Chapter Forty-Six – Scarlett #2
‘Don’t go,’ I begged, reaching for him even as he stepped back. ‘Please. I can’t lose you again. I need you.’
A hint of a smile. It held a slightly wry edge. ‘You’ve never needed anyone.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said immediately. ‘I need you. I . . . I love you.’
Answering emotion sparked in his face, in those piercing, mismatched eyes that seemed to stare right into my soul. And as I looked into those eyes, into the light and wonder and compassion within them, I knew he saw a soul worth loving.
‘As I love you,’ Severin said, resting his forehead against mine. A tear dripped down my cheek. He wiped it tenderly away. ‘For eternity, Scarlett. I will love you for eternity. And you will never be alone .’
I opened my eyes to darkness. To Cassius and Fennec staring at me as though I had lost my mind.
‘Have you made your decision?’ Fennec asked, a hint of impatience hardening his voice.
‘I have.’ I stared him down. ‘Some fates,’ I said, echoing the words Severin had once said to me, ‘should not be changed.’
Darkness whipped out from Fennec with impossible speed, spearing towards me like a javelin.
I shoved Cassius to the side and faced it, knowing that this wasn’t something I could avoid.
If it killed me, so be it. At least I would be with Severin.
At least I would have died fighting for something that mattered.
Aquamarine light exploded from the necklace Severin had given me, brighter even than Fennec’s darkness.
It shattered through the priestesses’ power and even the image of Fennec himself, wiping away the darkness in a single brilliant flare.
When I dared move my hands from my eyes, it was to see a grey sky above me, the sun peeking out from one of the clouds.
Behind us, our army of clansmen was decimated. A thousand lives callously and brutally taken.
But the priestesses . . . I stared down at their motionless forms. It seemed ludicrous that six people could have been responsible for this level of destruction. And yet, those six priestesses had almost destroyed any chance we had at winning this war.
Perhaps a thousand lives was worth the cost of taking them down. At least now we had a fair chance.
‘Do you think Roran’s Artisans would have Seen this?’ I asked, helping Cassius to his feet.
A year ago, Cassius would have pushed me away – would have spurned any assistance I offered. Today, he gave me a nod of thanks before turning in a slow circle, taking in the destruction.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said at last. ‘Roran wouldn’t have sent the priestesses if he knew they would be killed. I don’t think even Artisans could See past whatever that was.’
‘I think it was a place.’ I thought of what Velanthe had told me, about how blood sacrifices had brought her closer to the divine world. ‘A kind of in-between, where the priestesses could commune with Fennec. Somewhere the mortal and divine realms come close to touching.’
‘Disconcerting,’ Cassius remarked, ‘but as good an explanation as any.’ He cast me a curious, assessing glance.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked as we made our way through the morbid pile of bodies – searching for survivors. A horse would be useful, but I wasn’t holding out much hope. Fennec seemed to have torn through them first.
‘You could have dived out of the way and left me to bear the brunt of Fennec’s burst of power.’ His tone was carefully unreadable. ‘Instead, you held your position and used precious seconds to push me out of its path. You saved my life.’
‘You saved mine,’ I reminded him, thinking of the way the priestesses had carved into me.
Cassius’s lips curved. ‘Let’s call it even, then, shall we?’
I smiled back with genuine warmth. I had missed this – working with Cassius rather than against him.
But his expression turned serious as his attention returned to the bodies. ‘Mira will be expecting our army to outflank Roran’s forces. This defeat could cost us the war.’
‘Maybe not.’ I knelt beside one of the dead horses. If everything Velanthe had told me was true, blood magic was destructive – corrosive. She had thought it would destroy Mira if she used too much, and there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t do the same to me.
But my mother had used blood magic a great deal, and she was still in seemingly perfect health. I doubted she would have been so determined for me to embrace magic that would only kill me.
The horse answered my call almost immediately. It stirred and clambered to its feet, its eyes wholly black – as black as the blood that dripped from my palm. It tossed its dark mane and lowered itself onto the ground, allowing me to climb on.
‘Take my hand,’ I said to Cassius and hoisted him up.
His warmth settled behind me, but I could hear the dryness in his voice. ‘ That’s your plan – to charge Roran’s army with one horse? As much as I admire your boldness, Scarlett, I was hoping for something slightly less suicidal.’
I didn’t answer, too busy taking in the dead. Thousands of bodies that could turn the tide of this battle.
Mira’s blood magic hadn’t been limited to touch. Perhaps neither was mine – not if I embraced it completely.
As if the horse was an extension of my mind, it trotted slowly between the piles of bodies. I sliced my palm with my dagger and let my blood drip steadily down onto the ground.
And then I waited.
Cassius shifted impatiently behind me. But he must not have seen what I had – the black blood thickening and beginning to move, snaking across the ground towards the bodies.
When I saw the inky veins spiderwebbing across my arms and hands .
. . My smile felt like Fennec’s. Powerful and calculated and more than a little hungry.
Cassius jerked as the pile of bodies shifted. With a groan, the dead clansmen began to rise. One after another they broke out of those piles and straightened, snapping to attention as they looked at me. Their eyes were so dark that they burned.
There was wrath in those eyes. Wrath that needed to be directed.
Their heads swivelled to fix on Ulrik, as if recognising his authority. Then their focus returned to me.
Kill them . It was nothing more than a thought, but I felt it echo around me, deafening in its power. Kill Roran and everyone loyal to him. Make him pay for what his priestesses did to you.
Their bodies lurched as they moved into formation, flanking me and Cassius, whose grip tightened almost painfully around my waist. And as we reached the edge of the forest, Roran’s immense army coming into view, I no longer felt even the slightest flicker of fear.
What was there left to fear? I was the master of death, and death was what I planned to offer my enemies.
‘Let’s go kill our brother,’ I said to Cassius and my army of the dead. And then we were moving.
It seemed only fitting that my rule as empress should be built on Roran’s bones.