Chapter 55
Each step battered the ground. Each strike of steel mauled the stone. Taison was closing in, and I knew these breaths were to be my last. I would fall one last time—a white rose dripping red, never to arise.
If I were to fall at the hands of the gods as a soul marked by Shadow, was I damned to Oldurem? After all my years of devotion, would I be stripped of salvation? As Deceit teemed in my mind, a god who resided with me rather than the Everlaides, I could not be sure.
A silhouette, clad in black, towered before me and broke my sight from the Bloodletter.
Alistair grasped my chin, casting my eyes to his, ever dark.
“Rhoswen, leave,” he yelled at the chains of fear that bound me. Tension skewed the features surrounding his darkened eyes, brows furrowed and lips thin.
“Now!” His palm struck my shoulder once, twice, compelling me to run.
I stumbled where I stood. Eyes severing from his, I looked at the beast that gained. Alistair turned to Taison and lifted his blade, glinting in the scarlet light.
My voice was frail, breathing my final remnants of Andraelian air.
“Alistair—”
“Leave, Rhoswen,” he bayed over his shoulder.
Three soldiers left another Chosen dead on the black stones, angled to Taison, and charged. Coming from behind, a soldier lifted his sword, and I thought for a fractured second—maybe, only maybe, I might run free. It was a worthless, desperate thought.
Sword to shoulder, skin was unbroken.
Taison twisted with his hammer down, lifted his hand around the soldier’s head, and closed his fist. Gold and bone warped until innards seeped from the visor. Another soldier charged, and Taison whisked him away with a flick of his hammer, body breaking against the fountain in an instant.
The third man—he hunched over, gagging, and was sick in his helmet. He dropped his sword, showed empty hands, and turned to flee. Taison ripped off the arm of a dead man, bones disjointing, and threw the sharp edge into the slat between helmet and breastplate. The third collapsed.
Not ten seconds had passed.
Taison licked his lips and pressed his blood-bathed palm against his forehead, eyes burning with a red I have never seen before. Carnage, so raw.
“It seems your lord will die this day, Rhoswen,” Taison shouted with a cruel laugh.
“Do you forget? His fate has been sealed in the tomes of the gods. You cannot save him.”
I hushed to Alistair’s back.
“I-I’m sorry, I—”
“You both will die by my hand!” Taison howled, swinging his hammer that was larger than me.
“I was only trying to protect you.” Yet I failed.
The Bloodletter gained in deadly speed.
Alistair hardened his stance with a drawn blade and flexing muscles.
“Rhoswen,” he whispered, thin as thread.
“Please. Leave.”
I lifted my hand to… to… I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. As I stood in the bloodbath of war, threatened by a god server and protected by a cursed lord, the confidence of my acts, my reasons, had shattered.
But as I stood here, the only thing I knew was that I needed to run, though I did not wish to run alone. I wanted Alistair beside me. I wanted to tear him from his place as protector, so we could flee this damn night together.
Rather than reach for Alistair, my hand tightened into a fist.
He would not come with me, I knew.
No one could outrun a Bloodletter in hunt.
My heels grinded against stone, and I flung myself around, chasing towards the gate. Alistair and I locked eyes for a sliver of stillness that withered immediately.
Alistair charged to Taison, blade lifted, bearing his sword like an offering, as though valor itself could sanctify him from a Bloodletter’s moment of reckoning. The moon suspended in the empty night, and before my sight honed onto the iron gate, I saw my father’s guillotine glisten in wicked vanity.
Arrows whistled past me.
Teeth were sharp above me, the iron gate agape. I plunged into the throat of the city, leaving behind my father’s house. My neck twisted—the Lord of Ravens scraped against the ground, evading Taison’s hammer, and he sliced his steel along the Bloodletter’s back.
Another arrow swept past me, drifting through my hair.
A bear-cry ripped itself from Taison’s chest, and the hammer battered against air.
I continued ahead, but I did not look ahead.
