Klaus was alive. He had to be.
Echoing footsteps caused her heart to pick up speed, and then a Järenchki appeared before her. Long dark hair, pale ivory horns.
There were shadows beneath Vojtech’s eyes. He looked frailer than she had ever seen.
“Klaus.” The word was a prayer on her lips.
Vojtech swallowed, and she did not move her hand from her heart, trying to keep it in one mangled piece.
Vojtech nodded, slowly.
She gasped again, as if she couldn’t breathe. She shook her head.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head more frantically. “No.” She took a great gulp of air, pressing as hard as she could against her chest. “NO!” Her voice broke with the scream.
Vojtech nodded again, solemnly. His eyes were shining.
But he had never cared for Klaus. He had done nothing as the Praeminister slit his throat, as Zephir held him. She had offered herself to the Praeminister to give Vojtech a chance to free Klaus, to save him.
The realization made her heart nearly stop as she still tried to hold it together, tried to keep it from breaking.
And Vojtech hadn’t come to her aid either. Not while the Praeminister had broken her foot, made her kneel, wrenched her head back. Made her watch her best friend die.
It wasn’t Vojtech who had saved her.
It was Rhodri.
“We have a lot to discuss,” Vojtech said softly. “The Holy War is coming. And I see you met…another like me. But now is not the time to bombard you.” He winced as he glanced at where her foot lay, under the sheets. “I’m so sorry, Scarko, for our loss.”
Our loss.
It wasn’t his, she thought bitterly. It was hers. Yezedi’s.
You think he needs you to guard him? Those words again from Rhodri.
“Zephir?” she managed to ask before Vojtech looked as if he would turn away. Perhaps he had at least taken care of that problem.
A shadow crossed his face. “He got away. And besides, as you know, you must kill him. I’m surprised that Rhodri didn’t tell you as much himself, while you were losing all of your morals in Kezda.” He left the infirmary without another word, and she let him.
Klaus.
Her heart fractured a little more. He hadn’t even gotten to watch the Praeminister die. At the hands of Rhodri. Not Vojtech. Not her. Rhodri.
Who had taken her here, she wondered? And where had Rhodri gone?
He had told her once before, if she ever changed her mind about leaving Kezda, to let him know. What about leaving the Order? What about leaving Vojtech? And how could she possibly let him know when she couldn’t even move from the bed, not without too much time and a lot of effort?
Where was Yezedi?
As if right on cue, Yezedi came bursting through the infirmary doors, her long braids trailing behind her as she stalked to Scarko’s bed. She was dressed in the deep red of the Eldmat’s cloak. Scarko glanced down at her own clothes. A white gown, standard in the infirmary. She ground her teeth but lifted her head to meet Yezedi’s hazel eyes.
They were full of pain, and she looked as if she had only just stopped crying. But it didn’t stop her from placing her hands on her hips.
“I assume you want out of this bed?”
Scarko nodded. “How long have I been under?”
“Three days.” Yezedi grimaced. “We had to use your blood to come back here, to resurrect, as we didn’t have the luxury of looking for horses in the chaos.” She shrugged. “It drained you.”
“Klaus—”
Yezedi nodded, eyes blinking furiously. “I said penance for you. Lashings, the fun way.” She didn’t speak of Klaus.
Scarko felt her eyes prick with wetness. “We’ve had enough penance.”
“That’s debatable.” Yezedi’s eyes cleared, and her face was unreadable for a moment as she sat down gingerly on Scarko’s bed. Her slight frame barely made a dent. She was careful to avoid her foot. “Zephir got away…” Scarko didn’t bother telling her she already knew, she needed to hear what had happened, “…to run back to his little friends, I suppose.”
Scarko raised a brow. There was barely any menace in Yezedi’s words.
Yezedi sighed and took Scarko’s good hand in her own warm one. Her next words were whispered: “There’s a prophecy, did you know? From the Nacht Lands?”
Scarko pulled her hand away, and shook her head. “I don’t want to hear anymore of Vojtech’s fairy tales.” Even if Zephir has suggested a link between them, even if Rhodri was from there.
