A Heart So Fierce and Broken

by Brigid Kemmerer

  “I have made no demands. You have. And you offered sanctuary to me and my people because you hope to secure an alliance with the future King of Emberfall.”

  “Grey,” calls Noah, “that guy’s got maybe five minutes. If that.”

  “Is five minutes enough time for your magic to work?” says Karis Luran. “Or will you waste it negotiating?”

  I don’t take my eyes off her. “You are the one who requested that he be healed. Will you waste it negotiating?”

  Her mouth turns downward slightly. “The scraver’s debt must be paid. I will not turn him over to you if you will release him from his oath.”

  “So if I maintain his year of service, you would be willing to hand me the chain.”

  Her expression is so shrewd. In a way, she reminds me of Rhen. “Yes,” she says. “If you can heal this man, this creature’s year of service will be yours. I will indeed hand you the chain.” She gives it a jerk, and Iisak growls at her but does not move. “And once we have come to terms on an alliance, you will allow me access to the scraver’s”—she glances at the man on the ground—“talents as well?”

  That seems a little too open-ended for my taste. “At my discretion.”

  “Three minutes,” Noah calls. “He’s lost a lot of blood, Grey.”

  Karis Luran smiles. “I truly do like you better than your brother. Yes, at your discretion. Heal Parrish for us all to see, and you will have your scraver.”

  Parrish. The name pulls at me, and I try to remember why. The memory won’t come, and he’s dying anyway. I put the thought away for later and drop to a knee in the blood. There’s so much damage that I have no idea where to start. His breath makes a rattling sound.

  Maybe my indecision is visible, because Noah says, “You’ve got to stop the bleeding. Everything else is secondary if he keeps bleeding out.”

  I glance at the guards blocking Noah. “Release him.”

  “No,” says Karis Luran. “You alone. If the healer speaks again, silence him.”

  “Mother, please!” cries Lia Mara. “Please. Parrish followed my order.”

  Then I understand. I remember who Parrish is. Her guard. The one who accompanied her to Ironrose the night Rhen took her prisoner. A cold fury takes a seat in my chest.

  “This man knows what he did,” says Karis Luran. “If his life ends here, everyone else will know it, too.”

  The longer she talks, the closer this man moves toward death. I press my hands right to the worst of the damage, hoping it’s the source of most of the bleeding. Blood and viscera slide beneath my fingers, and I close my eyes, looking for the sparks that have helped me before. It’s easier now, like the early stages of swordplay, when it’s all simple footwork and arm movements. A step here, a thrust there.

  My eyes remain closed, but the flesh begins to re-form under my hands, muscle and skin pulling together. Blood no longer flows around my fingers. People nearby gasp. I hear murmurs in Syssalah.

  I open my eyes and move my hands farther up, to his chest, which barely moves now. His skin has a ghastly pallor, and I’ve seen enough men die at the hands of a monster to know this is not a good sign. I force my magic across the bond between us, those sparks seeking the damage and healing it. These marks close, too, and Parrish’s chest rises and falls rapidly. His one good eye opens, and he lets out a low groan of pain. His gaze meets mine, and he tries to throw up an arm to fight me off.

  I lift my hands, which are coated in his blood. “Be at ease,” I say to him. “Allow me to help you.”

  He does not move. His expression is full of fear, and he speaks in rapid Syssalah.

  “Parrish,” calls Lia Mara. Her voice breaks on a sob. But whatever she says next makes him lower his arm.

  “She will kill me,” Parrish says.

  “She tried. Now I will try to save you.” Though I’m not sure I can save his eye. It’s a shredded ruin above his cheek.

  He doesn’t move his arm, but I press a hand to his bloody cheek. He hisses in pain and tries to jerk away, but the skin begins to knit together, and his good eye widens in surprise.

  The murmurs around us grow louder.

  The damaged eye re-forms, the iris and pupil swimming up through the white. It’s simultaneously the most disgusting and fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.

