Wraith King

by Argyle, Amber

  Every part of her threatened to break. Holding herself together with every shred of hope she possessed, she tried to wrench free. “It hasn’t reached your eyes. We can still—”

  “I can’t live like this!” he said in fits and starts, his body spasming.

  She froze, her breath half in and half out. She shook her head, over and over and over again.

  He reached up, running the back of his knuckles down her cheek. “I swore I’d keep you safe. Did you doubt me?”

  She pressed his hand to her heart. “Never.”

  He smiled. “You are a warrior queen. The queen our people need.”

  No. The White Tree was dead. She’d seen the sheer number of mulgars. Thousands and thousands and thousands. The barrier might hold, but eventually, the mulgars would make it over the wall. And when they did, the Alamant was finished. Humankind was finished. She hadn’t saved anyone. She’d only delayed the inevitable.

  She didn’t say any of this. Denan was dying. She would not let him die thinking it had been for nothing.

  His gaze shifted to his mother. “I don’t want you to see this. Take the others and go.”

  Tears streaming down her face, Aaryn held his hand tight. “I was there when you came into this world. I will not leave when you depart it.”

  He seemed about to argue and then pressed his lips into a thin line. He turned to the others. “Everyone else but Tam, out.”

  The druids left first. Atara hesitated, shooting Larkin a look so full of sorrow that Larkin’s hard-won composure threatened to break. Then she, too, left.

  Denan took his mother’s hand. “I’m sorry for the hurt you will suffer.”

  Tears slipped down her cheeks. “I’m proud of you, my son. So proud to be your mother.”

  Denan panted in pain. The marks ringed his eye sockets. The tremors shook his hand now. But he fought them. Fought the betrayal of his body.

  He reached out, his hand cupping Larkin’s neck. “My heartsong, my little bird. When it’s your time, I will come for you. As I always have.”

  “Always.” She bent down and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

  His pleading gaze shifted to Tam. “We made a promise, long ago.”

  Tam’s expression shattered. Pale as death, he took out his sword. He meant to kill Denan. To end his life before the corruption turned him into a monster. Just like Maisy had said would happen. Ancestors, I cannot watch the light leave his eyes.

  And suddenly, Larkin’s conversation with Maisy came back to her just as jumbled as all her conversations with Maisy had ever been.

  “I’ve always been your friend, Larkin. Always. And when the time comes, you’ll remember that.”

  “What have you done to my husband?” Larkin had cried.

  “You’re not listening! I’m trying to save you, save him, save everyone!”

  “By turning him into a mulgar? How does that save him?” Larkin had asked.

  “Because then you will finally be willing to do what you must.”

  But what must I do, Maisy? Larkin thought.

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Larkin? You are the light.”

  She didn’t know what that meant!

  “Trust me, Larkin. Just one last time.”

  As if in response to the memory, Larkin’s sigils gleamed. She looked at them in shock; she hadn’t opened them.

  Where light is, shadow cannot go, Sela had said. Remember.

  Larkin found her gaze drawn to the south. In the direction of Valynthia. A city of shadows.

  And Larkin suddenly understood what they had been trying to tell her all along. How to destroy the wraiths. And in return for that knowledge, Larkin had killed Maisy.

  Larkin panted—the horror of what she had done and what she had yet to do driving the breath from her body. But there would be time for guilt later. And grief. And loss.

  “I’m the light,” she murmured. She held out her free hand between Tam and her husband. “No.”

  Tam shot her a pleading look. “I have to.”

  “Larkin.” Denan fought for each word as the black siphoned into his eyes like wisps of smoke. “Let me die cleanly. As myself.”

  Denan’s eyes rolled up. His body convulsed. Tam gripped her shoulder.

  She surged up, Tam’s tunic in her fists. This man who’d become as dear to her as a brother. This man she had to make understand. “The mulgars will keep coming, Tam. By the thousands. And one day very soon, maybe even tomorrow, they will make it over the wall.”

  He shook his head. “What does that—”

  She gritted her teeth. “There’s only one way this ends. I have to kill the wraiths.” The monsters who dared to steal her husband from her. Well, she would steal him back. And she’d kill them for it.

