Chapter 19
A week after Death massacred the maiden-priests at Ereban, I’d walked into his temple, singing.
When everyone was asleep under Wesha’s power, five of the queen’s guard crept in after me, their ears sealed with wax, and slit the throats of every last death-priest there.
When I fled to the countryside with the other acolytes, more riots erupting behind me, I had a new name. Iona Night-Singer.
That was who I was when Taran met me. A rebel, a survivor, a killer. He never asked me to be anything different.
I didn’t sing Wesha’s blessing of night when I slipped back inside the palace.
After the alarm went up, I let the Huntress’s few priests rush past me to the spreading fire, and I sang Lixnea’s blessings instead.
Don’t look at me, don’t see me, I’m not here.
We’d slipped past enemy lines with this song, Taran and I, whenever we thought it was worth the risk to catch some clever death-priest or loyalist general unawares.
Smenos’s palace was still as I shuffled through its enormous warren of halls cut deep into the red sandstone of the cliffs, uncountable rooms that had once housed crafter-priests now vacant and musty.
It must have been welcoming when occupied, but now it felt like an empty beehive with the honey left to rot in the comb.
Something terrible had happened here—I saw signs of it in jewelers’ glasses on a side table, a half-sharpened quill fallen to the floor with no one left to sweep the shavings.
They wouldn’t have just left when they felt their vows dissolve—not without their tools, surely?
I didn’t have to think about how to find Taran, at least—I just followed the tug in my chest and kept a tight grip on my last knife as I went deeper into the complex.
I was prepared to yank him naked out of the Huntress’s bed if necessary—then disinfect him and my eyes both with strong vinegar—but for a second time since landing in the Summerlands, I nearly collided with Taran.
He was barefoot and stumbling in his unlaced trousers, one hand clasped around the neck of a pottery jug of wine, the other holding his ornate cloak shut over his bare chest. He registered my presence enough to stop, but without forward momentum, he lost his balance and slid halfway down the wall behind him, barely keeping to his feet.
I grimaced, assuming he was drunk. Not that I blamed him for wanting to drink off whatever he’d just done with the Huntress, but it wasn’t going to make our exit any easier.
If we survived this, I would get drunk, and we’d never speak of this night again.
Taran lifted the jug and took a long swig despite his awkward half crouch against the wall, expression as furious as when I’d last seen him.
“You’ve had enough,” I said, reaching for the wine.
At my movement, Taran wheeled away, trying to put his back to me.
“Get your own,” he snapped.
Either his tone or the jerky way he’d moved made me take a second glance at him, and it was enough to wash away at least half my anger. His pupils were blown wide and shocky, and the hand that held his cloak shut didn’t entirely conceal the raw burns on his throat.
There were drips of liquid on the floor behind him, and until I was close, I thought he’d spilled the wine. But no, Taran’s blood gleamed like newly minted gold coins on the dirty inlaid wood of the floor.
“What did she do to you?” I whispered.
“Nothing. Get out of here.” He convulsively licked his lips before trying again to lift the jug. This time I managed to snatch it out of his resistant fingers. If he was hurt, the last thing he needed was more wine.
Quickly scanning the hallway, I tried doors until one opened to an austere bedroom. The air was stale, but the single bunk and simple cedar furniture were clean and neat, ready for a crafter-priest who’d never returned for the shoes tucked under the bed.
“In here,” I ordered him. I held out my hand, which he ignored to shuffle unsteadily to his feet.
“I told you to go home.”
“I didn’t listen. Get on the bed and let me see whatever injury you’re hiding,” I told him, fairly certain I would win this argument, as I had a lot more experience with stubborn patients than he did in commanding priests.
“Skyfather’s done worse when he didn’t like how I bid him good morning. It’ll heal by tomorrow.”
“No. We’re both leaving tonight, even if I have to push you out in a wheelbarrow.”
With an angry twist of his lips, Taran moved stiffly to the bed. I gave broad warning of my movement as I approached him, but he was still reluctant to release the white-knuckled grip on his cloak and let me peel it away from his skin.
I hissed as my mind automatically reconstructed what had been done to him.
