Chapter 43
Worth Dying For
Chyr
W
e tie the horses higher up the slope where the muffling mist will reduce any sound they make. Wet leather creaks as we work, and rain threads down my collar. The smell of peat, soaked horse, and sodden wool curls thick around us.
Farther down the hill, Flora is waiting behind a tree. I slip in beside her.
“How are you holding up?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says, “though Daire might question my definition of that word, too. I’m not sure sanity has ever been my strength.”
“Bravery is nothing more than a moment of insane connection to something or someone beyond yourself. I’m here, I’m alive because you’re you. Because you have those moments of insanity.”
A smile tugs at her lips. It’s small and tremulous, then it spreads until every part of her face glows with it. It makes me want to pull her into my arms and tell her all the things it costs me not to say.
I think of that moment in the Sacred Wood when I first saw her, and the moment not long after that when I told her not to help me. Even Then I must have known that I would always choose her over myself.
She has never said she loves me, though that’s a hope I hold in my heart. But I know she loves her people and Alba Scoria more. I hope she loves them enough to accept what I have to do.
Daire sets up a perimeter around the trap.
Using four stones, he anchors the silence, attention-deflection, and magic-dampening spells from his runes to ensure the soldiers and militiamen who trudge behind the Greys on foot will have no warning before they reach us.
Flora draws water from the loch to soak the track, creating deep mud to bog the horses down.
The illusion Cathal has built is perfect, if a little spiteful.
He’s created near-exact likenesses of both me and Fergal, making it look as though we are whipping our exhausted horses, desperately trying to outrun the Greys.
The Greys spur their own mounts to chase the illusion, and he lures them in, keeping the image of us close enough that the Greys can see the fear Cathal’s magic is projecting onto our faces as our illusionary selves look back at them across our shoulders.
At the same time, Cathal keeps the Greys far enough away that they can’t wonder why they don’t sense any fear.
I let the Greys run well into the trap we’ve set, far enough that Flora’s mud slows their horses to a walk. Five Greys. No, only four. One of them reins in, checking his speed. Peering around suspiciously.
Sweat mingles with the rain beneath my collar as I hold the signal longer than I should. I wave away a couple of early midges that hover in front of my eyes.
Then the last of the Greys finally rides forward. And I nod to Flora, signalling for her to start.
Flora squeezes the earth around the horses’ legs, then leaches the water out of the mud to trap them in place.
Flora’s Shadehounds watch me with their silver-ringed eyes, as intent as the other Riders. Then I lower two fingers. Go.
We all surge forward, swords out and magic crackling along our skin.
I reach the last Grey who entered. He sends a lance of fire at me, targeted enough to make me throw myself aside. I smother the flame with a burst of air that sends him flying off his horse.
The ground shakes as I stride around the horse to reach him. I barely have time to register that he’s an earth-wielder before the mare wrenches free of the ground and rears. Her iron shoe clips me on the shoulder as she rises.
My arm goes numb to my fingertips, and my sword falls from my grasp. The Grey lunges for it. I seize the hilt with a rope of air, and I hurl it, aiming for the Grey’s black heart. The blow misses—he’s still breathing. But the force was enough to fling him to the ground and pin him to the earth.
Niall gets to the Grey before I can finish him off, and I look around and find that the whole attack is done.
Flora releases the horses and slaps their haunches to send them down the loch in the direction from which we came. I grab one of the Greys’ swords while the others start to clean up and toss the bodies in the woods, and I carry the sword back to Flora.
“What’s this?” she asks when I offer it to her. “I have my own sword, but I’m better at trapping Greys than stabbing them.”
“It’s not for them.” My mouth is dry now that I actually need to say the words. “Fierceness, you’re going to have to choose a Rider.”
She stares at me, eyes narrowed, and tips her head.
I’m not sure whether her eyes turned silver when she received the Maiden’s crescent moon on her shoulder or if that happened when she received the crowns.
I’m not sure what the colour means, but as beautiful as it is, I miss the calm grey that was Flora’s, the cool contrast to the fire and moonlight streaks of her hair.
She’s still too stunning for words, and those eyes look back at me, waiting for me to say something she doesn’t already know. To say something that makes sense.
“I know how much you hate the idea of being trapped, having your choices taken from you,” I say.
“There’s so much I haven’t been able to tell you.
Things my oaths prevent me from thinking, much less saying.
You’ve guessed most of what’s important.
Add that to the knowledge that the Compact may protect mortals from being compelled, but that didn’t apply before the document was signed. ”
The oathbands make me pay for those last few sentences, but I don’t give a damn at this point. Clenching my teeth against the pain, I force myself to keep going.
“All the oaths I still believe in were made when I was too na?ve to understand that the Tirnaeve to which such oaths belonged no longer exists. But those oaths led me to this moment. To you. You are the honour and kindness Siorai used to live by. Protecting you is how I can keep the oaths I thought I was taking—the oaths worth dying for.”
“No.” She whispers the word.
“Yes. The gods chose you for a reason, Fierceness. The land chose you. And so do I. You have every reason not to trust me, but I hope you do. I hope you can. Because I need you to make me a promise—just like you once made me promise blindly.”
Flora’s face has gone pale, and she lifts both hands to cup my face. Her skin is cold, and she is trembling. “If it has anything to do with the Grey’s sword, I can’t. I won’t.”
I close my eyes and take a breath, then I kiss the palm of one hand and then the other. Threading our fingers together, I hold on to my one spot of warmth and hope.
“I need you to take me as your consort, Flora. It’s the only way.
Choose me. Make the sacrifice with me. Win the Crown of Moonlight, and then you live.
But you have to kill me after that. Unless I’m dead, you’ll never be safe from the oaths Chulainn forced me to take.
The oaths won’t let me go, and your throne would never be safe.
You’ll also be tied to a man you didn’t freely choose, and I can’t bear the thought of that. ”
“You know I would choose you anyway, don’t you?
” She looks down at the way our fingers are tangled together.
“I knew that after the night we…I chose you then, and I will choose you every night for the rest of time. I love you, Chyr. Even if your oaths kept secrets from me, your actions never did. I could have seen the truth myself if my own prejudice hadn’t blinded me.
You are not your father. Or your uncle. You’re a good man, a true man.
Not a perfect one, but you don’t have to be. Not for me.”
Her words fill my heart with stubborn hope—and my mind with despair.
“You still don’t understand. I don’t know what the oaths my uncle forced on me might make me do.
You would never be safe. And if I’m banished to the Gloaming as an oathbreaker and Vheara gets her hands on me, then no one in either world would be safe.
We can’t take such risks. I’m begging you, Fierceness. Promise me.”
Flora’s moonlight eyes are so bright that I don’t see the tears welling up in them until they spill down her cheeks. She makes a small, choked sound as she shakes her head.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I won’t make a promise that buries you.”
Her hands slip away from mine, and my heart cracks into pieces.
I’d hoped the other Riders would be on the other side of the Veil in Tirnaeve before Flora and I made the sacrifice at the Altar of the Moon. But if she won’t promise to kill me, then I’ll find another way to die. Oaths be damned. I’ll rupture my broken world to make sure she lives.