Chapter 18 #2
A guttural scream clawed through the air when the point of the knife, with horrifying precision, lodged into the corner of Lucien’s left eye. The two crewmen gripped the man tighter. Both held one side of his face, forcing him to keep still as Erik…worked.
The king didn’t blind the man, not right away. He tugged and teased at the eye. I covered my mouth, hot sick rising in the back of my throat. Erik slowly lifted the eye, causing a bulge in the socket, but never finished the job.
Lucien sobbed and pleaded.
“I might consider a bit of mercy,” Erik said, calm as a summer’s breeze, “should you tell me who financed your campaign.”
“Finish it, gods, finish it,” Lucien sobbed, truly pleading for the king to pluck out his eye.
“Financier.” The king lifted the eye a little more.
I took a bit of pride that I wasn’t the one to vomit. A man somewhere near the water’s edge retched when bloody sinews bulged from behind the socket.
My nerves twitched; the desire to flee, to swim until I tried my fate with the Chasm took hold. Don’t look away. This was the man I’d face. Perhaps I was gazing into what the future held for me. Better to learn what I could now.
It gave me focus and purpose. It gave me a desire to act, not crack at the seams.
“These…isles are damned…anyway,” Lucien sobbed. “The lotus was a…new attempt at a spell cast to…heal it.”
Erik steadied his hand and looked to the northern tip of the isle. Beyond the smoke and flame, dark hills made of scorched grass were all that remained. Clearly the fire had eaten away whatever greenery there’d been.
Or so I assumed. Until the slightest burn of fear flashed in the king’s eyes.
The king blinked. “Who wanted the lotuses, Lucien? Lady Narza?”
“I…I…I don’t know their name. Payments were made without meeting.”
“What purpose did they have for the lotus?”
“Might p-p-poison the blight away.” Lucien groaned. “I was going to use s-s-some to b-buy entrance through the sea witch’s realms to the far seas.”
Bloodsinger’s lip curled, revealing the points of his canines. “Thank you, Lucien. You’ve been most helpful.”
Erik tugged on the hilt of his knife and removed the tip. It was horrible. The eye was bulged, out of place, and bloody. It was completely useless and no doubt painful.
The king left it in such a state.
He wiped the blood and fluids on Lucien’s shoulder and grinned. “But you’ve chosen for the final time to prove that you’re certainly not loyal to your kingdom.”
With a fierce thrust, Erik rammed the dull knife into the center of Lucien’s belly.
The man roared his pain and doubled over. The king spun on his heel, speaking to Tait and Larsson as he stalked away. “Hang him with his innards by a stake in the cove. A reminder of what happens when you cross the king.”
Blood stained Erik’s hands, but he made no attempt to wipe it off, nor the splatter on the sharp edge of his jaw when he approached.
I dug my heels deeper into the sand and straightened my neck.
The red of his eyes pulsed like a flame behind the pupil.
For too many crushing heartbeats, he merely drank me in, devouring me in a single glance.
Without a word to me, he stormed toward the crowd of villagers. “Where is the Daire?”
“Come on.” Celine appeared at my back and shoved my shoulder. “We’re to follow.”
“Where?”
“He’s going to speak to the Daire of the isle, the lord, or in this case, the lady.” She used the tip of her sword to point forward.
People huddled around Erik and a woman. She was taller than the king, eyes like moonlight, and a headdress of bone and intricate fabrics was tied into her corded hair.
Bands made of leather and beads adorned her wrists and upper arms, and a necklace made of jagged teeth covered the whole of her chest.
They spoke in hushed tones, their heads close. The woman hardly seemed unsettled by the Ever King. Strange as it was, there was almost a bit of respect. Not only from her. Upon his approach, Erik had dipped his head and pressed her palm to his lips.
Not as a lover would, more ritualistic. Like a greeting shaped from turns of traditions.
The woman gestured around her village. Her people listened intently. I stepped back, unable to hear, and desperate to find clearer air.
Celine and the crew were focused enough on their king and the Daire, no one noticed I’d broken free. Down the shore, Lucien’s screams had died off. I didn’t want to look. To me, it was like earning a glimpse of my own fate.
The sand thinned beneath me, making way for wetlands and bits of grass to peek through the sea soil. Or what should’ve been grass and blossoms. Darkened stems and shriveled remains snapped to dust beneath my steps.
A sniffle came at my back.
Five paces away, a small girl with her braided hair tied back in a knot on her head hugged a cloth doll. Heavy tears dripped onto her dirty cheeks. She looked at me, then down at the scorched land.
“Fires?” I asked.
The child tilted her head, studying me. Perhaps she could not understand me. I pointed to the smoldering rooftops, then back to the ground.
The girl followed my gestures but soon shook her head. Clearly, she didn’t understand. Words could be spoken differently, but heartache was the same across worlds. The child mourned her home and the beauty I was certain had once been here.
I smiled and waved her closer. Thoughts of my own fury magic were stored far away. What good would it do me here? I brightened gardens and thickened vines. For blossoms, I could make them more vibrant, smell sweeter.
A rather pointless gift for my predicament.
But with enough focus, I had succeeded in healing deadened fields, or low-yielding crops even. Land destroyed by fire, I’d never tried. Still, I kneeled and pressed my palm against the dark soil.
A bite of something sharp, almost as though a barb pricked my skin, welcomed my touch.
Nothing so horrid I couldn’t keep my hand in place.
I held my breath and waited for the familiar warmth of fury in my blood.
The peace was there, a calm flow to the magic, but there was something else, something dark.
A gasp slid out when the memories of the land seemed to hook around my palm and draw me in deeper.
No, no, no. Not again.
I tried to pull away, but some power, some force, clung to me and filled my mind with tales only the earth knew.
Cries and pain from the ground under my fingertips dug through my belly, churning it in sick until bile rose in my throat.
I tried to catch a breath, tried to pull away before my fury dragged me deeper, but I was frozen in place.
Few people knew my fury could do this, reveal any horrors that had taken place in a particular site. A discovery made during the war with the sea. Deadly histories, pain, attacks, murder, suffering, anything done atop the soil, I could feel if I went deep enough.
Unwittingly, during the war, the land gave up its horrors and offered blood and terror a child ought never to see.
I’d kept my magic tamed ever since, never pushed too far, afraid it would drag me under again, but one touch to this soil and it was throttling me in agony.
This place wasn’t burned by fire, that much I knew.
In my mind, a swirl of shadows surrounded a once-vibrant isle.
Next, a strange taste that bled onto my tongue.
Not the smoke or ash I’d expect from a fire-ravaged land, but a bitter taste like herbs and elixirs, tangled with a unique flavor like rain on the wind.
I’d sensed magic in the earth before. Each power had a different emotion, a different taste to the soil.
There was magic here. Dark magic.
The child squealed beside me but sounded as though she were wading beneath water. Still, it was enough to help me claw my way out of the grasp of the broken earth.
I opened my eyes, hands trembling. While I’d been tossed into a clue that something wretched had gone on here, the girl beamed and clapped her hands in delight.
All hells, where my hand had touched the shriveled stem, now a brilliant golden flower bloomed.
I’d never seen a bloom like it. Angular petals that gleamed as if made of true gold, and leaves that were more cloverlike than anything.
I buried my disquiet over dark magic in the soil and forced a smile at the girl. She grinned in return, then bolted back to her folk, shouting something I didn’t understand.
A bit of pride took hold in my chest. My fury frightened me, but at least today, it had made a child more at peace with what had happened here.
But contentment shattered soon enough.
“What have you done, Songbird?”