Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 19

  “I suspect,” she said, “that if one were to do it, it would simply be a matter of cost.”

  “Cost?”

  “All magic requires energy. Obvious to anyone who’s ever done it, yes?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Thus, we already have an established truth in this: magic has a cost. Imagine, then, a spell with an exponentially high cost. Instead of just giving you a bad headache, when the spell executes, it demands life force. Enough of it to kill someone. It isn’t binary, you see. The difference between life and death isn’t a line, it’s a chasm. And a spell like this would have to pull from deep within the levels of magic, down where the rules aren’t as clear.”

  She lapsed into thought.

  “It’s a little sickening, isn’t it? What a gruesome idea. Such a spell would have incredible cost to create. Imagine sacrificing that much of yourself just to drag another soul back with you when you go.”

  Imagine indeed.

  My mouth had gone dry. I had come here with the wild hope that Eomara would tell me it couldn’t be done. If Eomara said that something was impossible, it truly was impossible. But even when I walked through this door, a part of me knew that would be too easy. She was only giving voice to what I already knew and didn’t want to believe.

  “So how would one break it?” I asked, and Eomara’s eyebrows lurched.

  “What a question indeed. How does one break a blood pact?”

  I let out a puff of air through my teeth, and Eomara chuckled.

  “Exactly. Not impossible, but damned difficult. You’re better off trying to find a way to maneuver around the chains than gnaw your own arm off.”

  Perhaps my unease was clear across my face, because Eomara frowned and leaned forward.

  “Tell me, Max, is this really just theoretical?”

  I was silent. Perhaps that was answer enough for her.

  “I’m sorry that I do not have a clearer answer for you,” she said. “Perhaps you should consider visiting Vardir.”

  My gaze snapped back to her. “Absolutely not.”

  “I know that you disapprove of his tactics, but…”

  “Disapprove of his—” I let out a scoff, shaking my head. “Unbelievable.”

  She shrugged. “Just a suggestion. He would know more about this than me.”

  “Is that miserable lunatic even still alive?”

  Eomara gave me a peculiar look. “He is in Ilyzath, Max,” she said, as if it was borderline pitiful that I didn’t know, and in a sense she was right — being sent to Ilyzath was a huge event, and it happened so rarely that when it did, the rumors flew through the Orders like wildfire. But then, I’d spent almost a decade after the war in a state of either severe inebriation or total isolation. There was plenty of news that I had missed. And of course, my only thread of connection to the outside world — Sammerin — would not be especially eager to keep me up to date on Vardir, of all people.

  He was, after all, the man who was responsible for Reshaye.

  “No.” I shook my head. “There’s nothing that I need to know badly enough to see him.”

  A lie, even if I wished it was true.

  Eomara shrugged and took another sip of wine. “Suit yourself, captain. But I think you know as well as I do that you have to look in unsavory places for unsavory information. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Tisaanah

  I heard a terrible, terrible scream.

  My eyes opened and blinked blearily at the ceiling. Sweat plastered my body.

  A dream? Or—

  The scream came again, the kind of sound that stripped me from the inside out.

  I jolted upright and paid for it with a splitting pain in my head. Still, I forced myself out of bed, threw on a robe, and went to the door.

  It was not hard to follow the sound. It echoed down the hallways of the Farlione estate, nearly non-stop, as if whoever was making it was in such agony they didn’t even need to stop to breathe.

  In the back of my mind, Reshaye coiled.

  {Do not go.}

  Why?

  A slow hiss. {It feels like death.}

  I padded barefoot through the wing, following the sounds. Eventually, I turned a corner that led to a hallway that was completely dark, save for one door with light spilling from beneath it. The scream was so loud here that I couldn’t even hear myself think.

  The door opened easily to my touch.

  Four figures huddled in the center of the room, heads bowed. I recognized Nura immediately. Two of the others donned tight-fitting black leather, spears mounted across their backs — Syrizen. The fourth was just a head of white, curly hair, kneeling.

  The scream went on, and on.

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  I had to raise my voice. I didn’t realize I had spoken out loud until all those faces turned to look at me. Ariadnea. Anserra, still wearing her red sash. The kneeling Valtain was Willa, crouched over the bed.

  I realized who lay there — Eslyn.

  She was writhing in the most unnatural way, as if every muscle in her body was spasming in different directions. Her black jacket had been opened, and her tanned skin was mottled with patches of purple.

  “What are you doing here?” Nura said, sharply.

  “I heard the screaming…”

  “Screaming?”

  I went to Eslyn’s bedside. The figure I was looking at looked nothing like the cocky, strong woman I fought beside. This… this looked like a corpse, or worse. Her abdomen, once powerful and muscular, now twitched with sweat-slicked shudders. Tiny veins beneath her skin seemed to all push towards the surface, pulsing and black.

  “What happened to her?” I asked again.

  “A’Maril,” Willa murmured, not looking up.

  “A’Maril?” I had never heard the term before. “What—”

  Another scream split through my skull. Reshaye recoiled so violently that I staggered backwards, my hands going to my ears.

  Anserra muttered, “Get her out of here.”

  Nura approached me, eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  I looked at her as if she were insane.

