Chapter 28
Wroth
Marrion laughed, her fangs flashing white against the blood and dirt smeared all over her face, said, “Father,” in tones of ringing happiness, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed facedown on the ground.
Bane and I darted for her at the same moment, but with the blood in my veins depleted, I collapsed as hard as she had, arms and legs numbed with expended effort.
My brother bared his teeth at me, displaying needle fangs that grew as I watched, fury flashing in his golden eyes.
“My daughter, Wroth,” he snarled, his deep, guttural voice cracking with rage.
“She—”
“My only daughter.” He carefully scooped her up, and Marrion’s head lolled. “And you thought to bring her Below?”
Her pulse beat strongly in her throat, despite her unconsciousness. From the moment she had drawn out the distilled fiends’ blood, I’d known this moment was coming; no sanguimancer, not even the greatest, could drive their body that hard without repercussion.
But she was alive, and free from the Below, and she would recover. I dragged myself to my feet, weariness in every limb.
“I did,” I said evenly, wiping a stray lock of hair from her brow. “I brought her down, and I would do it again, because we owe our lives to her.”
Bane’s face was distorting, his jaw lengthening and small horns sprouting along his brow.
“She saved them all. I could not have done it alone.” I gestured to the small group of whimpering, crying, half-unconscious humans before the door.
“She’s an adult now, Bane. She made the choice to come, I accepted, and she has proven herself far beyond what you or I ever achieved down there. She did what Olwyn could not.”
He growled at me, hissing through his teeth, clutching her close.
“Sleep well, my favorite niece.” I kissed her forehead, ignoring the fangs close enough to bite through my throat. “I hope you brought reinforcements.”
The feral rattle in Bane’s chest slowly died. “They are coming,” he said, making an effort to enunciate through his distorted mouth.
I nodded shortly, and, knowing Marrion was in good hands, turned to help Nikos and Rasmus do what we could to make the humans more comfortable.
It wasn’t much.
Their wasted limbs trembled, muscles balled into tight knots, lungs heaving beneath the contours of their ribs. I dripped the Nicla’s water into open mouths, praying to any god who would listen that I could fulfill Jesamin’s request, and force them to live by sheer willpower.
It wasn’t until Bram arrived that I began to feel true hope.
He rode a white stallion dripping with blood sigils, and he had brought bloodwitches, called from all over the Rivers. My people spilled into the empty field, setting up a triage camp with shocking speed.
They laid the humans in cots and began transfusing blood and healing wounds, even conscripting Rasmus to start brewing alchemical bases for their potions.
Bane laid Marrion gently in one of the cots, carefully tucking a thin blanket around his unconscious daughter. His face had slowly flattened, regaining its normal proportions of slit nostrils and cartilaginous ridges.
“I don’t know whether to kill you, or thank you for bringing her back,” he rumbled, drawing my eyes from a cot where a wasted woman, her torso covered in surgical scars, cried as a healer massaged the agony from her shaking legs. Bram was hastily painting sigils in his own blood over her flesh.
I hated to stand here, doing nothing, but the bloodwitches had pushed me aside and told me bluntly I had no skills that would help, and would only be in their way.
Instead they had sent a young soldier my way, who had offered his wrist. What blood I had taken from him had not come close to slaking the thirst in my depleted body, but the blood available was necessary to keep the weakened humans alive.
“Neither,” I said, looking up at a flash of red from across the field, and seeing the riders there. “Though if you’re thinking of killing me, I’m sure little sister will manage it before you do.”
Cirri shielded her eyes and looked towards us, her face pale and drawn, her long hair braided over her shoulder. She spurred her horse at the sight of the camp, followed by two more riders: Tiarnan and Lorcan. Though twins, they looked drastically different from one another.
Tiarnan, the elder of the two by only a few minutes, had his father’s black hair and golden eyes, his face as finely carved as Marrion’s. He wore dark leathers, bristling with knives; like his younger sister, he specialized in the art of hostility.
Whereas Tiarnan was broad and muscular, Lorcan was lean and slim, with a fall of dark red hair and green eyes that usually danced with mirth. Now they had gone dark with alarm.
Both boys looked like they had murder on their minds as well.