  Then it’s done. He’s healed and I’m exhausted, and we’re both sticky with blood and sweat and probably worse things.

  He’s staring up at me in wonder, and he’s breathing as hard as I am. “This feels like a dream.”

  No. It feels like a nightmare. I force myself to my feet and look at Karis Luran. I hold out my blood-slick hand. “My payment.”

  The expression on her face is a combination of fury and irritation and approval. “Very well.” She presses the taut chain into my hand. Her fingers slide through the blood on my palm.

  My muscles feel primed for a different kind of battle, making my breathing shallow and my focus very narrow. I wish I could draw a sword and execute her right here. “If you’ll forgive me, I should return to my rooms to change.”

  “Of course,” she says smoothly. I cannot tell if she has lost face here or if I have. “You should not forget your jacket.”

  I go still. My jacket.

  “Here.” Lia Mara’s voice is barely a whisper at my side. “Go. Please. Before this grows worse.”

  I close my bloody fingers in the crush of leather and suede, hoping to brush against hers, but she’s already let go.

  Nolla Verin is watching me very carefully.

  I force myself to keep my eyes on my people, still blocked by the guards. The brief kiss I shared with Lia Mara seems to have happened days ago. Months ago. A lifetime ago. Now I’m covered in gore, a pure spectacle in front of strangers.

  “Let my people go,” I say, and somehow my voice is level. “We will return to our rooms.”

  Karis Luran nods, and the guards part. Tycho rushes to my side. Noah moves to Jake’s.

  I don’t want to drag Iisak by the chain, but he hasn’t moved from the shadows. I can no longer read his expression, and at this point, my nerves are too edged to care. I wrap the chain around my hand, offer a bow to Karis Luran, and start walking.

  He follows willingly. I want nothing more than to drop this chain, but I’m worried someone else will pick it up.

  As we leave the room, Karis Luran is speaking to her guards. “Take Parrish to the dungeon. Take his eye for good this time.”

  Lia Mara screams. “No! Mother—no!”

  My steps freeze.

  “No.” Jake’s hand finds my shoulder, and he gives me a good shove. “Keep walking.”

  I don’t move. My jaw is clenched tight. I try to turn.

  Jake gives me another shove. His voice sounds like I feel, quick and rushed and panicked—but he’s steadfast. “He’s alive. You saved his life. You gained ground today. You can’t lose it now. Walk, Grey. Walk.”

  My feet refuse to move. We’re still visible from the doorway. I have no doubt Karis Luran gave her order just now to undermine me, to send some kind of message to her daughter.

  Inside the room, the man screams. I wonder if they are doing it right there.

  My chest is tight, and I know they’re doing it right there.

  I try to shove past Jake. “I didn’t save him for her to torture him.”

  Iisak hisses. “She will demand my return. She will likely have me do worse.”

  That makes me stop. I run a hand across my jaw. Lia Mara’s screaming is etched in my brain now. So is the man’s.

  “It’s just an eye,” says Jake.

  “I hate this,” Noah mutters.

  Me too.

  Tycho takes hold of the chain. He’s possibly the only person I would allow to take it from my hand, so I release it. His eyes are dark and troubled again.

  “Iisak is my friend,” he says. He wets his trembling lips and glances at Jake. “And it is just an eye.”

  This is no choice at all.

&n
bsp; Silver hell. I set my jaw and start walking.

  The screaming echoes behind us long after we reach our chambers and lock the doors.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  LIA MARA

  Mother strides into my room hours later. It’s late enough that I should be asleep, but I knew she would be coming, so I haven’t even dressed for bed. Her personal guard is with her, looking so fierce and punishing that I wonder if she’s going to have me killed right here in my chambers. I leap to my feet and back away before I realize what I’m doing.

  “Mother,” I whisper.

  Parrish’s blood stains her robes, and there’s a streak of it on her face, with more on her hands.

  I have no doubt she’s aware of every stain, and she wore them here just for me.

