We all stood silent. I looked from Lyriana to Jax, but neither had anything to say. Zell’s words had taken the fight right out of all us. Zell tossed Jax a skinning knife, and Lyriana turned away. As Jax hunkered over the doe and set to work, Zell stood up and walked off toward the thick trees at the edge of the camp. And I couldn’t help myself in following him.
“Was that a Zitochi prayer?” I asked. “Something to honor your Gods before you eat?” I was trying to impress him. Why was I trying to impress him?
Zell glanced back at me. “No. I just made it up because it sounded like the kind of thing you’d want to hear.” I saw something in his face I’d never seen before, a knowing glint in his eyes and the tiniest hint of a playful smirk. Then he stalked off into the trees.
I watched him go, wordless, and felt my cheeks burn and my heart quicken, like it had down in the tunnels. What was it with me and this guy? How did I keep being so wrong about him? And why did I even care?
Zell hopped nimbly over a log and vanished into the mist. I shook my head, let out a deep breath, and turned back to the camp.
“Come on, Miles,” I said. “Let’s get a fire going.”
MY STOMACH FULL, I SLEPT through the day like a baby and only woke up around sunset. I shifted from my huddled ball on the grass and sat up, blinking in the grove. The sky was a dull orange, the sun almost out of sight, coloring the whole world as if we were looking at it through a pane of stained glass. Jax was off by the horses, setting up our bags. Lyriana was still asleep in the hollow of the tree.
But it was Zell who caught my eye, which, given that he was shirtless, was not all that surprising. He stood in the center of the grove, and my eyes wandered over his toned back, his lean and sinewy arms, his taut stomach with just a few dark hairs trailing down to his pelvis. But it wasn’t how he looked that had caught my attention (just most of it). It was how he moved.
Zell had his eyes shut and a look of perfect, serene calm on his face. In his left hand, he held one of the swords we’d taken from the Dolan brothers, the one with the purple stone in its pommel. In his right, he held a dagger, and its sleek metal sparkled in the orange light. He breathed in slowly and deeply, his whole chest rising. Then he moved, and it was more graceful than anything I’d ever seen. His eyes still shut, he weaved around the grove, his sword spinning in a blur of motion, his stance constantly shifting and adjusting. He would turn to strike behind, then duck low, then thrust his back out, angling himself so flat at the waist he almost bent in half. It was like he was fighting a dozen invisible enemies, sure, but it somehow seemed effortless, elegant, like a river flowing against rocks. This was a practiced series of movements, almost like a dance, and it was just as captivating to watch. In Castle Waverly, everyone always said the Zitochi were simple, crude warriors who had no technique and couldn’t appreciate beauty. But this most definitely had technique, more technique than I’d ever seen our soldiers use, and a hell of a lot of beauty, too.
Zell finished with a lunge, a roll, and a graceful spin that left both blades outstretched. He stood there like that, eyes still shut, sweat trickling down his heaving shoulders and chest. Then he shifted back to the original position and started again.
“He’s been doing this for an hour now,” Miles said. I turned back to see him squatted behind me, a handful of mushrooms in his hand. “What do you make of it?”
“It’s really beautiful.”
Miles shifted, uncomfortable. “It looks nice, yeah. But would all those fancy twirls and spins really do him that much good against a six-foot knight in full armor coming at him with a broadsword?”
“Or against your mom with one of the mage-killers,” I said, and Miles was silent.
“Hey!” Jax shouted from across the glade. “Quit gawking at the Zitochi, and come get saddled up!”
Lyriana stirred in her tree, grumbling in a distinctly non-Princess-like manner. “I’d like another hour of sleep, please….”
“And I’d like to not get killed by Zell’s psycho brother when he catches up to us.” Jax clapped his hands loudly, startling Lyriana awake. “We ride. Now!”
