Chapter Twenty-Seven The Curse of Honor
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE CURSE OF HONOR
Caelan’s whole body spasmed where he lay sprawled on the floor, clawing at his chest.
The door hit the wall with a smack as Reya threw it open. “Caelan,” she panted, reaching for him. He screamed at her touch.
Footsteps pounded into the space behind her, and Reya shouted to whoever was there, “Help me!”
Thance rushed to grab his arms, but Omira remained frozen on the threshold.
Reya ripped open his tunic and pulled off the bandages.
“Stars above,” Thance breathed. Omira clamped a hand over her mouth.
Every inch of him was covered in the swollen, blackened veins.
They had risen up his neck and over his chin, inching toward his bloodshot eyes and open, screaming mouth.
Reya watched in horror as his Ire leeched of all color and light until it was a dull gray, like a candle burning down to the quick.
“Knock him out!” Reya said. “Knock him out so he doesn’t have to feel it!”
Thance’s hands and voice were steady, but his eyes spoke his fear. “The pain might be all that’s keeping him alive—”
Another heartbreaking scream broke from Caelan’s lips, and a sob erupted from Reya at the sound. “Then what do we do?”
Thance hesitated.
“THANCE, WHAT DO WE DO?”
“Hold him. And pray it is not the end.”
Reya closed her eyes as another scream escaped. He couldn’t die. They’d made it. They were so close now.
She kicked her leg over Caelan’s writhing hips, straddling him, and took one of his palms in hers, clutching their clasped hands to her chest like a tether.
“What is going on?” a voice demanded from the hall. Kalúe.
“What is wrong with him?” Zantae echoed.
“Hold his legs!” Thance shouted to any one of them, and Zantae moved, grabbing Caelan’s ankles.
Reya prayed to each of Caelan’s patron All-Gods.
To Pirax, Tella, and Iena. Then she prayed to Ryksis, calling in whatever love he had for the Etellinian people.
She begged Tika for another card to play.
She invoked the All-Gods one by one. Ciszo.
Ria. Loire. Rysus. Maris. Della. Dymis. Talise.
Hahlo. Beo. Veda. There were more. But only one of them had claimed her.
Reya threw her head back to the stars she knew were still shining above the sea that was motionless and silent beneath them, and spoke at last to the Holy Mother of them all.
He believes you chose me. If that’s true, then prove it. Save him. Save him for me.
Caelan’s next scream was raw and deep, and all the fear and pain in her chest turned to glistening rage. She clutched his hand harder. “You are fire and fury and vengeance, and you will not be defeated by some damned curse.” She willed the command into him: Live.
One moment she was in her body, the next she was looking up at herself through his eyes. Before she could think about what she’d done, Caelan’s pain hit her like lightning. Her whole body went rigid.
Thance inhaled sharply.
Reya saw corpses scorched by flame on battlefields of dead that stretched on for leagues.
She saw a woman who was the spitting image of Caelan with dark hair and golden eyes.
Caelan’s pain mingled with Reya’s until she could no longer tell whose mind they were in.
A Dread Wolf’s teeth tore through her shoulder.
Rain poured down on the streets of Edris, flooding the gutter where she’d been left to survive.
Then she was back on the Etellinian mountainside, knee-deep in snow.
“You did not survive five centuries only to die here, Caelan.” Reya practically shouted the words through the agony. “You will live.”
Not knowing if he heard her, Reya held on, bearing his pain as her own.
People passed by the door to their cabin to speak to the captain, who remained unmoving on the threshold next to Omira.
But Reya had no space to think of them. Her grip trembled on the male she held. So much pain. So much death.
Live.
Caelan stopped thrashing. Her body rebelled at the sudden stillness. When she feared he was gone, it felt like the Deep had cracked open and swallowed her, and she was prepared to unleash the God Power on the constellations themselves. Thance pressed two fingers to the pulse at his neck.
Reya shook their clasped hands. Open your damn eyes.
“I have a pulse,” Thance said. Reya felt Caelan’s breath then, labored but still there.
Outside the porthole window, the faint blue light of daybreak crept in.
“Reya.” Thance’s words were a distant echo in her ears, which were still ringing with Caelan’s screams. Her throat was raw like she’d been screaming, too. Had she?
“She needs air.”
Cords of black hair brushed her neck as Kalúe and Zantae hefted her up. When her legs refused to support her, Zantae lifted Reya into his arms and carried her.
