Chapter Thirty-Two
It took Kiva mere seconds to realize what had begun while she and Jaren had been traversing the underground maze.
It wasn’t just the screams that gave it away. It was the sounds of steel on steel, the whistles of quarrels and arrows, the baying of the hounds ... and the blood.
The grounds of Zalindov were already stained with it.
It was so much worse than any riot Kiva had witnessed before.
Even from within the domed building that covered the entrance to the tunnels, she could see masses of prisoners fighting against the armed guards, hammers and chisels and pickaxes against swords and shields and bows.
Everywhere she looked, people were wrestling, bodies littering the ground, some writhing in pain, others still and silent.
None cried out louder than those fending off the dogs, whose sharp canine teeth shredded flesh and snapped bones.
All of this Kiva took in within the space of a breath, panic overwhelming her mind before adrenaline cleared it. She looked at Jaren and gasped, “Tipp— Tilda— I have to—”
“Go!” he finished for her, urging her forward. “I’ll catch up!”
She was already running as he called, “Be careful!” after her.
He would follow as fast as his injured body allowed, but it might not be fast enough.
She needed to get to the infirmary, to Tipp, to Tilda, and make sure they were safe.
She would barricade the door, lock them in the quarantine room if she had to, whatever it took to protect them.
Olisha and Nergal would look after themselves—they’d probably already left to find a hiding place—but Tipp and Tilda .
.. Kiva needed to hurry, hurry, hurry .
A whooshing sound had her swerving just in time to miss an arrow that shot into the ground too close for comfort.
Her feet faltered, fear clutching at her chest, but she continued on, sprinting through the bottleneck of inmates and guards clashing near the western watchtower, dodging and ducking until she reached the barracks and could use it for cover.
The noises of the battle made her desperate to block her ears, if only to drown out the agony all around her.
Why were they doing this? It would achieve nothing.
The moment the violence broke out, the Warden would have been ushered to the top of the wall, following protocol for even the smallest of riots.
There would be no getting to him, not unless the prisoners overcame every single guard and then climbed the wall themselves.
Rooke was the safest man at Zalindov, and he would remain that way as long as the riot continued, watching from on high as prisoner after prisoner fell.
Maybe this was what he’d wanted all along.
A riot was the swiftest way to guarantee mass carnage.
He would have no need for his poison after today, and there would be no questions asked—he would never see justice for his crimes, with blame for the innumerable deaths falling squarely on the uncontrolled violence.
Another whistling arrow prompted Kiva to duck just as it whooshed past her ear, close enough for her to feel the air move. She made a gargled sound of fright, but it was drowned out by the clamor around her, the yelling of the guards and prisoners alike.
Still bolting across the grounds, Kiva watched for arrows and flying daggers from the guards, but likewise watched for the improvised weapons of the inmates, seeing guards piled on the ground with their heads smashed in or with open lacerations, some still with hand tools sticking out of them as they stared unseeing into the sky.
For every guard that had fallen, Kiva saw ten downed prisoners. More. And she knew that at any moment, she could join them. And yet still she ran, keeping an eye out for Naari, unsure if she wished for the guard to be by her side or hurrying to protect Jaren. Unsure if—
BOOM!
Kiva was thrown from her feet, a scream leaving her as she soared through the air and slammed onto the cold, hard earth.
For a moment, she could only lie there, stunned. Her ears were ringing, the sounds of the continued riot muffled into nonsensical background noise, her vision blurry and fading in and out of focus.
Flat on her stomach, Kiva turned her head just in time to see the watchtower fall.
An explosion—someone had caused an explosion . They’d blasted the base of the tower, the stone corner crumbling right out from under it, the entire structure tilting precariously before gravity took hold and it crashed to the ground.
The earth shook at the impact, the guards who had been shooting arrows from the safety of the raised platform now crushed beneath it. Dead.
“Take that, yeh dogs!”
Kiva’s hearing had returned enough to hear Mot’s cry, her vision clear enough to see him raising his hands in triumph.
“Mess with an apothecary, and yeh’ll reap what yeh sow!” he crowed, before hobbling quickly into the storm of dust created by the collapsed tower, disappearing from view.
