Chapter 63
HONOR
My head was aching as the bells sounded and the baby squealed. Katherine’s forehead was still damp with sweat as she wrestled the surprisingly strong newborn to her breast. I could only stare in awe. Katherine must have severely miscalculated when the boy in her arms was conceived. Average sized, he was healthy. Pink and angry with clenched fists and a tremendous wail, the tiny creature couldn’t have been seven weeks early, as she had said. The woman hadn’t questioned herself, only thanking the gods for an easy birth.
“We have to go, now,” Marella asserted, panting as she bounded into the room. She frowned at the tiny bubbles of blood rising from Katherine’s body, and I couldn’t help my grimace. Most of the mess had been caught by the blankets before the unnatural change to the air had occurred. It could have been a lot worse. I stood from the stool at the foot of the bed, finding the bucket beside me. Inside, the water had turned into a large bubble, and all I could do was stare for a moment. I stuck my hands inside it and swished them around, cleaning them. It was oddly calming, all things considered.
“You should go,” I told Marella, nodding. “I’ll stay.”
“Nor,” she pleaded. “Come on.”
I swallowed, looking down into her eyes. Her dark hair floated around her face, and with how much weight she’d lost after her father’s death, it was a wonder she didn’t float away herself. “It’s not often the gods send us a sign. Rhia brought me here to stay with her,” I said, nodding toward Katherine.
“Then it’s my sign too,” she hissed, grabbing me by the wrist. I shook her off, pursing my lips.
When Marella had whispered in my ear, informing me of the dark turn our path had taken, I’d been guiding the babe out of his mother as she screamed. I’d wanted to scream too, letting that guttural instinct to rage and cry over the unfairness of it all take over. But I’d controlled myself. There was nothing to be done. Even if Marella ran until her legs gave out, if it was truly Ciarden’s Flame, there was nowhere far enough to protect her. I was schooled in the history of Vesta; I knew exactly what would happen if she spoke true. There was no sense in fighting it. I took solace in the fact that sometimes it had been referred to as Damia’s Grace—a swift death as she delivered our souls to the eternal lands.
But I didn’t want to take Marella’s hope. Perhaps she’d float away and escape it, her waif-like body caught like pollen on a spring breeze.
I wondered if Dewalt was still locked in that room, accepting of our predicament. He would know just as well as anyone that we were doomed. I fought every instinct to run to him, to find him and seek peace in his arms, to run and die together hand-in-hand—whether he wanted to or not. But Katherine couldn’t run, and I wouldn’t abandon her. Perhaps it was selfish, but I’d followed Rhia so faithfully for years, delivered countless babies forced on others in an attempt to garner her favor, and not once had I been appreciated for my service. Not until Katherine. No, I’d stay right here and tend to her until my last breath.
Swallowing, I dried my hands on my pants. By the way they ballooned around my legs, I was grateful I hadn’t worn a dress. I fought the tear threatening to fall, not allowing myself the time to mourn. I didn’t know what I was mourning anyway. That I would die? That I’d never see Dewalt again? Or perhaps that this war had come to something like this. The devastation of Astana hadn’t been enough; the enemy had decided to turn to that which forsakes everything good in this world.
“You can’t stay,” Marella said, biting down on the words to prove her point. Her gaze flicked over to Katherine, the woman’s head tilted back and eyes closed. The babe on her breast had finally calmed, and she needed to rest. Wife to the blacksmith, I’d only spoken to her the first time a few days prior, when I’d gone there to procure myself a dagger. I hadn’t expected how close she was to giving birth.
“Why is the bell still ringing?” Katherine asked, head rolling to the side. “I thought I was imagining it.”
“Marella, go ,” I said, ordering the girl beside me to run. There was no sense in both of us dying. “It’s all right.”
Marella swallowed, glancing between me and the woman on the bed. Finally, her sense kicked in, and she spun on her heel—gone in an instant.
“It’s a warning for us to leave,” I explained, untying the apron I’d thought to snag from the kitchens on my way here. It had been driving me mad ever since the fabric began drifting into the air.
“Why?” Katherine’s eyes flew open, and she tried to push herself up in the bed.
“Rest, Katherine. Please,” I pleaded. For whatever reason, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. What could I say? She’d just brought life into this world, and we were all three about to depart it in a blast which would likely leave little more than a crater.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded. Grunting as she sat up, she frowned at the blood she’d only just noticed hovering over her. “What in the gods’ name…” she murmured.