Yezedi’s eyes narrowed. “This is….” She swallowed hard. “Klaus told me. While you were away, and we were prepping and stocking weapons to attack the palace while the king was gone, after you came back. Which you didn’t. Not until we got you.”
Scarko stared at her incredulously. “I know that I fucked up, and I don’t want to hear about any fairy—”
“The prophecy,” Yezedi continued, a hard edge to her words, “speaks of a girl with a blood gift and a boy with a blood curse. One will help win the war in the mortal lands,” she gestured around them, “able to raise an entire host of horned creatures to fight against their enemy.”
Scarko stopped breathing.
“It was foretold nearly 600 years ago. For a second Holy War.”
Yezedi’s hazel eyes bore into hers. “By the Priestess of the Northern Nacht Kingdom, under the control of the Queen of Winter.”
Scarko narrowed her eyes.
“Unable to be spoken of by any from the Nacht Lands.”
Rhodri. Vojtech.
“And the prophecy continues. Only one can live, and the other must die at the survivor’s hands before the war can begin.”
Scarko blinked.
“Zephir wanted Vojtech for revenge. But perhaps he, too, knows of the prophecy. Perhaps the king had Zephir under his command. To help the King win the war. The king,” Yezedi sighed, “who is now away with his son, trying to find some dark bit of magic to give them our gifts.”
Scarko shook her head. No wonder the prince had stayed in the carriage; the king hadn’t wanted to risk him, hadn’t wanted to risk the abomination he would turn him into. What role did Rhodri play in this? Rhodri had saved her. She could still hear his roar bellowing through the forest. As if he had cared. But why would he? What was she to him? What did she play for him? Did he want to win this war for himself somehow?
Zephir. The king.
“I need to speak to Vojtech.” Scarko made her words hard, and Yezedi blinked. She felt a pang of guilt at her friend’s confusion, after she had revealed to her a missing piece of the puzzle, of Rhodri, of Zephir, of Vojtech’s orders.
“Scarko, he is busy preparing for war—”
“I don’t care. Surely he can spare a minute of his time.”
Yezedi bit her lip, then nodded. As she left the infirmary, she glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t forget your penance.”
Scarko resisted the urge to scream.
Vojtech came a long time later, when the sun had set beyond the windows of the infirmary. She tried not to let it wound her as she waited alone in the bed, healers in white occasionally bustling in and out, checking her warmth, feeding her blood. Not Vojtech’s. She, apparently, did not deserve that now.
But at last, when Vojtech came sweeping in, black robes behind him, she sat up, slowly, achingly. But she sat. And Vojtech merely glared down at her.
She took a shaky breath. “I have to kill Zephir because of a prophecy? From a priestess in the Nacht Lands?”
Vojtech’s eyes widened, just slightly. He bit his lip, crossed his thin arms over his chest. Slowly, almost painfully, he nodded. As if the curse that had bidden him to silence was hard to work around.
“To help you win the war?”
Another nod.
“Was I ever anything more to you?”
Vojtech arched a brow. “More?”
She felt a blush creep up her neck, thought of his horns scraping down her chest
in the house in Kezda. But then another, darker thought pushed through her mind. He had done nothing while Klaus died. The very thought of him, his blue eyes, that ever-present smile, made her heart ache. She forced the thought away.
“You…you tricked me.” It sounded so infantile, and yet, it was the truth.
Vojtech had the audacity to smile. “Tricked? Has Rhodri been filling your head full of lies so he could fuck you?”
She stiffened at the disgust mingled with contempt on his face. He took a step closer, ran a pale finger along her bare arm, beneath the edges of the white infirmary gown. She shivered at his touch, but there was no longing, only a flash of anger.
He clutched her wrist in his fingers. “Rhodri has always hated me.”
“You told me that the rest of you, the Järenchki, were buried beneath the Palace.”
He nodded, his fingers still around her wrist. “And so they are. And so you will help me raise them, after we win the war. After you murder Zephir. After we stop the King from finding a way to turn his son into one of us.”
“Does the king know?” She didn’t need to add of the prophecy. Of the Nacht Lands.