Unable to help myself, I snorted. “I suppose it would be an interesting chapter in Rivers history, to be the one lord quite literally torn apart by the entire ruling family of the Rift. Perhaps we could begin an amusing blood feud.”
Cirri dismounted, striding towards me with her mouth set and hands fisted, but she veered off the moment she saw Marrion in her cot.
Bane looked up at me as his wife took over the fussing, his brow crinkling. “Do you need the aid of a healer?” he asked, a tentative note in his tone.
“No. Why do you ask?”
Bane studied me, his frown growing deeper. “You are…different.”
The twins dismounted, their unease clear as they looked between me and their father, but they joined Cirri and Lorcan immediately set to wiping Marrion’s face, cutting into his own wrist to draw the sigils. Of the three, his talents lay in the healing arts.
“We were all changed by this journey.” I looked down, unable to bear the thought of Jesamin so far below. “How did you know? If not for you and Bram…I think many of them would’ve died.”
“You can thank Marrion, firstly,” Bane said.
He was beginning to relax, as though daring to finally believe that his daughter was alive and would be well.
He held up a hand, revealing the tiny circle of glass dangling on a chain around his wrist. “She gave her own blood charm to Bram. Two days ago, Bram summoned us in the Red Mirror, and spilled your entire foolish plan.”
Bit by bit, I understood: the glass charm Bram held in trust had begun to flicker, and, fearing the worst, Bram had called upon the Lord of the Rift before Silvain and his knights had even made it back to the surface with the news that we were breaching the Gates.
As Bane flew south, fearing for his child’s life, Silvain arrived with the news of the breached Gates.
Bram had immediately sent out the call for aid to every bloodwitch, assembling the cavalry for a rescue.
Watching the charm incessantly as it darkened and brightened, Bane had tracked Marrion’s movements Below across the Rivers, until it flared with dark fire—likely the exact moment she had consumed the distilled blood.
And from there, he had followed it to where she knelt on the grass, having given all of herself to see it through.
“How was she?” Tiarnan asked, appearing at my shoulder with all the silence of a shadow.
I considered it, looking at Marrion’s still form. “Magnificent.”
Tiarnan smiled for the first time since he’d arrived. “I’m still going to punch her when she wakes up.”
I would’ve wished him good fortune—the sight of Marrion extruding a halo of blood tendrils would be forever burned into my mind, and they didn’t yet know what she had accomplished—but a healer brought me a tankard of bloodpowder tea, mixed with whatever fresh blood they’d had to spare, and the thirst scorching my throat drove me nearly to madness with the scent of iron-hot blood.
I drank deeply, the nourishment replenishing my wasted veins, and tested my legs when I stood. It was enough to get me down those stairs again; if I drank of Jesamin, I would have the strength to bring her back.
I started towards the faerie mound, eyeing that dark door, and then I saw him, slithering through the grass practically on his belly.
Alvar flinched when my shadow fell over him. He went limp, sobbing tearlessly into the soft grass.
“She stayed behind to fix your mistakes,” I said softly, crouching over him. “You will not go anywhere until she comes back.”
“And if she doesn’t come back?” he hissed.
“Then I will no longer feel the need to restrain myself.” I took his upper arms, picking him up, and Alvar collapsed the moment I stood him on his feet. He had nothing left in him after the wild flight to the surface.
“Lay there like a grub, then. But you’ll do it in chains.”
I fetched chains from one of the knights, binding Alvar from neck to ankles, and thrust a stake through them, pinning the chains to the earth. Whether on foot or belly, he would not be going anywhere.
And I had promised her. I had promised her to see it through before I returned.
It was the worst promise I had ever made.
By the time the sun rose, a new city was threatening to form before the faerie mound.
Time had stopped moving entirely.
And Jesamin had not yet emerged.
I paced before the faerie mound, tail thrashing.
By dawn, the healers had been sure that all the humans would live. They were all that remained of Lonmire, those brutalized ten, and the two children in Jesamin’s home. I doubted they would ever return to their village after what they’d lived through.
And Alvar…his weeping had long since fallen silent.
He laid there, staring at nothing. The man who had set this all in motion would likely spend the rest of his days in a cell, though I had suspicions some of the more robust survivors, particularly the woman Dareia, were quietly debating how easily they might stick a knife in him before their caretakers stopped them.
