Chapter 8
MAKE YOUR PEACE
KINGFISHER
ANOTHER DRESS LAY over the back of the chair, untouched.
I’d chosen it yesterday, pulling it from the garment bags safely tucked away at the back of my mother’s dressing chamber.
They hadn’t belonged to my mother; I found the dresses there shortly after bringing Saeris to Cahlish for the first time.
They weren’t my mother’s style or her colors at all.
She had simply foreseen a day when Saeris would come and had left an entire wardrobe for her—a gift for the beloved female that she would never call daughter.
Ivory white, the rich satin dress flashed like lucent faerie wings. The skirts were simple. Understated. No tulle or frills. There were no over-the-top adornments to it at all, really. The subtle pink-blue undertone that shone through when the fabric caught the light was enough.
Saeris’s scent hung thick in the air around the chair. She had stood there and studied the dress, I fancied. Run her hand over the corset. Once again, she’d chosen to pull on her fighting leathers and her boots before disappearing to take on the day.
I grinned, shaking my head as I turned and took in the dented pillow next to me.
She was already gone.
Hah! Well, that was a turn up for the books.
How many times had I disappeared from a female’s bed before she’d woken?
Honestly, not that many. Not as many times as Lorreth, that was for sure.
The women I’d taken to bed had always known that fucking me was not a pathway toward anything meaningful.
They’d known that it would be a one-off, and most of the time they were happy to proceed with that knowledge in mind.
That’s what they said, anyway. There had been plenty of females who had been surprised when I had taken my leave of them the next morning, shocked that they hadn’t been the one to change me.
And they had been sweet.
Beautiful.
Breathtaking, even.
But they hadn’t been her. And when armed or cursed with the knowledge that one day your mate would show up and change everything, no one else could ever come close.
So mostly I hadn’t bothered with the distraction of sex.
Mostly I’d busied myself with the business of killing.
And now she was here, my Little Osha, and she was more than I could have hoped for.
And her side of the bed was empty.
I couldn’t blame her for it. Vampires slept, it was true.
When the sun was high in the sky, it was virtually impossible for the newly turned to remain conscious.
Most of them had to rest at that point, but not Saeris.
She’d tried to hide it from me, but from what I could tell, she hadn’t slept at all since she’d awoken in this strange new form she occupied.
The past three nights, she had paced her rooms at Ammontraíeth, waiting for the court she ruled over to come back to life, waiting for me to return to her, but she hadn’t slept.
She didn’t want me to worry. I knew that.
The God Binding was still so new between us.
She hadn’t learned yet that she could tell me anything and I would be there for her, no matter what.
It wasn’t my job to fix all her problems or shield her from this new existence, though.
There was plenty she had to figure out by herself.
And when the time came, I would be ready and waiting if she needed help.
In the meantime, she could explore the estate where I had spent the early years of my life and explore what this new life of hers had to offer at the same time.
I wouldn’t stop her. I stretched, enjoying the bright scent of her that still clung to the pillows and the sheets for a second, and then I got out of bed and went to hunt down some food.
“What kind of grown male bypasses bacon and goes straight for the pastries? You’re not right in the head.”
I found Renfis perusing the breakfast feast that Archer had laid out in the dining room.
His sandy brown hair was loose for once, unbound from his war braids.
It hung down his back, still wet from his morning dip in the lake by the orchard, the strands soaking through his shirt.
We pocketed two or three items from the steaming platters, and then I opened a shadow gate to transport us back to camp.
We were halfway back to his tent—and I was halfway through a custard tart—when he started in with the teasing. “I’ve never met another warrior with such a sweet tooth. It’s a miracle you even have any teeth left in that head of yours.”
I grinned, flashing every single one of the teeth in question at him. “Blame Everlayne. She was the one who fed me her sweet treats when she was little.”
As always, the mention of my half sister made my friend’s back straighten a little. As always, I didn’t mention his reaction.
Renfis rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes skipping over the steep hill that still stood between us and camp. “Ah yes. Speaking of your sister, I checked in on her briefly this morning. As I was leaving, I ran into Saeris. She was looking a little . . . disheveled.”
I understood his meaning perfectly well, but I feigned ignorance. “Oh, really? She must have had a restless night.”
Renfis snorted. “A very restless night.”
He would never bring up the fact that she must have smelled like a brothel. He hadn’t mentioned that I did, either. It wasn’t polite.
“How are things going between you two, then? Well, I take it.”
I shrugged, playing coy. “Ah, y’know. I like her well enough.”
“Well enough?” A hint of frustration colored his tone. “What do you mean, well enough? You’re God-Bound to her. Doesn’t that mean that—Well, aren’t you—Gods and martyrs, are you laughing?”
He hit me squarely in the arm, so hard that I dropped the last of my custard tart in the mud. I considered it morosely for a second before I carried on walking. “Yes, Renfis,” I said, finally giving in. “Things are going very well. More than well. They’re amazing.”
“And you’re in love with her?”
I scowled darkly at him out of the corner of my eye, pulling a face. “Yes,” I admitted. It wasn’t that I begrudged the feelings I had for my mate. I just hated admitting it out loud to someone to whom I had repeatedly sworn I would never fall in love. It was more than a little embarrassing.
