Chapter 51
Emrys
The wind off the northern ridge stung my face as I rode, the scent of pine and winter in it, even in summer. Arth’s hooves struck the earth like war drums beneath me, the rhythm steady, as unrelenting as the rage running through my veins.
I hoped we could still avoid war if only I left. Maybe that was a dream, but it was all I could offer my people.
When she’d vanished, the last fragment of my calm had left with her. With every breath, the curse struggled to break free and take me over like never before.
She was alive. She had to be. But she wasn’t safe. I’d burn the entire world if that was what it took to get her back.
Those cursed gods, who loved chaos and blood, must’ve heard my thoughts because a horn blasted in the distance.
Shadows wearing the deep blue of Gelida erupted from the tree line ahead. An ambush.
Leading them, armored and waiting for droves of men to die before him, was Cadoc atop his horse.
Coward.
The curse howled its approval, but it wasn’t joy I felt. It was the old hollowness of the life I’d left when I decided to return to Darreth. The endless ocean of magic swelled within me once again, but now I realized how cold the water was when the people I cared about weren’t around.
I didn’t want to fight. I wanted only to find her. But it seemed like all the universe wanted was for me to spill more blood.
I dismounted mid-charge. My boots struck the ground just as the first soldier lunged.
Brave idiot.
I slapped Arth’s rump and shouted the word that meant “return” between the two of us. He was clever. The stallion could find his way back to our camp alone.
I drove my shoulder into the first man’s chest, lifted him bodily, and smashed him into the nearest tree. Bone crunched.
He didn’t get back up.
The next came with a pike. I ducked under the thrust, grabbed the haft, and kindled it with a touch. He screamed as the weapon burned in his hands. I kicked him in the gut and moved on.
The way the soldiers moved suggested they wanted to drag me into the shadows of the tree line. I had no intention of playing their games. Even the monster was growing impatient. It wanted death, but it wanted Isca more.
I cast wide with my off-hand, forcing the magic surging through my fingertips to form a line of white-hot fire. It ignited the line of soldiers charging toward me in an instant. They flailed as their armor turned into ovens.
I spun through the next line like a god of ruin. My steel sliced through hardened leather jerkins as if they were damp parchment. The men’s screams didn’t sound human to my ears anymore, but neither did mine.
She’d kissed me last night. Told me I was a good man. Asked me to touch her because I, the lowest of the low, unworthy of her affections, had made her want. She’d made me feel something close to peace for the first time in years. And these men thought they could take that from me and live?
Spells lashed from my fingers—arcs of ice sharp enough to flay a man in half, walls of fire that turned men into ash before they could scream. I called stone from the ground and shattered horse and rider alike.
But they kept coming.
The arrow that grazed my shoulder landed where her head had rested. I crushed the archer’s skull against a boulder with magic.
Her name was my anchor to sanity and the reason I abandoned it.
Smoke, shouts, and the heat radiating from my flames consumed the world around me. There were too many men. But that was the point. He’d planned for this.
Cadoc had expected me to burn bright then burn out.
He simply had no idea how eager the monster was to serve—nor had he ever seen it in action. He’d come into this battle expecting to see a different version of my father.
King Euros had been strong, but he wasn’t me. I was worse.
Eventually, the lines before me all broke. The soldiers retreated, dragging the wounded as they went, dropping their blades onto the blood-soaked ground. Smoke thickened the air, heavy with the iron stench of blood and burned leather.
Only then, only when he saw no way of avoiding it, did Cadoc abandon the perceived safety of his horse.
“They were right,” he said, trying to taunt me into stupidity. “You’ve gone mad over a woman. She’s pretty but…nothing special.”
So he’d seen her.
My vision narrowed to the point of a blade.
“Certainly not worth the kingdom you’re about to damn for this,” he chided, all bravado, no substance.
The grip on his sword was so tight, his knuckles were white, and there was the slightest quaver in Cadoc’s voice. This was a seasoned warrior who saw that he had no chance and wanted a quick death. He wanted to leave this world holding his sword.
“Where is she?” Blood dripped from my gauntlet onto the ground.
“You want her back,” Cadoc spat, circling in the ash I’d left behind like he thought I would allow him to fight me. “You’ll have to make a trade.”
The rage inside me drowned out my ability to speak for a long moment. I fought the monster for control, blunt human teeth to sharp ones made of magic. The beast didn’t want a trade. It wanted no more words. It wanted Cadoc’s tongue sliced from his mouth for daring to say that Isca wasn’t special.
Not yet, I whispered to it. Let me see his face when he breaks.
“She screamed your name when they dragged her away.” Cadoc sneered. “Sounded to me like she was cursing you for not being there.”
For what felt like an eternity, I did nothing but stare him down, watching the pulse at his throat accelerate.
The monster inside me licked its lips. You failed her, it whispered back. But I won’t.
I hated that it might be right.
With a flick of magic, I sent his sword flying, startling his horse as it landed on its far side. Then I was traveling through the mists of magic, sword sheathed, dagger in hand. The world only slowed when I had Cadoc’s shoulders in my grip.
And with a second flick of my wrist, I opened his stomach with the precision of a surgeon.
Cadoc collapsed to the earth, clutching his insides as if he could hold himself together. All it took was a slight, contemptuous push using my free hand for him to fall onto his back in the dirt.
