46. Rorax
Aknife pressed against Rorax’s throat, and her eyes flew open.
“That’s a kill.” Jia’s face hovered above hers, her perfect skin glowing in the dark. “You sleep like the dead.”
Rorax scowled and shoved Jia’s hands and her knife away from her. “You’re a bitch.”
Jia huffed a laugh and backed up a step as Rorax sat up in bed, rubbing at her eyes. “You’re back.”
Jia’s face tightened. “Yeah.”
Rorax wrapped her arms around her knees, not wanting to ask but needing to know. “What did you find?”
There was a long, heavy silence before Jia answered, her voice broken and haggard. “She was there, her body. Kiniera and Raengar had it moved a few miles north of Morvarand to a war camp where Raengar and his men are. It was burned to almost nothing. I . . .” Jia’s voice broke off, her throat working to swallow her tears. “We had a House of Fire burial ceremony in Morvarand, and Raengar is giving me all her belongings they’ve found. It . . . went as well as could be expected.”
Jia wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands and bent down to pick up a black leather-bound scabbard that she’d placed on the side of the bed. She carefully unwrapped a blade, one of Volla’s shortswords.
Jia handed it to Rorax. “I want to give you this one.”
Rorax didn’t trust her voice, so she just nodded her thanks as she wrapped her hand around the gold and silversteel handle carefully. The blade was one of Volla’s most prized possessions. A shortsword that had been forged with both goldsteel and silversteel and had been blessed by a fire witch to withstand even the hottest of flames, the perfect sword for the Torch. It had been given to Volla by the King of Fire as a gift for her services in the War of the Wings and had been in her weapons arsenal ever since.
“Thank you,” Rorax croaked, her throat feeling scratchy and tight.
“I kept her longsword.” Jia’s voice was barely audible in the dark as she whispered, “They couldn’t recognize Sahana’s body in the rubble.”
Shame, guilt, and loss pricked tears from her eyes.
“I talked to Raengar. He’s furious with you, Rorax. He said if you keep something like that from him again, he will lock you in the dungeons. He told me he would kill me for it if I do it again, and I believe him.”
She hunched protectively into herself as another shard of guilt pitted in Rorax’s stomach. Rorax placed the blade carefully on the pillow next to her so she could wrap her arms around her knees again, hugging them close. She had betrayed and hurt someone she loved; someone who loved and trusted her in equal measure. He deserved better than her.
Could she die from this feeling? This utter devastation and self-loathing? She wanted to. She felt like her soul had rotted away, decomposing slowly into something so loathsome and foul she didn’t know how to heal it.
“I gave him our blood samples and told him what Kiniera said about bringing them to the University of Poison to have them tested. I don’t think . . . I don’t think anyone is taking the news of Sahana and Volla’s death well. I’ve never seen him look so on edge.”
The news made the already frayed edges of Rorax’s heart ache. Raengar meant everything to her, and she wished she could be there to comfort him.
Jia fiddled around with the drawstring on her bag for a moment before she stood. “The Selection is tonight, isn’t it?”
Rorax nodded numbly at her. “Yes. After the ball.”
“Good, you’ll need someone watching your back once the influxes start to hit. Hopefully you get House of Fire. Elios is at least nice to look at.”
Rorax nodded but couldn’t bring herself to smile as she finally wiped away her tears with her fingers.
“Go back to sleep, Ror. I’ll see you at the ball,” Jia said, then turned and quietly left the room.
“You’re on time. It’s a miracle,” The Guardian drawled as Rorax gave her a small halfhearted curtsy. She was at least twenty minutes late.
The Guardian had demanded Rorax check in with her upon Rorax’s arrival to ensure her attendance. The overbearing twit.
Rorax forced the corners of her mouth to lift as she straightened. “I wouldn’t get used to it, blessed Guardian.”
The Guardian sighed and clicked her big, golden, gaudy rings on the wood of her throne. She squinted from one of Rorax’s snowy white eyes to the other.
Rorax had sent one of Kiniera’s Blood Hawks to Merosa, the Witch Queen, who had been the original caster and had been paid previously to repair her rune. But the damage done to her identity was irreparable. Whispers and fearful glances followed her wherever she went and even if her eyes were covered again, it was too late. “I heard you had been exposed, Spine Cleaver. I suppose those eyes are hard to hide.”
“Unfortunately.” Rorax grimaced, looking over her shoulder to find members of the congregation staring at her in fear. “The truth spread overnight. Everyone here knows who I am.”
“Fame always did come as a double-edged sword,” the Guardian sighed softly, looking Rorax over in her black dress. The dress was deceptively simple, hugged Rorax lovingly, and showed off her arms and shoulders. Her hair was up in a loose bun, and for the first time in the six months since she received it, her Contestar mark was visible for all to see. “Good luck tonight with the Selection.”
Rorax refused to give the Guardian another bow, so she just abruptly moved away, scanning the crowd for Jia.
Jia was there, standing on the side of the dance floor, watching people from over the rim of the champagne glass she held. Rorax could see the ever-present sadness in Jia’s face, her grief there even as she gave Ror a lazy smile.
With the hand holding her champagne glass, Jia raised her pinky to point to the right, back towards the way Rorax had come. “The Fire Emissary is watching you like you’re the prized stag of the hunt he wants to claim.”
