“I don’t want to fight you. Give me the girl and I’ll leave without bloodshed,” Reyker beseeched him.
“You’d best kill me, boy. If you don’t, I’ll tell Draki where you are, who you’re with, and what you’ve done.”
They spoke no more. There was grunting, the clash of weapons. A body hit the floor. Ulver dragged me to the passage to look. Reyker was bent over Einar, whose chest bore a gaping wound. He stared at his dead friend, his face pale.
Ulver chuckled.
Reyker hurtled toward us, and Ulver wrenched my head back, his fangs hovering just above my skin. “Don’t come any closer, lordling bastard. I can tear out her throat faster than you can swing that axe.”
“Not if you want to live.” Every muscle in Reyker’s body tensed, ready to spring.
“You think you can kill me, little lordling?” Ulver grinned. “I know what you are. A rebel. A deserter. Draki should have let me take your head that day, but he had such hopes for you. I told him you’d turn out worthless and spineless like your father.”
The axe trembled in Reyker’s hands. “Tell me what you want, Ulver.”
“I have everything I want. I have the Sword of the Dragon at my mercy over a pretty little bitch on this island of mongrels.” Ulver’s breath crawled across my cheek. “I’ll drain her slowly, one slice at a time, and I’ll make sure you live long enough to watch the light in her eyes fade. Her last thought before she dies will be how you failed to save her. Just like your mother.”
Reyker’s eyes darkened with a mindless fury that was as frightening as Ulver’s threat. An eerie calm settled over him. “The girl is not mine. She belongs to Draki.”
A tremor ran through Ulver. “You’re lying.”
“See for yourself. She is marked.”
Ulver shifted me, peering behind my ear. When he saw the scar, he went rigid. “Stjorna af Drakin.”
Star of the Dragon. I was just one shiny dot in the constellation of girls Draki collected.
“Do you know what the warlord does to men who try to steal his property?” Reyker asked. “Have you seen their bodies? Or what’s left of them, by the time he’s finished?”
“I barely touched her,” Ulver protested, shoving me aside. I landed on my hands and knees on the cave floor.
The axe tore the air as Reyker leaped.
Ulver dodged a half-second before the blade reached him, and it slammed into rock in a drizzle of sparks. As Reyker spun, Ulver drew his axe, and they crashed against each other, weapons and bodies colliding, stumbling from one side of the cave to the other.
I scrambled out of their way.
The two of them sliced and ducked and chased, knocking into the walls, a hair’s breadth from maiming one another. Ulver was brawny, with monstrous, clumsy strength. Reyker was agile and swift, possessed by unearthly ferocity. They seemed a near-even match.
Between swings, they threw punches and kicks. They weren’t just fighting to kill—this grudge ran deep, forged years ago in the blood of Reyker’s kinsmen. They wanted to tear each other to pieces.
They didn’t notice me pick up the broken spear.
Ulver thrust a kick into Reyker’s knee. He staggered. Another kick sent him to the floor. With Ulver bearing down on him, he rolled onto his back, bracing the axe handle across his chest to protect his body from the Dragonman’s falling blade. The handle cracked, absorbing the blow.
With another strike, it would snap.
Before Ulver swung again, I stabbed the spear into his ribs. He roared, turning to aim his weapon at me.
Reyker’s axe lodged into Ulver’s thigh. The Dragonman screamed.
Grabbing his arm, Reyker planted his foot on Ulver’s chest and rocked backward. Ulver flew over Reyker’s head and hit the ground, his weapon skidding away. In an instant, Reyker was up and the axe was in his hands. He raised it high, brought it down fast.
Bone crunched. Blood flowed.
Reyker stared at the blade protruding from Ulver’s skull, fingers clenching the axe handle. His chest heaved, his breath came in rapid bursts. I counted to fifty. To a hundred. Nothing changed. Reyker didn’t blink, loosen his grip, or catch his breath.
I called his name.
Savage Reyker answered, baring his teeth. His eyes looked but didn’t see. He was lost.
“Reyker.” I stroked his cheek, and he flinched. “It’s over. Let go.” I ran my hands down his arms, coaxing his locked fingers to release the axe. The second he did, he grabbed me, shoving my back against the rock. His eyes were dark pools, unfocused.
“I’m not afraid of you. You aren’t going to hurt me.” I took hold of his face. “Remember the elk, Reyker. Your parents, Lagor and Katrin. Vaknavangur. Remember who you are.”
Moments passed. I felt his body start to relax. His breath came more naturally. Life slowly seeped back into his eyes. I kept whispering his name.
Finally, he looked at me. Saw me. He slumped to his knees, arms slipping around my waist, burying his face against my stomach. I combed my fingers through his hair. We stayed that way for a time, silent, holding each other.
When he drew back, I sat beside him. “Did he hurt you?” Reyker asked.
