Chapter Eleven The Sword from Hell #2
“You don’t know me or what I’ve done, or who I’ve done it for. How many people have you killed in your long, immortal life?”
“More than you. And I remember each and every one of their faces.”
She ground her teeth, inching toward him. “As do I. So explain to me how your bloody hands are somehow cleaner than mine.”
Lightning cracked the sky. In the moment of brightness, she realized how close they’d gotten.
He seemed to realize it, too. When his eyes fell to her mouth, he looked impossibly more angry, as if the shape of her lips had committed some crime.
She drew back and lifted her tea. Reya drank deeply, trying to think of anything beyond how wet her clothes were and how badly her stomach hurt and how tantalizing his scent was.
She took another bite of her golden horn, shifting uncomfortably in the silence.
Caelan rested his elbows on his knees, as if the weight of his age had suddenly become heavy.
“Your magic will find release one way or another. If you don’t let it out, it will build until it consumes you.
Until you can no longer tell an enemy from a friend.
Until Reyanwyn is gone and the shell of you has become something else entirely. Something I might have to try to kill.”
She let his words sink in. Then said softly, “Reyanwyn of the Mountain died a long time ago.” Reya had taken her place, and she was prepared to face down the All-God of death. He’d been coming for her for years.
A beat later, Caelan busied himself with packing up the food, and she knew the conversation was over. The scent of blood permeated the air, but not hers.
He’d bitten his tongue to keep from responding.
“Come on, thief, hit me.”
Reya lunged, taking the bait like a fool.
One minute he was in front of her, the next he was behind her, smacking her rear with the flat side of his sword. She whirled, striking brashly, but he was already paces away.
She’d never seen anyone move that fast. Then again, she’d never fought a Sage before.
Backside stinging, she waited for him this time, watching to see where he put his weight, which knee he favored.
The howling that had kept them on edge and moving for five rigorous days had ceased.
Reya wanted to believe it had just been an everyday pack of wolves, but instinct cautioned her not to get comfortable in the silence or linger in one camp longer than they had to.
All she wanted to do was sleep. But she couldn’t, and not just because the vibration of her magic under the cage of her skin made it all but impossible.
Caelan had laid a far too tempting opportunity at her feet.
“I have a proposition for you, thief,” Caelan said. “If you can disarm me one time—just once before blood is drawn—I won’t say another word about your magic. But if you can’t, you’ll let me take you somewhere.”
She scoffed. “In case you weren’t aware, fire fingers, we’re in a bit of a time crunch.”
He shook his head. “It’s on the way. And I think this will help you.”
“Help me how?”
“That’s the deal. Unless you don’t think you can.”
Reya kept the taunt front of mind as their swords clashed overhead, and her whole body shook with the force of the blow.
Lennox would have cursed her for a fool if she hadn’t taken the opportunity to cross blades with an Alethian when she only had her dignity to lose.
Reya reveled in being able to find the weaknesses in her opponents.
But so far, she had found none in Caelan she could exploit.
He was an entirely different class of deadly from what she had been trained to target.
Worse, he was stronger, faster, and had centuries of combat training.
But she didn’t have to beat him, just disarm him. Otherwise, he’d be taking her All-Gods knew where.
“Bend your knees,” he said.
With each swing, she lost precious ground to his strength. Caelan swept her legs, and she hit the ground hard, spitting dirt and cursing her stupid pride.
If she was being honest with herself, she was glad for the distraction. The fennel tea was helping her keep her food down, but it was doing nothing to combat the pressure building inside her. She needed to move. To work herself into exhaustion.
“Is that all you’ve got, oh ancient one?” she said, all bluster and forced smirks, buying herself time to get back on her feet and wipe the sweat from her eyes. “You still haven’t told me the name of your sword. You know, it’s customary to be introduced to something before it slaps you in the ass.”
Caelan saw right through her, but answered anyway. He said the name in the First Language, a long and beautiful, almost melodic word that she had no chance of pronouncing and sounded nothing near appropriate.
“What does that mean?” she panted.
“Loosely translated—Hellfire.”
