Chapter 23
“Watch out!”
Taliesin is already in motion. He ducks low, then spins, catching the attacker’s gut with his blade. A horrifying spray of black blood fills the air. Droplets land on my cloak. The stench of it clogs my nose, choking me.
He dispatches another—and then another—before seizing my shoulder and steering me around the other side. More rogues flood the chamber, swords raised, their roars thick with bloodlust. We stop short, Taliesin’s fingers digging into me.
Fear pounds like a drum in my chest. Taliesin is a formidable fighter, that much is clear, but the rogues keep coming, crowding into the chamber.
He can’t face this many alone, and my dagger is still lodged in that other man’s skull.
My power is useless here, but even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t kill this many by touch alone.
We’re doomed.
Taliesin steps back, pulling me with him, dragging me toward that empty depression we found. I expect the rogues to follow. We’ll be trapped with our backs literally against the wall, surrounded on all sides by the enemy.
But they don’t come.
Instead, they hurl themselves at the sarcophagus with a furious intensity. They strike it with their swords, they circle it, they scream at it. Like it’s the enemy and not us.
Taliesin pushes me behind him, then leans close, his lips brushing my ear. His breath is hot on my skin, sending a shiver through me.
“Stay close and hold on to my shirt,” he murmurs. “I’ll hack a path out of here.”
Tears of fear and frustration burn my eyes as I nod.
I feel helpless, useless, like the damsel in distress I swore I wasn’t.
Without my magic, I don’t know how to protect myself.
And suddenly I understand how much I’ve relied on its presence, even when I’ve refused to wield it.
I’ve called it as a curse, the thing that makes me the monster everyone fears, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s my strength.
Or it could be, if only it didn’t carve holes into my mind.
I hold tight to Taliesin’s shirt as we inch toward the passageway.
The rogues are utterly consumed by the sarcophagus.
They hack and claw at the stone, sending shards and dust raining onto the floor below.
We skirt the edge of their screaming frenzy, and it gives me a chance to get a better look at them.
Their eyes are wrong. Where the earlier glaze unsettled me, this is something else entirely.
It makes my bones go liquid, like I’m staring into the face of something no one should ever have to see.
They barely register our presence. It’s like something beyond them has taken hold, an unseen force driving them into a mindless rage.
They’re not here for us. Not this time, at least. They came for this tomb and whatever was inside it. For the dead god once housed here…if he’s truly dead at all.
At last, we reach the passageway. Gray light from the outside slants through the exit. We’re so close…only steps away now. I start to release Taliesin’s tunic just as a rogue suddenly appears ahead, squeezing through the slit in the wall and charging toward us.
Taliesin grunts and shifts sideways, pinning me between his body and the wall.
The rogue closes the distance with spittle flying from his open mouth.
Taliesin swings his sword. I expect the rogue to defend, to raise his own weapon to block, but he seems oblivious to the threat.
The blade makes contact with his throat, cleaving his head from his shoulders.
Roars of anger echo through the chamber behind us. My stomach drops. We’ve caught their attention again.
Taliesin takes off down the tunnel, and I clutch his tunic, holding on for dear life. My heartbeat is so loud I can hear nothing else. Our boots skid across the stone when we reach the exit. Taliesin shoves me through first, then slides through just behind me.
The dull evening light is nearly blinding.
I blink once, then twice, before I understand why it looks like the trees are moving.
The clearing is full of rogues. Nearly a hundred of them, all moving toward us, eyes vacant, steps sluggish, like they’re being called forth by something beyond their control.
All my breath seems to stall in my lungs.
“They’re not here for us,” Taliesin murmurs.
Clearly not. But they don’t want us here, either. And if we stand in their way, they’ll happily finish what they started at the cliffs.
I look around us, searching for a solution.
We can’t retreat into the tomb, but the path into the forest is no better.
Too many block the way, and even now, more appear, emerging from the trees like phantoms. Most fix their eyes on the tomb, but a few stare at us instead, their hands twitching around the hilts of their swords.
“We need to get out of sight,” I whisper, too afraid to speak louder.
He nods. “Around the back of the tomb. We can wait them out, then take the path once it’s clear.”
I don’t like it, but I can’t see a better choice. If we trek through the forest off the path, we’re as likely to get lost as we are to stumble into another pack of rogues. And this time, the sarcophagus won’t be near enough to distract them.
Besides, I don’t much mind the idea of sitting for a moment, of catching my breath. My face still stings, and I can feel dried blood crusting on my skin. More must have leaked out after Taliesin wiped my lips.
At the memory of his touch, my chest flares with heat.
Taliesin Wynn is nothing like I expected him to be.
Well, no, that’s wrong. He is, in so many ways.
There’s a hard edge to him, a deadly aura that radiates from his every move.
And he’s every bit as capable of destruction as the Order has always claimed.
But he is far more than that, too. He’s protective, thoughtful…
maybe even kind. If I were to ever draw him, I would not render him in black and white, but in vast shades of gray.