  “Do you seek to undermine me?” she demands. “Or is this simple envy for your sister?”

  “It’s not—I’m not—Nolla Verin—”

  “Do you have any idea what is at stake, Lia Mara?” she says. “Have you no consideration for how important this alliance is?”

  “Yes.” I swallow. “I do.”

  “Then explain to me why you would be wearing his clothing in front of every Royal House in the palace?”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry.”

  She steps close to me. “You will make no further apologies. You will make no further mistakes. We have the heir, and the Royal Houses have pledged their funds. Tomorrow, I will seal an alliance with this man, and he will lead our people to claim his throne in Emberfall. You will remain here until then.”

  She turns to leave, her robes swirling in her wake.

  I rush to follow her, but her guards step in front of me, and I’m drawn up short. My heart pounds in my chest. Mother has never turned her guards against me.

  Once they’re through the door, I cannot breathe. It latches heavily behind them.

  My sister. I must speak with my sister.

  I count to ten. To twenty. To one hundred. I count until my mother and her guards will be gone.

  I fly to the door and throw it open. A guard swivels to block me. Instead of Bea and Conys, I find myself face-to-face with Parrish. His missing eye has been stitched closed. He’s pale but steady, a staff in his hand to bar my way.

  I gasp and stumble back. “Parrish—Parrish, please. I have wanted to talk to you so badly—”

  His voice is cold, not revealing even a glimpse of the guard who once shared a shred of humor with me. “The queen has ordered that you will not leave this room.”

  This is the final blow. My mother has put him here as a reminder for me that my actions have consequences. That my actions have caused nothing but harm.

  I’m staring the result right in the face. Parrish’s other eye is clouded with pain and anger and regret.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  He says nothing.

  I have nothing to offer.

  I reach out and close the door. I got just what I wanted: I’m alone in my room.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  GREY

  Iisak refuses to allow me to remove the chain. I refuse to send him back to the dungeon, and I refuse to tether him in my chambers. He dragged the rattling links around the stone floor for hours until I threatened to hang him with it if he didn’t stop pacing. My mood is bitter and recalcitrant, and I want nothing more than to sit in front of the fire to reevaluate every choice I’ve made since the moment Dustan appeared in the arena at Worwick’s.

  Instead, I’m staring at the fire, thinking of Lia Mara. I wish I hadn’t given her my jacket. I wish I hadn’t endangered her. I wish I hadn’t—

  “You seem unsettled, Your Highness.”

  I glance at Iisak. He’s crouched in the darkest corner of the room, as far from the fire as possible, his eyes glittering black.

  “Stop calling me that,” I snap.

  “I believe you should get used to it.”

  Silver hell. I run my hands back through my hair.

  “What bothers you more?” says Iisak. “The man who lost an eye or our troubled princess?”

  “Can they not both bother me?”

  “For certain.”

  I ordered him to stop pacing, but now he’s too still. Too calm. “What if she had told you to harm me instead of that man? Would you so quickly have bared your claws?”

  “Yes.”

  He answers so swiftly that it broadens my fury. I clench my teeth and wish I had asked for anything other than his freedom.

  “I have already bared my claws to you,” he says. “You healed the damage within seconds. Why would I risk her wrath and refuse her order?”

  I look away from him. The fire snaps and flickers.

  “I have made no secret of my desire to return home,” he says. “I will spend my year sworn to you or sworn to her or whatever is required, and not one minute longer.”

  “I will never make you do … that.”

  “Do not make promises you cannot keep, Your Highness.”

  I glare at him again. “I told you to stop it.”

  “Return me to the dungeon if my presence troubles you.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Is that so tempting?” His eyes narrow slightly. “Truly?”

  I grit my teeth and look away again. He is baiting me, and I know it.

  “I imagine there must have been an element of relief to be a guardsman,” he says. “To know your actions were directed by another. To have no sense of accountability for what you were ordered to do.”

  He says this as if I do not feel the weight of every action I have ever taken. “You do not know anything about my time as a guardsman.”

