Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Without the sun, little separated one day from another.
It was easy to let time melt like honey left out in the summer.
Sometimes the stars dimmed a little during the day, as if bowing their heads in remembrance of the dawn’s light.
But only if you looked very, very closely.
Most never bothered. I always did, though. Every day. Someone had to remember.
I stared up at those stars now and tossed an empty wine bottle into the alleyway, the glass shattering in a rainstorm of glittering shards.
It was morning, or close to it. I’d gotten drunker than I’d been in a long, long time.
Mirie and Valentina had since gone to sleep, and neither had tried to approach me again. Wise.
{This is pathetic,} Zefiah said, but her tone was more of compassion than disgust.
I rose unsteadily to my feet, then walked upstairs to the row of room doors. I threw one open without knocking. It was, of course, unlocked. Men like Marko never felt like they had to lock their doors.
His big form jerked up when I entered, then relaxed back on the bed when he saw me.
“Thought you wouldn’t be in the mood,” he said.
I wondered if I reeked of my night the way he reeked of his. By the looks of his disheveled clothes, I wasn’t even his first visitor tonight.
{Typical,} Zefiah grumbled, but I tossed her aside in the corner, far enough away from the bed that I wouldn’t be able to hear her.
I crawled onto the bed. Marko rolled over, propping himself up on one muscular arm, and gave me a slow, lazy grin.
“Hey, you,” he murmured, and briefly, I glimpsed another version of him—one who lived in a world in which the sun had never fallen, who was legitimately handsome and charming.
But then, Marko didn’t need to be anyone but exactly who he was.
He thrived in this world, where the size and strength he had were more valuable than the kindness he didn’t.
Mirie grieved the sun. Valentina was so young she didn’t even know she should.
But Marko didn’t mourn the old world. He was doing so damned well in this one.
I flattened my hand over his cheek. Ran my fingertips over bristly dark stubble, the angle of a broad chin.
“Hey you.” I leaned closer. He tilted his head up in anticipation of a kiss. But I only said quietly, “You are going to go with Valentina and Mirie to Hegaella tomorrow.”
He opened his mouth, maybe to protest, maybe to claim he hadn’t been considering otherwise. But he had, and I knew it, so I didn’t let him speak.
“You are going to go with them,” I said again.
“Going to walk every single step with them, and you’re going to go to the fortress and remain by their side the entire time.
Even if something better comes along. Even if you see the opportunity to rob them, or traffic them.
Even if someone offers you a million gods-damned pieces of gold for your machinist.” He opened his mouth again, and I pressed my fingers over it.
“And if someone comes after them, be it a trafficker or a soulless or a vampire or a damned god, you are going to defend them until your last breath. You are going to go down fighting for them. Because I’m the Vindica Ultis, Marko.
Chosen of the goddess of fucking retribution.
And if I learn that you fucked them over or abandoned them when they needed you, if they end up dead and your corpse is not right there next to them, I will spend the rest of my life hunting you down.
I am built for revenge. And when I punish you slowly, it’ll taste just like justice. Do you understand me?”
His blue eyes searched my face. They were pretty eyes, ice bright. They looked like they belonged to a softer face, a softer heart, than his. Right now, they sparkled with mirth.
I removed my fingertips from his mouth, which curled into a smile.
“For a hero, you’re so good at being a villain,” he said. And unlike Mirie or Valentina, he said those words with something like admiration.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I understand, Vindica Ultis. Do my job, or you’ll peel my skin off and enjoy every second like the sadist you are.”
I thought of Mirie and Valentina, looking at me with such disappointment tonight.
Marko never looked at me that way. It occurred to me now, in this drunken haze—sadder than I admitted to being—that perhaps he was the only living person who truly understood me.
And maybe that was because like recognized like.
“Now that you’ve threatened me . . .” His hand slid down, playing at the fabric where my untucked shirt met my waistband. “You staying?”
As sensual a proposition as Marko ever offered.
A hand up my shirt on a bed that he’d likely had another woman in mere hours ago.
Some part of me was ashamed of it. But another part was sad and drunk and lonely and yes, maybe a little horny, ready to let Marko call me all the names I wanted to call myself while I left teeth marks in his skin to remind him of my promises.
