Chapter 2
Taison approached slowly with a wash of shadows distorting his features, though I could make out those red eyes in the darkest night. He stalked between me and the horse I yearned to saddle. To ride into the night and forget this day.
Lifting his hands, Taison pulled back his hood. A sharp nose cut the air, and tight eyes traded between Vera and me as though they had no other purpose. Whisking the cape of his cloak, he revealed his massive stature. Taut muscles spoke to his years of training. Or perhaps, years of killing.
Years of Carnage.
Be wary of this one, the god reminded me as he often did when Taison was near. His eyes scratched behind my own. Watching.
Taison wiped the black hairs from his face—focus shifting between Vera and me—then tied his hair into a tail and cleared his throat.
“Ladies, who is it that I shall kiss?”
Disgust turned my stomach. I recoiled where I stood and laid down Deceit’s magic—the red curls faded as my skin snapped to my innate features.
Vera let go of me and sprang forward. Leaping into his arms, she pressed her lips into his. I thought I might have bartered deception for concealment, the way the two rapt each other in touch and desire as though I wasn’t here.
Once his hands slipped beneath Vera’s dress, old wine nearly left my throat.
Vera pried his hands away with a voice deepened by lust.
“Darling, that was a seamless killing. I am happy to finally be rid of that cursed place!”
Taison cupped her face with his red-washed hands.
“You were spectacular in there.” He then tilted his jaw to me, glare affixed.
“How did you manage to deliver the poison?”
My thoughts were brittle, but I steadied my words.
“I set some upon my neck. He always did find such place alluring.” I could not bring myself to say Percy’s name aloud.
Taison roared from his chest, his chipped tooth catching moonlight.
“And your timing could not have been better! As soon as he was weakened, my blade found his damned heart.”
Vera squealed.
“Gods, Taison, it was effortless.” She kissed him again.
“I could barely see your sword as it cut through the air.”
“That Calhourn got better than he deserved,” Taison said with a grunt.
“It should have been a slow death. One I savored.”
Spoken like a true killer.
The god met my thoughts with a tail twisting around my spine. And the thirst of a killer’s blade is not easily quenched, dear one.
Taison’s spite left a dry taste in my mouth.
Percy was kind. Or rather, he was kinder than many of the men I had known over the years. Not once had Percy’s glove struck my cheek. He never called me wench or bitch, or any other demeaning title that many men often had on the tips of their tongues. And he had never come upon me in the night, seeking something I was not keen to share.
It was something I gave willingly.
But, in the end, those I walked beside were marked. I had become an omen of death. A foretelling of another house to fall at the hands of the Guild of the Gods. I sought secrets, I pursued trust, all so another man might die in the name of sovereignty. I was a thousand faces, but not one was to be remembered.
Leaping onto my icy-iron saddle, I stroked Skye’s mane.
“Hello, girl,” I hushed.
She neighed and kicked back her head. When I knocked her sides, she struck the rocks at her feet, and we rode on.
Hooves chanted as the steeds trampled the path of fallen leaves. Vera snuggled into Taison’s chest, his large build hiding her in his shadow. Though no shadows could mask the burning waves of her hair, like a vibrant flame in the night.
I shivered against the breeze. The bitter air seeped past my gloves, all the way to my bones. The nights were always cold, but so were the days. Andrael never gleaned any warmth from the sun. Not in this era.
For in this era, the light was dying.
My father’s home was dark and cold, but the sun still rose in brilliance during childhood. Anymore, shadows scorned light into a feeble state. And, in the wake of darkness, the evil tendencies of mankind ravaged the realm of Andrael.
Deceit’s talon-like nails clenched my eyes and burrowed in my pupils, watching the wood pass us by. You must be careful how close you are to the lords.
I scraped out a dry laugh. I am careful.
I am no fool. I can feel your tears like acid souring my stomach. You cared for him. His nail traced the curve of my eye. Such a distasteful creature he was, his soul beyond redemption.
A tear was at my lashes. What would I be if I did not care for life? I held back my thoughts for a moment, but I was tired and near the end of my patience. So, I said it, curt and rude—Certainly, I would be more like you.
Hating the sinners I am sworn to protect? Tell me, darling, what is wrong with loathing those who are unworthy of the gods? He laughed in a disturbingly low note. At least, I used to find it disturbing. Now, it was merely white noise that rumbled in my head. You must be ready, Rhoswen. One day, it may not be a lord before you to kill. It may be a king.
