“We’re both caught in the same web, Kit. Pulled by strings we can’t even see. Killing is the only thing we’re good at. If something gets in our way, we cut it down. No remorse. No regrets. Just death.”
Kit placed her hands on both sides of his face. “Listen to me. You are different. You’re a good man, Caim.”
Was he? He wasn’t so sure.
“There’s a dark shadow over this land, Kit. Maybe it started here with my father and mother, but it’s gone far beyond this place, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes, you do. You’ll fight. Not because you want to, but because you have to.”
What she said was true, but knowing the truth didn’t make it any easier to accept. The rage might have left him, but in its place gathered a more primal emotion: vengeance. Blood to answer for blood. There was no other way.
The sword quivered in its scabbard.
Kit looked up to the blade’s hilt jutting over his shoulder. “What about that?”
“What about it?”
“I don’t like it, Caim.”
Yeah? Welcome to the party, darling.
Turning away from the ruins, Caim breathed in the scents of pine and heather. He held that breath as he tore open a hole in the darkness. In its opaque surface he saw his face, drawn and haggard-the face of a dead man. He and Ral, he and the sorcerer, he and the Beast. Dealers of death, one and all. The only difference is that I’m still alive. Don’t follow me, Kit. You won’t like what you see.
Releasing the breath, Caim stepped into the void.
Stone cracked and shattered. Steel was torn asunder, and the air shimmered as eldritch forces shook the foundation of the temple.
Blood leaked from Sybelle’s fingernails as she lay on the floor, digging furrows in the cold marble tiles. Her hair was disheveled, her gown slashed and ripped.
Soloroth, her son, was dead.
In the scrying pool she had watched the battle between her child and the scion, seen victory snatched from Soloroth’s grasp. Frightened for the first time in many long years, she was able only to gaze on in shock as Soloroth fell at the scion’s feet. Then the waters turned dark before her eyes, cutting off her last sight of her son and severing their contact forever.
In the aftermath of her fury, her sanctum lay in shambles. The ancient sarcophagus of Het Xenai, which had withstood the ravages of three thousand years, was reduced to a pile of dust. Her phials and fetishes lay in shards upon the floor along with the orichalcum box, its priceless contents dissolved into the stone. Only the scrying pool remained intact, its black waters as still as death.
A cold wind stirred the debris as a disembodied voice whispered in her ear. One comes…
Sybelle rose to her bare feet as the curtain leading to the nave lifted. Whichever of her priests was fool enough to disturb her in this, the moment of her greatest anguish, had better have good reason. But the temple was empty. The candles wavered, casting tall shadows against the walls. Sybelle stayed the lethal spell on her lips as the duke staggered across the doorstep. He leaned against the bronze doors, eyes glazed over, his clothes stained with wine and worse. Drunk again, or still. In the past sennight she hadn’t seen him any other way. The man had lost his vitality. He was an empty, sodden husk, little better than a corpse. Like my Soloroth.
“You killed her,” he said through numb lips.
The words took her by surprise. She had killed many over the years, thousands upon thousands, but she knew who he meant. His first wife. She’d killed the woman not long after Arion was born, and had taken her place at Erric’s side.
“She was everything I wanted,” he continued, bracing himself against a wall, staring at her. “She was my love. And now you’ve sent my son away to die.”
Sybelle seethed as she looked upon this man she had loved. The sight of him filled her with disgust. She had given him this city, slain his rivals, and still he couldn’t tame this one petty realm, so she’d been forced to send her son, her only child, to do it for him. Now Soloroth was dead for it, and the fault lay at this man’s vomit-caked feet.
He pointed at her. “You’ve ruined my life! Now I’m all alone, all because of-”
“Shut up.”
The duke straightened up, a frown folding the loose skin around his mouth. “That is no way to address me. I am King of Eregoth, Sybelle. No matter what you and your grotesque ogre of a son-”
The air between them blurred as she lifted her hands. A rush of vigor surged into Sybelle as she drew the essence from his fragile shell. It was wan and addled, but still delicious beyond measure. She could have stayed in this moment forever, content, sated. Then he fell to the floor. As abruptly as it had started, the sorcery drained out of her, leaving her weak and shaking.
Sybelle stumbled across the chamber and collapsed at his side. His eyes stared at her without a hint of accusation.
“My love. My darling Erric.”
She rocked back and forth beside his lifeless body. Alone in her grief, she didn’t notice the loud voices outside until the guardian announced the intrusion. Brushing Erric’s lips with a kiss, Sybelle stood up as a band of huge men in bestial hides and furs entered the temple. Her son’s Northmen. At a barking command from their headman, Garmok, they led a coffle of bedraggled people into the nave, men and women and even two older children. Battered and stoop-shouldered, they were forced to kneel at her feet.
“Prizes for you, Queen of the Night,” Garmok spoke. “Where is our hetman, your son?”
Sybelle eyed the prisoners, a renewed hunger growing inside her. “He is dead.”
The Northmen shook their weapons and began to howl. Garmok struck a prisoner with such force that the man sprawled to the floor in a widening puddle of blood. The other captives mewed with terror.
Sybelle smiled, liquid heat spreading through her body as she went down to greet her new playthings.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
They shambled up the slopes of the foothill under a bruised sky. Bloodied, dragging their wounded behind them on shoddy litters, no one would have guessed they were the victors.
Caim marched at the head of the company. He couldn’t face the men, carrying their dead like an honor guard. When he’d returned to the outpost and seen the results of the disaster he’d led them to, he could hardly face himself. No matter what Kit said, he couldn’t blame anyone else. He’d forgotten the first rule of warfare-know your enemy-and others had paid the price. He was a killer, not a general. He had no business leading people into battle. Despite that, they followed him, not complaining when he announced they were returning to the castle. Some, he knew, would leave as soon as they were fit, off to join Ramon’s outfit or just go somewhere safe. He didn’t have the heart to tell them they wouldn’t be safe anywhere in this world. What had started here would spread.
Thunder rumbled, sounding like it came from the other side of the hills. It would be daylight soon, but the northern sky was a mass of black clouds.
Keegan’s shoulders were hunched as he came up beside Caim. From what he’d heard, the boy had accounted himself well, even leading the outlaws in a counterattack that drove off the duke’s soldiers. Caim hadn’t known much comfort in his life; fool that he was, he’d left the only woman who had ever tried to offer it. He didn’t know what to say. That it got easier? The sentiment sounded hollow even to him, but what else was there to say? The truth? No, better that the boy believed this hurt would pass. She died a warrior, but that doesn’t take away the sting, does it?
“What’s the next step?” Keegan asked.
“Next step in what?”
Keegan jerked his chin back over his shoulder at the men marching behind them. “The plan. Where are we going next?”