“That’s how Zephir knows. That’s why the Praeminister kept you at his side. You think it’s because he enjoyed you?” His words were harsh, and she flinched. “You think it’s because he liked having you as a pet? Although,” Vojtech frowned, looking thoughtful, “perhaps he did.” He sighed and let go of her wrist. “I wouldn’t know what that was like.”
Scarko felt as if he had gutted her.
“Why Zephir didn’t kill you, I’m not sure. You, with your mortal bones, so easy to break.” He glanced at her foot, beneath the infirmary sheets, “You, with your willingness to set off through the Skov on your own, to kill a street fighter, with nothing more than my word—”
“You said the gods—”
He smiled. “The gods did indeed grant me a vision. A vision that you, in all your stumbling inadequacy, would be able to find him easily. That he would fall into your lap if you went when I said. And he did, didn’t he? But neither of you could kill the other, no doubt mooning over your dead families.”
She felt her heart fracturing. Vojtech had protected her, had saved her.
“You think I let you live, promoted you to my personal guard,” he said the word with a sneer, “because you were so talented? Scarko, you can barely wield a sword. No. What you can do is fulfill the prophecy, hand me the war, give me the Royal throne once more.”
No. No. No.
“Don’t look so down, Scarko,” his voice was nearly a purr. “I still very much admire you.”
Rhodri had said Vojtech was selfish, had said he had created the Holy Writ to ease his guilt. But what guilt? Looking up at him, Scarko saw nothing of guilt on his face. Nothing at all. Only coldness. Only the man who had let Klaus die, had let her into the Praeminister’s clutches in the prison, had not even sprung her out himself.
He sighed again. “I’ll let you…take that in. Don’t call for me again, not unless Zephir falls dead in your lap.”
He left without looking back as her heart broke.
23
Chains Can Be Fun
No one else was in the infirmary. She had been poked and prodded during the day. During the night, she’d been awoken for samples of her blood, to be given blood, and to hear only her own ragged breaths; not from physical pain, no, even her foot no longer throbbed as it had. But from the hole in her chest.
When the sun came up once more, and Yezedi appeared before her bed, she was not ready to speak.
“It’s time for the Sacrament,” Yezedi said quietly, as if she could see the pain on her friend’s face. Scarko’s mouth twisted into a grimace, and she made to tell her friend off, to roar at her to leave. But Yezedi leaned closer to Scarko, speaking into her ear. “Rhodri is here.” Scarko’s breath caught. Yezedi continued, “Vojtech does not know. I questioned him. He has his own interests in this game, being Lord of the Southern Nacht Lands. But Scarko…”
She held her breath, Lord of the Southern Nacht Lands.
Yezedi dipped her head lower, her breath grazing Scarko’s ear.
“Rhodri killed the Praeminister. Vojtech…” Scarko’s heart squeezed again. “Vojtech watched as the vile man broke your bones.”
She didn’t have time to contemplate the meaning of her words before Yezedi spoke again. “I’m going to take you to the dungeon. We’re going for Sacrament, alone, and to pay tribute to…” She didn’t say his name, but Scarko understood.
And before she could ask questions, Yezedi leapt off the bed, and swept Scarko into her arms like a child, as if she were nothing.
Scarko’s eyes went wide and Yezedi huffed a laugh. “I’m stronger than I look, prick.”
Scarko smiled, a reflex. “No one has ever called me a prick before.”
They met no one on their way to the dungeon, as everyone was busy with Sacrament. It wasn’t until Yezedi gently deposited her against the wall so she could get her bearings on one foot, that Scarko realized she had been holding her breath, waiting to hear Vojtech’s voice behind them, halting them.
The dungeon smelled of blood, and Scarko saw nothing as she swept the dim place with her eyes. A small flame had appeared in Yezedi’s palm.
And then a voice spoke behind them. “Hello, princess.”
She kept her grip on the wall and turned, away from the staircase into the dim, cavernous dungeon. Away from the manacles in the wall for prisoners. For torture. Yezedi was quiet behind her, her flame flickering softly across Rhodri’s features. His silver-flecked eyes glowed, as did his hair, dark streaks of midnight blue entwined around his horns of the same color. He had his hands in the pockets of dark pants.
