20 Reckoning
This was carnage.
Marble and ash plumed above the sinking wreck of the Aequitas.
Shudders groaned through the earth. Thousands veered toward the safety of the Grand Elsarian Temple.
Crowned in dust, lacerated, burned, they screamed for the gods.
Some held their dead, others wailed at the loss of even that final vestige of their loved ones. Lives snuffed out in an instant.
I don’t even know if I saved Gaius. Her healing abilities were rudimentary at best, and his neck—pain choked her at the memory of the cheerful man.
The first vigile she had met, the first to treat her with respect, and Kadra’s staunchest ally, defending him when even she had believed the very worst. The black ice that had veiled Kadra’s gaze upon sighting his body had promised vengeance on a scale that the land hadn’t seen since monarchical times.
Silently adding her vow to his, she dragged in a breath and stilled when Cassandane staggered out of the Aequitas.
Alone.
Where is he? Her heart hammered in her throat. The ground croaked, a roar building within the Aequitas that spoke to fire. Her nails cut into her palm. He promised he’d come out.
“It’s breaking apart!” someone yelled.
Lightning exploded out of the courthouse and struck Aelius’s statue, splitting it at the neck. A stentorian crack split the air. Everyone ducked for cover as the outstretched, marble figure teetered and came down, rippling the ground with the force of its impact.
No, no, no. She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd and nearly fell to her knees upon spotting the figure darting out of the last remaining exit. Kadra cleared the doorway and ran onward. Seconds later, the Aequitas collapsed. One final victim.
She didn’t think. She was already racing to him.
Disheveled, covered in soot, and incandescent with rage, he was the most breathtaking sight.
He had only just set Gaius down and whispered something to him when he saw her.
Some of the grief fell from his eyes in favor of overwhelming relief.
Closing the rest of the distance, he fiercely pulled her to him.
“Are you injured?” Smoke had roughened his beautiful voice.
“Nothing serious.” Her voice choked. “I’ll kill them for this.”
A harsh breath against her hair. He drew back to cup her cheek, taking note of her injuries. “Thank you for surviving.”
She leaned into his palm, nodding mutely. The world blurred into pinpricks and dull voices as the adrenaline and anger that had propped her up for so long ebbed loose. Kadra held her close while her vision righted, his vigiles coming to take Gaius to a healer.
He looked more haggard than she had ever seen him, features taut with rage and the promise of retribution. She hadn’t realized how badly her brush with death in Komis had scared him until she had witnessed the blood visibly returning to his head when she’d entered the Aequitas.
Black eyes caressed her face. “How long has it been since you slept?”
“The night before last, and I’m regretting even that. I should have returned to Edessa right after seeing that farmer’s memory and asked you about Noceo—” The rest stuck in her throat when she felt him go still against her. She forced it out. “Drenevan bu Kader,” she whispered.
His aquiline features tightened. “Yes.” A grim, bleak blow to the chest.
Cracked open, she stared at him, bleeding, robbed of speech. Something almost desperate flared in his eyes the longer their silence strained.
“Sarai, I—”
“Kadra,” Cassandane called hoarsely, limping toward them. Raw, healed skin peered through the hole in her robes where Noceo had stabbed her shoulder. “By all the gods and Saints, thank you,” she rasped. “I owe you for this.”
“No.” His voice transformed it to a grim epithet, muscles bunching in his jaw.
Oh. The impasse between them forgotten, Sarai shook her head. “This isn’t your fault.”
“Agreed.” Cassandane’s eyes narrowed. “Wisdom knows, the Unraveling is proof that you’ve an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but we don’t choose our family.
No one who bought into talk of omens and fueled the past several months of turmoil has any right to say differently.
” At his silence, she sighed. “That’s a nasty burn, Kadra. See to it.”
Frowning, Sarai followed her gaze. Her jaw dropped at the congealed mass of blood and skin across his back. He took the brunt of the blast. His arms had banded around her while rock had shattered and burst.
“You need a healer. This is beyond what I can fix.” There would be debris embedded within his injuries. She lacked the dexterity to pull out every piece.
He lifted a shoulder in an elegant but weary shrug, telling her that he wasn’t keen on it. He only trusted her with his body. Prior to that, he had been content to bandage his injuries without a care for how they healed. Men.
