XXXVIII | THE CRIMSON WHISPERS
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The battle raged, the screams of soldiers echoing throughout the hilly terrain, and yet, Celvene could do nothing. She had to simply pray that Aizasea could bear the fury that was ready to rain down upon it—that they'd be able to survive the night.
Her thoughts jumped to her friends, namely Khamisi and Quinn. She was sure Khamisi could defend himself against a soldier or two, but not the full force of the Noriya Army. Quinn... Well, Celvene had to hope that the girl got out of Painted Sky and to safety as fast as possible.
Every Noriya soldier was dressed in a full set of heavy armor, metal glinting.
And there she was, at the outskirts of the city, in nothing more than a set of rags with a blunt dagger in hand—and the blade felt as though it would fall from the hilt at any amount of pressure.
Quinn really knew how to defend herself.
She turned to escape; while she would love to fight for the city and prove her worth, she wasn't going to be able to do so with her current disadvantages, and she wasn't a fighter.
If she was fast, she could make it to the castle, stock up on supplies, and get back before the battle was over.
She could cast spells from a safe distance.
All she had to do was avoid anyone who questioned her—namely Aleksandr, assuming he cowered away from the fight like Celvene expected him to.
Before she'd gotten more than twenty feet, however, something grabbed the cloth collar of her shirt. She hoped it was someone from Aizasea, but realistically, she knew it was a Noriya soldier. Her suspicions were proven correct when she looked up to be met with a silver face leering down upon her.
"Where are you going?" the female soldier asked, lip curling up into a sneer.
Her white hair was streaked with red—blood, Celvene realized with fear.
The haunting glow of her pale eyes bore into Celvene as the woman yanked her backwards.
Celvene tried to break free of her hold, but the woman was twice Celvene's size. Her efforts quickly proved futile.
The armored woman raised her shield in one gloved hand, and behind it, Celvene could see the peak of a mace.
Two wings of dragons hugged each other, with a set of glowing red eyes lurking behind the wings.
Her mace thrummed and glowed a soft blue—it was enchanted with frost magic.
With her free hand, she held Celvene with a grip so tight she was surprised her skin didn't rupture.
Luckily, the woman grabbed the side of her body where her dagger wasn't visible. Celvene tucked the blade against her thigh, concealing it as best she could. She swallowed a shiver upon feeling the cool metal of the woman's mace resting against her neck.
"Oh, you're a pretty one," the woman crowed, and ravenous hunger was palpable in her accented voice. She pressed the mace further into Celvene's neck, and a sliver of pain crawled through her skin, followed by the warm trickle of blood. "Your head will make a nice trophy."
Celvene didn't move, not daring to shift the blade any further into her neck. Instead, she kept her gaze fixated on the grass, watching as thin droplets of her blood fell to the blades in small plops.
An exasperated exhale followed her movements, and the pressure against her neck was alleviated slightly. Her head was then forcefully snapped to the side, tilting up so she was forced to look the woman in the eyes.
"Quiet, too?" The woman's lips curved into a smile. "Odd. I thought every soldier from your city screamed. At least the ones who have come across me. Oh, how lovely they sounded."
Her eyes narrowed. The soldier wanted Celvene to respond, but she wasn't going to bite so easily. She kept her gaze locked onto the woman's eyes, hoping her stare would keep the soldier distracted.
"I'll make you whimper, little girl," the woman said, and her hand moved to cut the mace into Celvene's skin.
And then a terrible, terrible memory surged back in Celvene's mind's eye, just as vivid as the night it happened. A man had her pinned to the wall in a Slums alleyway, sneering at Celvene's futile struggling.
With every squirm, Celvene's panic grew while her strength faded—up until the man's hand slid under her skirt, and Celvene's mind went blank except for one thought: survive.
She recalled the shattered beer bottle on the ground from when she was first cornered in the alleyway; a second later, it was lodged in the man's neck, held down by Celvene's own hand.
She had just registered the warm blood spraying onto her sweat-drenched face when the man released her, and her shaking legs couldn't catch her in time.
Celvene remembered hearing the crunch of bone from her ankle and feeling the sharp pain jolting up her leg, but she didn't care.
She remembered hearing the gurgling of blood from behind her as she crawled away, but she didn't turn back.
She remembered seeing the deep gash in her throat that had almost killed her, but she didn't know when she got it.
She didn't know the man who had saved her from bleeding out, either. Even today, there was the faintest rupture of tissue that sliced across her neck, though it wasn't very visible unless the light caught it at the right angle.
All Celvene could think of was one, cold truth: she had killed someone.
Celvene switched the dagger to her other hand in one swift movement before plunging it into the woman's side, in the one area unprotected by her armor, something she hadn't even known she'd examined.
Her mind brimmed with panic, swarmed with thoughts of surviving. Whether that was the woman's gut, thigh, or somewhere in between, Celvene didn't know; all she knew was that she capitalized on the one opening she saw.
A sharp gasp escaped the woman's lips, and her grasp on Celvene faltered.
Celvene willed herself to block it out. To block it all out.
She removed the dagger before pushing it into the woman's skin again, harder, then again, and again, and again.
It was only when her weapon swiped at the air that she realized the woman had already collapsed.
She looked down, tears flowing down her face. Wiping a bare hand against her skin, the sticky feeling of blood mixed with the salt, she knew it was not her own blood. Not all of it, at least. The blood hissed against her skin.
She was panting, and if she kept staring at the woman's twitching body, she was pretty sure she'd be heaving soon. Her head pounded, and the world around her spun. Breathing was difficult, like she had something stuck in her throat.
But... as she continued to look at the body, blood flowing into the dirt, she realized she didn't only feel disgust. She felt pleasure.
When she'd broken her leg after escaping a predator, she hadn't felt that emotion, nor when she'd stabbed the man the day of the sword ceremony. But right now...
Something in her hungered. It was an odd, indescribable feeling, like the low burning of a fire on a winter's day. The crackling of embers, the flicker of flame... it yearned for something. What that was, she couldn't tell.
She blinked, and blackness swarmed her, staining her vision shades of midnight.
The shade that engulfed her was cold, and it was hot, and it was burning, all at once.
But when she looked down, she was still on the battlefield.
It was different, though. The verdant grass was no longer green; it was red, swamped in a gush of sticky liquid.
She looked up, and the field felt like it shouldn't have been so still. But the battle had concluded. There was no clear victor, no soldiers left standing. Instead, they all laid in crumpled heaps, dismembered body parts strewn across the grass.
Every lifeless face stared into the sky, mouth agape and eyes twice as wide. Bloodshot and broken. Celvene couldn't tear her gaze away.
The moon was setting, but now, it was tinted red, casting crimson light onto the land. The roaring of water to Celvene's left was all she could hear, but she knew there was no stream nearby. Two heavy weights pressed into Celvene's palms. She looked down.
In her hands were two bloody daggers. Not just any daggers, though; they were hers, engraved with the symbols she'd carved into the hilts. The daggers she'd lost. The crimson liquid dripped from the blades onto the grass, and the slop coating the fields continued to rise.
Celvene tried to step out, to step back, but she was frozen in place. She was helpless as the liquid reached her ankles with no signs of stopping. The smell of iron rose with it. She finally realized what it was.
It was blood.
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