“He didn’t get the chance.” I looked over at Sloane and the other sentry. My corpse would have lain next to theirs if Reyker hadn’t come. I wanted to throw my arms around him, show him how grateful I was, but something the executioner had said was bothering me. “Ulver called you Sword of the Dragon. What did he mean?”
Reyker lowered his head until his hair swept across his face, hiding it. “What happens to me when I fight, my people call battle-madness. When I was a Dragonman, Draki used me. He filled me with hatred for him, and then pointed me at his enemies. I lost control. I killed everyone in my way. Over and over Draki did this. He called me his sword.”
A weapon, fallen into the wrong hands, the mystic had said of Reyker.
“You aren’t his sword anymore.” I saw the invader in Reyker when he fought, but the man sitting next to me now was different. Kind, pensive—the man whose soul I knew inside and out, in all its ugliness and beauty.
“No. You gave me new life.” He lifted his eyes to mine. There was naked fear in them, like he was curled in my palm and I could crush him if I chose. “I am your sword now, Lira.”
You wield the lost sword of the Frozen Sun. A weapon of the Ice Gods in the hands of the Green Gods’ soul-reader.
I ran my fingertips over the black flames of his warrior-mark. “I don’t care who you were. I know who you are, Reyker. My friend. My wolf.” And so much more, so many things I had no words for.
I touched my mouth to his. Reyker pulled me closer and I sank against him, my arms slipping behind his neck. His hands stroked the length of my spine, settled in the small of my back. I felt the rise and fall of his chest with every breath, the pounding of his heart vibrating between my breasts.
He pulled away too soon, shaking his head. “Not here.” He glanced at the pools of blood, the dead bodies. “When I kiss you more it will be in a beautiful place.”
I thought of gallows and dungeons, of homes burnt to ash and blood soaking into snow. “There’s nothing beautiful left.”
“There is,” he promised. “We will find it. You will see.”
Reyker kneeled beside Einar’s body, chanting a quiet prayer. I did the same for Sloane; he’d died a warrior’s death, given his life to protect mine, and I hoped he dined tonight in the Eternal Palace.
Though it was nearly nightfall, we thought it better to take our chances in the open desert rather than staying in the cave and risking more invaders returning to it. I found my knife, lying where Ulver had dropped it, and strapped the sheath to my thigh. We gathered supplies from the invaders’ stock, bundling food and weapons—I took a short sword, light enough for me to wield, and belted it around my waist—then the two of us stepped out of the
cave into the cool evening air. I reached for Reyker’s hand.
Together we climbed the knoll. At the top, we scanned the empty moor. No horses. Wraith, Reyker’s mount, the Dragonmen’s—all of them had vanished.
“Where do we go?” Reyker asked. “Do we try for Houndsford again?”
My answer was swift. “No. To Aillira’s Temple.” I’d been thinking on it since meeting Sursha at the stronghold, and being attacked by Westlanders in the Silverspires and the Green Desert had shored up my resolve. “They’ve hidden behind their walls long enough. There are women at the temple who have powers to rival the greatest warriors. If Glasnith is to defeat the Dragonmen, the Daughters of Aillira must come forward to help.” I could only hope they’d listen to my plea, since I was one of their own.
The Green Desert was massive, and I wasn’t sure which direction the temple was from here, so I headed toward the horizon. Deeper into the wasteland.
“How did you find me?” I asked as we walked. “Did you track Wraith here?”
“I followed this.” Reyker ran his finger along my skoldar, and my skin seemed to sigh. “After I cut my mark into you, I sealed your wound with my blood. Your skoldar links you to me through blood magic. The night my ship was attacked by the Brine Beast, I felt your presence the closer we sailed to Glasnith. When you found me in the harbor, it was like there was a cord stretching between us. If I focus hard enough, it pulls me toward you.”
That’s why the scar responded to his touch. Maybe it was why my experiences reading his soul were so different. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think I was like Draki. I didn’t mark you to claim you. I just wanted to keep you safe from the warlord, and it was all I had to give you.”
“Is that … is that why you have feelings for me? Because we’re linked—”
“No,” he said before I could finish. “I care for you because of who you are to me.”
“And who is that?”
His eyes burned into mine. “Someone willing to listen with her heart, to find the man inside the beast. The girl who pulled me from the water, who saved me from her father’s sword. The woman who walks in my soul and drew me out of its darkness.”
His words struck the cold block of guilt that had been lodged inside me since the day my mother died—cracking it, thawing it. For the first time, I let myself believe her sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. Because if I truly meant this much to Reyker, then my life mattered.
The desert was silent, save the occasional baying of coywolves, the whistling screech of catamounts. The moon rose high and full, a fulgent white lily blooming in a dead black garden. Hours crawled by as we searched for a settlement, someone to give us directions or aid us in acquiring a horse. A few times we came across abandoned tents, the remnants of a campfire, horses’ hoofprints. It was as if every nomad in the desert was hiding.