I do not wish to discuss this, Deceit.
Will you be ready when the time comes? Will you be able to kill your own father?
My father. The king.
It was in his home, within his castle, where Deceit first came to me.
Twelve years ago, my mother lay upon her deathbed, plagued by fever. She held my hand with what little strength she owned. A candle’s flame flickered against her final breath, and she fell beyond the veil. I then held onto my father, though he only plucked away my fingers, one by one, and left me to mourn my mother’s death in loneliness.
It was this night I knew my father was comprised of cruelty. From the fibers of his skin to the density of his bones, he was fabricated from malice. This night, the gods granted me gifts beyond what was intended for mortals. Gifts, so I might kill the man I once called Father in desperate attempts to save Andrael from extinction.
Before I understood my oath, I thought my gifts were a curse, so I sewed my body into the shadows to survive. Though I preferred the shadows, and such dark obscurity was far reaching as the nights drew long and the days shined dismal. It was not always this way.
The Goddess of Light had died some time ago.
Travesty followed as the goodness of the realm was lost to the dark of the lands. The Everlaides quaked overhead, the lands wrestling beneath the power of the gods. I remember watching a brilliant star chase across the sky, fade, and disappear. A thrash of violent winds followed, threatening the foundations of my father’s house.
Andrael had never been the same.
In efforts to balance the scales of evil, the gods granted their chosen people gifts.
I was only hopeful for a moment, believing perhaps I was not cursed, as men began coming forth with the convictions of their gods. But then, the executions came, and the king called for severed heads, denying the gods the pleasure of sovereignty.
One night, my father witnessed the powers I was bestowed. He hated me for it, lifting his blade to do the same to me as he did to countless others. So I ran. I ran until my feet bled. I had not been my father’s daughter since that night, though a piece of me never felt I was his daughter to begin with.
Through the white rose brambles, I fled and never looked back. When I had finally escaped the king’s hands, when I had a moment to catch my breath, I plucked rose thorns from my dress and skin with hands covered in my own blood. The final thorn I pried remained tethered to a white rose. I held the fragile petals in my bleeding hands and let them fall to the ground. My father’s name fell with it.
Since that cursed night, I have always been Rhoswen Fallen.
Vera, Taison, and I rode on, and the god spoke nothing more. He withdrew to tend to other godly matters, fleeing the ripples of my mind, and left me to ponder my greatest contemplations.
My father was a creation damned from his first breath. A tyrant of power, his reign was drenched in blood. Blood and Shadow.
Shortly after the Goddess of Light was killed, a mass of black smoke fell from the Everlaides, appearing like an entanglement of evil beings sentenced to Oldurem. As the dark fell from the grace of the gods, the smoke cast fumes throughout the realm.
Shadows were birthed.
Those who were suffocated by the smoke, a Shadow was left behind. The gods had not given knowledge of the Shadows. The gods’ chosen knew only that the Shadows brought forth man’s sinful nature, with veins drowning in black blood. The Shadows become one with the vessel. One with the man.
The Shadows now lurked in the lands, darkening the days. Smoke had not fallen over every home. The Calhourns were spared the curse, but some men’s acts did not need a dark force to draw out their malice.
This was the war. A war ushered by the ruin of light, the emergence of darkness, and the wickedness of man.
I cannot say my father, the king, was changed after he had been drowned in the smoke. It was only that his anger was less forgiving and quicker to find fruition. In his ire, the dark magic would smolder his veins with a webbing of black mapping his skin. They were the same veins I saw as his blade cut my stomach. The scar I bore was a relentless reminder of my father’s hatred, or perhaps a reminder of the gods’ mercy.
“Did you hear that?” Vera asked, cleaving me from my mind. She tensed against Taison.
He held her closer.
“I hear nothing.”
The trees spoke, leaves scattering along the branches in forewarning. Like liquid filling my skull, Deceit pressed back into my mind. Careful.
But it was too late.
Skye’s tread broke, her neigh a cry, and we fell to the cold ground, stones tearing my skin as I twisted to a halt. My vision spun, the wood stretching and folding. Taison helped Vera stand and unsheathed his blades, spinning them like batons.
Vera charged to my side. Two men emerged from the dark. Coming towards us.
“Rhoswen, hurry!” She yanked me from the ground.