“I’ll have my healer, Destus, take a look after he works through the dying,” Cassandane offered.
Kadra inclined his head. “Thank you.”
“Likewise, Magus Supreme. Even Aelius wouldn’t have been able to pull that off.
” She stared sadly at the Aequitas’s corpse.
“The healers are setting up tents around the Grand Elsarian Temple. Plenty of space for the living and the dead and enough gods to watch over them all.” She took in the carnage with muted despair.
“Saints and the Wretched, at least he didn’t make good on his threat to turn Edessa to rubble. ”
Sarai’s vision blurred. She could see it now. Flames stretching across the horizon, cities pleading for salvation. The fury that gripped her was too much for her exhausted body. Black closed across her eyes. Her newly healed legs gave out.
Kadra scooped her up before she hit the ground.
“Your back!”
“Rest,” he ordered.
He was right. Two disasters in as many days. She was at her limit. And yet, they had left so much unsaid that she feared what awaited her upon waking. Kadra watched her for a moment before walking to the tents with her in his arms, ignoring her protests of being able to walk.
“Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake.” He pressed his stubbled cheek to her forehead in a rare, public caress. “I’ll tell you everything, Sarai.”
Why didn’t you before? She was too groggy to ask. Gray veiled her vision like slow-moving fog, the landscape between wakefulness and dreams parsing out the worst of her fears.
The truth was that she wouldn’t have minded as much if it had been anyone else.
But among the many things that had inexorably drawn her to Kadra was the strange, old-fashioned honor he kept, whereby he spoke nothing but the truth.
It was unthinkable as a politician. Gods, how it had baffled her that a man so deeply enmeshed in violence had bound himself to such a strange principle.
So, she’d known in Komis that for him to have lied by omission meant that these secrets were cataclysmic.
Wetness rolled down her cheeks. She dimly heard a rough curse before fingers wiped at her eyes.
Then, all was finally, blessedly, quiet.
“… will be with you shortly, Magus Supreme.”
A nod against her hair. She blinked. A ceiling of thick, red fabric came into focus. Cassandane’s tent? It was bare but for a pallet that she and Kadra were sitting on. Groaning as every limb decided to protest being alive, she sleepily turned her face to Kadra’s exhausted one above her.
“Good evening.” Depthless eyes searched hers. “How do you feel?”
“Much better.” She sat up in his lap, wondering why her eyes felt swollen. Her burns seemed to have been healed. “How long has it been?”
“Six hours.” There was a bleakness to him that she had only seen at Sidran Tower when he had admitted to walking away from her and at the Unraveling. She flinched in preparation of the blow.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Heart plummeting, she disentangled herself from him and rose. “Would you have told me eventually? Or…” She swallowed, blood pounding in her ears as she voiced the fear. “Was there something I did that made you not wish to tell me?”
“No,” he ground out, air sawing from his chest. “You deserved the truth. This isn’t your fault.”
She released a shuddering breath, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes against the ache building there. Of all the things to cry over. People were dead, and Noceo had all but overthrown the Tetrarchy. She was being foolish.
“Sarai,” a flinch ran through Kadra’s pale features when he attempted to stand—her only indication of how much pain he was in. He offered his palm. “Please come here.”
She took it to ease the lines of strain tightening his face.
But her throat felt too thick. On any other day, her hurt might have stayed quiet, until she was able to marshal herself enough to express it without tears.
But she’d been scraped raw by too much. The fears she normally fought alone burst free.
“I thought… perhaps you didn’t tell me because I was—” Her voice choked.
“Cassandane isn’t wrong about your overblown sense of responsibility.
Sometimes, I wonder if you only ever look at me with guilt.
The Aequitas was crumbling, and there I was.
Running. Not strong enough to help you. Not strong enough to bear your secrets or your burdens. ”
Kadra turned to iron. “Never.” His voice was a scarred rasp now. “I—” He stilled, emptiness entering his eyes when she released his hand.
“Let me take a breath.” Turning away, she spoke past the lump in her throat.
“My insecurities are my own. I shouldn’t force your secrets from you.
” She raked a hand through the tangled mess of her hair.
“I’m sorry. Gods, I shouldn’t be acting like this at the site of a tragedy—” Kadra’s arms closed around her, pulling her hard against his chest, breath rough in her ears.
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Voice tight, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “The shame is mine. Eleven years ago—”