Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Time passed differently for the young maiden. Days disappeared, memories were lost, and she began to have strange thoughts, unable to distinguish the voices in her head from her own.
—Fabia’s Fables, “People of the Stars.”
Pain blazed in my chest. Was it physical, or was it from that terrible rip in the connection? Had something happened to that soulbinding thread? A wave of hysteria washed over me, and my heart pounded in panic.
Another icy hot blast slammed into my chest, cracking bone.
A voice in the darkness, a command. Hands gripped my arms, hauling me up. My arm barked in pain as it was wrenched behind me. I was being bound. Wake up.
My consciousness drifted between that state of darkness and the light that accompanied the pain.
A flash of light before icy air filled my lungs as I gasped into the night.
I blinked rapidly, trying to take in my surroundings.
My elbow ached, and I tugged against the rope binding me to a post. Or a tree?
A dark room. Small and fucking cold. I blew out a breath that clouded in the pale blue light seeping in from a tiny window in the ceiling. A groan rumbled behind me, and I jumped, fiery pain ripping through my elbow and ribs.
Something wiggled at my lower back, and I yelped, trying to squirm away from it. I craned my neck, trying to see who was tied behind me, feeling long arms resting beside my own.
“Wake up,” I croaked, my voice hoarse from ingesting the languidus smoke, whatever the hell that was.
Another moan. I wiggled my arms against whoever sat behind me.
“Wake up!” I hissed.
The person stiffened and jerked their arms forward, sending an unbearable sharpness through my elbow. I let out a soft whimper, biting my lip to keep from screaming.
“Fuck. Fuck,” he growled. “Bonscaíh?”
Godsdamnit.
“Where are the others?” I whispered. “Did you pass out?”
“Obviously,” he murmured. “If you can shift your elbows to the sides, I can probably get us out.”
Bracing myself, I sucked in a breath and attempted to move my elbows as pain ripped through my arm. “I can’t,” I breathed. “I think my elbow is dislocated.”
Lord Astraeus let out a low swear.
“And I think my ribs may be cracked,” I added, noting the sharp ache accompanying each breath.
Lord Astraeus’s head turned. “Sounds like you did more than pass out.”
I frowned. “You think they tried to revive me?”
“I’d say they did, seeing as you’re awake and talking to me now.”
I gritted my teeth as an insufferable edge of sarcasm rode his voice.
“Well, what do you plan to do about this?” I snapped. “You got us into this mess. Fucking disaster.”
A deep, throaty chuckle reverberated through his arms that made me want to claw his face off.
“You’re seriously laughing at this? Fuck you,” I hissed.
“Mmm, maybe another time,” he crooned.
Heat rushed to my face despite the frigid room, and I scoffed, the movement sending an ache rippling through my chest.
“Why not? You’ve got a thing for pirates,” he mused. “Though I’d hardly qualify the honorable Captain Ravindra as a pirate.”
Blood leached from my face. Bayne.
Oh gods, had something happened to Bayne?
My heart hammered. That tether, that thread was my link to Bayne.
Why hadn’t he believed me? A weight crushed onto my chest. Khato had to have suspected our link, sending me to the Waters of Ascendiel to show me my own threads, to show me possibilities.
My stomach pitched. I could have tied myself to him before all of this…
“Despite running away from his throne,” Astraeus continued, his voice cutting through my thoughts, “he’s rather righteous, isn’t he? Though I suppose he has dabbled in theft enough to warrant the title of pirate, noble as he may be.”
My blood raged. “Stop talking,” I hissed.
“Or what? Does the pup bite?”
His words curved, and I could hear the grin forming on his lips.
My blood boiled. “Fuck you.”
“Oh, I’d fuck you silly, love. But now is not the time.”
My jaw ached. I blew out a short breath, willing my temper to calm. “You know nothing of what Bayne has been through. Do us both a favor and shut your piece of shit mouth.”
Another throaty chuckle, and my nails sliced into my palms.
“I know more than you realize, Bonscaíh. Bayne is a liar,” he countered, the damning word forcing the recent ache of betrayal back into my heart. Liar.