I lay back in the bed.
Marko was already snoring thirty seconds after his last thrust. Our tryst was hard and fast and ugly, like it always was, and it hurt just the way I wanted it to.
I didn’t bother to say goodbye when I grabbed Zefiah and returned to my own room.
I collapsed on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Water-stained rafters twirled above me like the dancers I used to so admire as a child, bearing fungal skirts.
Silence.
Terrible silence.
I felt disgusting. I stank of sweat and blood. The hair I’d brushed was now matted from Marko’s greasy grip. My makeup hung in smears under my eyes.
It was always in the quiet that the sadness set in. Slow, like an inevitable incoming tide, dragging all kinds of rancid carcasses to the shore.
I reached into my pocket and pressed my thumb to the imprint of Shiket’s profile. With a sudden heave, I dragged myself to the washroom and emptied my stomach into the sink.
Then I flopped onto the bed and curled up. My hands found Zefiah more easily than they had ever found any lover, and her presence felt warmer, too.
Just her and me, now.
{What terrible punishment,} she said.
Maybe it was. I didn’t say it, not even silently. But Zefiah was connected to me through far more than words.
{You can change your mind.}
No. I couldn’t go with them and defy Shiket again. Just as I couldn’t let them come with me if Shadowborn vampires would be chasing me the whole way.
{They are accustomed to battling vampires. They could hold their own.}
But even Zefiah understood it wasn’t really about that.
Finally I spoke, in a raspy whisper. “They’re better off, and you know it.”
Zefiah said nothing. She could speak only truth, and the truth would be cruel.
At last, she said, {For whatever it may be worth, Kyrene, the day that I end you will be a sad one for me indeed.}
My lashes were heavy. An ugly smile lurched across my lips.
Funny, that it felt like such genuine tenderness.
Thanks, Zef. Thanks.
I woke up to a pounding headache and a churning stomach that I promptly emptied.
What is the point of bearing a divine sword if you can’t even spare me a hangover? I grumbled to Zefiah as I splashed some stale water over my face.
{I think the real question is, are you even worthy of bearing a divine sword if you expect it to save you from the consequences of your own choices?}
Have you met a religious figure, Zef? If hypocrisy were a disqualifier, there would be none left.
{Spoken like a true believer.}
Still, once my hazy memories of the night before returned to me, I wasn’t much in the mood for ribbing. I didn’t remember all the specifics of my fight with Valentina, but that was probably for the better. What I did recall was unpleasant to think about.
I remembered the conclusion well enough, though. A decision that sober me agreed with just as vehemently—more, even—than drunk me had. Today, I would leave for Yiferis. Valentina, Mirie, and Marko would go in the opposite direction, to Hegaella.
The four of us met at the stables and tacked our horses in silence.
Marko seemed to be feeling the effects of his night as much as I was, grumbling to himself, seemingly oblivious to the tension.
Mirie was quiet, watching me in that inquisitive, thoughtful way.
Valentina steadily avoided my gaze as she strapped her saddle back onto her horse.
Valentina was terrible at being a sullen teenager. It sat on her awkwardly, like ill-fitting clothes. When we were done preparing and Marko and Mirie brought the horses out, I pulled her aside.
“Val. Hey—Val.”
She actually was ignoring me, the little shit. I had to grab her arm to make her finally face me.
“So we’re really doing this, huh?” she said. “Or are you ready to just let us go with you?”
It was hard not to feel a pang at that—of pain, of sadness, I wasn’t sure which. “We’re really doing this.”
“That’s stupid.”
“It’s not, actually.”
“You only said it because you were drunk.”
“I’m sober now, and I still think it’s a good idea.”
Those last four words tasted a little sour. A little false. I thought of that little girl, and all the countless versions of her I’d met over the years; tried not to feel that empty ache in my chest.
Val swallowed, eyes to the ground, arms crossed, like she was putting up physical defenses around her heart.
“We’ve made it together, all this time,” she said. “We always got through it. What makes this different?”
Her voice cracked, ever so slightly, and I was struck all over again by how young she sounded.
And yet, at the same time, how much she had grown from the night I first met her—a cocky, cheerful ten-year-old machinist prodigy, crashing into my life when I’d been the most certain I wanted no one else in it.