  “I think it is telling that you ran from your birthright and chose an occupation near the lowest rung of Emberfall’s society. Were there no privies to clean?”

  “Do you wish to fight, Iisak?”

  He uncurls from his position by the wall, looping the chain between his hands, each link click-click-clicking as it passes over his claws. “I believe the better question is, do you wish to fight?”

  I do, actually. My heart has been calling for action since I heard Karis Luran give the order to take Parrish’s eye. My muscles are tense with the need to best something.

  In our final season together, the enchantress Lilith was secretly torturing Rhen each night. He would wake each morning and call for me to fight him in the arena. It was harder than any training session I ever had with the Royal Guard.

  I never fully understood his need until this very moment.

  I wish I could stop thinking of Rhen.

  I rub at my eyes, but I sense motion in front of me and jerk my hands down. He’s come close enough to touch, each movement slow and calculated. Firelight flickers off the chain, off his wings, off those night-dark eyes.

  He swipes his claws at me, almost quicker than breath, but I am ready for it, and I leap back, overturning the chair. My dagger finds my hand, but the sword is out of reach.

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” I say.

  “You want to fight with something.”

  “What do you want, Iisak? Do you want me to kill you? Do you want to be put out of your misery?”

  He laughs. “Do you think you could kill me?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he launches himself at me again. His claws dig into my shoulder, but before I can land a hit with the dagger, he’s spun away.

  He’s not quick enough to keep the chain out of my grasp, however. It jerks tight as he hits the limit, and I hold fast.

  Despite his height, he’s nowhere near as heavy as a human man, and I drag him toward me easily, his feet digging into the stone floor.

  As soon as he gets close enough, I swipe with the dagger. He swipes with his claws. We both lose—or maybe we both win. He went for my hand with the chain. I went for his shoulder. We break apart, both bleeding.

  He gives me no time to recover. He leaps at me again, swiping for my face, for my neck. I bat his claws away with t
he dagger, but my forearms take most of the damage. He must sever something vital because the weapon slips from my hand to clatter to the floor. My magic responds almost without thought, healing the damage quickly enough for me to go after him with fists and brute strength. We collide with the other chair, with the chest of drawers, with the pile of logs beside the hearth. A drapery rips down from the wall.

  Iisak twists free of my hold and buries those teeth in my forearm. I punch him, and it dislodges him enough that he leaps off me, my blood staining the skin around his mouth.

  I roll fast and find the sword under the chair, but Iisak is on top of me before I can draw it. His hands aim for my neck, and I’m ready for him to swipe with his claws, but instead the chain catches me in the throat and presses me down into the stone floor. It’s so tight that I can’t even swallow. He kneels on my sword arm.

  I fight his grip with my free hand, but now he’s got leverage.

  I glare up at him, sure my eyes are burning with fury. I fight to grit words out. “What do you want, Iisak?”

  He leans down, his face an inch from mine. Those fangs are still bared, still tinged with my blood. His breath is like a winter wind. “No. What do you want?”

  I try to throw another punch, but he knocks my hand away, then puts his claws against my throat, right over the chain. I grip his wrist, but he tightens his fingers. I feel every single point of his claws against my skin, and I freeze. He doesn’t break the skin, but if I dare to breathe, he might.

  What do you want?

  Those words seem to drain the fight right out of me. My chest is heaving beneath his weight, and my throat burns with emotion.

  There are so many things that I don’t want.

  I don’t want Lia Mara to suffer for what I’ve done.

  I don’t want the few people who’ve sworn to me to suffer for their allegiance.

  I don’t want anyone else to be harmed.

  I don’t want my country to fall.

  I blink up at Iisak, and my vision blurs. “I don’t want to be at war with Rhen.”

  The claws in my neck ease, and the scraver withdraws. I slide the chain away from me, then roll to sitting, rubbing at my neck. The magic in my blood rushes to heal any injury, almost without thought now.