The bruises were the oldest. On a mortal, I would have said they were a few days old, vivid and painful, all up and down the breadth of his chest, with only his unlaced trousers and the folds of his cloak concealing the extent of it.
Bruises in different shapes, sizes—from fists, boots, belts, whatever objects had come to hand.
That had been done first, and his immortal constitution was already trying to heal the damage.
What was more recent, what had me struggling to keep from crying, was the incision.
It started at the vee of his collarbones and went down the length of his chest, all the way past his navel.
Someone had neatly peeled through layers of skin and muscle, down to the bone, cut him open like a field-dressed buck to be aged until tender.
Blood still welled along the edges, thin spiderwebs of red over bright gold—a mortal wound on an immortal body.
The burned skin on his throat, puffy blisters in the shape of a handprint, told me how he’d been kept still long enough for the Huntress to do this.
“Oh, sweet Maiden, Taran, I need to suture this,” I said wildly. A mortal wouldn’t even be conscious by this point, let alone panting fury through clenched teeth.
“Leave it alone.”
“The hell I will.”
I fumbled with my pack for a needle and thread—how would I sterilize anything? Could Taran even get an infection?—then climbed onto the bed as Taran tried to bat me away.
“Don’t bother. She used a steel knife, not stone. It won’t kill me.”
“Why would you let her?”
His lip curled. “You remember they were about to hand you over to Death, don’t you, darling?”
I wouldn’t have let him go if I’d known this was what she’d do.
I should have dragged him out when I had the chance.
“I thought she just wanted—” I couldn’t get the words out through the choking deluge of guilt, because I’d been thinking about my own useless jealousy rather than the expression on his face when I first mentioned Smenos.
He didn’t want to come here, but I made him.
“You know, I would have preferred that,” Taran said caustically, arms wrapped around himself. “It’s harder to close your eyes and think of something else when your liver’s being fondled. But no, she was called away by some alarm before she could turn to the romantic portion of our time together.”
His teeth were bared like a fox with its leg caught in a trap, both of us snarling and angry because anger was easier than fear. Easier than my bottomless sadness that Taran had obviously endured this at her hands before.
I pressed my hands over my eyes, dashing tears away against my palms. My distress finally registered with Taran, who stopped trying to push me off the bed. He lay back, hands still protectively curled over his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I said, letting my anguish crack my voice. “Please let me help. I could suture this. Or do you—do you want me to try to heal it? I’ve never done it before, but I could try. Genna’s blessing for closing an incision. It’ll hurt.”
I was reluctant to make the offer. His injuries didn’t look internal, so it wouldn’t kill him if I fumbled the intonation, but healing was exquisitely painful, which was why it was done in tandem with a maiden-priest who’d keep the patient asleep.
That had been me and Taran, after every battle—standing together over the wounded, his hand under my elbow to hold me up while my voice faded to a whisper. I remembered it deep in my bones.
Taran had more confidence in my abilities than I did, because he looked down at the angry gash in his chest and exhaled before pushing his face into his shoulder to brace himself.
I put my hands on his body and sang his part. Just the way he would have done it.
After a few measures, the cut began to close, forming a red line and then fading thin and pale. It wasn’t perfect, but after ten minutes of chanting, his insides were no longer visible from the outside. Once he was no longer bleeding, I could breathe again.
“Let me see the rest,” I said, tugging at the waistband of Taran’s trousers.
He really must have been in pain, because he didn’t even make a crack about not being in the mood.
He slipped off the rest of his clothes and lay facedown on the bed, so that I could sing each square of skin from livid purple back to smooth marble.
It took nearly an hour, and it must have been agonizing, but he curled his fists over his head, making no sound.
As I sang, I rubbed his shoulders to break up the bruises, urging stiff muscles to soften under my fingers.
Even once the blessing was over, I kept speaking, a stream of meaningless reassurance through tears.
You’re alright, it’s over, don’t worry, you’re safe.
He pushed himself up the bed enough to put his face in my lap, a wordless request to keep my hand moving in a circle between his shoulder blades.
For me, it was a relief just to be able to hold and touch him as much as I’d wanted to.
Who had ever loved Taran over the course of his long life, except for me? Had anyone even been gentle with him?