T he condition of the ruins grew worse the further I fought. By the time I cut through the northern part of the city, I had to slow down just to make
it through the broken stone. I was soaked in human blood and my own. None of my wounds, though, compared to the headache. My skull felt like it was shattering. I knew I was close.
It was quieter here, though the rest of the fighting would reach me soon. A few stairs led down into several inches of water, beneath melancholy arches of white.
I stepped into the water, and an involuntary gasp ripped through me.
For two seconds, I felt as if I was falling, even though my physical body had not moved. I looked up and saw stars glowing bright violet above me. I was so deeply attuned to every sensation for miles. A powerful force called to me. Ahead, a streak of blinding light, growing more intense by the second, reached for the sky.
It was the Lejara, and more importantly, it was them. I knew it. I shared their souls. I would recognize them anywhere, even by spirit alone.
I stepped forward—
I was suddenly yanked backwards. My head smashed something hard.
The world was cold.
I was no longer with them. I was back here, in the ruins of Niraja, my body cracking against marble stone.
I barely managed to turn my head, just in time to see a flash of blond hair and a sword swinging at my face.
I rolled out of the way and grabbed my weapon. By sheer luck, I managed to recover fast enough to block Ishqa’s strike.
Ishqa.
For several seconds, I just needed to take him in. He was so much closer than when I had seen him last, his face mere inches from mine.
All thoughts of Maxantarius and Tisaanah withered away. No. I wanted blood. I wanted justice. I wanted vengeance. “You,” I snarled. “You did this to me.”
I drew my second blade and plunged it into his side.
He staggered back. I was after him just as fast. He recovered quickly, even as blood gushed from the wound in his side. Ishqa was a powerful warrior. He was stronger—but I was faster.
I threw myself at him, strike after strike after strike.
“Do you know what they did to me because of you? Do you know what they took from me?”
I didn’t even realize I was speaking aloud until my throat began to hurt.
Didn’t realize I was crying until the tears blurred my vision.
“Five hundred years. So many days. Nothing but white and white and
pain.”
He barely managed to evade the knife I aimed at his face. Blood smeared the side of his cheek. I’d sliced off one of his ears, or part of it.
Taking an ear wasn’t enough. The people he had given me to had cut off every part of me until there was nothing left. And then they had cut away my soul.
I pushed him against the wall. He was badly wounded—I could feel it in his struggling breaths.
“Do you know everything they took from me?” I snarled. “I do,” he said.
I do? No. I wanted more. I wanted him to beg for my forgiveness as I emptied his entrails.
“Why?” I heaved. “Why?”
I was getting better at reading the expressions, but I could not understand this one.
“I have regretted it every day since, Aefe.”
This answer enraged me. He winced as I drove the tip of my knife a little further into his throat.
“Do you think your regret is equal to my suffering?” “No.”
“Then what good is your regret to me?”
Now, I understood this expression—sadness. “None,” he said. “My regret is worthless.”
This sentence was such an injustice. He was right. His regret was worthless. But he had carried it for five hundred years, and I had sustained my pain for just as long. Now what? What could come of all those years of suffering?
Kill him, a voice whispered in the back of my head. His death will make you feel whole again.
Yes. Maybe blood could fill what apologies could not. I drew back my blades, a snarl on my lips.
Ishqa was ready to meet death—until his gaze flicked over my shoulder, and his eyes widened.
He threw his weight against me, sending both of us falling to the dirt. I clumsily rolled to free myself from beneath his weight. When I looked up, I strangled a gasp of horror.
It was the creature from my nightmares.
It was almost Fey—tall, as if walking on stilts, its body stitched together in ways that did not seem to quite make sense. The open wound in its stomach glowed white. The one I had seen in my visions had stringy red hair. But this thing had a different face, one that looked as if it might have been beautiful before it was cut apart and stitched back together again, framed by long, fair hair. A single gold thread dangled around its neck.
Ishqa crouched on all fours, looking up at it in horror. When he spoke, it was a choked sob. “Iajqa.”
No.
Was that truly her? Could it be?
It seemed impossible to think that this… this thing… could be the dignified general. And yet…when its eyes settled on me, their gold hue, even surrounded by bloodshot veins, was unmistakable.
Iajqa had traveled south. Had traveled closer to the Aran queen’s territory. And she must have been—
It lunged.
The creature nearly tore Ishqa in two. He didn’t even fight back at first, still gaping at this thing that used to be his sister. He was saved by chance— the creature grabbed another one of the Fey soldiers instead, stringing him between razored fingers and ripping him apart. The blue light that poured
from the open wound in its abdomen sputtered in small explosions that left those around it rolling away in agony.
In the next ten seconds, I watched, paralyzed, as it killed a dozen Fey without seeming to even try.
Iajqa was nothing if not loyal. She never would have raised a hand against her own people, let alone so indiscriminately. If this thing had been Iajqa, there was nothing left of her within it now. She had been pulled apart and put back together again as something that would live a short, painful life, designed only to kill.
Ishqa kept screaming her name, over and over again, dodging her frantic blows but never striking.
The creature turned her eyes on me, and her frantic flailing stopped. The light beneath her skin shivered.
I readied my blades—
She was on me before I could move, her hands on my shoulders. One of those gold eyes was a little lower than the other, far from the perfect symmetry of her previous face. Her nose had been cut off. A wound opened from the side of her mouth, extending almost to her ear.
The overwhelming smell of death nearly emptied my stomach. And that revulsion spread, too, to the magical senses beneath this world. It was wrong on every level, physical, spiritual, magical. This creature was made from magic its maker should not have been trying to wield.
It made a noise that almost sounded like words—almost sounded like,
Stop me—and then tried to rip me to pieces.
My blades seemed pitiful against this kind of strength. It barely reacted to wounds that would maim or kill another. When Ishqa finally snapped himself out of his trance and levied a devastating blow with his broadsword, she hardly faltered.
She grabbed me instead, claws squeezing, squeezing. I opened my mouth and blood dribbled out. My hands flailed in panic for my weapons, but they had fallen to the ground in my brief seconds of distraction. I was helpless. Just as I always had been for so many years, fighting and fighting against a force I couldn’t meet.
Time slowed.
I heard Caduan’s voice. You are not nothing.
I became acutely aware of my heartbeat, rapid in panic. My breath, ragged and gurgling.
The line between life and death blurred, like twilight on the horizon line. I could reach out and touch death, it was so close. I have longed for you, it whispered, for an age.
But in this moment of clarity, something else came to me, too. A power was churning and roiling in the world below this one, my thread of connection to that deepest well slowly igniting to a screaming rope of fire.
In that magic, I had strength.
I could let myself die here. I could finally let my lost lover take me away, as I had prayed for it to do for hundreds of years.
Or… I could live.
With blurring vision, I looked up over Iajqa’s sinewy shoulder to the battle beyond. What had been chaotic minutes ago had now devolved into nightmarish slaughter. Ela’Dar’s warriors were overwhelmed. The Aran queen’s creatures were too numerous for them, combined with the sheer number of human soldiers. They needed me.
I thought of Caduan’s reaching hand. He had offered me a choice— offered me power, and with that power came the desire to act on behalf of something more.
I turned away from death. I grasped power.
I looked deep within myself, reached into the magic that now seemed so close to the surface, and I unleashed it. Iajqa let out a shrill shriek, her skull suddenly spilling with light, the gold eyes melting from her face. She dropped me as her ruined body began to dissolve.
I was already running.