We skirt the edge of the tomb, and the rogues vanish behind us.
Dense trees crowd close. Some bend toward the onyx, growing up against its side, like they’re as drawn to the magic as the rogues are.
Still, the grass beneath is brittle and black, just like out in front.
Life and death seem to be in a constant battle for dominance here.
I don’t know what that means. I’m not sure I want to.
A few paces beneath the canopy, I spot a fallen log and motion for Taliesin to follow.
Once we’ve crunched through the leaves, I settle onto the rotted wood. Taliesin drops his pack and immediately takes my face in his hands. He leans in, examining me closely. His thumb brushes my lip again, and I shiver despite myself.
“You’ve got a bit of blood here, but it looks like the wound is already healing.” He sits back, though his hands linger as his gaze inches lower. “And your wound from the tower is completely gone.”
I lift my hand to my neck, feeling only smooth skin. “It is?”
“You’re like me,” he murmurs.
A burning heat sears through me. I look at him, and he looks at me, and despite the million thoughts rattling around in my mind, I have no idea what to say. We are alike, far more than I want to admit. But as soon as I think it, his hands drop away.
The moment his touch leaves me, my lungs suddenly reach for air, like I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
“I should have suspected as much,” he says, reaching for his pack. “We both have innate power, something the Order can’t control. It only makes sense you’d heal like me, too.” He pauses, studying me. “You look surprised. Weren’t you aware?”
I shake my head. “While we’ve been partners, Osian has never let anyone get close enough to wound me. If I knew before that, I don’t remember.”
“And you weren’t aware of it now?” He rummages through his pack. “You say your magic usually takes a piece of you. A memory, right? Did it when you healed?”
“I actually…don’t know.” I frown, pressing a hand to my chest. “I usually feel this horrible pain when a memory crumbles, but there’s nothing now. I assume I would have started healing only a few moments ago. After we left the tomb.”
“Yes, the iron would have numbed that power when we were inside, like all the rest.”
He pulls a cloth from his pack and leans forward again, gently wiping the last of the blood from my face.
It’s not his skin this time, but even so, my body reacts by tightening all over.
I’m all too aware of how he shifts a little closer, lowering his head so that it’s only a breath from mine.
He is focused so intently on my mouth that my lips part out of their own volition. A flash goes through his eyes.
Then he swallows and pulls back. “There. You’re perfect now.”
A shudder goes through me. I look at anywhere other than him and blurt out the first thought that isn’t blood, touch, or mouth. Or perfect.
“You say our magic is alike, but your memories don’t shatter when you use your ice, do they?”
His face clouds over, and for a moment, I wonder if I struck a raw nerve.
But then he answers. “Using it drains me, but it doesn’t take from me like yours does.” A pause. “At least not anymore. I think it may have once. My childhood is lost to me. Years after it, too. I don’t why, or if something changed, but I don’t forget things now. Even things I wish I could.”
I search his face. “I don’t remember my childhood, either. My father was a drunk who didn’t want me. That’s all I know. Seren took me from him.”
His gaze sharpens. “Took you?”
“Rescued me,” I correct automatically.
“Hmm. And you still believe it was rescue?”
I sigh, then close my eyes. “No, I suppose not.”
For a long while, we just sit here like that, silent but for the creak of the trees and the rustle of animals scampering through the underbrush.
I dig the bread from my pack, still warm despite the hours that have passed.
Every so often, Taliesin scouts the path ahead before dropping back, his eyes hard and distant.
“Only a few left,” he says after the third time he’s checked.
Just in time for the gray light of evening to have faded from the sky, leaving only a ceiling of black as seamless as the onyx tomb.
I shoulder my pack and follow Taliesin to the front clearing.
A handful of rogues drift around the ring of skulls, oblivious to our presence.
The crash of shattering stone and wild, animalistic roars seeps through the slit in the tomb’s wall, half-shut now.
Someone has wedged a sword in the gap to keep it open, but the whole structure vibrates, like it’s only seconds away from sealing and trapping everyone inside.
I hesitate, if only for a moment. No matter who these people are or what they’ve done, that seems like a cruel end. Hunger and thirst will slowly rot them from the inside out, until they’re gasping and too weak to stand.
My touch would be merciful for once.
“We can’t help them,” Taliesin says, reading me again, as he so often does.
I shake my head and follow him down the path, in the direction of the distant rebel command post, and away from the people who would rip us apart the moment we stepped inside that tomb. He’s right. We can’t help them. Still, leaving them feels wrong, like I’m turning my back on something sacred.
Through the trees, Bryn scampers toward us. She greets Taliesin with another swipe at his boots before climbing to his shoulder once again. A stream of chatter spills from her, a language I’m beginning to realize he understands.
His expression darkens as he listens.
Dread pools in my gut. “What is it?”
“Tonight is not a deathless night,” he says. “The souls of the dead are near.”