AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Me, of course,” Cian said, and then his face darkened as he met Nevahn’s eyes. “We’d just won a major battle, clearing the path for Tam Lin’s army to march straight through the mountains. Nothing but a few farming villages stood between us and Srall. But the path Lim wanted to take would have taken months, and the siege even longer. Years, probably. Every year while her people squatted outside those gates, ten of my people had to go to their deaths. I didn’t want to wait that long, so I tried to convince her to send emissaries to Iridyn to demand his surrender. When she refused, Ren was furious on my behalf, but he was joking when he said we should go ourselves. I didn’t think it was funny. I said that was exactly what we were going to do.”
He sighed and stretched out his legs, staring at his bare feet. “So, we went. I demanded an audience with him. I stood there in that throne room, just feet from him, and told the most powerful person in the world that if he didn’t end the blood tithe then and there, I would put his head on a spike. I thought the worst thing he could do was kill me. I was wrong. He…”
Cian’s throat worked, and he had to try three times to start again. “His response was one word:harac. It means burn, and it was the last word Ren ever heard.”
Nevahn scooted across the space between us to put his arms around Cian, who embraced him back. For a few moments, there was silence as they held each other.
Then Cian pushed away his tears and cleared his throat. “After, he decreed the tithe would be doubled. For their part, Jaida would have to pay ten lives every year as well. I pleaded for him to leave Jaida in peace, told him they had nothing to do with any of it. He made me kneel in Ren’s ashes and swear it. Only then did he decide that Ezulari could bear the full price if I so chose. He left it up to me, and gods help me, I did it.”
“I went back to Jaida to deliver the news,” I whispered. “I never intended to stay there for fifty years. It just became easier. Jaida was peaceful, with no reminders of Ren scattered all around me. None but the face I saw in the mirror every day.”
“We loved him,” Cian said. “I thought the three of us would be together forever. That we’d marry and raise children…”
I fought the urge to wince at that. Obviously, Cian and Ren weren’t going to carry any children. That duty would have fallen to me whether I wanted it or not as the only one biologically capable. Even if no one ever asked me, the pressure was there, living alongside the dread, guilt, and desire slurry it conjured.
But of course, Nevahn missed nothing. He lifted his head from Cian’s chest. “You don’t want to have children?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back, looking away. “My position on that is…complicated. I don’t wish to be treated as an heir making factory simply because I have the capability of being used as such.”
“Who would?” Nevahn said.
“No one is asking you to do that, Hel,” Cian said. “We’ll leave that part of our agreement open-ended for now.”
That was how the discussion always went, and it had been a constant point of contention before. Cian adored children and wanted nothing more than to have his own one day. He’d be a good father, too. Knowing that made it hard to deny him. Had I stayed in my homeland, making and rearing children would have been my entire life. I had never wanted that. I wasn’t against the idea of children completely, but now was certainly not the time to open that discussion again.
Cian suddenly leaned across the small space and kissed me. “Thank you.”
I blinked. “For what?”
“Loving me, even when I didn’t deserve it. For being there to knock sense into me when I did deserve it, and for being here, at my side, when I needed you most. You and Nevahn…You saved me.” He looked over at Nevahn and squeezed his hand. The way those two looked at each other made me sick in the best way, like I’d eaten too many candied figs on the best day of my life. Their love was beautiful, and I was honored to be a part of it.
The truth was, we had saved each other. Before I came to Ezulari, I was bitter and broken, my heart made of ash. Even when Cian was angry with me, his passion, his belief in what he was doing, had woken something in me that was hard to explain. I remembered why I loved him because I hated him first.
I didn’t know how to tell him any of that. For all my power, words were his gift. So, I crossed the distance between us and kissed him. Then I pulled Nevahn close and kissed him harder, biting his lip until the tang of fresh blood was on my tongue, and we went back into the yurt.
Again and again, we found each other in the dark that night, more alive together than we’d ever been apart. We lay tangled together until the first dawn shadows crept in and I knew we were nearly out of time. The purification ritual for Nevahn’s Shadow Rite was to begin at dawn, so I held onto him tight and squeezed Cian’s hand, another silent promise that we’d never be apart again.
Thelodgewasnota yurt of cloth and wood like the other buildings, but a temporary structure made of carefully piled stones and bent bamboo. Layer upon layer of cloth and fur served as the curved walls and ceiling, leaving only a small hole at the top for smoke to escape. More stone lined the dirt floor within. The ground sloped toward the center, where an unusual fire burned in layers. The flame stayed low, heating stones on a grate above.
Cian and Hellion weren’t permitted within a hundred feet of the lodge, so I said my goodbyes there and went inside where Warlord Chinua demanded I strip.
While I sat naked on the rocks, Warlord Chinua either knelt in silence, or spilled water onto the rocks from a big wooden spoon. Sometimes, she would chant and tear up sweet smelling grasses, casting them onto the rocks along with the water. Steam hissed up from the rocks in great, angry plumes. The air shimmered and swirled with heat.
It only got hotter as the sun rose higher. I paced to keep my feet from burning on the hot rocks.
Sweat dripped out of every pore, the sticky weight of it near unbearable after a few hours. That every muscle ached from the night before didn’t make it easier. I didn’t know how I would stay awake for two days straight, let alone keep from passing out in the heat.
Harif had told me to meditate on my fear, to conquer it before my two days were up. Just thinking through the discomfort was difficult at first. Rocks did not make fine seating, and the temperature intensity fought to rob me of all sense. Every time I thought I had adjusted, I had to get up, move, and start all over again. It took most of that first day just to understand the rhythm of the ritual and how my body chose to respond to it.
Night fell, and the rocks cooled, but the lodge stayed hot thanks to the burning coals.
Fear.
What was my greatest fear?
Maybe death. Every mortal feared death, didn’t they? It was the great unknown. What waited on the other side? Only the dead knew, and they couldn’t speak of it. Yet fear did not take me as I considered my death. Maybe before the battle at Lach Ban-Lenon I would have been afraid, but I had seen so much death now that something had changed in me. There was a new calm where that fear used to be, and in it swirled the maelstrom from which I got my nickname.
Perhaps that was it, not death, but loneliness. I’d spent most of my life in such a state, part of the world, but separated from it. In Adros, I had thought it a weakness, but here, in the Land of Nightmares, Cian and the other Nightmares had taught me my difference was a strength. I was no longer alone; I had Cian and Hellion. I had friends like Devonay, Odan, Xeltec, and Dorric. Though I could lose them in this war, the fear wasn’t overwhelming. If they all died, I had already resolved to die with them.