“He’s a liar and a thief,” he continued. “And a damn good one at it, I’ll give him that. He uses his charm…that charisma, to get what he wants.”
A vice wrapped around my chest, as if the pirate lord were speaking aloud the intrusive thoughts I couldn’t shake from my mind since Ronan revealed Bayne’s dishonesty. His charm… his charisma… But things had changed between us, hadn’t they?
“And he’s stolen much from the Lords of Marisarma. We’ve lost great value thanks to him,” Astraeus said, scattering my thoughts.
“Seems like you care more about your treasure than your people,” I bit out, wishing I could slap the smile right off his godsdamned face.
“I am talking about people,” he murmured, voice going deathly quiet.
“What do you mean?”
“I think that’s enough for now,” he said, forcing his voice back into that casual tone. “We don’t know who is listening. Stealthy fucking creeps.”
I stilled, squinting against the darkness and searching for any sign of an outline or whites of an eye, but we’d missed them so easily in the burial chamber.
Where were the others? How long had we been down here?
Carina couldn’t have held the water much longer if we’d been out for more than an hour.
Did they think we were dead? I swallowed a dry breath, shut my mouth, and waited for our captors to return.
Minutes, maybe hours later, I blinked my eyes open. Soft light peeked in from the corner of the room, indicating the rise of Ganmira and Renova, illuminating the icy chamber in swaths of blue and white.
Astraeus hummed a soft melody, the smoothness of his voice reverberating into the trunk that bound us, sending small vibrations into my back. I twisted, my best attempt at avoiding the movement, irritated at its calming effect.
“Do you think they could be the People of the Stars?” I finally asked, thinking of the fairytales in the book that had shown itself to me at the Living Library.
I’d lived my entire life not knowing there were other beings besides humans.
Elves… Would it be that preposterous that the children of the gods would be real? Demi-gods living in hiding?
Astraeus stilled behind me. “No.”
“How do you know?”
I winced against his shrug, and my elbow barked in pain. “Then who are they? Why did you call her ‘your holiness?’” I whispered after a few heartbeats of silence.
Lord Astraeus was quiet for several moments before he responded. “In Votruvia, there are tales we are told as children about the People of the Dead. Wraiths, with nothing left of their human form but bones, led by their holy mother, defending the souls of the deceased.”
An eerie awareness snaked through my gut. “Defending them from what?” I whispered.
“‘Impostors,’ my mother would say. An enemy never here but never gone. More riddles. A cautionary tale, of course. ‘Affront your elders, the People of the Dead will take you from your beds.’ But there’s always a bit of truth in them, isn’t there?”
Lord Astraeus shifted behind me, as if scanning the room. “I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds of years ago, Votruvians encountered the locals here in the Death Dunes and some made it out alive. History belongs to the survivors.”
“We need to get out of here,” I murmured. “Take this off me.”
The irritating cuff chafed against my wrist. I considered casting to Tiberius… But would it be worth the energy required? And what good would it do? He couldn’t do anything for us while he was in Lotrennia. No, I’d save that for when I had something more practical for him to respond to.
“Can’t. Need my hands for it or I would have already,” he said as he opened his bound hands and waggled his fingers against my lower back.
“Stop that,” I hissed.
“Ticklish?”
Before I could respond, my heart leaped from my chest as a horn blared in the distance and the smooth slide of ice on ice groaned from behind me.
Soft, orange light floated into the small room, outlined by two large shadows that split.
The first knelt in front of Lord Astraeus and the second stalked before me.
The warrior, clad in white and bedecked in hundreds of bones strung together like armor, eyed me from behind the human skull he wore as a mask. He held a spear in one hand and the long, thick humerus of some large beast in the other.
I flinched as he lifted the bone and prodded my elbow with the rounded head. I bit back the scream that tried to escape as pain ripped through the joint. He murmured something in another language to the other, who gruffed in response.
My body stilled as he knelt, removing the binds from my wrists before hauling me to my feet with a dagger poised at my lower back.
