Page 329 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

His knees hit the pavement with a hard crack, her blood already cold where it seeped through his pants. With shaking arms, Ryker Ashborne of the Watch House Ashbornes scooped her limp body into his arms.

“Shovel,” he barked at one of the other boys. The kid was fifteen, maybe younger. He nodded, and Ryker saw the blood splattered over his neck as they passed each other.

He looked up to the still-clear sky. Cursed that it remained empty.

No healers came.

No earth goddess either.

Just Ryker and the girl as he made his way through the now-silent city until tree cover dappled the sunlight.

With his bare hands, Ryker dug a grave for the unnamed girl. He knew better. They were supposed to burn the bodies. But he couldn’t bear the idea anymore. Couldn’t stand the thought that she wouldn’t have something to mark where her mortal remains lay beneath soil and grass.

And so, he dug.

Until his skin cracked and bled, Ryker scraped dirt from the earth. He found an angular black stone that sped the process, and he grieved and raged with every brutal strike into the soil.

“Do you still think they’re coming back?” a soft voice asked from the clearing. He didn’t turn, but he felt her. Kara. They’d gone to school together, and if he was honest, he’d always cared a little too much for the petite blonde who cared only for herself.

Ryker plunged the stone into the earth and heaved. Again and again.

With a thud and a crunch, Kara drove the metal of a shovel into the ground beside him.

And they dug. All the while, Ryker thought back to that day in the square. The day the demon king had his father whipped within an inch of his life. The day the lightning god spared them—and Ryker made him a vow.

In silence, they carved a forbidden grave deep into the earth and laid the girl inside it.

Only when Kara knelt beside him, snatching his wrist to examine his bleeding palms, did he finally say with unwavering certainty, “He’s coming back.”

He had to be.

SIXTY-FIVE

MERCY

AUGUST

Five months, one week, five days, two hours, fifteen minutes since they took my wife…

“Nathara, I am begging you to check again,” I gritted out, leaning on the cane I gripped so tightly I feared it would break.

“And I assure you,” she said without bothering to lift her pitying gaze to my face, “We’ve checked everything, Mr. Porter.”

“Please,” I begged through my teeth, forcing another step through the agony radiating from my mid-spine into my hips and leg. I’d lost a month in the hallowed golden halls of Hazelharbor, and as lovely as Magnolia’s sisters were, I didn’t have time for this shit.

“Mr. Porter,” she clipped, slamming the book in front of her closed with a huff. The warm brown skin around her mouth tightened as her lips thinned. “If pain remains, its source is not physical, and I am neither mentalist nor fate weaver.”

“Feels pretty physical.”

“Oh, I know you feel it physically. I doubt the source will be found there.”

“Are you telling me this is in my head?”

“Everything a Soul experiences is mental or spiritual, Commander. How do you suppose schizophrenics die at the hands of their hallucinations?”

“I am not hallucinating having my spine snapped.”

“No. You’re not. But you’re not confronting your new reality either.”