Chapter One – Mira #2
‘I will kill you for this,’ I vowed. ‘And when I do, I will show you as much mercy as you’ve shown today.’
‘I look forward to it.’
Both Roran and I were watching Darius now. We all knew what this was, but still Darius staggered towards me. Still, he refused to give up.
His love for me was bright in his one open eye. I hoped he saw the answering love in my own.
Roran brushed his thumb across my tear-stained cheek. I wanted to slap it away, but my body was frozen in place.
And then he let his hand fall.
‘Close,’ he announced, advancing on Darius – one slow, deliberate step after another. ‘But not close enough.’
Roran’s sword pierced Darius’s heart. A clean, fatal strike. Darius was dead before he even hit the ground. Less than five metres away from me.
I fell to my knees. When I had watched my mother die, I had been consumed by grief and hatred. But staring at the vacant face of the man I had come to love like a father, there was only numbness.
‘Now this feels familiar, Kasmira,’ Roran said, and I was dimly aware of him standing over me. ‘I wonder how many more loved ones you’ll lose before this war is done. Fortunately, I have a long list to choose from.’
His shadow retreated, the dying light of the sun reaching me once more. But its warmth didn’t touch me.
‘Enough of this theatre,’ I heard Roran shout to his Warriors. ‘Release the Kalurian.’
Another trick. It had to be.
I raised my head to watch Nari crossing the stretch of plain that had claimed Darius’s life. Flakes of snow drifted down from above, but even tired and freezing, Nari kept her head held high, her kohl-darkened eyes locked on Roran.
As she passed him, Roran grasped her arm. She and I both tensed, readying ourselves for the killing blow.
But he merely said, ‘Return to your brother with my blessing and this offer: if V?lund surrenders Kasmira Volaris to me, I will consider the Wilds an independent territory, under his jurisdiction.’ I stared at Nari in shock, willing her to look at me.
But she only had eyes for Roran as he continued, ‘You have seen how little regard your so-called queen has for Kalurian lives. I will give you until the end of the month to decide.’
He strode back to his encampment without sparing me another glance. There was no need to torment me further. He had already landed the crippling blow.
Nari crouched beside Darius’s body and pressed two fingers to his brow – a Kalurian gesture of respect to honour a fallen warrior. When she rose, I couldn’t remain silent any longer.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I told her, my voice breaking. ‘I never meant to–’
At last Nari looked at me. She was so tall I had to crane my neck to meet her dark eyes, a striking contrast with her long, braided blonde hair. As the wind picked up, the bones woven into her braids jangled – an eerie, discordant sound.
‘My life is irrelevant, Kasmira.’ Though she spoke without inflection, I heard the accusation in her words. ‘But what I represent isn’t.’
‘You can’t take Roran’s offer to your brother.
’ It was the wrong thing to say – I was making all the wrong decisions, one after another, and I sensed Nari’s respect for me draining away.
But I had to convince her. I had to try .
‘You’ve seen what Roran is. He’s a monster, and he won’t keep his word. ’
I felt even more diminished under the weight of Nari’s disappointed stare. ‘It is up to V?lund and the clans to decide whether to accept Roran’s offer. But you will have the chance to plead your case.’
I watched Nari walk back to her warriors, recognisable as berserkers by the bones in their hair and the animal pelts over their chain mail.
They greeted her with far more affection than they had ever shown me, and as I looked on from a distance, I was reminded that there was a very good reason why V?lund had empowered Nari to act in his stead.
She might not have been descended from the Sorceress like I was, but she looked like a warrior queen – and I had no doubt that V?lund was her male equivalent.
A physical embodiment of the fearsome, ancient Kalurian kings who had ruled long before the Sorceress’s line.
Given the distrust between the clans and the Temple, given their wariness of blood magic and a half-Ravalian ruler . . . I was terrified t hat was exactly what V?lund would become. A Kalurian king, with no need for the Temple – or for me.
I slumped back onto the hard ground, studying Darius’s ravaged face, the frost clinging to his closed eyelids. I tried to imagine him at peace, finally reunited with my mother, but it didn’t work. Despite all the Temple services I had attended, I still didn’t believe in an afterlife.
‘Come on, Mira.’ Jadis and her brother, Elian, helped me stand.
Tear-tracks gleamed on Jadis’s dark skin, and I remembered Darius telling me that he had taken Jadis and Elian in as children, after their parents were killed by Ravalian Warriors.
‘We’re no longer protected by the banner of truce – we can’t stay here. ’
‘The berserkers will defend us–’
‘No,’ Jadis said, an edge to her voice. ‘They won’t.’
I glanced at the spot where the Kalurian warriors should have been, but saw only an empty ridge. They had left for the Wilds without waiting for my order. Without giving any thought to their queen.
Icy fear speared my heart.
‘It will be dark soon,’ Jadis pressed, but I didn’t need her to convince me of the danger we were in.
Between the three of us, we carried Darius’s body across the mountain pass, one painstaking step after another.
The bloodcurdling howls of Roran’s hounds followed us all the way back to the Temple.