The fallen general of my kingdom’s oldest enemy looked up at me in astonishment. I pressed my boot to his gaping stomach, careful to avoid his guts now spilling over the grass in a mess of blood. His gaze flicked in the direction his sword had disappeared as if it might save him.
“This was never going to be the grand fight you wanted,” I snarled. “Tell me where she is, and I’ll allow you to die like a soldier with your sword in your hands.”
Cadoc’s lip curled. “Even if I die, you won’t get her back.”
“I will,” I said, and meant it.
When I withdrew my boot, the monster reveled in the cry of pain Cadoc tried to hide from us.
Even as he realized there was no “if” about his death, defiance was written in the lines of Cadoc’s face.
His hatred for my family was so old, so deeply ingrained, that he would die before he told me anything that would help me.
I had offered him pity once. I wouldn’t again.
“It takes a long time to die from a clean disemboweling,” I said, relishing the feeling of my sneer.
“I’ll enjoy imagining you lugging your corpse across this field, guts dragging in the dirt, as the crows hop after you, eagerly awaiting their turn at your flesh. Nothing can make you a brave man now.”
I started to walk away.
“Wait…” he nearly begged, voice weaker. Cadoc’s blood gurgled in his throat as he forced a laugh. “You’re going to walk right in…and they’ll allow it. She’s too tolerant of abominations like you. Do us all a favor and kill her too.”
She? Did that mean Princess Anwen?
I almost turned, almost said something, but decided it wasn’t worth my time. I would kill anyone who came between me and Isca. That was a foregone conclusion.
Just to spite him, I flicked his sword even farther away as I started toward his horse. Let him die like the coward he truly was without his weapon in hand.
I had the capacity for cruelty, but I’d never wanted any of this. The petty act should’ve satisfied me, but it didn’t.
If Cadoc had seen Isca, that meant whoever had taken her had rendezvoused with this regiment. They would be a half day’s ride or more ahead of me by now. I needed to cover a lot of ground, and his horse was still fresh.
I started walking toward it when magic pulsed from the tree line the soldiers had been trying to drag me into. It matched the signature of the one I’d felt lingering in our tent back at the camp.
My vision went red.
I stalked into the woods. It took me less than a minute to find the source. Corrupted druidic magic warped the air around the hiding mage—an effective veil of illusion that allowed him to blend into the base of a nearby tree. The average soldier, even the average mage, would’ve missed him.
I was not average.
Instead of announcing myself, I removed the air from his lungs. All I wanted was answers. He could breathe when he supplied those.
But he gave me another fight instead, sending a pillar of earth flying into the space between us.
The curse crushed it with a blast of pure magic.
He summoned twisting vines that were meant to trip me, to distract and bind me.
I burned them with a blast of my fire. I didn’t have time for this.
Still, it was well done for a man who would run out of air in the next minute. In three strides I was atop him, slamming him onto the mossy ground with enough force to rattle his bones.
“You will be granted a breath,” I hissed, “only to answer me. Nod that you understand.”
His face was beginning to turn purple. He nodded.
The movement caused the necklace with the pendant of his rank within the Assembly to fall out of his collar. Druidic Grand Magus.
Gelida had hired a grand magus to do their dirty work?
The Assembly kept their top talent under tight scrutiny.
Maeron must at least know that this man was working for Gelida.
Just how much that snake, who called himself the chancellor, knew about what this man was doing was another question altogether.
Even a pleasant truth might not save Maeron from me after this.
“Were you with Cadoc? Speak and choose your words with care.”
He gasped, filling his lungs as I loosened my hold. Sweat beaded on his temples as his eyes darted every which way. “I-I wasn’t with Cadoc. I was sent to do a job—”
“Did the Assembly validate your contract?”
He nodded, face going pale.
“To take the diplomat?” I growled.
He breathed in deeply as he tried to stop himself from squirming under my grip. He nodded. Then the lingering traces of Isca’s magic on him finally reached my senses.
“Did you hurt her?” I asked.
He opened his mouth.
I never heard his answer.
The curse surged like a flash flood. I fought it, choking and gasping, but all I had was two hands to hold back the torrent.
I’d meant to ask him if he’d put Isca to sleep, as his type could do. I’d meant to ask him where they’d taken her and a million other things. But her magic was on his skin.
And just like that, the sanity I’d barely been holding onto, fled me completely.
When I blinked again, I stared down at a body turned to pulp, wrapped in the same traveling robe the corrupted druid had been wearing. There was something wet in my clenched fist. It took a heartbeat too long to realize it had once been his jaw. And it was still twitching.
I think I returned to the location of the ambush. It was hard to say what was real. I’m fairly certain I killed all the survivors. There was blood and something worse covering my boots and armor when I left.
The smell of burned flesh and the coppery slickness coating my fingers were reminders that I’d done this. I’d let it happen.
Whatever lay between me and her was not going to be simple. I’d slaughtered an entire regiment of their army. I’d killed their general.
All because I lost control.
All because I was desperate and let the monster win.
Cursed gods… What would the cost be? I couldn’t allow Isca to pay it.
I had finally found something worth staying alive for. Yet if Fate demanded a life… I would walk willingly toward the ending I had once begged for—long before watching the light fade from her eyes.