  “They cannot die,” Aaryn said.

  Larkin faced the woman. “Maisy said the wraiths are weak during the day. If I go with them, I can find a way to kill them.”

  “Go with them,” Aaryn said, aghast.

  “It’s what they’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?” Larkin said. “Me for all the mulgars. And in return, the Alamant will be safe. Denan will be safe.” At least for a time.

  “Not if they turn you into a mulgar,” Aaryn said.

  “They can’t,” Larkin said. “They tried already, and it didn’t work, remember? Maybe . . . Maybe I can even end the curse.” Eiryss had said someone in her line would break the curse. Sela had broken half of it. Maybe Larkin was meant to break the other half, and to do it, she had to go to Valynthia and kill the wraiths.

  “Larkin—” Tam began.

  “They’ll be back tomorrow night,” she cried. “And the night after that. And the night after that. How long do you think we’ll last?”

  Neither Aaryn nor Tam answered. Because they both knew that within a few days, a week at most, it would all be over.

  “We don’t have anything else,” Larkin whispered.

  “He’ll never forgive you,” Tam said softly.

  No. He won’t. But he’ll be alive, and that’s all that matters.

  Aaryn gasped and reared back from Denan. Larkin was already moving. She pinned her blade against Denan’s throat. But he was not Denan anymore. His eyes were fully black, his skin pale as death. He was a mulgar now.

  Even as she watched, that black imploded into his pupil, the forked lines disappearing from his skin as if they’d never been. Save for his eyes, he looked perfectly human again. Longing drove a spike through her chest.

  “I will give him back.” The words were from Denan’s lips, but her husband hadn’t said them. Instead, the wraith watched her through her beloved’s eyes.

  “I will meet with you.” She gritted her teeth. “But I need everyone to think my husband is still Denan. Do you understand?”

  Not-Denan nodded. She eased back, her body tense for the ardent to attack. He did not. The ardent lay docilely on the ground, watching her with a predatory hunger that made a chill crawl up her spine.

  She couldn’t afford to think of the thing before her as her husband, as the man she loved.

  “Light,” Tam said. “He’s obeying you.”

  For now. Larkin didn’t dare wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Tie his hands.”

  Denan lifted his wrists. Tam looked about, but it was Aaryn who found the rope Larkin had cut from around her waist earlier. Wincing at the blood, his mother cried as she tied Denan’s wrists.

  The rings and grunts and shouts of battle suddenly stilled. Larkin peered over the edge of the crenellations to see the mulgars jumping from the wall, slipping back into the water. The Alamantians looked about in bewilderment.

  The hairs on the back of Larkin’s neck rose. She was going to the wraiths. Terror seized her middle, and she wasn’t sure whether she was going to vomit or cry. Not wanting any of them to see, she turned her back to them and tried to calm her frantic breathing. To focus on the world around her.

  The horizon had lightened to gray, the pitch dark of the dead of night
giving way to a hazy charcoal. In a few hours, the sun would rise. Below, the water was littered with bodies, thousands of them. But thousands more climbed out of the water to disappear into the forest beyond. And in the center, she could make out a darker patch of shadows.

  The wraiths were waiting.

  Becoming Wraith

  Shielded from view by the tower to her left, Larkin watched as the boat swung over the crenellation and lowered so that it was even with the wall. Not-Denan stepped over the parapet and into the little boat. Larkin and Tam followed him. Tam did his best to shield them from view as Larkin bound Denan’s ankles to his hands, just in case. He bore it without the slightest protest. Larkin started to turn away but became ensnared in the shine reflecting off Denan’s soulless eyes—eyes that followed her every move.

  “Larkin,” Aaryn said.

  Larkin saw the question in her mother-in-law’s eyes. Was Larkin sure she wanted to do this? She gave a curt nod and pulled her dampener amulet over her head. “Give it to Nesha.” She grieved the loss, but she didn’t want this getting into the wraiths’ hands.

  Aaryn tucked it in her pocket. “Lower it.”

