Chapter 1 #3
“That was five seconds.”
“I talk faster than that.”
“Ten.”
Lexsea’s mouth turned up in a sulk. “Fine. You know what he wants. You know what he did. But you don’t know why.”
“The ‘god of the netherworld’ just murdered any leverage he might have had.” It wasn’t true though. Elloven’s murder had done exactly what Ryquin had intended.
“You don’t know why you should say yes.”
“Then spit it out, harpy.”
“God of the netherworld?” Taven whispered. It sounded even more ridiculous on his lips. “Is that why...”
“He needed you to bring me here. Used Elloven to do it, and it worked because you’re not smart enough to see when you’re being played,” Jesstin said, still fixed on Lexsea.
“You don’t know everything, Jesstin. You can still save her,” Lexsea said.
She glided across the room. Her confidence flickered when Jesstin unlatched his scabbard.
“She’s not beyond your help. As a show of faith, I’ve just seen to an important step toward this goal.
Without it, your task would be impossible, so I am here to help, you see. I already have.”
She had more than nerve. She had a death wish, and Jesstin was itching to grant it. He spat at her feet. “Time’s up.”
Lexsea’s hands lifted in surrender, but then she changed.
Her eyes quivered erratically, then rolled back into her head and back down with a crash.
Her voice took on a deep, masculine edge.
So Ryquin had shown up. “There are many things you don’t know about your necromancy, Jesstin, and who can say if you’re strong enough?
The dead assault you because they believe what I believe.
You can do more than speak indiscriminately with the deceased. You can raise them.”
Jesstin drew his sword and wedged the tip at Lexsea’s neck. “Do you prefer to die in your sister’s body or your own?”
“You put false hope in his head at your own peril!” Sesto exclaimed, shrill and unsettled. Jesstin had never seen him so on edge. “Do you not see before you a man with nothing to lose?”
“You cannot raise all the dead,” Lexsea-as-Ryquin said. Her eyes traveled briefly downward. “No one is that powerful. Optimistically, you may have the energy for one. Your dilemma will be choosing which, for you’ve only just met Aelloven, but there are others you miss, no? Your mother?”
Curls of dried blood flaked away when Jesstin dragged a hand down his face.
The Rivenholders would say anything, do anything, to get what they wanted.
Dangling the prospect of saving Elloven and his mother was bold, but Jesstin didn’t care anymore if he was being used or lied to.
The last meaningful thing he’d said to Elloven was the worst thing he’d ever said to anyone, and he would put himself in whatever danger he had to in order to make it right.
Jesstin sheathed his sword for the time being. “Daire, I want to hear what you think, if you believe this shit. If you need me to kick this bitch out so you can speak freely, say so.”
Daire looked lost. More than that, scared. “Ryquin believes it. He told me years ago about the kingdom necromancer he was searching for, but he’d never seen... He doesn’t know for certain, and there isn’t a way to know without trying.”
“You’re not suggesting Jesstin take a holiday to the afterlife?” Sesto was astonished.
“I would never suggest that,” Daire said meekly. “I was only answering honestly.”
“What is it Ryquin needs me to do when I get there?” Jesstin asked. “Spread despotic propaganda, raise a cult in his name?”
“Jess! You are not entertaining this,” Sesto hissed. “I’ll go to Asterin—”
“I’ll already be gone,” Jesstin said. “You’re out of time, Lexsea. Ryquin. Say what you came to say.”
“I need you to open a door I can enter. It’s a very specific, particular door. There may be others, but there’s only one I need,” Ryquin’s voice said through his sister’s mouth. “That’s all. Then you can leave, and our bargain is ended. I will take it from there.”
“That’s all?” Jesstin shook his head. Open a door to the netherworld? A place no living person should be able to visit? “How?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “No one does.”
“Then why does he—why do you—think I can do it?”
“Sesto’s right,” Taven said slowly. “This is madness. If the dead could return, we’d know. There’d be some evidence.”
Sesto threw up his hands. “Thank you!”
“My brother has studied this for many years,” Lexsea said with a dazed shake, like she’d been knocked sideways.
“He’s confident in his forecast. I’m confident in him.
Time moves differently in the Infinitum, and every minute we spend arguing about this up here could be days Aelloven suffers down there.
In the interest of expediency, Jesstin, can we talk in private? ”
“Absolutely not,” Sesto stated. His laugh reverberated in the resulting silence.
