Chapter Fifty-Four Samira
FIFTY-FOUR SAMIRA
What did you do?”
My eyes snapped open.
Keir was crouched over me, holding my neckline away from my chest and exposing my handiwork from last night.
I glanced down and choked back a curse. I’d made a horrible mess of my skin.
I hadn’t truly felt it last night, but now the wound burned.
It looked nearly as bad as when it had gotten infected all those years ago.
The X was outlined in an angry red. One sharp move would split the scabs, and it would start bleeding again.
Batting Keir’s hands away, I sat up and pulled my dress back into place. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“I smelled blood, but I thought it was your blisters.”
“It’s nothing, Keir,” I repeated, standing. “Let’s just go.”
“Let me see it.”
“There’s nothing to see.” I started trudging over the sand again. The sun hadn’t crested the horizon yet. We could manage a mile at least before we had to bear its insufferable heat.
Keir rounded in front of me and grabbed my shoulder. “It could get infected.”
I shrugged out of his grip and kept on. “We’re not wasting water cleaning it.”
He reached for me again. “Majesty, just let me—”
“No!” I shoved him roughly, surprising him enough that he stumbled. I folded my arms protectively over my chest, a useless shield. A small trickle of blood rolled down my breast.
Keir stared at me. “You did that to yourself.”
“We’re wasting time before the sun’s up.”
His eyes scanned my face, studying me with deep intensity. I had that acute sense of probing I often got under Keir’s peculiar gaze, and it left me feeling bare, exposed. I tightened my arms around my chest.
“That’s why you didn’t run,” he said, realization dawning. “That night with the shackles. You weren’t trying to escape. You were doing this.”
I turned on my heel and started walking, not caring if he followed or not. I was not having this conversation.
“Why?” he called after me.
I kept my eyes trained straight ahead and said nothing, but a second later, he was next to me, keeping pace at my side. “Talk to me, Amunet,” Keir pressed. “You said you got that scar because of disobedience. What did you mean?”
I focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
Keir took one long stride and cut off my path again. I barely avoided ramming into his chest. “Tell me.”
I met his gaze from under my brows. “Not yet.”
Keir observed me a moment longer, the fire not dimming in his eyes. “I gave you my word I wouldn’t leave,” he said, voice low.
“You also gave your word to Rade.”
“And I kept it.”
“By nearly killing me? By marking my cabin without my permission? By avoiding your post for a full week?”
“I’m flattered, Majesty. I had no idea you’d miss me so much.”
“That’s not—”
“Believe what you want,” he interrupted, tipping up his chin and glaring down his nose at me, “but I have never broken my word. If you’d been telling the truth about your skills with a khopesh, I wouldn’t have been able to kill you.
” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “And I wasn’t actually going to kill you. ”
My breaths were jagged pieces of glass in my lungs as I struggled to keep from exploding. I’d never felt rage like this. The pressure of it built inside me, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep a lid firmly planted on top of it.
“No?” I seethed. “You just drew blood because you’re a twisted bastard who likes the taste of it—and oh yeah, pissing on cabins like an untrained dog?”
“I marked your cabin to keep you safe. Or have you forgotten that Bain nearly ripped your throat out that night? He would’ve come back the second you were alone.
My scent protected you.” I opened my mouth, but he plunged on before I could respond.
“You’re the one who lied every chance she got.
The way I see it, if anyone is going to break their word, it’s you. ”
He was right. I was already nearly laid bare before him—my lies and my guilt. Why not tell him everything? For a second, my name hovered on my tongue. But it stuck there. My last piece of protection against his full hatred.
“All I’ve ever tried to do is act with honor—” I began.
“Do not,” he snarled, “talk to me about honor, Khada. Your people don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“And you know nothing of my people.”
“I know that seventeen years ago, your king marched into my home,” he said, yellow eyes flashing.
“And he forced my people into the streets. He rounded them up—took children—and threw them into the Shroud. Then he set up a perimeter so that anyone who tried to escape met the edge of his soldiers’ blades. ”
My anger ebbed as my brows furrowed.
But he wasn’t done. “Some managed to get away before the legions arrived, but some of us”—he pulled the hem of his shirt up, exposing those slashes across his abdomen, the white of his rib peeking out through the skin bound by a leather band—“some of us went in and didn’t come out for days.”
