Chapter Twelve Blood Watchers
CHAPTER TWELVE
BLOOD WATCHERS
She just had to get naked.
Caelan threw his cloak over them both as her violet Ire snaked down her body.
Her stomach twisted violently, the magic flowing through her like a torrent.
The ringing swept in, so loud her jaw ached.
He closed his hand tighter over her mouth as she tried desperately to leash the force pounding through her blood.
“Breathe,” he whispered, breath hot in her ear.
I can’t, she mouthed against his hand and elbowed him in the gut.
In a sharper whisper, he added, “Through your nose.”
Reya did, forcing air into and out of her lungs, eyes never leaving the sword as the men began talking.
“At this rate, the king’s soldiers will run her down before we do,” one man said.
“This is a waste of time,” said another. “I’m telling you she headed east. They all do.”
Reya and Caelan had made camp on the east side of the pond to put the water between them and anyone coming by way of the road. The Blood Watchers had the same idea, fanning out to allow their horses to drink along the shore.
White soap suds still floated along the surface of the water. It looked enough like foam that they might not notice. Aside from that, there were few signs that they’d been there; Caelan must have had time to hide their bags. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for her armor and sword.
Reya’s heartbeat was racing a league a minute.
Caelan must have heard it pounding against her ribs because his thumb began to swipe lazily along her stomach, a touch that was probably meant to be soothing but only brought into sharp focus how very wet her white tunic was and how completely bare she was beneath it and how searing Caelan’s fingers were.
She couldn’t see Ash or Ciz.
“They’re fine,” Caelan murmured against her earlobe, making her shiver. “Ciz knows to keep quiet. But if they decide to camp here, you’ll have to go without your clothes.”
Reya tried to bite his fingers, but his hand was clasped too tightly around her mouth.
She slid her tongue over them instead; his grip only tightened, and Reya was certain she heard a faint groan.
The Blood Watchers were on the edge of their camp now, murmuring about scoping the area.
When one of the Blood Watchers decided to take a piss on the tree trunk hiding them, Caelan’s touch turned almost bruising as he clutched her to him.
Suddenly, he let go of her mouth and pulled something down over her head. She blinked up at him in the dark. Was that—? His palm flew back to her mouth just in time to catch her gasp.
A ring hung from the plain silver chain around her neck; the white gem atop the simple silver band glistened like the evening sky, practically humming with power.
The Earth Star.
“Don’t get any ideas, thief,” he said, the words barely audible to even her ears.
Too late. Why would he give it to her? To keep her alive? Sure, he needed her to save his life, but not at the cost of his own.
“Holy shit,” one of the Blood Watchers said. “Look at this.”
Reya felt Caelan go taut against her, and she looked up in time to watch the Blood Watcher pick up her sword.
Caelan sighed. “Damn.”
Her hand wrapped around one of the knives at Caelan’s hip.
All her life, she’d tried to force her body to accept human limitations, to ignore what the All-Gods had given her.
Now she welcomed a strength that was undeniably inhuman as she threw her head back into Caelan’s nose and wrenched herself from his grip, taking the knife with her as she went.
She dove out of the brush and rose up behind the watcher, pressing Caelan’s blade to his throat.
“Drop the sword,” she seethed into his ear. The man cursed, head tipping back toward her shoulder.
“What do we have here?” another watcher sang, triumph in every note.
More of them appeared, stepping around the trees along the shore, weapons drawn. The men spoke over one another, voices bouncing across the clearing.
“Is she the one?”
“She’s the wrong color.”
“Move any closer, and he dies,” Reya snarled, shifting her stance to put the woods at her back.
“Kill her!” shouted the man she held.
“Come quietly and you may live through the night,” one watcher warned. “You’re outnumbered.”
Behind the men, the moss began to sizzle against the rocks.
Reya angled her head to say into the watcher’s ear, “Am I?”
She felt Caelan as he stepped out of the shadows behind her and unhooked his cloak.
It fell to the ground with a whoosh, revealing the whole of his armor.
He drew Hellfire in one smooth motion, and the watchers’ faces went moon-white at the sight of the all-black blade.
She might have looked ridiculous standing there in nothing but a wet tunic that barely fell to her thighs.
But Caelan—every inch of him promised a slow death.
“What about the male?” asked one of the watchers.
“He’ll fetch a pretty price at the prison.”