The realm trembled beneath my feet as the hammerhead struck the ground, but Alistair had thrown himself to the side of Taison’s assault. Alistair lifted his blade’s point to Taison’s chest, but Taison lunged back and swung up his hammer for another downward blow.
Alistair weaved through the chaos.
Taison’s hammer was sent down, and—
An arrow flew past me, along me, cutting me. I tripped in the startle, cradling my side where blood flowed from the slice. Another arrow lodged into the ground, but two inches from my face. Fighting to my feet, I held onto my side and ran. I turned to look back, to see Alistair one last time, but an arrow’s shaft nearly devoured my eyes.
Past the clearing, Rhoswen! Deceit was tight around my eyes, setting my sights to the edges of Sariem’s streets.
Where are the others? I yelled within myself. I attempted to fight Deceit’s bind to my eyes, to look for others, but my vision stayed where the god demanded I go.
A steel point stabbed into a nearby torch, the arrows still stalking me.
They scatter, child! Deceit exclaimed. More fallen are hailed in the Everlaides where sorrow bleeds this night, but that will not be your fate. Not beneath this moon.
I scraped around a corner and hid behind a building, dividing me from the archers upon the battlement. My spine struck stone. I leaned against the wall and garnered a breath. The realm was spinning.
Deceit continued, Without direction, survivors chase their escape from your father’s hand. You must do the same. Before the Bloodletter finds you.
Deceit… I began, my heart somehow still in the courtyard. Alistair.
Do not speak of the lord, Rhoswen! Talons burrowed deep into my mind. His demise is written by the gods, and he has upheld his destiny this night. LEAVE!
The god’s cry was a tremor within. I lifted my palms to cradle my head. My palms were warm, but this was no warmth of good omen. In my hands, there was blood. My side was covered in blood.
You must hurry, the god uttered, looking at my wound through my eyes.
Past the howl of arrows and the remnants of battle, Taison’s untamed grunts echoed time and again. Which meant Alistair was still alive.
I contested into the maze of the city. Buildings like giants, I fell into alleyways, once abandoned, now crowded with the deceased. One after another, I leaped over the bodies, not allowing myself to bewail. This, surrounded by the dead, I had seen a likeness before when Shadows dragged me down to the heart of their cathedral.
Streets were littered with the fallen. The air tasted sour.
Death did not spare any, claiming men, women, and children alike.
We rise, you rise—the Shadows had made their promise to me.
As though the vision of Shadows and Sight had splayed before me, I ran through it. Only, this was no vision. The bodies were warm, their final breaths still lingering in the air. The stones were cold, and the moon was vivid. Alistair was alive, and Taison was determined to see us both die at his hand. These were my real feet that tripped over golden armor and sprang over Volants, Feytras, and others I did not recognize—perhaps the innocent suspected of treachery. The air swelled life in my lungs, but the taste—sour and of death—left me perishing within.
I did not know how many alleys I curled past, but I did know these streets, and I knew I neared the front gate.
The minutes were long. My breath was tattered, and my legs were burning. I stumbled into the stone walls time and again, dizzy from blood loss and the conjoining of god and maiden—Deceit and Davina. Each time my sight swooned into a blur, the god fetched my eyes and secured them in my skull, keeping my attention heightened.
“Rhoswen,” was a roar at my back.
The city shook beneath heavy feet—a devoted haste that outspread with each step.
Clipping a corner, I dared look at the red spheres illuminating in the shadows.
A beast, breaking through the barriers of carcasses, sprinted for me. Had his hammer not been in hand, I imagined Taison would fall onto all fours and snarl like a creature that was damned to Oldurem, resurrected for the killing. His feet clawed at the stones, his soles scraping beneath his speed. Each step was a leap, each second was a measure gained, and his blood-eyes swelled through the alley.
But if Taison was here, then Alistair—
Rhoswen, run! Deceit himself carried labored breaths that swept beneath my skin. Now!