Even a few hours ago, Jesstin would have shared Sesto’s alarm, but he doubted even the strongest predator could penetrate the state he was in now. “Outside.”
“Jess.”
“She knows I am a sword taller than her and have a short temper.” Jesstin walked out.
He didn’t let her speak first, didn’t even wait for the door to latch.
“Lose the wounded-bird look. You even think of using your conniving, magical little cunt on me, whatever happens next will be in self-defense.”
“Yes, I did do those things,” Lexsea replied.
Her hands were looped behind her back. She nodded behind her as if to say, See?
I’m being a good girl. “But you’re stubborn and pigheaded, and Ryquin could see you’d take some time coming around—time we didn’t have.
He needed me to plant the seeds in your mind, which I could only do when you were distracted by my. .. other behavior.”
“I know he killed Elloven. You deny it, they’ll be your last words.”
Lexsea cast a patient smile beyond him. “You came out here to listen to what I have to say, so why not listen?”
Jesstin flicked the safety open.
“Wait, wait! Goodness.” Lexsea thrust her hands out and fell back.
She finally had the good sense to look scared.
“Death isn’t the end for Aelloven. I... I was late coming here because I snuck into the flesh tenders’ and stole her body before they could prepare her for the lumens and the flames. Because once they do that—”
“You touched... You stole my El...” Jesstin’s throat pinched. He crushed his fist between his teeth with a bracing grunt. He had to let the bitch finish. He had to know what she knew.
“Because even you can’t walk into Infinita Mori and just wish her back to life! Her soul is in your hands, but what would she come back to if her body has been turned to ash? If part of her soul is trapped in a lumen hanging in someone’s window?”
“Where? Where is it?”
“I’ll take you there.” She lifted her hands. “I’ll take you there.”
“No. You’ll take Sesto, and he’ll take possession of her body.”
“It needs to be preserved just so—”
“Then you’ll tell him exactly, explicitly, how.”
“The magic it requires—”
He pulled his sword free and swung the heavy steel up to her chin, which started quivering. “Can you or can you not do what I’ve asked? Yes or no?”
Lexsea’s nods were tight and terrified. “Yes, I can,” she whispered.
“My magic...” She flinched and tried to back away, but he nudged her chin higher with the flat end.
“Will be needed, and it’s yours. I will do anything you need.
We can take her wherever... Please, Jesstin, can you lower this thing? I can’t think.”
Jesstin returned his steel to his side, but he didn’t sheath it, not this time. He couldn’t know if she was bullshitting him, but her death belonged to him, whether it was now or later. “Finish.”
“We can take her to this place... a cabin. It’s where Ryquin believes the door he needs will open in our world.
It belongs to me, actually. I inherited it from Tansea’s mother, and it’s mine to use however I please.
The door Ryquin needs is the door you need to bring her home.
We’d keep her body there, safe and protected, and when you return with her, she would look.
.. she’d look just as you remembered her before the swords came. ”
“Ryquin isn’t going anywhere near her or the cabin.”
“I can promise he never will, not until the very last moment, when it’s time for him to pass through.”
“How will I make you keep that promise if I’m down there?”
“The others...” She nodded at the croft. “Sesto and Taven.”
“You could just kill them when I’m gone.”
“If I killed them, you’d never open the door. If anyone killed them, you’d never open the door. You hold all the power here, all of it. Sesto and Taven will be the most protected individuals in this realm.”
“As long as I’m on your side,” Jesstin said.
“We’d never know if you weren’t.”
“I’m not.” He scoffed. “But if you do what you just said, you and your brother will live until I get back.”
Her grin was almost too quick to catch. “You won’t be thinking of us when she’s back in your arms.”
He breathed deep to block out the image her words had elicited.
“You blinked when I said that.” Lexsea’s boldness had returned. “Because you’re celibate.”
Jesstin thrust his sword at the path. “Go.”
“Not because you don’t have desires,” Lexsea said. She kept her hands obediently at her sides. “You’re punishing yourself.”
“I said go.”
“You’re punishing yourself for the behavior of other men. Men who are not you, are nothing like you.”
“If you’re in my head right now—”
“I don’t need to be in your head. You’re so transparent.
You’re so... so much more open than you want to think.
You would rather inflict suffering upon yourself than address what they’ve done to you.
Ryquin knew more about you than you knew about yourself.
Your two fathers. Your dead mother. Your siblings, the good ones and the bad.
Your tavern.” She cast a wary glance at the door. “Gennady.”