  What’s wrong? What kind of a question was that? I could barely hear any of them over that scream — gods, how could any set of lungs scream for this long?

  But then I realized:

  No one else was reacting to the sound. Eslyn’s lips, though they were contorted in agony, were not parted.

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Eslyn’s pain surrounded me. Reshaye ran circles in my mind, desperate to escape her suffering.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. Nura reached for me, and I gave her a snarl that I wasn’t sure fully belonged to me.

  “Get her out of here,” Anserra said, more sharply, and Nura shot her a glare before grabbing my arm and dragging me upright.

  “Let’s go.”

  I was so disoriented that I barely tracked our path. Nura led me to a separate wing of the house, far from where my room was. It was another apartment, bigger than mine, and she barely paused before leading me out through a set of glass doors onto a small balcony. The screams were quieter here, and the cold air made my heartbeat slow. Reshaye settled, though it still paced my thoughts like a dog guarding the windows.

  Nura poured me a small glass from a liquor bottle and handed it to me, then poured another for herself.

  I looked down at the amber liquid. It was trembling. My hands were shaking.

  “Just whiskey,” Nura muttered. “Trust me, you need it. I know I do.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I downed it on a single gulp, and exhaled tension.

  “What did I just see?” I asked.

  “Eslyn is sick.”

  “Sick how?”

  Nura poured herself another glass, which she nursed more slowly. “Syrizen gamble with magic far deeper than the magic Valtain or Solarie use.”

  “The levels,” I murmured, remember
ing what Eslyn had told me on our way to Threll. There were different streams of magic — Valtain, Solarie, Fey — and something deeper than all of them. That was why they took the Syrizen’s eyes. Removing their sight gave them a greater sensitivity to the lowest levels of magic, though even then, they could only dip into it for seconds at a time.

  “Right. And what they do is dangerous.” Nura let out a breath through her teeth. Her eyes were downcast, and she shook her hair out with one hand, going silent.

  I watched her carefully. It would be easy to write Nura off as unfeeling. But there was a grim sadness in her now, as if she too was trying to shake away what we had just seen.

  “They modify themselves, push themselves, to be able to Wield that fourth layer of magic,” she said. “But human flesh was never meant to withstand that. And sometimes, it doesn’t. That’s when you get A’Maril. Toxicity sickness, from Wielding magic not intended for you.”

  “But…why? Why now?”

  “Why does any illness choose its target? A’Maril is so often random. Maybe she pushed a little too far or stayed down there a little too long. Maybe she hit some toxic pocket of magic. Maybe she ate undercooked meat five days ago, which interfered with her body in just the right way, and the stars aligned. We just don’t know enough about it. But…” Her face hardened. “Eslyn has been taking extra risks, lately.”

  “Zeryth’s potions.”

  Nura nodded, barely.

  Because of the vials that Zeryth gave her before battles — the ones that made her so much stronger. I understood that whatever he was doing to create them played a role in his decline. It stood to reason that it would play a role in Eslyn’s, too.

  Nura took another sip, her eyes slipping out over the mountains. “But even aside from Eslyn’s unique circumstances, it’s not a terribly uncommon fate for the Syrizen.” Then she gave me a curious look. “You said you heard screaming.”

  “I did. Reshaye did.”

  As if awakened by the sound of its name, Reshaye slithered to the front of my skull, taking in Nura with detached disapproval.

  “It draws from deep magic, too,” she said. “Like the Syrizen, but even deeper. What you were hearing may have been coming from… there.” She waved her hand out into the air. “Instead of here.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “Who knows? No one understands this. But that’s why you need to be careful. Eslyn got sick because she Wielded magic that was too deep, for too long, in the wrong way.”

  And I was Wielding magic even deeper than that, for longer. I did get so, so sick after using Reshaye’s magic — but that was nothing compared to what I just witnessed.

  “What will happen to Eslyn?” I asked, quietly.

  “She’ll die. They always do.”

  “Always?”

  A pause. “One time, I saw someone survive it. Just once. But she was never the same.”

  Reshaye still paced at the front of my thoughts, like a caged panther sizing up the bars of its cage. My head was still in splitting pain.

  Stop that, I told it.

  {Not as long as she is here.}

  My fingers went to my temple. It took all of my strength to push Reshaye back, forcing it into a secluded corner of my mind.

  “What?” Nura was giving me a curious look.

  “Why does Reshaye hate you so much?”

  The corners of her mouth tightened. “Reshaye hates everything.”

  {What I feel is not hate,} Reshaye hissed, as if offended by this characterization.

  “It hates you more.”

  “Probably because Max does.”

  Despite myself — despite everything else I had to worry about — hearing Nura say Max’s name always made my jaw clench in sheer petty protectiveness. “It isn’t that.”

  {Again and again, she fought me,} Reshaye whispered. {It never ended.}

  “You tried to Wield it,” I said.

  “Of course I did.”

  Of course? My stomach turned. To think that she wanted this thing, after what it did to Max — after what it did to the Farliones. Sometimes, I found myself thinking of Nura as a reluctant ally, but in moments like this, I was revolted by her.

