Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Asteady rocking motion kept Aela secured in the depths of sleep, but her magic raged for her to wake.
The gentle sway of her head gave way to a sudden lurch through her body, as though she was falling from a dizzying height.
She jolted awake into a startling reality of being carried up The Spine like a sack.
She moaned at the soreness that bloomed along her ribs.
“Good, you’re awake,” drawled Gray Hair as he dropped her from where she was slung across his shoulder.
Aela groaned into the gravelly mountain path. The tall, pale man squatted and peered at her with his soulless black eyes. Each blink brought more clarity to her mind.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen, missy. You’re gonna walk nice and pretty-like with me until we get to where we’re going—no more witchy tricks—and maybe, just maybe, if you’re good, we’ll have a little fun together,” he said as he drew a cold finger down her cheek and jaw.
Aela flinched at the contact. His once flawless, alabaster skin was marred by a slash of black crystals embedded into the left side of his face. Aela smiled at her handiwork. Crimson blood trickled from the wound where he had picked at the shards.
Gray Hair noticed her assessing his face. “Normally I don’t mind a bit of rough play, but you haven’t earned that yet.” The sickeningly sweet smile that followed told Aela everything she needed to know about the man and what he planned for her. She would rather die.
“With that ruined face, no wonder you’re propositioning a woman in the dirt,” Aela wheezed.
Her goading found its mark as he shot a fist into her abdomen, right against her already bruised ribs.
She cried out, and Gray Hair tipped his head back.
His eyes rolled into his skull, and his mouth fell open as if he could taste her scream.
After he composed himself, he brought his dark gaze back to Aela and fisted her hair tightly at her scalp, dragging her so her face was mere inches from his.
“You listen to me—”
“My Lord Kaitos!” A newcomer clad in a brown robe bustled down from farther along the mountain path.
Kaitos stood, kicked Aela in the ribs, and muttered, “Don’t bother gettin’ up, darlin’. You’re right where I want you. Flat on your back.”
Aela tasted copper on her tongue. She wouldn’t cry; she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“What is it?” Kaitos snapped at the robed figure, who was almost comically shorter than him.
“There’s a dust storm coming. I was sent by the others to alert you. We won’t make it to the city before it’s upon us, my Lord,” the newcomer said with rushed reverence.
“Hmm,” Kaitos responded with a quick glance down at Aela—who was in no shape to escape—before he walked up the trail a short distance with his follower.
Fated Priests. Zealous numb-brained followers of the Gods.
She silently cursed herself for not having identified the telltale brown robes sooner.
Once Aela was sure they were engrossed in discussing the dust storm that would quickly be upon them, she pressed gently at her ribs.
Sweat trickled into her eye, and she clamped her mouth closed.
Broken. Aela stifled further groans as she prodded the rest of her body and took stock of her injuries.
“Come on, Aela,” she whispered to herself, “you’ve survived this long.”
Before Aela could hatch a plan or suspect Lord Kaitos’ involvement with Prente’s priesthood—still clinging to the ways of the old Gods, he stalked back to her with his follower in tow.
“This imbecile said there’s a village in these mountains where we can take refuge from the storm,” Kaitos drawled.
“Why would I go anywhere with you?” Aela asked.
“In case you haven’t noticed, lass, a storm is ‘bout to descend upon us, so if you value your life at all, you best get up.”
There was something off, something she wasn’t seeing about Kaitos. He was as different from the Prentans as she was.
Where had he come from?
There was no way on or off the planet—and she would know.
She had spent an ungodly amount of time trying to activate the traveling rings on Prente to no avail, and so she had lived in the deserted city that gave the planet its name for two decades and watched them for any sign of energy.
Her vigil had been fruitless. The rings were not functional.
How else could Kaitos have gotten to Prente? She was missing something.
Aela met his stare as she lay injured on the ground. “Leave me to the storm. I’ll only slow you down, and my life isn’t worth the trouble.”
Kaitos looked at her with an expression dripping in derision. “Oh, but lass, you are. You’re the reason I was sent here. You’re the reason for this entire mission. We’re getting off this unrested planet if it’s the last thing I do. So you better be worth the trouble.”
His words settled between them with cold, unflinching promise.
Who is he? What is he?