Reya barked a laugh so hard she coughed. If there ever was a weapon forged in the fires of the Void’s farthest hell, this was it. Like his axe, the sword he seemed to favor had been stained onyx, and its hilt wrapped in black leather.
“It’s not Etellinian steel, but it holds up just fine,” he said. “The blacksmith didn’t even charge me to blacken the steel. She said it was a gift.”
Reya cocked a brow. “How did you manage that?”
Caelan smirked. When the implication dawned on her, Reya rolled her eyes so far back in her head she was surprised they didn’t stay there. A sudden and colorful vision of Caelan’s head buried between another female’s legs made running him through with her father’s sword sound far more appealing.
“Are you done stalling?” he asked. He showed no sign of fatigue, save for a sheen of sweat on his forehead and chest, despite the fact that the male had the internal temperature of a bonfire and it was hot as hell out here.
Reya was beginning to think nothing could break his focus.
But she was not afraid to play dirty. So she peeled the white tunic that was plastered to her back with sweat over her head and tossed it aside, leaving only a tight band of fabric across her breasts.
Her braid swung across her bare waist. “You’re welcome to do the same, fire fingers.
I hate to give myself an unfair advantage. ”
Those eyes blazed gold. “Is that supposed to rouse me?”
“It’s hot,” she said with a delicate shrug, and he muttered something about cocky thieves.
“If you’re ready to fight like a Sage, I’m happy to join you,” he said imperiously.
He drove Hellfire into the earth, and then those forearms were flexing over his shoulders to tug his black tunic up and over his head, revealing emerald marks etched into warm skin, and Reya thought she might have miscalculated the effectiveness of her strategy.
She would have taken a moment to gawk were it not for the wound on his abdomen the color of Ash’s hide.
“Caelan, is that…”
The lesion was chapped and gray, and the dark veins around it splintered out like a spider web. It had to be some kind of poison. Or maybe a bite. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
One of the blood vessels twitched across Caelan’s torso, and she jerked back. The infection seemed almost… alive. Her mouth went dry. “Is this what’s killing you?”
A nod.
“Does it… hurt?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Yes.”
She suspected it took quite a bit for someone like Caelan to admit to that. The vein reaching toward his navel twisted beneath the skin, and Reya felt like she was going to be sick. “I don’t understand. Why can’t you heal this?”
He looked at her for a long time before answering. “It’s a curse mark.”
Reya’s eyes moved from the wound to his face, and understanding dawned. His desperation. His hatred for the Fae. Why only Kraken blood would suffice.
The day I learned I would die, I was standing in the Fae Queen’s throne room.
“The Fae did this to you. That’s why you need Kraken blood. They cursed you.” She took his silence as confirmation. “But why?”
Every muscle in his body tightened, and the amber of his eyes roared to life. Caelan’s words were clipped and deadly. “That’s a story for another day.”
Reya opened her mouth to demand answers. She rather thought she was entitled to them, but he cut her off. “It’s not something I particularly enjoy revisiting, thief.”
A terrible part of her noted and reveled in how critical the wound looked. How their sparring seemed to cost him something. Caelan Halcyon was indeed preparing to meet his All-Gods. All she had to do was wait.
Instead, she asked, “What do they mean? The marks.”
He glared at her. “You’re not human, so stop using their terminology.”
“What? Marks?”
“Humans use that term like an insult, as if Sages have a stain we should bury beneath layers of clothes.” He gestured in the general direction of his body. “We cover ourselves because it is necessary to our survival. Alethians are not so prudish.”
Brows high, Reya tried to picture a society where people who looked like Caelan were walking around half-naked in the gleaming sun. And she wanted to go there immediately, please.
“The word is iracundire in the First Language, but we call it Ire,” he continued. She tested both words aloud, and the sound seemed to pacify him. “Some Sages believe it’s our purpose written in the language of creation. Others think it’s a birthmark, like what humans have.”
More scars marred the skin above vital organs on his chest, evidence of what sort of opponents he’d been fighting over the years. There was a particularly wicked slice over his heart, a wound that would have been fatal to any mortal.
“Right,” she said, wetting her lips. “But why is your Ire a different color from mine?”
His mouth twitched up at the corners. “I would be happy to explain, thief—when you agree to train.”