  I didn’t let it show. But she cast me a knowing glance, as if she still felt my unspoken judgement.

  “Do not think,” she said, quietly, “that I did not have a reckoning with that thing.”

  Reshaye snarled, and the memories came in razor sharp flashes — Nura, looking into the mirror, flushed, shaking. A set of bloody hands in the sand of the sparring ring, forcing herself upright again, again, again. Nura, in cold water and utter darkness. Nura, slicing her own arm open.

  The images disappeared just as suddenly as they overtook me. The silence and the gentle breeze assaulted me. Nura had poured herself another drink.

  “I heard about what’s happening in Threll,” she said. “With the Zorokov family. You should have just done what Zeryth wanted you to do from the beginning. Then the war would be over, and you could go to them.”

  “It was too dangerous.”

  “The longer you draw this out, the more people will die.”

  I gave her a long stare. She was older now, than she was in Max’s memories of her. But the look in her eye, ruthless and certain, was still the same. How many times had she told Max — told herself — the same thing, in the wake of Sarlazai?

  And yet, there was a part of me that wondered if perhaps she was right.

  “I want it to be a world worth saving,” I said.

  A wry smile twisted her lips. “You must think I’m made of stone.”

  “Ice, perhaps.”

  Because ice froze over in layers, obfuscating whatever lay beneath it. There was something else there, I knew. She hadn’t always been this way. Even now, I saw the sadness in her eyes.

  A short laugh. “I don’t like that. Ice is too fragile.” Her silver eyes slipped to me. “I’d be careful who you judge, Tisaanah. Maybe one day you’ll stand where I do. You’ll cut away every weakness. You’ll make every sacrifice. And then the world will look at you and sneer at your inhumanity, as if you didn’t just become everything they told you to be.”

  She took a long drink and turned to the mountains.

  “Eslyn was my friend, once,” she murmured. “I’m not looking forward to watching her die.”

  It seemed strange to pity Nura. And yet, I understood more than I wanted to how lonely it was to chop away everything that connected you to other human souls.

  I lifted my glass.

  “To the dead,” I said.

  Nura lifted hers. “To the dead.” She downed the rest of her glass in one gulp, then turned and looked up to the Farlione mansion. It loomed over us, and she glared back at it, as if she could stare it into submission. “You know,” she said, plainly, “I hate this fucking house.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Aefe

  “Seven skies, what is that forsaken fucking stench?”

  Ashraia’s booming voice shook the camp. I couldn’t help but agree — it was impossible not to. We had just returned from hunting, and Siobhan and Ishqa from gathering firewood. One look at the wrinkles of disgust on their noses told me they were thinking the same thing.

  We all blinked at each other. Then my eyes slipped to the far corner of our camp, where Caduan’s tent stood.

  “Caduan?” I called.

  “Sh,” Siobhan said, raising a finger.

  We went silent. And then I heard it — strange sounds from the woods.

  “Caduan?” I called again.

  The answer came from the forest. “Over here,” he called back.

  I trudged through the brush until I reached a small clearing—

  —And immediately had to swallow bile.

  I uttered a curse that came out as gibberish because I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth without vomiting.

  The others were right behind me. Ashraia’s curse was louder than mine, drowning out Siobhan’s gasp.
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  Caduan looked at us and drew a hand over his forehead. Flecks of cloudy purple dotted his face.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s not pleasant.”

  “Not pleasant?” I repeated.

  There was a Mathira-damned body sprawled out — opened — on a makeshift table in the center of the clearing. It had been cut open from throat to navel, exposing a mushy expanse of guts and flesh, all grayish purple. The face was covered by a small piece of white fabric, but greasy tendrils of red-gold hair hung over the edge of the table.

  “What,” Ishqa said, deadly quiet, “are you doing?”

  We were all thinking it: he’d gone insane. Not that anyone could blame him.

  It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. The body on the table was most noticeably disfigured because of its opened abdomen, but its limbs, too, were twisted and gnarled, the skin grayish and too-formless.

  “It’s from the House of Reeds,” I said.

  “She,” Caduan repeated, nodding. “She is one of the Fey slain in the House of Reeds. Yes.”

  I pressed the back of my hand over my nose and stepped forward. The closer I came, the… stranger the body looked. I had seen many dead bodies in states of disrepair. I knew what normal Fey guts looked like.

  This? This was not right. This was too grey, too…formless.

  “What are you doing?” Ishqa repeated, most sharply.

  “We needed answers,” Caduan replied. He didn’t take his eyes off the thing on the table. “I was hoping I was wrong.”

  His gaze flicked up to meet mine, and I glimpsed raw fear.

  “This is a Fey woman,” he said. “Or, was a Fey woman. No longer.”

  “I don’t understand,” Siobhan said. “Clearly something had happened to—”

  “Not ‘happened to.’ She has inherently changed.” He stepped back, grabbing a cloth to wipe his hands. “Her blood is tainted with human blood. And there is something else there, too. Something magic. I can’t identify it, but…” He frowned as his voice trailed off, looking like he didn’t even realize that he had stopped speaking.

  “What does that mean?” I said, quietly. A knot of dread clenched in my stomach.