While he was no friend, he was the first lead she had unearthed that caused the sliver of hope within her to burn a bit brighter.
Aela didn’t stifle her cry as she staggered to her feet. “The village your… friend referred to is nothing more than ash.”
Kaitos frowned, looking between Aela and the short, brown-robed priest, trying to detect a deception.
Aela met his stare as it settled on her and prayed to the Fates that her captor would take any other path.
She let the truth of her trepidation at what lay beyond the pass rise to the surface of her eyes.
“Very nice,” Kaitos grinned. “Are we tame now, missy?”
Aela fought the urge to shudder. Abruptly, Kaitos snapped at them to get moving, so Aela pushed her body to its limit and led her captor up The Spine to the village she worked so hard to forget.
“I may have been sent here to retrieve you, but I ain’t gonna carry this all the way. Come on,” Kaitos said, pushing her satchel into her chest. Aela moved forward and positioned her pack across her shoulders—every motion sending knives of pain into her ribs.
The promised storm was finally cresting the highest peaks of the mountain, rolling in from the west. Local superstition claimed The Spine itself was the remains of the Goddess Leonta’s guardian.
The tale went on to say that when the Goddess’ epoc was slain, the cosmic lion’s body fell to Prente, forming the mountain range.
Aela knew better than not to believe it.
Her eyes cut to the flanking boulders of the pass that reared above.
They do resemble vertebrae.
Many Prentans believed the lion’s spirit haunted the steep slopes, breathing fire and consuming anything that got too close to its den. While the locals didn’t know the truth behind their fable, the other half of the tale wasn’t about Leontes, the mythical lion at all, but of her.
“While we walk, you can tell me where you came from. Elnath wouldn’t say. Color me intrigued,” Kaitos drawled.
Aela’s thoughts were sluggish like her movements as she staggered after him, yet the cunning part of her, the survivor, tucked away that morsel of information Kaitos revealed to examine later. Behind her, she heard the shuffling footsteps of the priest.
“I’m from here.” The lie rolled off her tongue with practiced ease.
Kaitos snorted. “Right, and I’m the Primary of Capricorn.”
Aela’s heartbeat lurched as if her hold slipped on an ascent in the mines.
Kaitos became distracted by his follower, and the synapses of Aela’s mind fired too quickly and yet not fast enough to process what he had just said.
Every sound around her ebbed away into a roaring ocean, and her body stilled.
The white-capped waves from her memories rolled and crashed over one another, drowning out the looming dust storm and brown-robed men.
When, at last, she could breathe properly and wasn’t rooted by visceral shock, Aela hastened her pace to follow after the men.
I must have misheard him.
Aela hadn’t heard of her kind mentioned in the last hundred years.
Not once. Even the local legends skipped over the celestial’s presence, as if the stars’ sin against the Gods was enough to banish them from history.
Kaitos turned his attention back to Aela and noted her wan features.
His black eyes filled with sick amusement.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head, missy. I’m not a Primary. If I was, I wouldn’t look like this, now would I?” A bitterness laced his words, but all she could focus on was that Kaitos was a star.
The wind picked up around the small group as they made their way through the first waves of storm-thickened air.
The priest stumbled up the path behind Aela and Kaitos’ towering form.
In all her years on Prente, she had avoided the priesthood.
She couldn’t fathom devoting her life to something that had abandoned her.
Fanatic fools.
Perhaps they didn’t know the truth, how the stars rebelled against the Gods while they slept, awakening them in an unholy war. Aela surmised that if the Gods leaving the realm had been ancient history for her kind, it was probably past comprehension for mere humans.
Aela shook off her distaste for the priesthood.
She had accepted her fate of being stuck on Prente.
Until now. Kaitos’ presence, however unnerving, was her salvation.
Aela gritted her teeth as she heaved herself over a large slab of rock that broke the path to the pass.
A jagged rise loomed ahead of them, marking the halfway point across The Spine.
“The pass is just over this rise,” Aela called over the whipping winds, holding onto the dust scarf that obscured the lower half of her face.
Her ashy hair flew wildly about her, the braid nearly undone by the ripping storm.
The three of them didn’t have far to go until her mind would be assaulted by things she had worked so hard to forget.
Their climb brought them closer to the violent storm as wind buffeted them on all sides.