I stumbled as he shoved me from behind, glancing back at Lord Astraeus, whose face was haggard.
Blood had frozen on his short, cropped beard, and his dark eyes glanced at me as the man standing before him raised the thick bone into the air.
A sickening grunt ripped from Lord Astraeus’s lips as it crashed into his thigh.
The dagger pressed dangerously against my spine as my captor gave another shove. My stomach churned as the door slid shut behind us. I didn’t care for Lord Astraeus. In fact, I think I hated the man, but I couldn’t help the growing nausea as his pained growls chased us down the hall.
I scanned the walls of ice as we walked, taking mental note of every turn we made until a second door slid open and a vast rotunda stretched before us.
My breath caught as I took in the massive arena, entirely made of ice and as grand as any castle.
Hundreds of rings lined the space that spiraled down into the center of the icy amphitheater.
Glowing blues and whites mixed in a frozen, twirling tapestry.
White and silver etchings of a bloody battle with fearsome warriors and winged monstrosities covered the flat space at the bottom, an elaborate portrait of a battle.
At the center stood the short woman from the tomb, draped in a cloak made of bones and white feathers.
Her arms spread to the side as she gazed at the domed ceiling, where the carvings continued.
The markings on the ceiling mimicked the pattern of stars as they appeared on each Sending, each twin eclipse.
She turned toward us, still wearing the massive skull of the strange beast. She peered through its large nasal cavity and motioned for us to descend.
All too aware of the dagger at my back, I scanned the rest of the rotunda, slowly making my way down the rings. Several guards posted throughout the upper ring, arrows nocked in my direction.
When we reached the bottom of the vast chamber, my bonds were cut. I staggered back a step as the tall form, hidden among his own set of bones, reached for me.
“Your arm,” the small woman before me explained, her voice clear and commanding with that strange accent.
My eyes snapped to the man slowly reaching for my left wrist.
“I can do it,” I said in a shaky voice. I stepped back, reaching for my wrist and biting my tongue to keep from crying as I twisted and snapped it back to my shoulder, sliding the joint back into place. Unbound, I turned to the woman, reaching for any type of connection to my powers.
She stepped forward until she was a mere foot in front of me.
“Bonder… Tynan’s Accepted… Death Digger… Daughter of Darkness…” she mused, scanning me with dark eyes shadowed beneath the mask.
My stomach churned at the names. How could she possibly know what the Stone Witch and Dark King Daimos had called me? She made slow circles around me.
“What names they have given you. But who are you, Lyvia? Who will you be? Death Scholar, no more. Lady… I think not. Daughter…” She threw me a knowing look as she paused her pacing.
My heart sank.
“Chosen by the gods,” she continued. “But were you? A twin eclipse... That was no doing of Ganmira and Renova’s, which means someone is to blame for manipulating it. And how does that tie into Olienna’s prophecy? Fate? Or was it even a prophecy to begin with?”
Manipulate it? What in gods’ names could possibly do that? My brows pinched as she made a large, sweeping motion with her staff in the air above us. Her opposite hand stretched between us, as if counting something invisible.
“Intriguing,” she murmured. “Bound, yet wholly unbound.”
“What is that supposed to mean? How do you know all of this? Who are you?” The questions tumbled from my lips as I adjusted my stance.
Her body relaxed, and she tossed her long staff into the air, catching it gently in the palm of her two hands, extending it for me to see.
I took a tentative step forward, eyeing the staff. Tiny carvings of skeletons were etched onto it, bowing to a man with his arms stretched out before him…
The woman snatched back the staff, clanking it on the ground three times, to which the guards shuffled from the chamber.
“The stars whisper to me about a great many things. I am Xenelpha, Matron of the Rhashtai. We are the Guardians of the Dead. Soldiers of Tynan, at least in this realm.”
I swallowed, and a dead weight pressed on my chest. “And what commands does the god of death give?”
Her lips tilted up in a small smile, the white powder on her skin cracking, revealing a small line of deep, dark copper.
“Protect.”