Chapter 35
According to the crumpled map I dug up from the bottom of our emergency bag, this dark stretch of trees was called the Forgiving Woods. An apt name, since I felt in need of forgiveness, and guilt knocked against my breastbone with every beat of my heart.
I couldn’t get Hames’s words out of my head. Couldn’t stop seeing the way he looked at me—like I was a stranger. Or an enemy.
The healers were barely able to save her.
I rubbed my chest, distracting myself with the map lit by a shining turquoise stone in the roof of the carriage, spiriting us to safety.
In front, four pitch black horses thundered through the woods, light bouncing from their softly glowing lapis shoes, carrying us further and further from Lazankh.
Deeper into a part of the goblin lands I’d never been before.
Did the rest of my troupe despise me, too? Did they see me as the enemy for keeping Kier’s part in the Haar’s existence a secret? It wasn’t as if Kier had given the magic orders, or if he’d been in conscious control of it. But I had a feeling none of them would understand that.
She bled out on the flight.
The name of the road we were clattering down blurred, my bottom lip quivering.
Maybe Hames was wrong, and in the chaos the healers just forgot how to take a pulse.
That was it. Cherish was fine. She was strong and resilient and full of far too much fire, far too much life, to succumb to her injuries. People like Cherish didn’t die.
But every mile the carriage took us from Lazankh, it gnawed at me. What if she was gone? What if we left her behind, and now she was dead?
“Zaba,” Kier said with remarkable softness.
I shook my head, dismissing his concern, his attention.
I didn’t want any of it. I just wanted to find the people the Haar had abducted to safety, return them, and go back to the castle to find Cherish who was fucking alive. “If you want to talk about Cherish—”
“No. Hames only said that to hurt me, she’s fine.”
“Zaba.”
“She’s fine. I’m fine,” I snapped. “If we’re going to talk about anything, let’s talk about your nightmares.
” I softened my voice with effort, reaching across to cover his hand with mine.
“You’re not sleeping, you basically sleepwalk when you’re awake, and you’re not acting like yourself, Kier.
Like I wasn’t acting like myself when Cleodora compelled me. ”
“I’m not compelled,” he sighed, bowing over his knees, clasping my hand in both of his. “I’m handling it.”
“Clearly.”
He tilted his face to make sure I got the full effect of his arched eyebrow.
“Alright, so neither of us is handling shit. I’m not—ready to talk yet. But you need to, Kier. How many more sleepless nights will you have?” I skimmed the fingertips of my other hand over the blue shadows under his eyes. “Let me help.”
“There’s nothing you can do to help,” he replied, averting his gaze to the Forgiving Woods outside the window, the sun dropping below the horizon and backlighting the branches in an opalescent mix of sky blue and orange. “It happened years ago, and I’m over it.”
I brought our joined hands to my mouth like I was going to kiss the back of his hand, but instead I sank my teeth into it, leaving impressions of my dull canines behind.
“What was that for?” he demanded, more baffled than anything.
“Every time you say something delusional, I’m going to bite you.”
He blinked. Smiled. “Do I get to do the same to you?”
“No,” I scoffed. “You have far sharper teeth. What are your nightmares about?”
“My childhood,” he sighed, dragging a hand through his hair until it fell in messy black strands around his shoulders. “It wasn’t exactly a charmed upbringing.”
“You’ve mentioned your father being an asshole. And I’ve met your brothers. I’m not sad one of them died.”
“Neither am I,” he replied with a wry smile. His hands tightened around mine before he let go, unbuttoning his shirt. “Remember I told you I got this scar on the battlefield at Lucre’s edge?”
“I remember,” I murmured, wondering if his asshole family ordered him into that battle.
“I lied.”
“You—” The second the words made sense, my brows slammed down and a frisson of magic went through me, warming my rings. “Who?”
“I was a small child, so I couldn’t fight like Jyrard and Corvyr could. Our father wasn’t… fatherly. He turned his rage upon me and my brothers, and they turned their rage upon me. I was the family punching bag.”