That same dust reached Kiva moments later, her winded lungs objecting as she began coughing for clean air.
Get up, she ordered herself. GET UP!
Tipp and Tilda still needed her. She couldn’t fail them. She couldn’t .
Determined, she pushed up on weak arms, her head spinning.
She nearly fell again, but regained her balance and staggered forward.
It was harder to see now that everything was coated in a fine haze, but as Kiva struggled onward and the dust started to settle, she began seeing familiar faces fighting for their lives.
First, there was Cresta, the rebel leader having stolen both a dagger and a sword, which she was using to cut down anyone in her path. As Kiva watched, Harlow succumbed to her blades, the quarry overseer collapsing to his knees as the light left his eyes.
Next she saw Grendel, the crematorium worker throwing what looked like ash into the faces of the guards nearest her, blinding them before ducking away to safety, only to repeat her actions all over again.
Then Kiva saw Bones and the Butcher fighting back to back in the middle of the open ground, the two brutal men drenched in blood and slaying any prisoners who dared come near. Kiva felt sick watching them; their gleeful looks showed how much they delighted in the violence.
Hurry, she told herself, looking away. She couldn’t linger, couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
Forcing herself to move faster, she pushed her wobbly legs until she was running again, sprinting again, weaving around dueling prisoners and guards, until finally—
There . Kiva could see the infirmary. A relieved sob gasped out of her.
She couldn’t believe her luck when she realized that there was no fighting near the entrance, the masses clearing the further she moved from the center of the grounds, where the numbers were still the thickest. A second sob escaped her, even as she continued flying toward it. She was so close, so close, but then—
She saw the door.
It was smashed open.
Kiva stumbled, her feet moving too fast over the uneven ground, her arms cartwheeling to keep herself upright—just as another arrow sailed right over her head, exactly where her heart would have been had she not tripped.
Shock and terror warred for her attention, but she shoved them aside. She couldn’t spare a thought for her near miss and focused only on getting to the infirmary, her lungs burning, her muscles aching, every part of her desperate to find out, desperate to see if—
She flew through the doorway, coming to a screaming halt now that she was no longer in immediate danger. The remaining breath fled her as she looked around, her heart stopping as she took in what had become of her healing sanctuary.
Glass vials were smashed on the ground, the rat pen was broken to pieces with the vermin gone, linens were shredded, sticky remedies covered everything from the benches to the walls to the floor. The infirmary was destroyed, but Kiva didn’t care about the room—she cared about who was in it.
On quaking legs, Kiva moved toward Tilda. She had no need to rush anymore. She could already see it from across the room.
Blood.
Tilda’s blood.
It was everywhere, her bedsheets soaked red.
And her eyes ... Tilda’s blind eyes ... they were staring up at the ceiling, unblinking, unmoving, just like the rest of her.
As if watching from a dream, a nightmare, Kiva placed her trembling hands over Tilda’s heart, over the gaping stab wound that could mean only one thing.
Nothing.
Not a single beat.
As still as death.
Don’t let her die .
There was nothing Kiva could do for her.
Don’t let her die .
She’d tried so hard— so hard —to keep Tilda alive.
Don’t let her die .
A tear escaped Kiva’s eyes, then another, before her knees buckled and she collapsed over the woman, heedless of her blood, thinking only of all she’d suffered through to protect her.
Kiva had survived the impossible, had completed the entire Trial by Ordeal, all for Tilda, all so that she might be safe, be freed. And now—
Now she was dead.
“I’m so sorry,” Kiva choked out. “I tried. I tried .”
Only twice before had she known such agony. Such heartache. It was all she could do to keep whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over again.
“K-K-Kiva?”
Kiva’s head shot up, tears blurring her vision as she looked wildly around for the owner of the weak voice. “Tipp?” she rasped, barely able to form the word around her flooding emotions. “Where are you?”
When Tipp didn’t respond straightaway, Kiva swiped at her face, standing from Tilda’s bedside, and called again, “Tipp?”
But then she saw him over the opposite side of Tilda’s bed, tangled up in the torn privacy curtain on the ground ... and lying in a pool of his own blood.