I began to stand, my head spinning. Deceit thrashed against my skull, awakening my senses. Vera was pulled away by a man holding her at the waist. She tore from his grasp, turned, and plunged her fingers into his eye sockets.
Then, she pressed her lips into his.
The man collapsed to the ground in an instant. The God of Slumber had declared himself this night. Vera’s gift—a token of sleep. She spat remnants of her kiss onto the snoring man.
“They’re cursed blood! Fiends from the guild!” The crier gargled on his last word.
Taison’s blade was drenched in red, piercing past the thief’s open lips and puncturing through the back of his head. His body went limp, held up by Taison’s blade alone. As if this would not send a man to his grave, Taison’s other blade carved the man’s head from his neck.
I might have been sick if five more men hadn’t appeared from the wood.
“Fiends of the guild, eh? I thought it’d take days to find you.” The man pointed his sword towards me.
“Oh, I am going to relish this.” He looked to his left, finding Taison, and his jaw dropped.
“Oh, sands, he’s a Bloodle—” And the man lost his head to Taison’s blade.
I could not watch.
Fumbling away, I was desperate to stake distance from the bedlam.
I wasn’t a fighter. I had never been a fighter. I was the discrete silence, hidden beneath masks.
Sprinting into the trees, breaking away from battle, a palm came from nothing and smothered my mouth. Instinct told me to bite, so I did, and a fist slammed into my ribs. My side burned. Throbbed. Any groan, any cry, was shackled beneath this hand.
“I like a biter,” slipped into my ears, and the thief’s arm tightened around my waist.
My feet rose from the dirt. He plunged me further into the wood—further from Vera and her merciless love. I was heaved against a tree, nose hitting the stalk. The thief’s hand covered my mouth, his other tracing my waist. I threw elbows as the god crept to the forefront of my mind.
This man knows not whom he stands against, Deceit uttered, undaunted and slick. A god and his maiden, a sculptor and his clay.
As the wood stirred around me—blades, blood, grunts, and this damn hand over my mouth—I stilled myself and thought of nothing. I became nothing. I sculpted into nothing, my clay skin softening. The tree before me, I arched my spine backwards and threw my face into the bark, my skin melding with it. The wood then fell silent. The man halted. His wandering hands released me.
I do not know what the thief saw, but as I turned, he cowered.
The god laughed.
The thief’s face fell, aghast, as he withheld what horror I was. My skin was thin and splayed, risen and dented. A disfiguration of whatever markings the tree bestowed to me. In one eye, I could only see the folds of my bark-textured skin. The other eye looked through the blood.
My head throbbed, my skull’s integrity tested.
The highwayman fled.
“You damn freak!” He cried.
I may have laughed with the god, but I neared tears as Taison threw a dagger into the man’s head, the ground echoing a pitiful thud. It was barely a fight. He did not stand a chance against Taison.
My face snapped back, my cheek burning. I lifted my hand where warm blood seeped from the pores.
Vera and Taison stood above the man overtaken by Vera’s kiss of slumbers, Taison lifting his blood-stained blade above the snorer.
“Wait!” I called, and Taison barely listened, his sword licking the man’s chest.
“These men deserve this,” he spoke through a growl.
“Let me question him,” I pleaded.
“One of the men said they were looking for us.”
“And?” The tip of Taison’s blade punctured the man’s skin.
“God servers have always been hunted.”
“Aye, love, listen to her,” Vera piped.
“We might as well get all we can from these damn highwaymen. After, by all means—have at it.”
I almost encouraged we leave the highwayman alive, but that was never a winnable argument when a Bloodletter’s eyes burned red. When Carnage vanquished mercy. Taison left the man with a huff and began to drag the bodies from the main path, concealing them in the wood’s overgrowth.
Vera came and held me, wiping the blood from my cheek.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“I am.” Vera’s eyes were of junipers, rich blues and sage woven into beauty. She looked past me at the tree mottled with droplets of my blood. She hesitated to ask.
“Rhoswen, d-did he hurt you?”
“No,” I said.
“I did not give him the chance.”
Vera then erased a tear from my cheek that had finally fallen, despite my efforts.
“They deserved to die,” she said.
I sighed.
“It is not about who deserves death. It is about who needs to fall so the gods might rise up.”
Vera never understood the difference. She grimaced.