I’d planned to tell her a softened version of the truth when she threw her legs over the side of the bed.
“You just gave birth. Lay down!”
“Exactly. Tell me what’s going on or I’ll march out there myself,” she said. I’d never seen a more fierce expression. The boy she held at her breast was her sixth, and approaching her fortieth year, Katherine hadn’t been shy about giving birth. She’d known more about what to do than I had, and I’d been the one to assist all the novices in Folterra. Chin lifted in defiance, her grey eyes narrowed. Covered in the muck of birth and all that came after, she stood steady on her feet despite the strange way in which the air had grown denser.
“Fine. They’ve used Ciarden’s Flame on the fortress. We can’t have more than a few minutes left.”
“Before it explodes?” she demanded, thick brows furrowed.
“I think it’s supposed to be quick and quite thorough,” I supplied.
“Well, then, let it take us faster,” she said, tugging her shift down over her bottom, the width of her hips keeping it from floating back up. She toddled toward the door, adjusting the baby in her arms as her expression told me to hurry. Blinking at her in disbelief, all I could do was shut my mouth and follow.
“I don’t remember feeling so funny after all the other times. I was cooking dinner ten minutes after Iliana was born,” Katherine said. “I swear, I keep seeing things.”
I wondered if she spoke of the small sticks and pebbles gently bobbing above the ground or of the birds above us. Without the sense of what was up and down, I watched as they flew upside down or on their side, and I’d never been so deeply unsettled in my life. Perhaps she referred to seeing things within the shifting mass in the middle of the courtyard, iridescent black shadows twining and spinning in a great, evil sphere. I swore I could see faces within.
“This gods forsaken shift,” Katherine murmured, and I was surprised by the divinity she used to shove the fabric back down over her hips. Weightless, it kept lifting and revealing her legs until she summoned a small blast of wind to shove it back down.
“You’re bleeding,” I said, noticing the drops of blood which floated out as she pushed her gown down. The inside of her thighs were already stained from birthing the boy who slept snugly in her arms. Her braid kept floating above her, the dull brown catching the sunlight and turning the strands of silver brilliant and shiny. She turned toward me, her face not entirely kind, and squinted.
“We’re dying,” she replied, before grunting, adjusting the drowsy baby in her arms.
Turning back toward the keep, I looked for Dewalt’s window, wondering if he was inside. Studying it for only a moment, waiting for some hint of his presence, I gave up quickly. Despite hiding from me in that room, he wasn’t a coward—not in a situation like this one. He’d be trying to save his soldiers at all costs. And yet, I’d seen him nowhere.
“Where is the general?” I asked, turning to Katherine, and she shrugged, laughing.
“Gods, that boy, a general.” Her amusement soured my stomach.
“What do you mean?”
“His sister comes down here often. I’ve heard many a story of Dewalt Holata.” Raised brows and widened eyes seemed to indicate stories of an unsavory nature.
A flicker of heat rolled around in my stomach. I didn’t care if we were moments from death; I wouldn’t tolerate rude words about this man who had become so important to me. “Then you’d know he’s loyal and kind and?—”
“No ill words about him were keen to leave my gob, girl. Calm down. Saski only told tales to embarrass a younger brother. I find it amusing, is all, the subject of those stories being in charge. Nothing more.”
“Good,” I said awkwardly. She grunted, using her divinity to push her shift down once more. I stared at the writhing mass of destruction in front of me, the shadows looking somehow both solid and transparent, mixing like oil and water. Like my hand could move right through them.
I startled, taking a few steps toward it, mind racing.
“What are you doing?” Katherine asked.
“It...I don’t think it’s solid,” I said, before looking over my shoulder at the woman behind me, eyes wide and wild. “Hand me the boy,” I demanded.
“To hell with that, girl,” she argued.
“Give him to me. You might need your hands,” I said, mouth working faster than my mind. It could work. It might not save everyone, but it could make a difference.
“What in Rhia’s name?—”
“Your divinity. Use it,” I demanded, and then I stared. The goddess she’d chosen to invoke could be no coincidence. “Rhia. Skies above...” I breathed in awe. “She brought me to you.”
Katherine stared at me, blinking, understanding dawning in her grey eyes. “Where?” she asked, gently detaching the baby from her body and bundling him.