The ride through the second night was a little better than the ride through the first one, if only because I knew it was possible to do it without dying. I could feel my night vision improving, and I was doing a better job identifying trees as trees and not as looming skeletal monsters ready to kill me. I still didn’t like all the eyes glinting at me, especially the ones that came in sets of three, two big and one little: death’s eyes, those birds were called, and the name didn’t do anything for their reputation. Sometime around the middle of the night, we came upon a slow-moving creek and had to cross it, pushing our horses knee-deep in the dark, still water. Lyriana hung on tightly to my back, her eyes shut. I put on a brave face, but my mind was spinning with images of every terrible thing that could be lurking in the water: eels or skuttlers or bonecrabs, primed and ready to attack Muriel’s legs and send us tumbling into the creek.
Oh, I’d named our horse Muriel. That’d happened, too.
There was nothing lurking in the water, or nothing that wanted to mess with us, at least. We crossed the creek without incident and pushed forward. That gave me the most confidence of all. Maybe the forest wasn’t that scary at night. Maybe the wolves and skuttlers and skarrlings were all in my head. Maybe this whole journey wouldn’t be that bad.
Then we came upon the cottage.
It was almost morning. We were all feeling tired, swaying on our horses, aching like we’d been put through a grinder. I was already imagining how good it would feel to lie down on some grass and eat some venison, when Zell abruptly jerked his horse to a stop. He threw up his hand, clenched tight into a fist, and even though he’d never taught us any codes, it was clear it meant “STOP.” We reared our horses behind him. My heart quickened. What did Zell see out there? What was about to attack us?
Then nothing attacked, and I realized Zell wasn’t looking—he was sniffing. I smelled the air, and then I got it, too, the faint but undeniable scent of smoke. Something was burning nearby, smoldering maybe, like a bonfire that had just been put out.
“A campsite, maybe?” Jax whispered. “Should we check it out?”
Behind him, Miles shook his head wildly. “Are you kidding? No, absolutely no! We should get the hell out of here!”
“Shhhh!” Zell hissed. Whatever else was going on, he clearly had a plan of his own. He slid off his horse and took a few steps forward, pushing through a large bush. He gazed out for a moment. Then he gestured for us to come join him. I looked to Jax, who just shrugged, and so we dismounted and went Zell’s way.
When we pushed through the bushes, we saw that we were up on a small hill. Down at the base of it was a wooden cottage, or at least what was left of it. It wasn’t on fire anymore, but it had been quite recently. The frame was a charred ruin, with thin columns of black smoke reaching up toward the sky like grasping fingers. Two of the walls had collapsed. Bricks were scattered everywhere. The ceiling had fallen in, giving us an eerie view in from above, like a dollhouse from a nightmare. There had been some kind of a battle here: deep rifts were cut into the standing sides of the cottage, and a pitchfork jutted out of a nearby tree.
A man lay on his stomach just behind the cottage. He was wearing a tan work shirt and had a bushy beard. Exactly the kind of stocky woodsman you’d imagine would live out here in the forest. I couldn’t make out much of his face, though, because his head had been split completely in half. Another man…no, just a boy, lay a few feet away at the base of the hill. A woodcutter’s ax was embedded in his back, just below the shoulder blades. The boy must have been trying to run away when someone threw it.
“Shit,” I whispered. Lyriana gasped. Miles turned away, looking sick.
“Bandits?” Jax whispered.
“Maybe,” Zell said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it. “I need a closer look.”
“You what?” I asked, not like it mattered. Zell was alre
ady sliding down the hill toward the ruined cottage. Before I could think better of it, I went after him, and Jax followed, despite Miles’s protests. There was something here Zell was after, something he wanted to find. And I needed to understand what it was.
From the distance, we’d only smelled smoke, but now that we were down at the cottage, there were far worse scents to deal with: blood, rot, bile, and shit. Flies buzzed around the two bodies in thick black swarms. I pulled my shirt over my nose. Jax just shook his head. “What the hell?”
I couldn’t find words for a response. I’d been to funerals, of course, but I’d never seen a body like this, all raw and bloated and rotting. It took every ounce of strength I had not to throw up everywhere.
“They were a family,” Lyriana said, her voice flat and hollow. I turned back, surprised to see her standing behind me, but there she was. She stared at the carnage with a distant look, and I could see her hands trembling. “A father and son, living out here. Chopping wood, probably to sell in town. Growing their own crops. Taking care of each other. A good life.”