Renfis beamed, his smile monopolizing most of his face. “I knew it!”
“Don’t breathe another word,” I growled. “I’m not going to gossip about my romantic life with you like some sort of sheep herder.”
He frowned. “Are sheep herders gossipmongers?”
“Yes. You’d be surprised by the scandalous things bored sheep herders are privy to. Especially the ones in the foothills of the Shallow Mountains.”
“Huh. Who knew. You learn something new every day. So, you and Saeris. In love. That’s exciting.”
“Fuck off, Ren,” I grumbled. “Why don’t we talk about your little outburst over Tal instead, huh?”
That shut him up. I almost wished I hadn’t mentioned it. But there was a tension hanging between us still, despite his playful teasing over Saeris, and one of us had to bring it up eventually. The sooner we cleared the air, the better.
My brother hung his head, thinking hard as we trudged up the slope. It had snowed in the night, and a fresh blanket of powder hid the frozen mud and the black scorch marks that scarred the ground below.
“I know I have a blind spot when it comes to him,” he said after a while. “I know it’s not as easy for you to hate him as it is for me.”
“Nothing is ever easy here,” I muttered. “And no matter how badly we might want things to be black and white, most situations never are. You taught me that.”
“I know, I know.” His breath plumed around him as he kicked a pathway through the loose snow. “The atrocities he committed at Malcolm’s behest, though . . .” He shook his head, unable to make his peace with it.
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“I do,” he agreed quietly. “And I do understand. He didn’t have a choice. If Malcolm commanded him to do something, he had to obey. But he should never have found himself in that position in the first place, should he?”
And this was what it all boiled down to: the night when Taladaius should have joined our brotherhood and foolishly chose death instead. I chewed on the pain of that memory, uncomfortable to find myself thrown back into the past.
“You’ve never made a mistake, then?” I asked softly. “I know I have. Too many to count.”
My brother made an unhappy sound, clearing his throat.
He held his tongue, but I already knew the answer to the question.
There were scores of decisions that he would have changed if he could have.
Plenty of harsh words he would have taken back.
A thousand instances where he would have altered the course of his actions, knowing the consequences they would have after the fact.
But it was useless, glancing over a shoulder and wishing to change the past. That was the pastime of fools and politicians.
A warrior couldn’t afford such luxuries.
“Let me ask you this,” I said. “Aside from the decision he made to join Malcolm, what would you have done in his shoes? That night outside the gates of Ajun. Foley was his friend, too, once. If you’d found me there, lying in the snow, my neck broken, dying . . . what would you have done?”
He stewed for a moment, but not long enough to convince me that he’d really thought about it. “I would have let you go. We are Proelia, Fisher. Our sole mission is to fight the horde, not join its fucking ranks.”
I let him fume as we summited the hill. Then, quietly I asked, “Are you sure about that?”
A sharp wind cut through my leathers, tossing my hair. I looked to Ren, expecting to find him annoyed by my probing, but I found that his mouth was parted in surprise instead. He was looking down the other side of the slope, at the camp . . .
. . . and the utter destruction that lay before us.
Irrín wasn’t a city. It was a living organism.
Moveable. It grew and shifted. Where there were no tents one day, a whole new section of the camp was liable to have sprung up by the next.
But now there were no tents at all. The encampment was in ruins.
Where Irrín had once stood, buttressed against the banks of the Darn, a scorched black crater now stretched for as far as the eye could see.
Smoke rose from smoldering patches of ground where the embers of a fire still glowed red hot amid the debris.
Charred wood.
Scraps of cloth.
Swords abandoned and blackened in the dirt.
We hadn’t smelled the smoke. It was too cold to smell anything at all, and we hadn’t been paying attention besides.
We hadn’t noticed the quiet.
The camp was destroyed. The tavern was gone. The armory. Everything. Only black ash and bones remained.
“What in all the holy gods’ fucking names?” Ren whispered.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
Eleven thousand warriors had been camped here. More, probably. And now there was no sign of them. There were dead, yes. But not enough bones to account for all who had called Irrín home. It wasn’t possible.
The sparse vegetation that had grown along the riverside was all cinder now. Only the huge oak remained—the very same tree we had tied the feeders to yesterday, before I’d gone to Ammontraíeth to show Saeris and Tal the heads of the feeders we’d fought to put down.
Their bodies were still strapped to the tree, but something had changed.
The feeders’ limbs were fused with the rough trunk, flesh melting into bark.
Their skin was gray and sallow, covered in a thin network of black vines that wrapped around the oak, strangling it.
From the base of the tree, blackened roots as thick as a warrior’s arm burst out of the ground, snaking over the exposed dirt for thirty feet before plunging back below.
The roots bore deep gashes, as if someone had taken an ax to them but hadn’t managed to cleave them through.
“What is that?” I asked, squinting down at the destruction. My stomach clenched like a fist around my breakfast. “Down there? Coming out of those roots?”
My brother peered down at the nightmare scene, his face drained of color. “It looks like blood,” he answered. “Black blood, pouring from the gashes as if they’re wounds. Look.” He pointed down at an area of ground by the river that hadn’t been touched by fire. “It’s contaminating the ground.”
And sure enough, it was.
Where the black ooze spread, rot and decay followed after it.