I stared at the scars, fury guttering out like a blown candle, and I shook my head as if that alone would make it untrue.
“The Shroud was Shaya’s will, your king decided,” Keir continued mercilessly.
“The Underworld god’s desire to reclaim us—because Kaldfolk are demons, right?
Shaya’s abominations? Your king wanted to force all Kaldfolk into the Shroud, where he thought we belonged.
He knew it would kill us, drive us mad, turn us into monsters, and he forced us in anyway.
Now tell me, Majesty, was that honorable? ”
No, King Zaid wouldn’t… He couldn’t have.
But the loathing on Keir’s face, the scars on his body, those weren’t lies.
“I… I didn’t know,” I whispered. But had Amunet? Had she known what her father had done? She’d only have been three at the time of the invasion—certainly not to be blamed—but if she had known, then she had lied to us.
Keir had been stuck in the Shroud. For days, he’d said. No wonder he always had that gleam of madness in his eyes. No wonder he despised Amunet as much as he did. He’d come face-to-face with monsters, in the Shroud and outside of it.
“I’m sorry,” I said brokenly.
Keir stiffened.
“I mean it—”
“Quiet.” His eyes strayed over my head.
The hair along my body shot up. I turned and scanned the desert. And when I saw it—only a handful of miles away—my blood ran cold.
An enormous bird with sand-colored feathers and violet talons. It didn’t look exactly the same as the one I had seen in the White Horns, but there was no mistaking it.
A Roc.
My heart dropped. “I thought there was only one of its kind.”
“There is.”
“Then how—”
“I don’t know.” Keir’s eyes were wide as the bird flew closer.
My breaths picked up speed as my mind raced. “We have to hide.” But Rade wasn’t there to pull a magical shield over us.
Echoing my thoughts, Keir said, “Not many hiding places in a wasteland, Majesty.” He drew his sword from its scabbard on his back. The blade was almost laughably tiny compared to the massive beast heading our way.
My eyes darted around wildly before settling on the sand. I dropped to my knees and started digging furiously.
“What are you doing?” Keir demanded.
“It’s the only option.”
The Roc drew closer, eating up the distance like it was nothing. Its tan mane rippled in the wind, and it released an earsplitting caw.
“Fuck.” Keir plunged his hands into the sand beside me. He worked much faster than me, hardly taking his eyes away from the bird as he gestured to the sizeable hole he created in mere moments. “Get in.”
I jumped in and lay on my back.
Keir threw sand on top of me, head darting up every few seconds.
The Roc’s beady eyes were visible now, and its violet beak dipped toward us.
“Hurry, Keir.”
He finished burying me and looked up. With another colorful swear, he ordered, “Don’t move.”
“Keir—”
The Roc’s shadow covered us. Keir let loose a vicious roar as he dropped his sword and his face elongated, his body lengthened and fleshed out, fur sprouted, claws burst out of his fingernails, and suddenly there wasn’t a man standing above me, but a bear.
Completely animal, save for his eyes, which burned with human fury.
He roared again—and then tore off in the opposite direction.
The bird gave chase with a shriek, beating its wings right on top of me and sending sand flying. I squeezed my eyes shut as sheets of it sprayed my face.
Then the sun blazed forth again as the Roc’s shadow moved, making a beeline for Keir’s retreating form.
I waited several breathless moments, the weight of the sand claustrophobic. Panic rose up in my chest. I couldn’t see what was happening, but I heard Keir’s bellows, the Roc’s screeches.
Get up, I urged myself. Get up and do something.
But I didn’t know how to use a sword, and I couldn’t shift into any animals. Remaining hidden was the smartest thing I could do.
A gentle breeze tickled my face. Soft, delicate. A caress. Entirely unlike the hot, dry gusts of the Wastelands. It was purposeful. Like a finger against my cheek.
I blinked as I felt it again, and it trailed away from me. Like it wanted me to follow it.
Going against my every instinct, I struggled to move. The sand was a band around my chest, my arms, my legs. But I gritted my teeth and pulled hard.
My right arm burst free. Then the other. I sat up, sand cascading off me like a waterfall, and staggered to my feet, spitting out the small grains that had somehow gotten into my mouth.
That wind brushed through my braided hair before trailing away again.
A short distance from me, Keir and the Roc were engaged in a fierce battle.
