Page 25

His sticky, pained breaths brought victorious glee, then frantic helplessness. Her own body was split in two—one side cold, the other flushed from his heat.

The gods had put them in each other’s paths.

She hated him.

He might hold value. He might be her only chance.

He deserved whatever happened.

He was the only one on this island that she seemed to be able to communicate with.

He was dying.

And she couldn’t save him.

Revni tried to stifle the hot tears, but everything suddenly cracked open—how alone she was, how she’d lost everything. Everything. What was she going to do? She was so horribly, terribly alone, and the only thing holding her up was this sack of meat she was hauling around the woods. She had felt so grown up on the crossing—ready to leap into danger and mystery and adventure. And now all she wanted was her father, his crinkled blue eyes, the scrape of his beard on her neck when he wrapped her in a hug so tight she couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t a grown up—she was a child, and she was drained and frightened and she wanted her mother, and she would never feel that steady heartbeat pressed against her ear again.

And even amongst it all, her muscles screamed in tired protest. Her stomach twisted in hunger, and the gall of it—that her stomach could keep going on as if nothing had changed, as if this day, this week, the rest of her life, was not entirely, irrevocably different—made her furious and desolate.

How dare her body feel anything but loss?

Eavus stumbled, almost taking her down with him. Revni pulled at him, too harshly, not harshly enough. Sunlight shifted in the trees—but there was no sun, only a day morose and full of anguish.

“He needs medicine.” She choked out the words in Brigfaen. Maybe she was the one who was delirious. “And we both need food,” she begged. “Water. Shelter. Anything…”

Revni grit her teeth, huffing labored, slowing breaths. She wanted to scream, to bite into the flesh of her own arm and rip it open, blood and muscle between her teeth—some way to find a place to put her pain and dig it deeper.

Clear your mind, and lift your brain away. There was you, her father had taught her, a body that could ache and bleed and die, and there was not you, the warrior that did only as the gods willed, a tool to be wielded. You could will it into existence—bjerluk, the numb calm before a battle—and she was still in a battle, just a long one that never seemed to end.

Revni shifted Eavus’ weight. What would her mother think? Crying instead of moving.

She was Revni Hyldyttr, descended from gods and warriors.

No one was coming to save her either.

Revni shoved down the fog of fear and pushed forward. That sunlight darting through the trees wasn’t possible. The clouds were too thick. She followed it anyway. That smell was another trick in her nose—it could be field-lengths away, a whole daymark. A memory. But the gods had implored her to listen, and so she did. Her heart thumped so loudly she wasn’t sure she’d hear anything beyond it. Eavus groaned, mumbled, dragged. Another shift of light⁠—

Don’t look up.

Revni trusted the gods and resisted the urge. Her new boots were filthy—caked black. She couldn’t help the flick of her eyes.

The only time we’ve ever encountered Dinaeii is when they come to us.

The gold that had looked like sunlight was blond hair. Revni held her breath. Bodies covered in mud, so thoroughly blending into the trunks and shadows that even when she was sure she’d seen someone, she doubted it until they moved. No one was sneaking up, silent as foxes—they’d been right out in the open.

For how long?

Revni pushed past every instinct to throw Eavus down, to draw the sword and knife, to run, and kept on instead with her same plodding steps. She could feel bodies closing behind her, and she willed herself not to look. The smell of smoke and rot grew stronger.

Bare, muddy feet appeared in front of her. Revni halted.

Enemy of my enemy. Was she reminding herself, or was that another prayer?

If these were Caerdeneii, she’d already be dead.

The feet stepped aside and Revni crossed through—that’s what it felt like, like a threshold, an archway, a moving from one part of herself to another. She felt the last heavy press of Eavus’ body before she lifted his arm from her shoulder, the bliss of relief as his hulking mass peeled away. He dropped to the dirt, and Revni took her first deep breath of the day and dared to look up.

“I’ve brought you an Aleterian.”