“There, over the water,” I said, pointing toward the coastline on the other side of the armory. Abruptly, I realized Katherine hadn’t once asked about her husband or other children. Perhaps she suspected they’d leave without her. I frowned, thinking of how often a mother’s role was to raise children to be independent and strong, sometimes at their own expense. How often women took care of their husbands and how rare it was for that type of care to be returned.
When my thoughts drifted to Dewalt—the patient demands when he’d taken care of me in the earth lodge, his soft touch and consideration afterward, how different he was—I shook my head to clear my mind.
“If you can’t get it to the water, perhaps lift it into the sky,” I suggested as she pressed the bundled child into my arms.
Katherine grinned at me before rolling up the sleeves of her stained gown. “Pay attention, girl. If this works, they’ll write songs about me. I don’t want any details spared.”
With no shoes on, Katherine ambled farther into the courtyard. Her steps were slow, but the heavier air likely helped her move easier. I could imagine her hips and pelvis hurt, but she didn’t complain. I held my breath as Katherine unleashed a breeze upon the dark orb, a desperate hopefulness lighting my soul. And when it moved, her divine air going beneath it to lift it the smallest amount, I nearly wept. The baby stirred in my arms, the dark blond hair of his mother only the faintest wisps on the top of his head, and I gently caressed his cheek.
Katherine hadn’t been wrong about his conception. This little one should have been small and sickly, barely alive. But instead, he was healthy—arguably perfect. And Katherine, the woman who had invoked Rhia’s name, had gone into labor moments before I’d needed her. Only the divine could have orchestrated such an event. My chin wobbled, emotions I’d been tamping down bubbling to the surface. Ever since I’d been taken to Folterra—before that, truly—I’d questioned everything I’d ever known. Abandonment and anger and sorrow had all twisted together to form this resentful creature in my heart. I couldn’t find space within it to hope the gods were listening, especially after everything I’d done to serve them without yielding pleasant results. But perhaps I could foster something new and different with the understanding that the gods were imperfect and mercurial. I wouldn’t dismiss the idea just yet.
Katherine stood in the center of the courtyard, using a gift from the gods to remove this horrific scar on humanity. Her braid lifted above her, arms outstretched, and she didn’t bother fussing with her lifting shift. Sweaty and spattered with blood, exhausted after giving birth, Katherine was making all the difference in the world. Because I’d been brought to the right place at the right time.
The mass of shadows grew wilder as she lifted it over the armory, angry almost, as if they’d been disturbed. Amidst the spinning and twisting shadows, something shimmered. As it grew brighter, Katherine and I both realized what it was at the same time. She speared the breeze of her divinity upward, forcing the shadows to move with speed. I didn’t have a chance to step back before the blinding flash of divine fire had erupted.
Above us, it appeared as a new sun. The devastating ball of blinding light grew and expanded—slowly, as if the air refused to part ways for its destructive force. With it, the divine fire began to fall. Slowly at first, as if it were a flower shedding its petals, hot licks of flame separated from the rest, gradually sinking to land on the slate tiles of the armory roof. Some of the flames extinguished quickly, shadows dispersing as if they were waiting beneath the fire.
It might have continued like that, Ciarden’s Flame slowly disintegrating into nothing, if it had been allowed to hover in that weightlessness. But suddenly, the air grew denser, settling heavy into my bones.
“No!” I screamed, stumbling a step backward. The enormous orb dropped, no longer floating, slamming down atop the armory. I turned my body, trying to catch myself and protect the baby in my arms. “Please,” I whispered, a desperate plea to whichever god might be listening. I expected searing hot air to slam into my back, shadows coated in divine fire spearing out to destroy, but instead, I was thrown bodily into the ground. My shoulder twisted, and I shrieked in pain as I kept my weight off the child in my arms.
I waited for the burn, for the intense pain of death by divine fire, but it never came. The babe was screaming, and I blew out a shaky breath. That noise meant life. Grimacing, I rolled, having to shove half of the armory door from my body. Using my uninjured arm, I pushed myself up. I couldn’t see anything.
“Katherine!” I screamed, coughing and blinking, trying to find the woman through the smoke.
“Here,” she said, choking. “You all right, girl? My boy?”
“We’re fine,” I said. The smoke wasn’t dark, easier for the light to penetrate, and when I finally made out her form, a sob heaved up my throat. We were alive. “You did it,” I said, voice rough. “You saved us.”
“ We did it,” she replied. “Wouldn’t have thought to do it without you.” Her arms wrapped around me, babe pressed safely between us.
And then the screaming began.