A deafening yell upwelled from Taison, impaled my ears, and broke into my skull.
I could not stifle Taison’s bawl—not as I ran with arms swinging manically at my sides.
I raced down the deserted market street of Sariem, and the air was like hands wiping tears from my face. My heart occupied my chest, broken in two, knowing Taison was here and not knowing how he left Alistair.
Taison’s feet drummed my death march. I looked back, and the flat of the street aided in his advance. He was so near that if I stopped for a second, I would be flattened by either his stride or his hammer. Taison’s hand reached out, reaching for the hairs lashing at my back.
I yelped, twisted from the street, and slipped between the empty market stalls.
Taison lunged, barely missed me, and stumbled further down the street. Body falling, the ground nearly breaking, he was up in an instant and pounced.
Weaving through the wooden stands, I fell into the shadows. There was no relief—the shadows were a frail shelter from Carnage’s predator. No shadow could snuff out those burning eyes. I crouched low between two stalls with blood pounding in my ears.
The Bloodletter stalked. His speed lessened. There was a patience in his steps, and tight breaths crawl down his throat. Taison fell from chase to scout.
“Your blood beats fast,” Taison rasped a whisper.
“I can hear it—the blood of a traitor.”
I clasped my hands over my mouth, smothering my breath.
“Do you wonder what has become of your lord, Rhoswen?” He asked with a vile satisfaction in his voice.
“Do you wonder how I left him?”
Tears tore from my eyes, wetting my hands. I had tried to slow my heart, but Taison’s words left it pounding recklessly. Each heartbeat’s end was the beginning of another.
“Gods, I’ve never seen a skull become so… flat.” Taison laughed again, cruel and kindled by hatred.
“You should have seen him. It was a work of art.”
I cracked a breath. I surrendered a weep.
The stall before me flung from its place. Taison towered above.
We stared at the other, and he uttered with upturned lips.
“There you are.”
I lunged into a run.
“You cannot escape this, Rhoswen.” This seeker was savoring the hunt.
“You are already dead. Your last breath has been breathed.”
I thought of another.
I did not know if a mask could save me. I did not know how long I could endure a mask before another wave of dizziness would snap my skin. Deceit’s apprehensions melded into my own, but, as death came for me, I had no other choice.
My skin began to burn.
“No you don’t.” Taison pivoted before me, grabbed me by the neck, and lifted me from the ground.
Any mask, any thought, snapped away.
My feet dangled over the stall’s wreckage.
His hand tightened around my neck, my throat caving in on itself. Beating, red eyes burned with vitality, but everything else was darkening. Fading. I tried to gasp, but no air could squeeze past Taison’s hand.
“I knew the moment I saw you, you had lost your way.” His tongue grazed his teeth, and he pulled me closer to the blood on his face.
“It was you who told the king we were coming. You are the reason my brothers and sisters are dead!”
I attempted to speak, but I couldn’t. Nothing could get past this Bloodletter’s chokehold.
Deceit shifted beneath my skin—I barely felt him. Climbing down my arm, he stretched to my fingertips. Not by my will, Deceit enslaved my hand. Knuckles knotted, my fingers curled, and my five nails stretched and sharpened.
“I told you, bitch, I’ve wanted to see you bleed for a long time. And now, I get to make you bleed.”
My eyes began to fall from the realm. A blurry hand reached out, olden and dark, and clawed Taison’s face. He grunted, his hand unlocked, and I fell to the ground in coughs and gasps.
The realm came back to me, stone by stone, the grainy becoming clear.
Taison was bent over, holding his face. He reached for his eye, tapping, searching, but… it was gone. I looked at my hand and trembled at the sight, finding what Taison searched for speared onto Deceit’s nail.
My hand snapped, the god breaking the tether, and Taison’s eye rolled into a slat between stones.
“You damn bitch!” Taison howled.
“I will wring your body dry with my bare hands.”
The god did not need to tell me—I ran.
