Atonement of the Spine Cleaver
PROLOGUE
“Gods above.”
Rorax blew out a breath and stepped out onto the terrace, her eyes wide with awe as she grabbed the railing and pressed herself against the cool stone to get a better look. The balcony, stemming off the royal palace’s library, had a bird’s-eye view of Surmalinn, and the city was absolutely breathtaking.
Against the still black sky, fires she and her soldiers had lit around the city illuminated the dark like tiny fireflies glowing orange against the night. The light from the flames reflected off the surface of the Elus River, basking everything in a soft golden glow.
Vaguely through her admiration, she could hear the House of Death civilians below her screaming, begging, and bartering for their lives, and their children’s lives.
Their homes.
Their schools.
Their businesses.
All of it would burn to the ground tonight, and in a few hours their whole existence would be turned into nothing more than ash and smoke.
The reminder caused indecision to niggle painfully in her heart.
Rorax gripped the stone railing tighter with her blood-soaked hands as the clock tower burning in the middle of the city center collapsed into a pile of hot coals and shooting orange sparks into the night sky as the screaming below intensified.
Something dark grew in her chest as she watched a woman carrying a small child wrapped protectively in her arms sprint down an alley, away from the city center where most of her men were still stationed.
The Wolf had been wrong in coming here.
Rorax’s army had broken through the House of Death’s defenses in less than twenty minutes, and the only souls awaiting them past the walls were just ordinary civilians. The armies, legendary monsters, and weapons the Wolf had told Rorax were here waiting for them in droves were nowhere to be found. There was nothing. Most of the people here didn’t even have a wisp of death magick. It was just a city.
The House of Death hadn’t even stationed a small national defense legion here, for fuck sake; the only soldiers here had been members of the city guard.
Rorax gritted her teeth, trying to slow her thoughts. Her stomach roiled as blood that wasn’t her own trickled down the sides of her face and slid down her limbs. She looked down to where her hands gripped the railing to find they had been soaked with enough blood to leave two crimson handprints on the light gray stone. The stain might as well have been on her soul.
Rorax was nothing more than a butcher here. She could stop this. Order her soldiers to pack up and leave, tell them to stop the bloodshed and the burning. They could all be gone within the hour.
As soon as the thought came, however, the note she had carefully folded in her back pocket seemed to burn her through her leathers. Her brother’s plea to free him.
No, she couldn’t stop the mission.
The blood coating her skin might feel sticky and awful, but if burning Surmalinn to the ground meant she would eventually be able to free her brother, then she was going to do it. She would kill every living soul in this city for him. Rorax owed Darras her life, and in over one hundred years she had not found another opportunity to free him. This was it.
But would he even want to see her after learning she was responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people?
The blood continued to slide down Rorax’s face and the strands of her hair, falling in fast little droplets at her feet. The sound seemed to urge her to hurry as indecision roiled and warred in her stomach.
Whatever she decided, there would be no going back. She was either going to kill her mother, or she was going to kill the queen.
She looked over the beautiful, burning cityscape of Surmalinn once more, hardening her resolve.
Saying a fast prayer to the gods for forgiveness, she pulled her sword out of its sheath and entered the palace once more.