Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sarai opened her eyes to agony. Hers. And someone else’s. The blood on her hands hadn’t begun to dry. She’d only been unconscious for minutes.
A tormented scream cut through her stupor, and she turned her neck to see Kadra, blade aloft, the very picture of one of the Wretched from legend. Her eyes followed the arc of his sword as he sliced through Tullus’s wrist, cleaving it straight off to join his other severed hand.
A weak sound of shock left her, but he didn’t seem to hear it.
“I think I’ll make you a torso,” he said hoarsely.
He was completely undone. Eyes incandescent, he brought the point down and through Tullus’s kneecap. Cisuré whimpered, curled up against a wall as Kadra gripped the Tetrarch’s remaining limb and did the same.
He placed a boot over the now-limbless Tetrarch’s mouth. “You should never have touched her.” His voice was hoarse. “She was mine , and you—”
Rearing back, he plunged his blade into Tullus’s chest with a sickening crack that made Sarai flinch in shock. Leaving it in to prolong Tullus’s suffering, he leveled malevolent eyes on Cisuré, just as footsteps came up the staircase for the third time that night.
But this time, it wasn’t just one person. Aelius and his vigiles stormed the room, half of them freezing at the tableau before them.
“Tetrarch Aelius!” Cisuré sobbed, rushing to cling to his ivory robes. “Oh gods, he’s killed Tetrarch Tullus!”
“Killing,” Kadra snarled. “He isn’t dead yet. ”
As Aelius’s vigiles surrounded him, Kadra gripped the hilt of the half-buried sword, and wrenched it free with a twist.
A wretched scream rent the air before Tullus stopped moving, eyes empty.
“Now, he’s dead.” Tossing the blade to the ground, Kadra’s smile was a madman’s. “I’ve been wanting to do that for years.”
“Was it worth it?” Aelius sounded genuinely curious as he mildly surveyed the limbs littering the tower floor. “You’re guilty of murder now. I won’t lack for witnesses.”
“He killed my Petitor!” Kadra roared. Sparks flared to life in the ballroom. “I won’t lack for motive.”
Aelius gaped, then burst into vicious peals of laughter. “The Petitor who’s staring up at us?”
Kadra’s head whipped toward her, features suddenly ashen. A malicious smile curved Aelius’s lips, and before Sarai could gasp a warning, he struck.
One moment, Kadra was sprinting to her. The next, he was flying back to slam into the wall, a thousand thin bolts of lightning binding him. He ground his teeth against the same excruciating pain she had known.
“No!” she screamed, trying to struggle to her feet, to do something , but her wrists and ankles were a wretched mass of burns.
Aelius shook his head. “Really, Kadra. I know she looks worse than usual, but she wasn’t dead .”
She expected Kadra to break free, to bring out the fearsome power she’d witnessed, but he only watched her, relief in his eyes.
“You weren’t breathing,” he whispered. “I waited. You had no pulse.”
Burning, suffocation, and head trauma . She couldn’t speak.
Color returned to Cisuré’s face as she laughed, high-pitched and hysterical. “The invincible Kadra. Bound. I’ve waited years for this.” She stalked to where Kadra was pinned to the wall and spat in his face. “Now, Kadra. Did you ever tell Sarai about the Sidran Tower Girl?”
Bile and foreboding rose in Sarai’s throat. Meeting Kadra’s eyes, she shook her head .
“I don’t want to know,” Sarai croaked, and almost laughed at the irony of it. Four years chasing after answers and now she would do anything not to hear them.
Torment lined Cisuré’s face. “You see, Sarai, four years ago, this man came across the Sidran Tower Girl. She was alive then, but bleeding out. He had enough time to seek a healer, to find help. But he didn’t, did you , Kadra? What did you do instead?”
When he stayed silent, a glint appeared in Cisuré’s eyes that chilled Sarai to her core.
Taking his fallen sword, Cisuré drove the point into his shoulder. “I asked you what you did to her!” she screamed.
Sarai flinched as Kadra’s eyes closed and he let out a hiss of pain. Still, he said nothing.
“Very well.” Wrenching the blade free, Cisuré strode to Sarai and held it to her throat. “Will you say it now?”
“Don’t touch her!” Kadra snarled.
She laughed in victory. “Then say it.” She pressed the blade against Sarai’s neck. “Just say it.”
He met Sarai’s gaze, his face pale with anguish.
“Don’t,” she managed. “Please.”
“What did you do to that girl, Kadra?” Cisuré shrieked.
He searched Sarai’s eyes for a long moment, a thousand emotions in his night-black gaze. Then, he bowed his head, grating out each word.
“I killed her.”
The world went deathly still. For a moment, she wondered if Time had made an exception for her and condemned everyone else to live on. Refusing to acknowledge his words, she looked away from the face that she loved. The mouth she’d mapped with hers only a night ago.
A door buried at the bottom of her consciousness, weighed down by horror too deep for utterance, suddenly snapped open.
And Sarai screamed.