Slipping past stalls, each one crashed behind me. Taison threw one after the other, clearing his path. He slandered me with each breath, but I could barely hear him. Terror sent blood chasing my veins, but it was grief that was near crippling me. I did not let myself imagine how Alistair had fallen to Taison’s hammer.
In my mind, Alistair was still alive.
I threw myself into the main street and charged towards the front gates—I could see the gate. Endless torches lit along the city’s exit, and I followed my guiding light, only—
The gates are closed, I called to the god, my stomach tightening.
Keep going, Rhoswen, he demanded.
In the dark of the road, light poured out from a pub, the door swinging open. I do not know why I looked, but there was a man standing upon the patio with four long cuts on his face. Lucien Brine. Drink seemed to weigh him down, but when Lucien noticed me, he shot up.
Lucien looked at me with eyes similar to Taison—drenched in hate.
Heading for the gate, I deviated from my path towards the stables.
A guard set reins into the hands of the stableman, and they both marked my coming.
“Give me the horse, now,” I called before I arrived, my breath tasting sour, but they did not move. My spell did not reach them. I cried again.
“You wish to give me the reins!”
With a nod, the stableman’s eyes turn to glass. He lifted his arm, reins in hand. Before the guard could argue, before I needed to persuade another, I took the reins, leaped onto the horse, and knocked its sides, steering us to the gate.
The city gate was before me. The Bloodletter was behind.
“Guards,” I called to a group of five as I approached.
Hands at the hilt, their eyes turned from curiosity to fear when they saw the Bloodletter at my back. One split from the group and ran into hiding.
Deceit’s magic was on my breath.
“You wish to protect me. Fight that man.” I pointed towards the Bloodletter. I could barely see him. The cost of Deceit’s magic sent the lands spinning.
The god took a deep breath and swelled magic within, reinforcing the spell.
“Go now,” I shouted.
“Fight for me!”
Glass eyes. Compelled steps. Surmounted will.
The guards lifted blades like corpses of the wood and approached Taison.
Two died within a second.
What do I do? I asked the god as I stood before my father’s mighty gate. Guards shouted from the battlement, and arrows began to rain down to the Bloodletter, but I was not far from him.
Convince them, child. Deceit spoke in sureness.
They are too far.
DO IT!
I filled my lungs with air, and the air curdled within me. I hollered.
“You wish to raise the gate!”
An arrow nearly took my tongue.
Convince them, Rhoswen. Remember, darling, the strongest deception bears truth.
Say it with me.
Deceit and I married our voices—“You wish to raise the gate, by order of the Torrance crown!”
Andrael fell into a whirling spell around me, thirst for rest near sending me to the ground. My back slumped in the saddle, and I dropped my heavy head against the horse’s neck.
The gate began to rise.
At my back, a soldier’s cry was cut short by Taison’s grunt.
Deceit, I beckoned. One last persuasion.
The deity’s fingers crammed into my mind, his magic sinking deep.
As I charged for the gate, I decreed a final spell over the people.
“Keep these gates—” Andrael spun.
“Keep these gates open!” I yelled. “Should you find those who wish to leave, you will be compelled to allow it.”
I managed to kick the steed’s sides, and it took gallop beneath the gate’s teeth. The god and I forged ahead, into the valleys before the wood. My body swayed with the current of the steed’s gallop, and Deceit’s breaths became steady.
If it were any other day, I wouldn’t have asked, but—Are you all right, Deceit?
Mind yourself, darling, he hushed in the void. I’m a god.
I no longer heard Taison, and I no longer saw his red eyes. I had looked over my shoulder several times, Deceit was there at the cusp, waiting for a monster to rip through the valleys and tear me apart. It never happened. Deceit and I did not stop until we reached the cusp of the wood.
My eyes were chained to the City of the King.
Countless lives had fallen, and I considered them all. Thranen’s son, Gwendolyne and Wylie, Feytras and Volants, Gems, fathers, daughters, mothers, and sons. Be it of the king or gods, I did not care. Death was still death, and those the gods had turned from now dwelled in Oldurem. Torn from time, their souls would forever walk the endless sands.