Some moments later, the man awoke, Slumber weighing down his eyelids. We didn’t need to bind his hands, did not need precautions to keep us protected—Taison held his sword plenty close to the man’s neck. Regardless, Slumber’s spell often lingered, leaving men weak and slow for some hours after they’d awake.
When the highwayman did not startle, but rather began to snore again, Taison knelt behind him and struck him, knee to back. The blade left a red line on the man’s neck.
“What? What’s happening?” The highwayman asked, reaching for his neck, only to find a sword.
“Gods, I-I-I did not know. Please, don’t kill me!”
“Why were you after us?” I asked.
“How did you—?”
“Ah, please!” He wept.
“I only did as asked. I’ve got kids back home, please, don’t kill me!”
I traded a glance between Vera and Taison—both of them looking at me as though I had something to give. I did. It was sour and odorous and something the god relished in. Deceit anchored himself within my mind. His powers seeped into my lungs like a current of hot water. Air curdled in me, and, when I blew out a breath, it was filled with godly magic.
I spoke a spell of deception.
“You say you only did as asked. You wish to tell me, are you arms-for-hire?”
He bit his pouting lip, his brows contorting into confusion. When I blew more magic in his face, his eyes began to turn glassy—a symptom of Deceit defeating resilience.
“Aye,” he began, his voice sounding constrained.
“We are all mercenaries.”
“We all,” Taison laughed.
“You’re the last one.”
“You killed them?” The mercenary asked, trying to look at the bloodbath, but we’d hidden the bodies and turned the dirt.
I took his face, angling his stare to me, feeling his tears coat my hand.
“Who hired you?” I asked.
“Do they know who we are?”
Each utterance came from a locked-up throat, the man trying and failing to best a god.
“We didn’t have your names. We only knew two women at the Calhourn Estate served the gods, but no one said anything about a damn Bloodletter.” He winced as Taison pressed the blade against his neck. More blood spilled.
“We were only told to tell the Calhourns, then keep our eyes open for anything suspicious. Kill you if we found you.”
“Who hired you?” I asked again, my mind teeming with a hundred thoughts.
“If I say, he’ll come for me.”
“You’re already dead,” Taison uttered behind.
I shot him a glare, looked back at the mercenary, and curdled more air, letting it drift around his senses.
“You wish to tell me—who hired you?”
“Lucien Brine,” the name wheezed out of his throat.
It was no name I knew.
“Well, I believe that’s all we’re needing.” Something sick played in Taison’s eyes and, before I could argue, before the mercenary sucked a final breath, Taison’s blade sliced his throat.
I stood to my feet and stepped away from the sound of wet gargling.
“Can you imagine if I had my hammer?” Taison asked in a vile key.
“This would have been far more fun.”
The thirst of a killer’s blade is never quenched. Deceit hissed, tensing alongside me. Nor is a killer’s hammer ever bent. Red stain, man slain, for in Carnage, blood is rain.
“What does this mean?” Vera asked, coming to my side and seeking my eyes. Seeking comfort and solace, but I had none to give.
“How could anyone have known?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We’ve been cautious. Careful.”
The god tapped his nails against my thoughts. You have been careful, Rhoswen. However, the company you keep.
Be quiet and let me think.
Vera trembled beside me.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go back to Sariem. If we’re compromised, that is the end of us. And what if we are attacked again? What if the crown is waiting for us?”
“Breathe, Vera, breathe.” I held her cheeks, my palms cupping the corners of her lips—lips that had kissed over a hundred men. Vera’s kiss. A kiss of poison, casting souls into slumber. Then, I surveyed the assassin at her back. A man blessed by the God of Carnage and the Goddess of Wisdom. A Bloodletter. Though Wisdom seemed to misplace him.
Kisses and killing were not careful in nature, and if the monarchy suspected our treachery, I would be beneath my father’s blade once more.
“These men were hired on speculation.” My spine straightened, my mind sure.
“Whoever Lucien Brine is, he does not know our names or faces. We will proceed to the City of the King. We will go to Sariem. We cannot abandon the guild on one mere rumor.”
Taison tucked his chin, his beating-red eyes measuring me once more. Taking Vera, he broke my hold on her and hushed.
“It does not matter how many know we serve the gods. I will kill a thousand men in your name. No one will harm you.”
Vera then found the solace she sought in me, nestling her face in Taison’s broad chest.
His timbre was low as he affirmed.
“We go back to Sariem.”