A soft smile played on his lips. “Good to see you are doing well.” Even as his eyes flickered to her foot, held just above the ground, and her face, no doubt still bruised.
“What do you want?” Scarko inquired.
Rhodri turned to Yezedi, who nodded. “I take it Yezedi told you of the…prophecy?” The last word seemed forced out, and Scarko wondered if it was as close as he could get to speaking of it.
Slowly, she nodded. “She did. What of it?” Her voice did not sound like her own. She had not forgotten Vojtech’s words to her, his admission. That he had never truly cared for her. Had not forgotten Klaus’s blood seeping from his throat like smooth, red water. Vojtech had done nothing.
Rhodri’s eyes narrowed, cold seeping from the silver of them. “Your Djavul did nothing to help you or your friend in the forest.”
Her heart constricted at the thought of Klaus. “Why did you? What’s your interest in this?”
“I have a great many interests in this. Including for your safety.”
“I will never be safe.”
Rhodri smiled his cold smile. “Perhaps not, princess,” he purred. “But within these walls, you are only to be used. Aren’t you done with that?”
Scarko said nothing, felt his words tug at her heart.
He sighed. “I don’t wish to keep you in chains.” His gaze flickered to the chains behind her and Yezedi. “Although, chains…can be fun.”
Scarko waited for that familiar blush to come over her face as he tried to lighten the mood, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. She did not take her eyes from his face. “I drink blood.” She hated that it sounded like a confession.
He dipped his head. “I know.”
“You’re not repulsed?”
He huffed a laugh and dipped his head once more, for another reason. “I’m the one with horns, Scarko.”
She waited, and he realized what for when he blinked in mild surprise. “I don’t eat bones. That craving went away in the Nacht Lands. Hasn’t returned since.”
“I don’t trust you.” She didn’t trust anyone, except, perhaps, Yezedi.
He shook his head, straightened from leaning against the wall and crossed his arms. She did not forget the feeling of his dark magic running through her
veins. She tensed, but nothing came. Neither, she realized, did her fear.
“Give me your hand.”
She remained still, her eyes searching his. What for, she wasn’t sure. “You are a lord?”
He grinned. “Handsome as I am, what did you expect?”
Yezedi cleared her throat behind them.
“Give me your hand,” he persisted, quieter this time.
“Why.” It wasn’t a question so much as a resignation.
“I will show you what you want to know.”
Carefully, she extended a hand to him, and her foot wobbled, the one holding her weight. He caught her in his arms, clutching her around the shoulders.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered, his own eyes going to Yezedi as he nodded, to tell her it was okay. To tell her she was okay.
But she wasn’t. And as she closed her eyes, she wondered if she’d ever be okay again.
And then, through the darkness behind her closed eyes, she heard his voice. The same one she had been hearing in her head since they first met in the Skov forest, since he had ran his finger down her bloodied palm. Cariad. The thought shocked her.
Watch and listen.
She did, but only blackness greeted her.
And then…the image shifted, and as she panicked, the voice in her head told her to trust, to relax, to heal. She saw herself trembling before him in the Skov forest, saw him, as if watching from a distance, saw him yank her hand toward him, run a finger in her blood. Then he was gone, and she set off on the wolf. But then the vision went back to him, watching her leave. He put his finger in his mouth, the one with her blood. And a bond was pulled taut between them.
She remembered when he had taken her hand, examined the blood. Called her a mess. She had thought he meant to taunt her, to tease her. To hurt her.
She was a mess. But through that blood he had taken, he had been able to speak to her, and now, he was showing her what she needed to know to make a decision.
The scene from the Skov dissolved again, and she saw a faraway land, beautiful, white, cold, in what she instinctively knew to be the Northern Nacht Land. And then it shifted again, and she was inside an ornate room, gilded gold and red. There was a woman, the Priestess, long black hair down her back, in a crimson robe, down on her knees, eyes wide and opened to the heavens, her lips moving quietly in a language Scarko knew she didn’t know and yet understood.
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