Chapter 50
Fifty
Caiden
I step in front of Taylan, my hand moving to the hilt of my sword. She moves to the side, then rests her palm on my hand.
The look she gives me is both reassurance and warning. “I invited them. Let’s not make them feel threatened.”
“Is this part of your gift?” I fail to mask the hurt in my tone. When she opened up to me about her ability to wake the dead, I thought she was finally trusting me.
“I haven’t explored it much yet, but yes.” She starts walking toward the oncoming unkindness.
I tense, my fingers twitch as I resist reaching for my weapon. There’s probably more than an hundred massive ravens flying toward us, and the body they’re carrying is moving, as if their captive is still alive.
“Taylan,” I say her name like a warning.
She glances over her shoulder at me, then stops. “Are you coming?”
Fuck. This woman is going to be the death of me, just as Roselyn predicted.
Once I catch up to her, she resumes walking. The unkindness approaches the ground in a flurry of flapping wings and sharp cries. Even from ten feet away, it feels like their beady eyes are judging me.
Shivers run down my spine and I ball my hands into fists. Ever since the accident with my dog and her pups, animals have avoided me. Some have even been aggressive for no reason. They know what I did.
I slow my steps, letting Taylan get a little ahead of me. It’s not because I worry about my safety, I know this isn’t how I die, but because I don’t want to fuck this up for her. She summoned these creatures and I could ruin everything.
Gusts of wind kick up from the flapping as the birds reach the ground, dust and dried leaves float around us until they all land, then tuck their large feathered wings against their bodies. Whoever they were carrying is on the ground, prone, unmoving.
They caw and chatter, the sounds wild and unruly. I take another cautious step closer, craning my neck. “Who is that?”
Taylan doesn’t seem to even notice me anymore. She’s staring at the ravens, moving closer little by little. “Are you certain?”
My brow furrows and I remain where I am, watching her. Is she talking to them? These can’t be…are these the goddess of death’s ravens?
The birds explode in a cacophony, shooting into the air, in a frenzy of wings.
Dust flies and I squint against the sudden wind and I tilt my chin skyward.
For a moment, there’s so many of them, they blot out the sun like a storm cloud, then they scatter, the birds traveling in different directions until there’s only a few dark specks against the cold, cloudless blue sky.
When I look back to where they’d been, the body is all that remains. Taylan is still while she stares at what appears to be a female corpse.
“Is she talking to you?” I close the distance between us, and when I reach Taylan, I suck in a breath. “What’s going on? How is she here?”
On the ground, her face pale and rotting, hair in stringy clumps, is Marian, my mother’s old lady in waiting. The only one who stayed behind with Taylan.
My heart races and I start looking around frantically. Where is she? She has to be here somewhere. I expected that I wouldn’t see her until I reached the Shatterlands. This is too soon.
“Marian?” Taylan’s voice is small, quiet.
I continue scanning our surroundings but look back at the dead ladies’ maid just as she sits up. Her eyes are milky white, her jaw not quite in the correct place.
She stands, but her movements are still and unnatural. Taylan told me she could wake the dead, but I wasn’t prepared for what that looked like. Even if I had been preparing for it for years before she even arrived.
“Why are her fingers red?” I ask, then I notice, she’s missing one. Her index finger is just gone. My upper lip curls. Is she already losing body parts?
“It was you?” Taylan asks. “You left the elm’s breath? Did you also poison the others? How?”
The corpse doesn’t speak. At least not to me.
Talan’s jaw tenses and she turns in a slow circle. “Mara! Mara, explain yourself! You sent a corpse after me and my friends?”
“What?” I rush over to her and grab her shoulders. She starts as if she forgot I was there. “Did she tell you that? Did the goddess of death try to kill us?”
“No. Marian, well, Marian’s body won’t talk to me. The one time I need one of the dead to speak and she’s silent.”
“That’s because I ordered her silence,” a sharp, cold female voice comes from behind me. It’s like I’m plunged into a frozen lake, my breath temporarily stolen, but I recover quickly. I knew this was coming.
I step in front of Taylan, then turn to face the newcomer.
She’s the same as I remember, her smooth porcelain skin doesn’t have so much as a single line or blemish. She always was unnatural in her beauty.
I glare at her. “Hello, Mother.”
“Mother?” Taylan grabs my hand, but stays behind me.
“Finally realized you can’t pull Father’s strings anymore?” I step closer to her. “All those relics you pumped him full of were no match for dragon-fire forged blades.”
“My blades?” Taylan brushes her hands over her skirt where I know she has the hidden pockets.
“Don’t,” I warn her. “They won’t work on her.”
“You’re the one Mara sent me after,” Taylan sounds stunned. “You were one running the empire. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“That’s the beauty of a gift from Mara. I don’t die. I can’t die. Even she can’t end me. It seems she’s finally decided to see if another one of her creations is enough to bring me down.” She smirks at Taylan.
The hairs on my arm stand on edge. I knew my mother was in hiding, running the kingdom from across the sea, but until now, I didn’t know why Roselyn told me my wife, a rebel turned empress, would be the one to send my mother to the underworld.
“It’s really too bad you won’t get to try.” Mother raises her arms and the earth begins to rumble.
The color drains from Taylan’s face and her lower lip trembles. Sweat beads on her forehead and her face contorts in pain.
“Stop!” I charge toward my mother, but Marian’s corpse intercepts me, shoving me with a force she shouldn’t have.
Pulling my sword free, I swing at the former lady, lopping off her arm. She doesn’t even flinch. Instead, she comes at me again. This time, I strike true, knocking her head from her body.
She collapses like a ragdoll, the magic keeping her going gone with the decapitated head. It rolls toward me and I push it away with my boot. Turning it so I don’t have to see those eyes.
I hurry toward Taylan. We have to get out of here. She’s not ready to challenge my mother.
“Caiden! Run!” Taylan screams, dropping her hands from her ears.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch movement. Lots of movement. I gather my shadows in my left hand, and tighten my grip on my sword in my right hand as I spin.
My eyes widen. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. The dead are lumbering toward us, some of them dragging themselves over the earth in their desperation to reach us.
They’re everywhere. My mother has awakened them all.
“Taylan, we have to go.” I rush to her, shaking my shadows free. Grabbing her hand, I drag her along with me. She’s grunting and panting, clearly fighting against the voices of the dead.
My mother is laughing. That’s fine. She won’t be laughing next time we meet. I wanted the Iskvalandian army with me when I challenged her, but Taylan’s going to have to be enough.
It would have been better if I had a fucking dragon with me but I’m going to have to deal with Brevan’s betrayal later.
“Where are we going?” Taylan demands.
“To find help,” I tell her. “Can you swim?”
“What?”
“Can you swim?” I repeat.
“Yes, but…”
I’m practically dragging her, but we don’t have much time. We can’t fight the hoard that’s chasing us.
When I hear the roar of the river, I let myself hope just a little. We’re so close.
Taylan stops just before the drop. “You want me to jump?”
I glance over my shoulder, then look back at her. “You think you can take all them?”
She looks and her jaw opens, her eyes widen.
All of the legionnaires were traveled here with are coming for us.
The only reason they haven’t reached us is because the reanimation loses power the more the wielder commands.
It’s how she played puppeteer with my father, using the relics to keep his corpse mostly alive.
How she kept Marian mostly alive as a spy until I figured it out.
“We jump together,” I tell her.
She nods, then grips my hand tighter.
“One, two, three…”