I scooped up Keir’s sword. I had no plan, just a feeling driving me forward.
The Roc had just beaten its wings against Keir, whose fur was already matted with blood.
He righted himself with a snarl before lunging at the bird.
The Roc screamed as Keir’s razor-sharp teeth clamped down on its shoulder, and slammed its beak into Keir’s side. Keir roared in agony, releasing his grip as blood gushed out. He crashed into the sand, and the Roc was on him in an instant, tearing at him.
“Keir!” I shouted.
As I ran toward him, the wind skimmed past me again, bringing a sudden shadow.
I looked up, half expecting to see another terrifying monster.
Instead, where before there had been nothing but hot blue skies, a slate-gray cloud swirled, as if an invisible finger was stirring the sky. And not just any cloud.
A storm cloud.
I gasped as thunder rolled over the desert, loud enough to shake the earth. Lightning flashed, louder than the sound of Keir’s pained roars, and then, like a bucket had been overturned, the cloud dropped a deluge of water.
I stared with parted lips at the sheets of falling water.
I’d never seen rain before. Any other moment, it would have been magnificent, but right then, it was downright miraculous.
Water, plummeting uninhibited, like there were endless reserves of it, pounding against the dry sand and the enormous bird.
The Roc withdrew from Keir, beating its wings awkwardly.
It cawed, its feathers weighted down by the onslaught of rain.
The Roc’s talons grazed the sand as it struggled to stay in the air.
It glared up at the cloud, then shrieked toward Keir one last time before flying away and disappearing through the clouds.
I ran to Keir as another round of thunder drummed and lightning cut through the sky, and fell to my knees next to him on the wet sand.
He groaned as his features shrank back into those of a man, but it was a halting, jerky transformation, taking too much effort.
Blood soaked through his tunic, and his normally tan skin was sickly pale.
His eyes stayed closed as I pressed my hands to his wound.
Blood instantly coated my palms. If it hadn’t been for the rain, he’d be dead.
I didn’t know whether to be grateful or frightened of whatever wielded this kind of power—and why it had decided to help us.
“Keir? Keir! Keir, can you hear me?”
His face was slack, body limp. Blood wept out of his side. He was losing too much.
Thunder clapped and lightning shot down from the sky, blindingly bright. I cried out and threw myself on top of Keir, shielding our faces with my arms, the bolt of heat so close it nearly scorched the hem of my dress.
And then it vanished. Replaced only by the pounding rain.
I blinked my eyes open.
Keir’s sword, which I had dropped in my hurry to reach him, shone a fiery orange.
I stared, breathless. Memories of my one visit to the palace barracks rose sharply in my mind. Healers had tended to large wounds with searing metal. The smell of burning flesh so horrific that I had never forgotten it, even years later.
A blessing, it turned out.
“Thank you,” I breathed to whatever entity was responsible for this mercy, and crawled through the sticky sand to snatch up the blade.
Heat speared through me, and I screamed, releasing the sword. A nasty red burn bubbled up across my palm, sending streams of agony up my arm.
I gritted my teeth. A problem for later.
I wrapped my hand in the skirt of my dress and picked up the sword again.
When I reached Keir, I wasted no time yanking open his tunic, revealing his muscled torso. The blood was still gushing out, seeping into the sand beneath him. “Sorry,” I muttered, and pressed the flat of the blade against the wound.
Keir didn’t move, even as his skin sizzled and that horrible odor lifted into the air.
I pulled the blade away. The wound was blistered, but it was closed. And his large chest was moving up and down. Breaths shallow, but they were there.
Careful to avoid my own burn, I heaved Keir onto his side, allowing the rain to clean what it could around the wound, wash away the excess blood.
When the searing in my hand became unbearable, I lowered him back to the sand and drew my knees up to my chest, staring at him, at the runes that stretched down his jaw and stopped just above his heart, the various battle scars that mapped up and down his torso, those awful slashes across his abdomen, the leather band wrapped around his chest. He’s a Shifter, I told myself. Superhuman. He’ll be just fine.
I glanced from Keir to the rest of the Wastelands.
Without the sun, I couldn’t see Ashorah. There was only the empty, uninhabitable landscape of nothingness. The rain no longer felt miraculous. Just cold.
I curled tighter into myself.