“Your friend here doesn’t have to die,” Reya said. “None of you do. Just turn around and go back the way you came. And we’ll go on ours. Simple. Easy. Everyone lives.”
The man she held shouted, “Damn it, kill her now!”
Reya pressed the blade deeper, drawing a line of red across the dried blue stripe down his neck. “If I go, so do you.”
The man gave a venomous laugh. “They’re never going to let you go. If you kill me, they’ll put an arrow in your heart. And if you drop that knife, I will drive this sword through your gut, and your friend over there will take my head. So go ahead, Sage. I’m already dead.”
Reya’s jaw ached as she clenched her teeth, but her hand was steady on the knife. It always was. “I know.” She dragged the blade across his throat.
Blood showered her hand as he dropped like a stone. Reya picked up her father’s sword, the blade glinting violet in the reflection of her Ire, and dropped the stolen knife, splaying her hand as Caelan pressed her ruby dagger into her waiting palm.
She tasted the bloodshed that was coming like the charge in the air before a storm.
Thunderous amber eyes met her own, and she waited for the command to run, to stand behind.
But it never came. Neither did the judgement she expected to see in his expression.
He was unflinching, focused. In this, they understood each other.
“If I kill more than you, you’re cooking.”
For a moment, she just stared at him. Then, despite everything, she smiled.
The ground beneath them trembled. The next breath she took was hot, like inhaling after a midday summer rain. Pond water dripped from her hair and hissed against the grass. Then Caelan Halcyon began to steam.
She had only seen him wield fire twice before. Like her own magic, it had been a terrifying thing to behold. He’d burned men alive before her eyes. It should have frightened her now. Yet it didn’t.
Caelan didn’t waste time with threats. That wasn’t his style. He simply moved. Reya chose her first target, and her bare feet dug into the mud as she leapt, wet hair clinging to her flushed cheeks, a battle cry on her lips. Her opponent hefted his battle-axe, and sparks flew as steel collided.
Before she knew it, she was back-to-back with Caelan, wincing when their bodies touched. Even beneath layers of leather and steel, he was a living flame.
Cobalt fire rose from the earth like the All-God of fire himself had summoned it from the heart of the world—and one of the men went up in a torrent, his screams echoing through the trees.
Reya and Caelan each took on two at a time, ducking and dodging in a fury of fire and steel and blood. She lost herself to the haze of red. Gave herself to the song of death.
She was the Crimson Dagger, and she would take them all down.
Reya struck across one man’s knees where there was no armor. As he fell, she drove her sword up into the gut of the second. Blood sprayed across her cheeks.
She felt the familiar wrongness in the rise of hair on her arms, and the skin on her neck where her necklace had once rested began to burn. Reya looked up and found herself facing a pox-scarred man painted in blue holding a crossbow nocked with a Kellstone bolt.
“Put it down, bloodling.”
Like hell.
The bowstring snapped and she dove out of the way, knocking another Blood Watcher to the ground with her. A strangled scream escaped her as the skin of her hip broke open on the edge of his sword. She scrambled to her feet, the fresh wound spilling blood down her bare leg.
If you don’t want to bleed, don’t fight, Lennox taunted in her memory.
“Magic-born filth,” the watcher spat.
It had surprised her once how much the human body bled when it died.
Now it was regrettably familiar. As Connery steel cut through skin and bone like cream and the watcher went down in a red shower, Reya felt her father as though he were standing beside her.
Saw his smile in the blade, the love in his eyes.
I know you can fight, his ghost whispered. That’s why I’m giving it to you.
A cottage flashed before her. A drop of blood on her cheek. Snow-damp clothes biting into the skin of her back.
There was a sharp ringing in her ears, and a cramp twisted her core like someone was turning a dagger in her gut. That was the only warning she had before light erupted from her, lashing out with abandon.
One of the watchers made to grab her, and Reya watched, horrified, as his hand disintegrated into black dust against the halo of her skin.
He screamed obscenities, clutching the bloody, gaping limb.
Sheer panic had her tripping backward as the magic swept over her like a tidal wave, hot and blinding.
One minute Ash wasn’t there, and the next he was, rearing onto his hind legs and trampling her would-be attacker beneath his hooves. She spooled the magic back into herself with a desperate cry, watching as it began to fade.
He couldn’t be here. She opened her mouth to tell him to run when she saw the watcher with the crossbow point his Kellstone bolt at Ash.