55. Chapter 49
Chapter 49
Raven
M y palms welcomed my daggers joyfully home as Caelan handed them to me. Farad's expectant face watched from the crowd. This was it—my chance to complete my mission. To honor my father’s memory, make Farad proud, and save the world from the threat of the coming Ravager. I’d trained for this since I was a child, sparred daily with these daggers for cycles, but when Caelan and his bird fought me, it was like they were something more than human. Monstrous and glorious. Magic and muscle. I was no match for him in this arena.
And the terrible truth? Should I admit it?
A part of me was glad that Caelan was better than me. It created an excuse. I didn't want to kill him. I could admit that, though only to myself. I could never tell Farad, whose judging face watched each night of our travels as Caelan tugged me into his tent.
But my personal feelings didn’t matter. I couldn't let this opportunity go by; I might never get another. If Caelan lived and he brought forth the Ravager, the many deaths that followed would be on my hands.
Every swing and parry brought the fight closer to its end. Caelan launched a fresh attack as his bird initiated another dive. Baris had yielded. This was it. I could feel it in the pounding of my heart. I would either lose to Caelan or fell him in front of all these people. It was a worthy cause to die for. Even as he pressed me and I blocked him, I didn’t know which it would be.
My gaze slid onto the Corpse of the Father and caught. I tried to pull my eyes away—I needed to focus on Caelan’s attack. But the statue held my attention with an almost physical force. It would not let me go.
Something was wrong.
The statue wasn’t blackened dragonstone any longer. It glowed green, the color brightening quickly as I watched, fixated. It didn’t pulse with individual Threads. No, the entire corpse was lit up like a sun. The light poured out of it to color the air I breathed. I gasped and swallowed it. I forced my gaze back to Caelan, gasping out the words to tell him.
But he was gone. They all were. Every soldier around me. Every lord and lady. I stood alone beside the foot of the corpse as the whole world brightened to a blinding shade of green.
No, not alone. There was one figure left, outlined in dim Threads. Lady Nahome Obsan. Another Touched.
“What’s happening?” I shouted to her. I wasn’t sure why I shouted. The birds had fallen silent and even the grasses no longer swished in the wind. Yet a buzzing inside my head was building, the sound scratching at the insides of my mind, pressing outwards as if to make me explode.
“I don’t know,” she called back.
Release me. It was the deep voice I’d heard all my life but it was a hiss, too. So loud now that I pressed my hands to my ears and cried out.
The hook in my chest that I associated with the deep voice and the crack below the Palace of the Suns tugged, the sensation sharp as a blade in my ribs. I was flying, flying through the tunnels beneath Vaharilar. Soaring down into the pool of blinding green light beneath the Palace of the Suns that I'd never seen behind, even as a child.
The terror that seized me had no equal. It had not felt like this when Asherah was born, though I’d been hijacked then, too. Forced to witness. This was worse. This felt like a thousand flesh-eating insects from the sands of Los scrabbling over my skin. It felt like a dagger twisting in my chest, like a boulder swelling inside my head. It was ripping me apart.
And then it stopped.
I was in a pit. Tanead stood before me. I cried out but he could not hear me. I was not really here.
Yes, almost, almost, said the voice.
Tanead bent at the waist and thrust his horns into the shell of a dragon egg, trying to tear it open. The egg was so much bigger than Asherah’s. The egg was no dragon egg at all.
No, I whispered. I rushed forward to stop Tanead but my hand passed right through him.
The voice laughed in my mind. I knew somehow that this laugh was only for me. Tanead and Nahome could not hear it.
Tanead's body moved strangely, his motions jerky and unnatural. His horns dug in deep. The egg tore open and the fragments of the shell fell away like spent ashes as the hatchling stepped out. The hatchling was stone black.
“You are not Kutha,” Tanead said. "You are Anu, the Father."
But he was more than that.
The newborn evil twisted and fixed his eyes on me. They were a sickly, unnatural, brightly glowing green, and I knew what he really was. What he was called in the ancient prophecy that foretold the world's end. I knew what horror I witnessed.
I am destined for another, he said.
Then the hook in my chest tore out, releasing me. An agony of pain washed through me, hot and sharp, eased by my relief as my consciousness snapped back to the Blood Lakes like a bowstring released.
I opened my eyes and Caelan was there, holding me. His eyes were wide with panic and his fingers clutched at my arms in desperation.
“Raven, Raven,” he was saying. His voice cracked. He was utterly unmasked. Undone by his worry for me. Uncaring about the soldiers who still made a circle around us or the crowd who watched. What his face revealed was undeniable.
Love.
He loved me.
The knowledge washed through me and I was as sure of it as I’d ever been of anything. The feeling of being loved was new. It felt like tragedy.
Because it could not change the other thing I was now sure of: The Ravager was here, and there was only one way to save the world from burning.
I must kill Caelan Havard right now.