33 Why the Hell Are You Alive?
WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ALIVE?
Why the hell are you alive?”
Isobel had been the first person to arrive at the meeting room.
“Shame, I know,” Esme chirped. She perched on Bal’s lap because he barely let her do anything by herself all morning.
Even her bath had been chaperoned, and he had learned to braid her hair under Mina’s tutelage.
And when she’d finally convinced him to allow her to come to this meeting, he’d told a servant to find her a pillow to sit on so the hard chair wouldn’t hurt her stomach.
Isobel sighed. “Truly,” she said. Her neck was wrapped up in bloodied bandages, and Mak’kon helped her to her new seat down the table.
“What can be so urgent that you need to push?” Urias grumbled as a servant brushed by him and scurried to the head of the table with two pillows in his hands, then fluffed them and placed them on the chair to Bal’s right.
Esme couldn’t care less about her little cloud chair. She locked eyes with Urias and the other Wraiths, and then she was in their arms. They held her so tightly they cracked her spine, but it didn’t matter. She cracked each of theirs, too.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Urias whispered, petting her hair. He was just like Bal, checking to make sure she was all in one piece.
“I know. I’m sorry.” And she really did owe them an apology.
Tagas pulled back and passed a look behind her shoulder to the few people at the table. He grabbed Esme’s arm and yanked her into a neighboring room. The rest of the Wraiths followed.
“What were you doing, Bast?” he hissed, throwing the door shut and turning to bear down on her with all his anger and sadness.
Daphna grabbed her hands. “You could have cut your heart out.” Their face dropped as the realization settled on them.
Esme didn’t even blink. The other Wraiths all sucked in large breaths, none of them strangers to a blade wielded by their own hand, or a cup of poison they poured themselves, or a purposeful trip over a cliff.
“No,” Daphna said in a choked voice, their face twisting at the very thought. “No. Never again will you ever, ever do that,” they whispered, face hot and full of tears. “You don’t get to leave me.”
“I thought…” Esme couldn’t explain what she’d thought. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She hugged Daphna again, smooshing her cheek to theirs. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t leave me,” they whispered. “You can always talk to the Viryan again, Bast. It helped last time.”
“I wasn’t sad,” she said, then pulled away and looked around at all her Wraiths. “I don’t even think I knew I was going to die. I just wanted to be free. I figured it was the best way.”
“We will be free together. You have to wait for us. We promised.” Padrian pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. “How did you disobey the Bond?”
“I wanted it that badly.”
“You wanted to die that badly?” he asked.
“No.” She stepped away to speak to all of them at once. “I wanted freedom that badly. The Bond fought me, but I wanted it. And… and I think I won. I succeeded in disobeying it.”
The Wraiths’ eyes widened.
“You overcame it?” Samander stroked his chin and passed Tagas a curious look.
“I can still feel it. It’s there, but…” She rubbed over her stomach, but the writhing viper of the Bond didn’t sap at her. “I think we can weaken it. I think I did weaken it.”
A strange smile crept over Urias’s face. “You were so delirious, you defied the very framework of Magic?”
“I suppose so. I must harness my determination for better things.” Esme sighed. “I missed you all. I heard Urias glamoured me, but Bal said he did a bad job.”
Urias harrumphed and crossed his arms as Tagas and Padrian snickered. Samander muttered about how Urias did get her nose wrong, while Daphna just clung to Esme’s arm.
“He should be grateful,” Urias shot back. “If I didn’t do that bad job, he would have vomited on his pet corpse.” Then he sighed and fixed her with the exact same look he had the first time he’d warned her about getting too close to Bal. “I guess it’s too late to get out of it now.”
“He kept my body, Ryukyhn. For days after I was supposed to be dead and he tried to save me when the will started the earthquake. He’s not Omniel. I know he isn’t.”
“He doesn’t have to be Omniel to hurt you,” Urias said, hooking a finger under her chin. “If he does anything, if he tries anything, if he so much as says anything, you must leave him. You cannot be understanding with him. He could kill you.”
“I know. I won’t be.” A terrible lie, and they all knew it.
“He is stupidly in love with you,” Padrian said with a sigh. “Wept at your bedside like a baby, even when your glamour was thin. And now you’re sitting at the head of the table. Your plan worked.”
Esme shrugged and said, “My plans always do.” She leaned her head on Daphna’s shoulder. They remined quiet but rested their head on hers. “Quickly, tell me everything.”