“Kier,” I breathed, struck with horror. Bile burned my throat. “How many scars came from battles? How many came from them?”
“Fifty-fifty.” He shrugged, tension lining every part of him. “I enlisted the moment I came of age to escape them, and when I returned I was strong enough to fight back.”
I caught his hand and feathered a kiss on his knuckles.
“I took custody of Danette so they couldn’t imprint their vileness upon her, or worse, beat the shit out of her, too, but—well, you know everything that happened.
Jyrard’s been on a campaign of hatred against me since.
He says it’s in defence of our sister, but it’s really because that first time I came back from the war I fought him until he coughed up blood, and he was forced to surrender. His pride never recovered.”
I forced a slow breath. “He hates you because you stopped letting him hurt you.”
“He sees it as his right. Probably because everything Father did fucked with his head. I can only assume he’s grown worse in the year since I last saw him if he was willing to sacrifice Corvyr just to kill me.”
“Gods save us from insecure men’s fucking egos,” I muttered. “All this because you grew strong, as if that was an insult to his violent pride?” I snarled so viciously I spat. Kier pretended not to notice, which was gallant of him.
“Good thing I brought this.” I reached into the bag until I found what I was looking for—a switch blade that was covered in thorn-like spikes of metal on one side. “I’ll use it to rip out his eyeballs, then his tongue, then all his innards.”
Kier was smiling.
“You’re not supposed to smile when someone’s laying out a plan for dismemberment,” I pointed out.
“All I’ve heard so far is a plan for blinding and gutting. Will you cut off his limbs too, wife?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, but it was a fleeting thing. “Jyrard was always dangerous. The things he can do with his magic…” Kier shuddered.
I wrapped my arms around him and felt his shoulders straighten, his chest expanding with a breath like I gave him strength.
“Even if you see him, even if he’s there the next time Cleodora attacks, I want you to run. ”
“Kier.”
“I’m serious, Zaba, I—”
The carriage lurched without warning, lapis light spraying from the horses’ hooves as they panicked, their screams splitting the silence.
“What the fuck?” I grumbled, letting go of Kier to hold onto the seat as the carriage veered out of control.
Outside the window, the top of a solid stone damn blurred past, water rushing down into a basin, almost loud enough to cover the horses’ panicked shrieks.
Kier threw his hand against the roof of the carriage, light bursting from a ring on his thumb. The wheels under us ground against stone with a horrific screech that made me wince, but we gradually slowed. Halfway across the dam, the horses finally stopped. The carriage jerked once and fell still.
“Stay inside,” Kier ordered.
“You tried that before, and it didn’t work. What makes you think it’ll work now?”
“Hope? Delusion? Don’t bite me.” He wrapped a hand around the pommel of his sword and kicked the door open, leaping out. “Call both your creatures. If this is—”
I followed him out the door and saw why he’d faltered. “An ambush?” I finished, staring at the dark blue uniformed bodies flowing onto the dam road from both ends. Trapping us in the middle. And oh look, there was just the man I wanted to see.
I put the spiked knife away for later and drew two long daggers, neither as impressive as Gaia’s sword but plenty sharp for my purpose. “How many would you guess there are?”
“Fifty on either end,” Kier replied, giving no warning before his dragon erupted into the darkening sky, a vivid streak of colour and light.
I followed his example and called on Baby and Valour, but we were up against a hundred, and there was Jyrard sauntering closer, looking as smug and vicious as the last time we saw him.
“Cleodora?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t see her,” Kier replied.
That wasn’t much of a comfort, but at least we were only facing one power-driven psychopath. “What’s our plan?”
“All-out chaos?”
“Kamikaze,” I agreed with a grin. “Love it.”
Valour, I warned her, sensing her attention fix on me a split second before I moved. My boots slammed into the stone beneath me and I jumped, landing on her back right as she began to run. I pointed my long dagger at Jyrard as her paws flew over the dam.
You’re dead. For what you did to Kier, for what you’d do now if you got anywhere near him. You’re dead.