I wanted to tell her to head back up the hill, but then Miles let out a horrified cry from the other side of the house. I rushed over to him, and then really wished I hadn’t. There was a woman there, the mother, and she…
She…
I turned away, my stomach roiling, my eyes burning. It was bad. Let’s leave it at that.
Lyriana stood behind me, one hand over her mouth. Zell stood next to her, and I could see the exact moment he saw the woman’s body. Something in him changed instantly. His eyes went distant for a moment, and then they lit up with fury. His nostrils flared, and he gripped the side of the house so tight that the charred wood crumbled in his fist. “That khenzar…” he snarled, and then more in Zitochi, words I couldn’t understand but I could tell weren’t good.
“Zell?” I took a step toward him. “What’s wrong?”
“My brother did this,” he hissed, as if he could barely get the words out. He was shaking, actually shaking. “He and his men. This is their work.”
“How do you know?”
He glanced up at me, and his eyes were so furious that I actually jerked back. “I just do.”
“But why?” Lyriana asked. “Why would he do this?”
“Because they defied him. Because they lied to him. Because he was bored,” Zell said through gritted teeth. “We have to go. Now. These people were killed no more than a day ago, which means my brother and his men are still nearby. We need to get into hiding and th—”
“Hey!” Jax yelled from inside the cottage. “This one’s still alive!”
We all spun his way. My brother came stumbling out through the cottage’s ruined wall, holding a young girl in his arms, maybe five or six years old. Her black hair was matted to her face with dried blood, and her clothes were soaked crimson. Jax staggered onto the grass and lay her down, and if it hadn’t been for his shouting, I would’ve thought she was dead, too. Her eyes were empty and distant, and her breath came in the weakest, tiniest gasps.
“Titans’ breath,” Lyriana whispered, and rushed over. She cradled the girl’s head in her arms and delicately lifted her shirt to see the wounds. Based on her reaction, it wasn’t good. With a sharp hiss, Lyriana began turning her hands over, clenching and unclenching her fists. Her Rings flickered green, but didn’t quite glow, like a candle failing to light in a strong wind. “I’d barely begun studying healing…” she muttered. “Come on, come on….”
Zell’s expression had shifted. He didn’t just look angry anymore. There was something else, a barely controlled panic behind his eyes. “Leave her. We have to ride. Now.”
“We can’t just let her die,” Jax said, and Lyriana didn’t even respond, just kept turning her hands and clenching her fists, over and over in desperation. Her Rings kept flickering…but they never quite glowed.
“She’ll die no matter what,” Zell barked. He was afraid now, afraid for the first time since I’d met him, and that terrified me. “And we’ll all be dead, too, if we don’t go now!”
I stepped toward him, cautiously. “Zell,” I said softly, “we have to try….”
His hand shot out and grabbed my arm, and he began pulling me back toward the hill. “No!” he screamed, and suddenly his hard, cold front cracked open, and I saw what was underneath. It wasn’t brutality or viciousness he kept buried, but fear and pain, a pain I couldn’t even begin to understand, a pain he had to fight every second to keep down or else he’d explode. He was just like the mage-killer, a tempest trapped, raging behind a calm front.
“Zell!” I shouted, as loud as I could, straight into his face. I dug in my heels and pulled my arm out of his grasp. He froze, staring at me with wild eyes. I reached out and took his hand; it was shaking in mine. “Zell,” I repeated, softer. “We can’t leave her. We just can’t.”
We stood there for a moment, his eyes blazing into mine, and I wondered if he was going to force us all back onto the road at sword-point. Then he breathed in deep and turned away without a word. He unsheathed his blades, facing the road like a vigilant statue. The message was clear.
Something split in my heart in that moment. I didn’t quite understand why, but I could tell that this was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder, just once, then turned back to the others.
The girl died half an hour later.