“The raven flew back to Waldovia,” Urias said. “They’re responsible for the massacre. I’ve been tapping into the bird’s mind periodically all week. It hasn’t left the country. It’s theirs.”
“So there will be war?”
Samander sighed. “Now that you’re awake and Balthazar has decided to be king?
Most definitely,” he said. “Maranna’s ridden back to Prelyn as general of the Scourge.
She should be bringing them north. General Dahl is sweeping the south for any Waldov still in the country.
General Gustoe has yet to receive his orders.
That was all we could get Balthazar to do.
He refused to talk about anything further until you woke up. ”
Esme groaned. At least it was something.
“And Janos?” she asked Urias.
A blush scorched his cheeks. Then he smiled so wide his eyes disappeared. “Janos lives. Weakened by Magic, but he lives.”
“How?” she asked.
“The deal was specific. Isobel would have to make him king. But she failed, so he couldn’t fulfil his part of the deal and marry Hallel. The whole thing was void because it was unfulfillable.”
Esme snorted and dropped her face into her hand. Urias laughed, too. How had that happened? How had they both got to keep their humans and their heads? She wouldn’t think about it. She’d just be thankful they didn’t have to mourn anymore.
“There was a day where I thought I’d lost you and Janos and I wanted to die,” Urias muttered.
“Please, please, wait for me to die with you next time you try.” He walked across their bit of space and took her hands again.
“And if Bal gets mean, tell me. If you’re ever scared of him, tell me.
I won’t let what happened last time happen again. ”
“You didn’t let it happen. And it won’t happen again,” Esme said.
“Better not.” Urias kissed her forehead. “Now, back to the meeting we go. Act like you don’t know anything.”
“But I know everything.”
“Mm-hmm. I know.” Urias turned her around and took the arm Daphna didn’t clutch. Padrian, Tagas, and Sam left her with their kisses as they returned to the meeting room. Daphna even led Esme back to her cushy seat.
“Well, with all our members in attendance, we can finally begin war proceedings,” Bal said, his hands clamped before him. He looked like a king—broad shouldered, long haired, sharp eyed.
“I suggest we gather our forces to march on Waldovia,” a minister with noticeably sweaty hands said. “We have lost many days already.” He passed Esme a judgmental look, as if she could have done anything to stop Bal from doting on her when she’d been a corpse an hour ago.
“Waldovia is across the Serpent Strait,” Esme said. “We’ll need boats. They’re all docked in the north. We move our men there.” She turned to Urias. “Your bird is still in Waldovia, yes?”
Urias sucked air into his lungs. When he exhaled, his black eyes went pale with magic. Feathers poked between the rivers of his hair. “Yes,” he said with a half-caw. “I am in a room of many birds. Royal aviary. It’s morning. There is a woman here.”
Esme scanned down the list of King Yarro of Waldovia’s advisors. “Is she one of the women on Yarro’s council?”
Urias squinted, and then his eyes trembled open. His very pupils shook at the sight of whoever it was he saw. “Tagas, p-please,” he stuttered.
Tagas nodded and snuck into Urias’s head. His eyes changed as he pulled the threads of the Wraiths’ minds to connect them all together. Bal gasped when Tagas yanked upon his consciousness as well.
The world through the eyes of Urias’s crow was a tapestry of greens and purples.
The birds were crowded together in a cage at the end of a hall of similar cages.
Drips of morning light illuminated the claustrophobic chaos of feeding time, with wings fluttering into one another as the mismatched collection of black birds thrashed around their tiny cage.
A woman stood before the flock of birds pecking at their bars.
She had a curtain of black hair down to her waist, and her shirtsleeves were pushed up to reveal muscled brown forearms. She sprinkled bread around the cage and moved on to the next.
She fed those birds too, until finally she came to the cage Urias’s bird perched in.
She swung open the door and, instead of greeting these birds with a smile and a meal like the others, she pushed her nose into the flock and sniffed.
Her large hand reached inside to hover, palm up, in front of Urias’s crow.
The little creature recognized her scent, so it plopped onto her hand.
She stole the bird out of its cage and carried it over to the window. Beyond, a blizzard had tossed a blanket of ice over the capital city of Waldovia, the place a glittering diamond. People took pickaxes to the heavy coat of frost, mining their own buildings from the cast of ice.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” the woman said.
At the sound of her broken Waldov, the crow looked up to its mistress. Esme recognized her immediately. She knew the shape of her proud nose, and the thinness of her lips. She’d weathered the storms in her eyes.
Brawna, Twin Bear of the Bahn-Nuk.