They laid her down on a large, plush bed and pressed a waterskin to her lips. The room was unfamiliar, but Kalúe’s scent was everywhere. Her bedroom, most likely. A faint breeze blew through the open stained glass windows.
Reya didn’t know how long she rested there, only that Kalúe stayed with her.
“How is she?” Thance asked when he, Omira, and Zantae appeared at some point later that day. She must have fallen asleep.
Kalúe’s answer was tight. “She’s barely moved an inch.”
“I’m not surprised,” Thance said. “She connected their minds, shared his pain.”
Zantae crossed his arms. “Is he still alive?”
When the twins nodded, Kalúe stood. “What happened to him?”
Thance, ever the diplomat, explained calmly, “Usually I can feel Caelan’s power, almost like an aura—it’s that strong. But I can’t feel anything from him anymore. His magic… it’s gone.”
“He’s cursed.” Kalúe said. “Caelan is who you need the blood for.”
The silence answered for all of them.
“You lied to me,” Kalúe said.
“We didn’t explicitly lie to you,” Omira said, and Reya swore the Fifth Sea rumbled beneath them.
The look Kalúe gave Omira could have felled a thousand Krakens. “I put my ship and my crew on the line because you promised light and flame and Alethian might. Zantae, give the command to turn the ship around. Set course for Ianess and drop these fools on the island nearest to our position.”
Zantae moved to follow the command without hesitation, but with a flick of Omira’s hand, the door to the captain’s quarters swung shut, and a long, smooth Alethian spear blocked his path. The energy in the room abruptly shifted.
Thance tried for reason over violence. “We still have a plan.”
Kalúe’s voice trembled with fury. “We are Kraken bait drifting in the world’s most dangerous known ocean. Your Guardian can barely move. Caelan has one foot out of this world. This is over. I should have done this hours ago.”
“No,” Reya rasped. Her throat tasted like blood.
Every head snapped in her direction while she forced herself into an upright position. Thance moved to help her, but Reya held up a hand and stood before Kalúe on trembling legs.
“Atyx could have taken Caelan, but he didn’t,” Reya said. Her voice was drier than sand. “If the All-Gods had not wanted us to go on, he would be dead. They are with us. With me.”
“Or maybe they’re mocking us,” Kalúe gestured wildly. “Maybe they decided it would be better sport to watch us all drown in the Deep. They’re All-Gods. We are the puppets of their world theater.”
Reya willed strength to her words, her limbs.
She had come too far, risked too much. She and Caelan both.
Her magic was a living, breathing thing beneath her skin.
For two days, it had been simmering just below the surface without release.
Now it demanded the fight it had been promised, and Reya’s anger only made it worse.
“You don’t want to pick a fight with me, captain.
Because I will win. And then we will all lose. ”
Kalúe shook her head. “You are mad.”
“Maybe I am.” Something in the air shifted. From the look in their eyes, Reya knew the monster that lived in the depths of her soul had climbed out of her skin. Kalúe saw the change too, clear as the sky overhead.
Maybe she had teeth.
Reya filled the room with light. It leaked from her every pore until she was glowing like a star. The others leapt back, shielding their eyes from the onslaught. She nearly vibrated, laying out the truth of herself like a promise.
For years she’d been at war with her own body, trying to control her power by beating it and herself into submission.
It was how Lennox controlled everyone around him, including her.
Fear and manipulation. And yet here she was at the edge of the world fighting for her freedom against impossible odds.
Because that sort of control could only go so far. It was fragile.
Anger, too, was fragile—a branch rather than a root.
She needed to go deeper. To find what had filled her with such rage in the first place.
There she would find control, in the parts of her that had once been innocent, before the world had soiled them with the ashes of her childhood. Compassion. Grief. Longing. Hope.
Her magic was part of her, and it could not be conquered. Only accepted.
She retracted the light, allowing it to fade into her fingertips, trusting it, trusting herself, until the wisps of her wild hair on the breeze were all that moved. The ship still floated, and she’d harmed no one—destroyed nothing. Reya said between breaths, “You don’t need Caelan. I am enough.”
For the first time in her life, she was starting to believe it.
A decision formed in Kalúe’s brown eyes.
The captain, to her eternal credit, looked unafraid as she moved inches from Reya’s face and said through her teeth, “Threaten me all you like, Guardian. My men won’t sail under a mutiny.
You’d have to kill us all, and I’m willing to bet you’re not that kind of monster.
Even if you were, you cannot sail this ship with a crew of three. ”
Reya swallowed, hating that she was right. They couldn’t do this without her. So if Kalúe wanted to turn back, they would turn back.