Rorax didn’t care about that. She wanted to ask if Jia was all right, but she also knew she wasn’t, and Rorax thought the reminder would be unwelcome. So instead, she looked over her shoulder to where Jia was pointing, but she couldn’t see the Fire Emissary through the crowd.
Jia turned to her left and used her still raised pinky again to point across the dance floor. “The Lieutenant of Death, however, is staring at you like he wants you stripped and bared for him, but he definitely hates himself for it.”
Rorax scoffed but looked across the room toward where Jia pointed. Ayres was hard to miss. He glowered holes in her, his jaw tight.
Rorax narrowed her eyes and tilted her head at him in a challenge. “He wants to kill me,” she murmured.
“He definitely does,” Jia agreed, taking a deep drink of her champagne. “But he won’t. I’ve heard a rumor that the Queen of Death sent him a letter and commanded him to make you his Contestar.”
Rorax halted her staring contest with Lieutenant Jackass to gape at her friend. “Did Kiniera tell you that?”
Jia shook her head. “Milla did.”
Rorax blinked, uncomprehending, before a dark shadow crossed in front of her.
Rorax looked up, cranking her neck back to find Lieutenant Jackass had made his way over to her, his face tight with displeasure as he glowered down.
“We need to talk. Come with me,” he said abruptly.
He looked handsome, very handsome, in his black suit. The neckline was high and the dark fabric right under his jaw just served to make him even more appealing.
No man has any business looking that gorgeous,Rorax thought to herself ruefully, especially this one.
The lieutenant wrapped his big hand around her wrist and dragged her through the throng.
Rorax looked back at Jia, who did nothing to help her except lift her champagne glass to Rorax as if to say, ‘good luck’.
The lieutenant dragged her out into the corridor. When there was a couple there, he turned around another corner, and then another, before she finally jerked her wrist out of his grasp. “Here is fine.”
Ayres growled and spun to face her, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did Jia tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Rorax hedged. She leaned against the wall, but he was so close, so big, that the smell of him was overwhelming. It was heady, and her body craved more of it; she wanted to inhale and bask in that balsam pine scent for hours. She moved away from him to lean against the opposite wall.
He turned to face her, and K??n save her, Ayres’s shirt being cut so high on his neck made his features seem even more intense, sharper, more dangerous in a way that she wanted to explore.
“Did Jia tell you what my queen ordered us to do?” He growled and a strand of silver flashed through his dark eyes.
A mix of trepidation and want sparked in her heart. “What did she order you to do?” Rorax asked in a hoarse whisper. Jia had said the queen wanted her as a Contestar, but Rorax wouldn’t be surprised if she had really ordered Ayres to kill her. Maybe that’s why he’d brought her so far from the ball.
Ayres, his eyes flashing, stepped closer to Rorax and she looked up at him, forcing her body to shut down, to stop feeling anything but instinct in case he attacked her.
“My queen told us to pick you,” he said, shaking his head slowly in disbelief and disgust. “She ordered me to choose you as our Contestar.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. She narrowed her eyes at him, but something inside her chest loosened. The Death Queen hadn’t ordered her death then.
Ayres took a few more steps forward and pushed her against the wall—his hand on her chest, right under her neck and above her breasts.
“Choose you. Under some conditions.”
Rorax’s eyes narrowed. “What conditions?”
“We will help you search the library; we will even have our librarians at home search for a way to help you survive this. However, if we fail, and at the end of this it’s only you and another Contestar still alive, you have to accept that we will kill you. We won’t allow you to become the Northern Guardian.”
Rorax swallowed hard, her throat dry. Gods, she was gambling with her life. “I accept.”
“And,” Ayres continued, “When the Choosing is over you still have to stay and fight, you still have to help us win the war with Lyondrea.”
“No,” Rorax said.
Ayres eyes turned into dangerous slits. “No?”
“I will come back to fight for the Realms, but first I have to find my brother. I have to free him from Lyondrea. Once I do that, then I will come back to fight for the Realms.”
Ayres’s eyes grew fractionally softer, before he nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
His gaze dipped down to her dress again, but when they came up to her eyes again, he looked angry. He growled down into her face. “Just so we both know, I will pluck your life from your body without a second thought if I even think something is wrong, if I think you’re working something out behind the scenes to find and use Sumavari’s Books. My people’s lives are on the line, and I will not play games with someone as dangerous as you, Little Crow.”
Little Crow. Despite his threats and anger, something about his words made her glow in pleasure. His recognition of her strength and ability, combined with the power and confidence of him—the force of him as he pushed against her—it made her core burn.
Gods, this man was dangerous to her sanity.
She shook it off and snapped her teeth in his face, snarling. “If you so much as lay a finger on me or Jia with the intent to harm, I will ship your head to your queen in a shoe box.”
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Ayres hissed. He glared down at her looking back and forth between her snow-white eyes, the energy between them crackling. Despite the way her body reacted to him, the air was heavy, full of anger, hatred, and mistrust.
“For the record, I think this is a fucking mistake,” he snapped before stepping away from her, and looking slowly down at her body in her dress. Rorax sucked in a deep breath as his eyes hovered involuntarily over her breasts for a split second before he turned and stalked down the hall.