All was silent.
It was a silence thick enough to choke on.
Alistair’s absence tore me inside. Every breath shuddered down my throat, hitching twice, never meeting my lungs. Something inside me caved, as though the roots of deception were hewed. My throat burned from the silence, from the lies, from everything I withheld from Alistair—the man who looked at me with care, even when I owed him my secrets.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to burrow my grief into the dirt and let it lie. But I only shook violently. My hands curled into fists around the horse’s reins.
When I closed my eyes, Alistair was alive.
The way he looked at me at our first meeting, speculative and scrutinizing. And how he saw me, entirely revealed in his chambers last night. In care and thirst, he caged me in his arms, and I never wanted him to let go. I yearned to stay within his arms—the very arms he lifted against a Bloodletter to save me.
The way he cared for me, protected me, bled for me, and now…
The way he died for me.
The tears came slowly, as if I had forgotten how to weep. But when the tears came, they would not stop. I buried my face in my hands, and, for the first time this night, I was finally allowed to fall apart. And I did.
I fell apart.
Between heaving gasps, hooves trotted in the distance. Wiping my eyes of sorrow, I winced, attempting to make clarity of the odd silhouettes the bloodmoon cast.
“Rhoswen,” he called, and I could not believe it.
That voice. I knew that voice.
“Alistair?” I hesitated to approach him. Alistair had died at Taison’s hand. At least, that is what Taison had claimed.
“Is-is it truly you?”
Alistair came nearer upon a steed.
“You escaped the city.”
There was an edge to his voice, and I called it relief.
“By the gods, Alistair!” I struck the horse’s side, and the horse careered me to him.
“You’re alive. The Bloodletter told me you died.” My words strangled in the tears.
“I’m all right.”
His horse stopped before mine, and I set myself beside him.
I reached out and strung my fingers around his hand.
“I am so sorry, Alistair.” I cried. Cried for a thousand reasons, but mostly for the fact that Alistair was with me. That we were together.
“I am so sorry for everything. For my dishonesty all this time. But I do not want that anymore, Alistair. I want to tell you everything.”
“I know everything, Rhoswen,” he said, calm and level.
“I know what you are.” He pulled his hand away from mine.
“What I am?” I sniveled and wiped tears from my eyes to see him clearly. I urged my steed closer to his, but he pulled back on his reins.
Alistair raised his chin and looked down at me. Cuts scored his face, trailing from his temple to his jaw.
“You are my enemy,” Alistair damned me.
There was danger on his tongue, I could sense it, but I could not yet accept it. I only needed to explain myself.
I spoke quickly.
“Wait, no. It-it isn’t that simple. I—”
“You serve the gods. I serve the Shadows.” His voice was slick, oiled with contempt. Loathing.
Deceit was restless, as though the battle still raged on. Rhoswen, you need to leave.
I begged.
“Alistair, I can explain everything.”
He wrapped his hand around a hilt, and he unsheathed his dagger.
“Wait, Alistair…” My words fell from me.
“This is our destiny, Rhoswen. For your lies, for your treachery, you must die.”
I froze for a second time this night. My feet were locked in the stirrups, and my hands would not release the reins. My heart stopped entirely.
“Alistair—” I hushed, and, before I could blink, the blade struck against the red moonlight and charted along my neck.
Deceit screamed my name.
For a second, nothing happened. Everything was still. Peaceful. But blood darkened his dagger. Warmth drained down my neck, pooled upon my collarbone, and fell between my breasts.
I tasted the iron. It clotted my throat and choked me of breath.
NO! Deceit quaked. Rhoswen!
The lands fell dark. Darker than the night.
A menacing curl twisted Alistair’s lips.
This… This could not be happening.
This was not to be my end, but…
My body was slipping from sensation. I fell to the ground. My eyes closed.
The realm fell away.