Elthika eggs gone.