42. Jia
Jia watched the Contestars training in the Contestars” Courtyard. Lamonte and his men were excellent, disciplined, and knowledgeable, but most of these Contestars would need years and years of training before they would be ready for true combat.
Losing a mate was excruciating. It was heavier and more intense than any other kind of grief Jia had ever experienced. Worse than losing her father, or her other brother, this loss was vicious and determined to destroy her very soul. Nothing seemed to register to her anymore, not the joy of food or the sun, not the vigor of exercise or sex. The world was empty, yet somehow, she still seemed to be drowning.
However, watching Rorax defend her and that Lowborn Enna against Isgra the other day. . . that had lit something inside her. Sparked a tiny reminder of the promise Jia had made to Volla.
If Jia was going to survive, she needed to focus on that, distract herself by making sure Rorax made it out of this alive, and not on the gaping hole in her heart that threatened every day to consume her.
Someone edged up to Jia, and she didn’t have to look up to see it was the lieutenant from the House of Death. She could feel the power in him, feel the cold fingers of his energy brush over her as if they were asking permission to take her soul away. It made her want to shiver. Jia wasn’t sure exactly what happened between Rorax and the lieutenant, but it was a good thing Rorax couldn’t feel his magick. She wouldn’t be nearly as abrasive to him if she could. Having the lieutenant this close made Jia’s skin crawl.
“Tell me about her,” the lieutenant said, his voice low and demanding.
“Isgra? Or Rorax,” Jia asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Rorax.”
“You know everything there is to know about her, Lieutenant,” Jia lied.
The man next to her snorted harshly. “Hardly.”
Jia watched Lamonte order his men to simply have the burned banners cut down to be replaced and considered the opportunity she’d been given to soften the lieutenant”s attitude towards her friend. Milla might be the House of Death’s emissary, but something in Jia told her the lieutenant was the one they needed to convince. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
It was Jia’s turn to snort. “Even I don’t know everything about Rorax.”
“You know the most out of anyone in the castle.”
That was true. But what could she tell him without getting Glimr lodged in her neck?
“She was barely living when the Wolf ordered the Siege of Surmalinn. Even now, she is still learning what it’s like to . . . be a person.”
Ayres frowned at her; his eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“The Heilstorms like their soldiers to be soldiers, but Sahana . . . still let us live. She encouraged us to go out into the world, she wanted us to love and live to have somethingto fight for.” Jia hesitated, shifting on her feet. “But the Wolf . . . she oversaw Rorax’s unit. She recruited her, trained her, and didn’t use the same approach as Sahana with her soldiers. Especially because Rorax was so young. I mean, Rorax didn’t even know how to read until a few years ago. Sahana taught her. After the Wolf died, Sahana offered Rorax the choice of the Blood Oath to continue being a Heilstorm, and she accepted. A few months later she found out Rorax didn”t know what any of the letters meant.”
Ayres’s mouth tightened in suspicion. “Education is mandatory in Ice.”
“Well, the Wolf deemed it unnecessary to Rorax’s training. She was the Wolf’s ‘special’ case. She trained Rorax to be a weapon for her own use and nothing else.”
Ayres”s brow furrowed in confusion.
“It wasn’t just that.” Jia rubbed her hands over her arms, remembering the Wolf always made her skin crawl. “Rorax wasn’t allowed to drink, consume unnecessary food like sweets, read, watch any entertainment, go to balls, or the opera . . . the Wolf kept her on a short leash and tried to keep her completely indoctrinated in what she was telling her. Rorax was only allowed to go on assassination missions, only on missions where they needed to kill or steal information. She never went on missions where they saved hostages or helped civilians. The Wolf tried to keep Rorax isolated from any other people besides herself . . . and if Rorax broke any of these rules she was beaten to within an edge of her life.”
Ayres’s frown deepened as he listened until he was scowling, the muscles in his jaw tight. “She was groomed.”
“Yes. Rorax was controlled, manipulated, and programmed to kill from the time she was seven years old. She became the ultimate weapon for the Wolf to use. The Wolf was successful in some ways . . . Rorax is virtually unstoppable if she can catch her prey unaware or if she goes against nearly anyone one on one. She was in the Valitlinn Press newspaper as the third most lethal person in the Realms, and they didn’t even know her identity.”
Ayres and Jia stood in silence for a moment, watching as one by one the blackened banners of the Houses of the Realms fell to the stone floor, cut down by Lamonte’s dark magick and picked up by his men.
“How did she get out? If that was the only thing she ever knew?”