Lyriana had done everything she could. She’d tried dozens of different magical forms, her Rings flickering, flickering, but never glowing. After that, she’d gotten desperate and tried to do a medic’s work, cleaning the girl’s wounds and even forcing breath into her lungs. But none of it worked. Soon the girl lay there, as cold and still as the rest of her family.
Lyriana cradled her, and her arms were stained red up to the elbow. Miles and Jax stood uselessly beside the Princess, a limp bandage dangling in Miles’s hands. Lyriana was silent, breathless. Everything suddenly got much colder, and a light frost crept into the dirt by her feet. The air around her crackled and pulsed with tiny charges of magic, like we were at the heart of a lightning storm. That hot, electric smell filled the air. Her Rings pulsed a hard, icy blue.
Was this more Heartmagic? Was she about to lose control?
Lyriana turned away. The pulsing feeling vanished, and the air went back to normal. “I’m fine,” she said, forcing her voice to harden. “We bury them. With respect.”
I’d thought Zell might object to another delay, but he didn’t say a word. He was still standing guard in the road, and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t moved a muscle. So the rest of us found some shovels and dug side by side in the soft dirt. A light rain began to pour, unusually warm, and the ground steamed as the droplets hit it. Once we’d had four graves dug, Jax went to carry the bodies, but Lyriana didn’t let him. Instead, she used her Rings, gently Lifting and carrying them toward the graves, before delicately lowering them in. They almost looked peaceful, like they were floating down a river, eyes shut, soaking in the sun. After the bodies were down in their graves, Lyriana snapped her fingers together, creating four little glowing orbs of Light that hovered above the graves and then gently drifted up, over our heads, into the stars. “May they light your journey to the heavens,” Lyriana said, “where the Titans will greet you with open arms.”
I’d thought she might cry or break down again, but now she held firm, her voice just barely wavering.
I walked over to stand next to her and then, impulsively, I took her hand. Jax tossed his shovel aside and joined us, throwing his arm around my shoulders, and Miles stood awkwardly next to him until Jax threw an arm around him, too. I breathed in deep, feeling the warm rain against my skin, watching as the raindrops sparkled white in the light of the orbs above. Footsteps sounded behind me, soft and meticulous, and I glanced back to see Zell. He’d finally left his guard, I guess, and was standing right behind me, gazing up at the lights with an unreadable expression. He whispered something under his breath. I did
n’t have to ask this time if it was a Zitochi prayer.
We stood there like that, the five of us, gazing up at Lyriana’s orbs as if they were the Coastal Lights. Here we were, standing by this ruined cottage, wanted dead by the entire Province, a band of brutal mercenaries after us, and yet, in that moment, I felt…safe? Protected? Loved? I felt like I’d been out in the cold my entire life and had just for the first time stepped into a warm house with a crackling fire.
I looked around, from face to face. We all knew the same thing. We were in this together.
Until the very end.
WE RODE HARD FOR A few hours to make sure we were clear, before settling down in an overgrown, abandoned quarry. We built a weak fire in a stone pit, burning lichens and old dry twigs, and sat around it in a circle, quietly eating our venison. No one really wanted to talk, not after that. So I took the lead.
“I think it’s time you told us about your brother, Zell.”
Zell looked up. “What’s there to tell?”
“Uh, let’s start with, what in the frozen hell is wrong with him?” Jax said. “I mean, he is evil, right? You know that?”
When Zell finally responded, he spoke slowly, as if carefully selecting every word. “My brother is…different. Even as a child. We’d chase each other around the halls, like all brothers, but when he caught me, he’d always want to hit, to bite, to hurt. Then there were the animals he’d get his hands on, the dogs and cats and the rabbits. And then there was…there was…” He trailed off, swallowing hard. Did this have something to do with his reaction back at the cottage, with that panic in his eyes? What had Razz done to him?
“Zell,” I started, but he shook his head and cut me off.
“Our father is one of the greatest warriors in the history of our people. I always wanted to be like him: to vanquish my enemies, to bring glory to the Clan. But that’s what it was always about for me. Honor. Razz, though…Razz just liked to watch things suffer, to watch people bleed. The more innocent and vulnerable, the better.”
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