57. Zarek
Zarek
CALLING ME HOME
Someone is calling me home.
The voice is distant, faint, and sleep wraps around me like a heavy blanket. I almost want to ignore it, to stay where I am. But the voice comes again, tugging me back to the world. Somewhere, there’s a woman. Calling for me.
I shiver and try to think. It’s so cold.
Did I fall asleep in the meadow again? I push against the darkness clouding my senses, struggling through murky layers of dreams. Wind hisses and whistles around me, making the heavy heads of grass rustle in the darkness.
I must be in the meadow. I can almost see the last light of the setting sun shining across the jagged teeth of the mountains that loom above Dungal and the gap of Vederill Pass.
I love coming here, watching the road, playing soldier and hero in the meadow.
But sometimes I fall asleep, and a woman calls me home.
I shiver again.
That voice isn’t my mother’s. The meadow slips away, and the cold deepens, sinking into my bones.
Dungal is fallen. Gone. Wind hisses around me, but gods, whatever it’s rustling, it isn’t the grass that covered the meadow above the palace. I haven’t walked through that particular meadow in decades. For all I know, Vsenrog burned it with the rest of the palace. Just more ashes. More dust.
But the voice comes again, soft and warm. Calling my name.
Someone is calling me home.
Something deep inside of me cries out in response, clawing at the suffocating blanket of sleep. Images jumble together as I struggle to wake up; I can’t be sure if they’re memories or nightmares.
Broken glass. Silver chains that burn without flame. Screaming men falling into the vast, gaping maw of the earth.
And a woman.
A beautiful woman who was not afraid. A woman who held my gaze with her wide, dark eyes, her palm soft and warm against mine, our fingers laced together. A blood-red ribbon wrapped around our wrists, binding our lives together.
My skin crawls with strange energy. I think of silver chains, of the mad elf trying to hit me. My gut rolls, but this time, I don’t push the magic away.
I grab it. And I throw it back at the sleep smothering me, the darkness pressing against my consciousness. I push against sleep like I pushed against his attacks, again and again, my mind and body aching, burning, screaming with the effort.
My eyes fly open.
I gasp, sucking in breath. The room is dark, and I feel like I’ve just been punched in the gut. Moonlight traces delicate patterns across the distant ceiling. Wind rustles the heavy curtains.
And someone sobs beside me.
I turn toward the sound. My body is slow to respond, my muscles stiff.
“Lilias,” I whisper.
My wife stares at me with tears in her eyes, and my chest pinches. Is something wrong? Is she hurt?
I raise my hand and brush my fingers across the curve of her cheek.
“You’re so beautiful,” I tell her.
My voice sounds ragged, like a blade that’s been left out to rust. She turns to press her lips against the back of my fingers. Someone coughs in the darkness.
“We need to go,” a man’s voice says, from somewhere behind me.
I frown. Is that Petrys? What is he doing here?
Lilias nods, then turns away. I let my hand fall to her shoulder, then brush her hair. I remember that hair spread out across a pillow in a hayloft.
And I don’t even bother to try to stop myself. My hand closes around my wife’s shoulder, and I pull her toward me.
Our lips meet. My body sings with a different kind of magic, something deeper and older and far stronger than the caged energy hissing in the silver chains.
Her mouth opens for me, and our tongues dance together, slowly and sweetly, like we’ve done this a thousand times before.
The heat of her body sinks into me; I start to remember what it feels like to be alive.
Petrys coughs again. Louder this time.
“Great,” he says. “Okay. Now, we need to go.”
Lilias stares at me as she pulls away, her dark eyes burning with a promise, and gods, my cock starts to thicken.
“Can you stand?” Petrys asks.
His face looms over me as Lilias leans back.
“Petrys?” I reply. “What in the hells are you doing here?”
My voice sounds thick and slow, like I’m trying to speak underwater. Petrys rolls his eyes, then grabs my arm.
“Come on,” he says, nodding at Lilias.
Slowly and painfully, the two of them drag me to my feet. The room sways around me like I’m very, very drunk. My legs ache in strange ways when I try to move them. Lilias wraps her arm around my waist. I let my head rest on her shoulder, breathing her in.
“Gods, you smell good,” I say, because, apparently, I don’t have a lot of control over the things that come out of my mouth right now.
“Let’s move,” Petrys whispers.
We shuffle across the room like wounded soldiers fleeing a losing battle. Fear spikes in my chest when Petrys reaches for the door. For a heartbeat, I’m sure he’ll open that door and see Varitan standing on the other side. Smiling.
That strange, magical energy crawls over my skin again, radiating from the silver chain in my pocket, filling my body like air in my lungs or blood in my heart. And the fear recedes like shadows before the approach of dawn.
I won’t let Varitan hurt them. No matter what it takes. I know how to stop that bastard.
The door swings open, and lamplight spills over the floor. Petrys glances down the hallway, then gestures for us to come with him. The buzz of magic slowly sinks back into my body as I realize Varitan isn’t here, waiting for us in the hallway with a cold, hard smile.
No, Petrys is rescuing me.
Gods above, what a crazy thing to do. I stare at him as Lilias and I stumble out of the room.
“This is a terrible idea,” I mumble.
“Yeah, yeah,” Petrys mutters, his eyes on the hallway. “Fuck off.”
He pulls the door closed, cutting off the lonely sound of the wind through the broken window.
“I told the guards I’d give them a break,” Petrys says. “I need to be here when they get back, or they’ll get suspicious. We don’t want suspicious guards. The longer we can go without raising an alarm, the better.”
Lilias nods. I frown. This is a terrible plan. I open my mouth to tell him that, then clamp my lips shut. Petrys looks pale and exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in days.
Damn it. My brother knows this is a terrible plan.
But he’s desperate.
“You can’t make it far,” he says.
“I can—”
“Shut up,” he snaps. “Lilias can’t drag you all the way to the stables. That would attract too much attention.”
I shut up. The man has a point.
“Go back to the servants’ hallway and wait for me,” Petrys says. “And, for the love of all the gods, don’t make any noise.”
Lilias nods. I try to say something, but by the time my mouth remembers how to form words, we’re already shuffling down the hallway and Lilias is frowning at the walls like she’s trying to remember where she left her favorite cloak.
“Stop,” I whisper.
She stops, then turns to me.
“It’s here,” I say. “The door. See the crack in the wainscotting?”
Lilias shakes her head. I reach forward and press on the wall. The hidden entrance to the servants’ passageway springs open. Lilias glances over her shoulder to where Petrys stands in front of the door to my prison.
“I never would have found that,” she whispers.
“Yes, you would,” I say.
Our eyes meet, and my gods, the effort it takes to keep from kissing her almost kills me.
Petrys coughs again. I tear my eyes away from Lilias to glance at my brother. He’s scowling at us and waving his hand like he’s trying to shove us into the servants’ passageway from the other side of the hall.
“Okay, okay,” I mutter.
Lilias pulls me into the narrow passageway. I tug the door shut behind us, wrapping us in darkness.
“Zarek,” she whispers.
I shiver as I turn toward the sound of her voice, the warmth of her body.
And I kiss my wife with everything I have left.