She still had the same round face, the same freckles over her cheeks that blended so well with the perpetual smear of machine grease.
The same big, dark eyes. But her features had also grown more angular.
She was nearly as tall as me. Sometime recently she’d started attempting to tame her wild honey-brown waves—with limited success—and I felt a sudden, shocking twist of regret that I had never offered to teach her.
Staring down the prospect of a day without Valentina for the first time in six years, I regretted so many things, now.
I felt so selfish for it. For now wanting so badly to give her all those mundane kindnesses, when it was too late.
For wanting, so badly, to keep her.
But there was no kindness greater than the one I was giving her right now. I wished I could tell her that. Wished I could find the words for it. But those words sounded so much like ones I’d never been able to drag up my throat—words like sorry and care and want and, most of all, love.
So I gave her ones I knew much better. “Listen, kid. If you run into trouble, save yourself. No matter what. Load an extra shot for spite, and don’t be afraid to use it.”
She made a face like she was sucking on something sour. But I’d been about her age when someone had told that to me, clutching my shoulders as the world collapsed around us. I hadn’t wanted to listen then, either. But I learned, eventually. So would she.
“Don’t give me that face.” I flicked her in the forehead, and she scowled. “I taught you how to give them hell.”
“I know. It’s just . . .” She shrugged weakly. “I just wish there was more we could give than that. You know?”
Her words were different than the ones she’d thrown at me last night. Somehow, they sounded the same.
Awkward silence stretched. The obvious gift lingered on the tip of my tongue—I’m sorry.
But I wasn’t, was I? I was sorry for speaking to her the way I had last night.
I was sorry I’d fucked up and let her see the things I still wished I’d hidden.
But I wasn’t sorry for killing those people to save my own, just as I wasn’t sorry for any of the ones who came before them or would come in the future.
So I said, instead, “Work on that weapon for me while I’m gone. I expect it to be perfected by the next time I see you.”
Valentina blinked.
By the next time I see you.
Her face split into a lopsided grin, and my chest ached at her joy. Because I knew, in this moment, if I did what was best for her, I would likely never see Valentina again.
“You know it will be,” she said.
I resisted the overwhelming urge to ruffle her hair—like I hadn’t done since she was a kid. I slid my hands into my coat pockets instead.
And though there was so much more I wished I could offer her, I said only, “Take care of yourself, Valentina.”
“You too, Kyrene. You too.”
Mirie was the last to say goodbye. I pulled her back as the others started down the road and slipped something into her hand.
She looked down at it, brows arched.
“You need this.”
“You need it more.”
One of my gauntlets—forged from blessed gold, each bearing the signet of Shiket over the backs of my hands.
They had been created alongside Zefiah five millennia ago, and though they held only a kernel of her power, even a kernel was significant when you were talking about tools once borne by the Goddess of Justice herself.
But the value in the gauntlet was not its power. It was the protection that came with it. A direct thread running straight to Shiket. A way—albeit an imperfect one—of extending the protection of the goddess earned by the Vindica Ultis to them.
Mirie was already a devoted acolyte of Shiket. She would be able to bear the gauntlet—and it would grant her a level of protection matched only by the highest-ranking priests of retribution.
“Take it,” I insisted. “Shiket will protect you.”
“The Lady of Justice already protects us.”
“She’ll protect you extra, then.”
Mirie looked as if she would argue with me again, but maybe she saw in my face how much I needed her to have it. She slid it onto her hand. The metal reshaped around her forearm, longer and more slender than my own, like it had been forged specifically for her.
“See?” I said. “It likes you.”
“It has taste.”
“At least one of you does.”
“Such abuse the Vindica Ultis hurls at a woman of justice.”
“Go back to the temple if you don’t like it.”
Mirie cocked her head. Smiled, a little sadly. “I suppose tomorrow has finally come.”
A sudden lump rose in my throat, an itch starting behind my eyes.
{Good gods,} Zefiah sighed. {Humans. Such sentimentality.}
As if she didn’t feel it too.
I hoisted myself up onto my horse and raised my hand in a goodbye.
“See you soon, priestess.”
Mirie opened her palm. “See you soon.”
Neither of us acknowledged the lie.