  The enchantresses manning the pulleys hesitated. Lowering anyone into the lake—especially their king and queen—was surely sending them on a suicide mission.

  “Do it!” Aaryn barked.

  The enchantresses lowered the boat. Larkin flared her shield, took hold of her magic, and molded it into a modified dome that encircled them. The craft rocked gently as it lowered down the side of the wall and settled in the lake.

  Larkin and Tam unhooked the ropes. The lampent flower in its woven cage bobbed up and down, casting soft light over the rippling water. But there were no colorful fish leaping at the bugs attracted to the light. Instead, it illuminated bits and pieces of the dead as they churned together—an arm, a leg, a sightless head . . .

  Shuddering, she sat on her bench. Her paddle found purchase between the bodies and turned them toward shore. Bodies bumped into the bow and slid along the hull. They were dead. They couldn’t hurt her.

  So why did they disturb her so? Because they were empty? Or because someday, her body would turn cold and sightless and then molder? Generations would pass, until one day no one alive would ever have known her. She would be utterly forgotten.

  And then what? Memories lived on in the sacred trees—provided you were entombed in one—but even sacred trees died. Not that it was an honor she would have. Not now. Which left what?

  She didn’t know, and the not knowing terrified her. I don’t want to die. Would she ever see her family again? See Denan again? She glanced back at him, sitting unnaturally still just behind her.

  Light. It hurt to have him seem so alive—so him—when he wasn’t.

  Shouting from the soldiers lining the wall. Larkin looked up, up, up to see Gendrin and Atara leaning over the wall to look down at them. Atara had gone to fetch the general as soon as she realized what they planned to do.

  Gendrin cupped his hands around his mouth. “Come back now! I order you to come back!”

  Larkin technically outranked him. That wouldn’t stop him from killing Denan. Involving the council.

  It was better—cleaner—this way.

  Ignoring him, Aaryn lifted her hand in farewell. The stillness of the woman’s expression—grief on hold—burned into Larkin’s memory like a brand. Larkin knew the question in her eyes: would her son still be lost to her after this? Or would she lose all three of them?

  Larkin felt a stab of resentment. Had Aaryn been so willing to let Larkin go because it meant her son would return to her? Larkin turned away from the useless emotion.

  A cloud passed over the moon. She was grateful she could no longer see the horrors all around her. Her head ached from lack of sleep. She was bruised and battered, her muscles stiff and achy. The cold from the frozen lake inside her seeped into her body, making her shiver despite the heat. She drove her paddle in harder, her teeth clenched to hold herself together.

  It wasn’t long before they reached the shoreline stacked with bodies like driftwood. The sky was black overhead, and a dusky turquoise along the rim. Dawn was coming. She wondered if she’d ever see a sunrise again.

  Tam stopped paddling first. “We can still go back.”

  “I couldn’t be the kind of queen my people needed, couldn’t be the queen my king needed. I made so many mistakes. But I can do this. I can save him.”

  For the first time in months, she was right where she was supposed to be.

  Frowning, Tam threw anchor. They fell back to uneasy silence. They drifted as she searched the shoreline, but it was impossible to distinguish shadow from shadow.

  “I know you’re there.” She was surprised at how calm she sounded. She certainly didn’t feel calm. “Show yourself.”

  For a time, nothing happened. She became hyperaware of Denan’s gaze. She could not live in a world where he was a monster. Nor could she let anyone kill him. But if her plan worked, she was forcing him to live that exact scenario in her place. She could think of no greater cruelty.

  “I have a bargain to make,” she said.

  Silence stretched so long she despaired that it was too late. That the wraiths no longer needed her bargain. Then she felt a sudden wrongness—the taste of death in her mouth, the dirt of an old grave crumbling beneath her fingertips. Even the lampent’s dim light seemed weaker.

  Directly before her, the darkness became a living thing—a thing that sucked away all light and joy, leaving hatred and corruption. She couldn’t make out the telling features of the individual wraiths, but she knew it was Ramass. It was always Ramass.

  Tam drew his sword.