If they did, well…I had no intention of dissuading them from the idea, necessarily. If not for Jesamin, I would’ve handed them a blade and let them take turns.
But I had promised her to see them home safely, to see Alvar brought to justice. To leave her alone to do what she had worked for her whole life.
I trusted her with everything in me.
The morning rolled by, and the door remained empty.
Not a hint of the shimmering miasma; no sign of the golem.
My family knew I waited for another. Bane came by on occasion, and sometimes Tiarnan or Lorcan, holding yet another mug of bloodpowder tea that I drank without tasting.
They rested their hands on my shoulders, and I didn’t feel them.
The words of encouragement they spoke passed through my mind without leaving a trace.
I had worn a path into the grass, my gaze focused on the door, when something touched my sleeve.
Cirri stood before me, her green eyes bright and worried.
“Little sister,” I sighed, reaching out to touch her scarred hand. She had finally peeled herself from Marrion’s side in the darkest hours before dawn; she was quicker than Bane to forgive my transgression, seeing the iron core of strength in her child.
And if she could have that absolute conviction in Marrion’s strength and skill, then I could surely do the same for Jesamin.
Who do you wait for? she asked, looking uncharacteristically nervous.
I exhaled, feeling the weight of the world crushing down onto me once more. “Jesamin fel Arron.” My voice was heavy as stone. “Our Master Artificer. She stayed behind to…to end that place. That hell.”
Simply saying her name was a pain, a knife through the heart.
Cirri reached for me, and I embraced her, holding back the scream of loss that wanted to erupt from me. She stroked my head, releasing me when I stopped shaking.
Does she know you’re waiting? she asked, and when I nodded, a smile crossed her face, as bright as summer.
Then she’ll come, Cirri signed firmly.
I shook my head slowly. “What she was doing…it could destroy all the Below. I believe in her, but…what? Why are you smiling?”
Cirri was still smiling. You believe in her? You’ve changed, Wroth.
I couldn’t muster any protest. “Yes. I trust her with every fiber of my being to do what must be done. I…” The word was foreign on my tongue, but rather than bitterness, it now tasted like a beautiful shared secret. “I love her.”
Good. You deserve to love and be loved. Trust her to come back to you. She searched my eyes, her gaze laying me open. Trust her to do what she’s best at, and be here waiting for her. She’ll need you more than ever.
“Ah, Cirri, I understand you better now.” I looked down, unable to meet the compassion in those eyes any longer.
“But she and I…I cannot be anything to her. Not with the damn Blood Accords in my way. I would give it all up for her in a heartbeat, but if I do, every vampire in the Rivers will know me as the man who left them to the mercy of beasts.”
And now, fresh from the nightmares of the past, I knew I could not give up my place and allow the loyalists to win. I could not allow the slightest risk that one of my people would be condemned to that pit of misery once more.
Cirri snapped her silvery scar-laced fingers against mine. The Wroth I know would not give up, she signed, chin raised. You withstood fifty years of hell. Now that you’ve found what you were waiting for all that time, are you really going to let those loyalist asses stand in your way?
I finally looked across the camp, as though I could see over the leagues to the spires of Owlhorn.
“Esteri lai Auvray is already in my castle, preparing for her wedding. Her father has enormous power here; he could make things…difficult.”
At Esteri’s name, Cirri rolled her eyes skyward then wrinkled her nose; a scathing indictment of the woman’s character.
Then you’ll simply have to find a way around it, won’t you? Twist their arms until they break. Lord Wroth the Soulbreaker is not the one who will shatter.
She patted my arm, and let me tend my vigil.
An hour later, the sun was blinding. The knights had arrived with carts to transport Alvar’s victims. Rasmus presented himself to the knights for surrender immediately, whereupon he was dragged by a bloodwitch back to the portable alchemical tables.
She promptly stuck the glass stirring stick into his hand and pointed vociferously at whatever he’d been working on.
It was impossible to care. He could steal anything he wanted and run off, and I wouldn’t care. Esteri could proclaim herself the high queen of Veladar, and I wouldn’t be able to muster the energy to shrug.
It had been too long. I would go back in, even if it meant breaking her trust and telling her I didn’t have faith in her abilities. I would rather die Below with her than live in a world where she was gone.
I turned and strode toward the door, hollow inside, and something flared in the darkness.
A light, as bright as hope.