“TIPP!” Kiva cried, bolting around the end of the bed and dropping to his side so fast that her knees screamed in pain. She shoved the curtain aside, her eyes filling with fresh tears as she looked down at the young boy and found the source of the blood.
Whole-body shakes racked her frame as she reached for him, pressing her hands to his abdomen as she sought to stem the flow, already knowing that he’d lost too much. There was no treatment that could fix this, no medicine that could save him.
“I t-t-tried to p-protect her,” Tipp whispered, his face so pale that it was nearly as blue as his eyes. “I’m s-s-sorry. I t-t-tried.”
He coughed, blood bubbling out of his lips and over his chin.
“Shhh,” Kiva told him, tears streaming down her face. “Save your strength.”
“I l-l-love you, K-Kiva,” Tipp kept whispering, his voice fading more, as if he’d only been holding on long enough to see her one last time. “Thank y-you ... f-f-for everything.”
Kiva hiccuped a sob. Her hands still pressed against his gaping stomach, where his blood now came alarmingly slow.
“I love you, too,” she whispered back, moving one wet hand to press it against his cheek, her tears flowing faster. “So I need you to stay with me, all right? We’ll get through this, just like everything else.”
Tipp smiled at her, and despite his pallor, despite the severity of his wound, he still lit up the room. “You’ve a-always b-been ... a b-b-bad ... liar,” he whispered, still smiling. “Y-You should ... Y-You should ...”
But he didn’t finish, because he coughed again, and then continued coughing, until his eyes rolled to the back of his head ... and his chest stopped moving.
“No,” Kiva breathed. “No, no, no, no, no.” She moved her bloodied hands over his heart. “Tipp, please .”
It was still beating, but only just. The slightest of thumps, and it wouldn’t remain that way for long, not now that he was no longer breathing.
“I can’t lose you, too,” Kiva sobbed, her tears falling down onto him. “I can’t lose you, too.”
And suddenly Kiva wasn’t seeing Tipp anymore; the infirmary faded as she was swept away to a freezing winter’s evening ten years earlier.
With sickening clarity, she remembered the moment the sword had been pulled from Kerrin’s chest and he’d fallen in slow motion to the ground, how her father had pressed his hands to the wound and screamed for help, how Kiva had reached for him—but been pulled away before she could so much as touch him.
No one was going to pull her away today.
Promise me, little mouse, her father had whispered, their very first night together in Zalindov . Promise me that you’ll never do it again.
But, Papa, your hand was bleeding. You were hurt.
It doesn’t matter, he’d told her urgently . You know why I’ve been teaching you the healing craft, you know why it’s so important, why you have to keep learning.
So that no one ever finds out, Kiva said dutifully.
That’s right, sweetheart, Faran said, kissing her cheek. You have to stop. You can’t risk it, not in here. Not even for me.
But—
I mean it, Kiva. Promise me, Faran said firmly . Promise me that, as long as you’re in here, no matter what, no matter who , you’ll never, ever do it again.
And so Kiva had promised.
Even when she’d feared her father had become sick like so many others, even when he’d died, she had kept her promise.
But she couldn’t keep that promise any longer.
It might have been over ten years, but her blood had been calling to her that whole time, waiting, waiting, waiting .
She was untrained, untested when it came to wounds as serious as this, but desperation guided her to focus on Tipp’s fading heartbeat, on his gaping stomach, on the life that was swiftly leaving him.
“Please,” she whispered, her voice breaking as she concentrated harder than ever before, praying that she could do for Tipp what she’d longed to do for her brother by the river all those years ago.
If only she’d been able to place her hands on Kerrin—all she’d needed was a moment, a single touch before his heart had stopped, and it would have changed everything. “Please.”
That was all it took.
Golden light poured from Kiva’s fingertips, seeping into Tipp’s chest, flooding along his torso, sealing his flesh, inch by painful inch.
It was working— it was working .
His heartbeat was growing stronger, beat after beat after beat.
And then—
He sucked in a breath, his chest expanding.
Kiva wept openly, keeping her hands in place, willing that golden light to keep healing, to keep sealing. She was nearly there, only a few more inches to go and he’d be completely—
“KIVA!”