“She hasn’t . . . not all the way. She was a ‘secret project’ at the military school in Skavetsia. The Wolf kept her isolated, but it was the same school that the king and queen, Raengar and Isolde Carbore, were trained at, and they somehow became acquainted. My brother, Ye-Jun, met her as well and the four of them became secret friends. They taught her there was more to life than what the Wolf was showing her, exposed Rorax to what was happening to her.”
“That’s why everyone says she is so close to the King of Ice.” Understanding dawned on Ayres’s face.
Jia nodded. “When Katalon eventually got wind of how competent Rorax was, he started asking for her to be on his personal assassination missions. She was eventually placed to work with people outside of her unit, like Sahana Thorash and Volla Torvik, and she slipped even further outside the Wolf’s control.”
Ayres scrubbed his hand over the shadow of his beard. “All of this doesn’t excuse what she did.”
“No,” Jia conceded. “It doesn’t. And no one knows that better than she does, Lieutenant.”
Jia and Rorax walked side by side to Kiniera’s door.
Jia felt free, lighter than she had fifteen minutes ago. The cut on her arm was red, and still stinging slightly, but her Blood Oath with the Guardian had been broken.
Rorax had a new cut on her arm in the same place where Jia’s had been. It was on the inside of her arm right below her elbow promising Rorax would stay and compete in the Choosing and not attempt to flee. Jia knew how Rorax felt about Blood Oaths, detesting them with every fiber in her body, but it was still nice to be free. Not that she would be going anywhere.
Maybe she should go back to Koppar as soon as possible and start getting Volla’s affairs in order. She needed to donate her clothes, armor, and weapons, and sell her apartment; but the thought of going back to that city, where every bench and city corner had memories of Volla wooing her or kissing her senseless made Jia feel woozy and weak. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.
Kiniera opened the door and let them inside. “Is it done?”
Rorax nodded, collapsing into one of the chairs around Kiniera’s table and scrubbing her face. “It’s done.”
“Good,” Kiniera said, moving to her side of the table across from them. “We have things to do.”
Jia sat down slowly. The air in the room was cold, and Jia could feel Kiniera’s magick pulsing around her. Kiniera’s power was similar to the House of Death lieutenant, and power leaked from her thickly, saturating the air wherever she was. Jia had Ice Magick too, but Jia’s was like a thimble of water in Kiniera’s ocean.
Whatever the lieutenant did to manage his power was much more effective than Kiniera’s technique, or maybe he was just built to hold more. Magick was corrosive, and if too much was held in one body not genetically predisposed to hold it, the magick became toxic.
It was easy to see how Kiniera’s magick affected her. She had dark purple bags under her eyes, and her translucent skin stretched over her facial bones a bit too tightly. Her mother, General Frostguard, had told her about Kiniera, about the rumors of Kiniera’s tragedy with her mate and she wondered, for about the thousandth time, if any of them were true. She would never ask Kiniera herself. Jia valued her life too much for that, and she doubted Rorax had any idea about the stories or if Rorax would even care.
Kiniera’s pale blue eyes drilled into Jia now, as if she could hear Jia’s thoughts.
“Frostguard, you will be leaving tomorrow morning and taking a horse up to Nyson’s Gap. A ship is waiting there to take you down to Morvarand. Take the samples of blood you have in your witch-vials to Raengar. Tell him I want those vials hand-delivered to the High Acolyte in Luxamal.”
Luxamal was the city where the University of Poison was located.
Jia shifted in her chair, frowning. “Kiniera, I . . . I think I should stay here. With Rorax.”
“Don’t worry about Rorax, Jia.” Kiniera’s mouth went soft, and pity warmed her eyes. “We extracted Volla’s body. It is waiting for you in Morvarand. We tried to have her brought here for you and Rorax to both attend the funeral, but the Guardian said no. And with Isgra being Isgra, perhaps it’s better to have it far away anyway.”
The breath wooshed out of Jia’s lungs and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see either as tears flooded her eyes. But she did feel Rorax scoot her chair closer and wrap a warm arm around her shoulders.
“Why here?” Rorax asked. “Why not take her back to Koppar?”
Tears flooding her eyes spilled down her cheeks, and the grief that she had momentarily forgotten came crushing down on her.
Volla was dead. The love of her life had died and left her here alone.
“We brought her to Morvard, and because Volla loved three things above all else in her life. The Heilstorms, her infernal Blood Hawk, and you, Jia. She wouldn’t have cared where she was buried, she would have just wanted you to be there.”
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