  Larkin leaned forward, one hand braced on the gunwale, the other gripping her sword. “Break the curse, restore the mulgars, and I will come with you.”

  A horrible sound, like the grinding of broken glass. It couldn’t be . . . Had the wraith actually laughed? “That was not our bargain.”

  She lifted her chin. “It is now.”

  More wraiths materialized from the shadows, their conversation the sound of a dark spell being cast.

  “My king,” Vicil said. “She can’t hold the dome forever. Let us take her through the shadows.”

  “We already tried that,” Hagath’s more feminine voice responded.

  “She has to come willingly,” Rature agreed.

  Larkin hadn’t known the wraiths were at odds about this. Their discord gave her hope that she really might pull this off.

  Vicil stepped toward the shore. “If we can’t force her through the shadows, let our mulgars transport her over land. Kill the man.”

  “Not if I kill you first,” Tam growled.

  “I can hold this dome until dawn.” She was almost certain that she could.

  “You think we cannot take you another way?” Vicil asked. “Eventually, our mulgars will sweep over the wall and—”

  “I’ll kill myself before you ever touch me!” she cried. Even the torn shadows of the wraiths’ cloaks went still, and she knew she’d found her leverage. Because this time, they believed her. “Break the curse. It’s the only way you’ll ever have me.”

  “My king—” Hagath began.

  “Enough!” Ramass shouted at the other wraiths. Thoroughly cowed, they stepped back. Ramass faced her. “Yourself for the mulgars. That is my only bargain. Reject it and my army will overpower your city within the week and mankind will no longer exist.”

  She could see it. Mulgars swarming the wall and out of the water. Men, women, children, dying. Like Valynthia, the Alamant would become a city of the dead. Dread seeped like poison from the top of her head all the way to her feet. But still, she couldn’t move. And then she realized why.

  I don’t want to die.

  The wraiths would use her for some evil purpose. And she could not allow herself to be used. Which meant she would take her own life, one way or another.

  I don’t want to die.

  “You don�
��t have to do this,” Tam whispered. He glared at the wraiths. “How did you know the White Tree would die today?”

  “Because Maisy poisoned her with my blood, and through her, your sister,” Ramass said. “The same day she killed your king.”

  It had been poison, after all. Larkin’s heart dropped, and she thought she might vomit. “The forest take you.” Had her sister survived the tree’s death or had they lost her as well?

  Larkin sensed rather than saw movement. Faint light appeared from within the folds of Ramass’s robes, revealing a crushed lampent, one that emitted a poisonous green light between mailed fingers—light that gleamed off the points of Ramass’s crown. Three figures stepped up beside him, their faces cast in shadow.

  “Will you not save them, Larkin?” Ramass moved to rest the lampent beneath one of their faces.

  Venna. Tined black lines etched eyes that were all back. The girl had been soft in all the right ways. Unsure. Lonely. Now she was a monster. Something inside Larkin broke all over again. Something she’d thought had been healed. Ramass moved, the light leaving Venna’s face.

  Now Ramass lit up Talox’s chin.

  “Talox.” The word slipped from Tam’s lips, a plea and prayer both.

  An ardent, Talox’s skin was free of the black marks. But he’d added fresh injuries to the old ones. His shoulder hitched unnaturally, likely disjointed in the battle. An injury that would cause even the strongest to weep with pain. And yet he hadn’t even bothered to put it back in place. Instead, he stared at her with such indifference that she wanted to weep.

  Ramass moved on, returning Talox to the shadows. The third face opened a fresh wound in Larkin’s heart. A wound that pulsed hot and hard. She gasped at the sight of her father. At the unnatural markings and black eyes. Whatever sins he’d committed, Harben paid for them tenfold. And at his end, instead of the natural death that came for them all, he’d become something far worse.

  The clouds passed beyond the moon; the light illuminated thousands and thousands of faces. Marred skin and black eyes filled with a predatory watchfulness. Larkin’s body screamed at her to retreat from the enormity of the corruption—the wrongness—before her. A wrongness made so much worse by the expectation in their eyes. She would take their hatred—Ancestors, give her their hatred—rather than their expectation.