I couldn’t stop thinking of the attack in the Silverspires, wondering if Draki was here, in the desert somewhere. My head began to ache. The scar behind my ear itched.
We stopped to rest at a rocky outcrop. I drank deeply from the waterskin and passed it to Reyker. “We’ll split up when we reach Taloorah,” I said. “You can camp in the woods while I enter the temple.”
“No. We stay together.”
I scratched at my scar. “The temple guards will kill you on sight.”
“We’ll find a way. I won’t be parted from you again. It’s not safe.”
“Reyker, the Dragonmen are everywhere. On the coasts, in the mountains, hiding in caves in the desert. Nowhere is safe for either of us.”
He touched the axe at his hip. “When I kill Draki, we will be safe.”
“And if he kills you?” I put my head in my hands. “You bloody men are all the same, caring more about your battles than your own lives or the people who’ll be hurt by your deaths.”
Reyker pulled my hands away, peering at my face. “Are you sick?”
My vision blurred, and I closed my eyes against the drums beating between my temples. It felt like someone’s fingers were inside my skull, trying to rip it open.
When I opened my eyes, I saw silver hair. Greenish-gold irises.
I lurched to my feet and backed away, until a wall trapped me. I turned, expecting to see the rocky hillside, but it was a solid sheet of blue ice. It stretched out on all sides, rising above my head. An ice cave.
“Little warrior.”
I drew my sword, but Draki knocked it away. He grabbed my hair with one hand. With the other, he slid his fingertip along the scar he’d made behind my ear, and it pulsed with cold.
I heard Reyker call my name from far away. The skoldar on my wrist tingled. I blinked, and it was Reyker in front of me, gripping my arms. “Lira?”
“He’s here!” I glanced around in confusion, seeing only rocks and hills. “Draki.”
Another spike slammed into my skull.
Reyker vanished.
Draki pressed me flat against the ice. “I wait for you.”
“Get off me!”
“You called me here.” He leaned in close. “You want me to release you from your noble choices, so you can taste the freedom of abandoning everything that holds you back.”
“I hate you. I want nothing from you.”
“I can break your chains,” he said, his breath hot against my face. “I can unleash your darkest desires. And all I ask of you is to let me in. Admit that you are mine.”
I looked to the scar on my wrist, hoping it would protect me.
Draki grabbed my wrist and squeezed, his thumb pressing painfully into my skoldar. “This cannot save you from me. He cannot save you.”
My knife. I groped for it, aiming the blade at Draki’s heart. He caught my hand, but I sliced at his biceps before he disarmed me. I struck his throat with my fist and shoved him off me, running for the mouth of the cave. It opened onto a frozen loch, and my feet slipped across its surface.
I screamed for Reyker. Where was he? Where was I?
Draki’s mark burned like icicles piercing my skin. I pressed my fingers to the scar. The ice sheet covering the loch trembled.
“Lira!”
“Reyker?” He sounded so close. There were rocks breaking through the ice, grass dotting its white expanse. Something rippled on the fringe of my vision—two halves of the same world separated by a thin, lacy veil.
Waves of pain. Like my brain was smashing itself against my skull, trying to break loose.
“You cannot run from me, little warrior,” Draki shouted merrily from the cave’s maw. “I will find you, no matter where you go.”
The ice weakened beneath me, my feet sinking up to my ankles. I pulled myself out, only to sink again, every step harder than the last. Footsteps and shouts echoed behind me. A sudden gap appeared in the air before me, revealing the steep hills of the Green Desert. I hurried toward it, my only means of escape.
A sharp crack, and the ice broke, submerging me to my waist. My limbs were dead weight, my skirts floating around me. I couldn’t move.
Draki was coming. He would catch me.
I sank deeper.
My hand was captured in a strong grip, my palm pressed flat to warm skin.
“You’re safe, Lira.” Reyker’s thoughts caress me, calming me. “Draki isn’t here. He’s only in your head.”
“No, he found me, Reyker. He came after me.”
“Draki’s not here, I swear to you. Whatever you saw wasn’t real. If you get confused, listen to me. Look at me. Trust me. Now, come out.”
My hand slipped from Reyker’s chest. I was in his lap, his arms around me. “Lira?”
Rocks rattled inside my head, making me dizzy.
I was in Draki’s lap. Silver hair falling across his shoulders, teeth flashing in his glorious face. “You lie to yourself. I know you wait
for me, as I wait for you. It won’t be long now.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Reyker’s whispers brushed my ear, soothing me. He held my hands firmly in his. I took a shaky breath and tried again.
The world came back into focus.
Draki was gone. Two mounted riders circled us, their spears and arrows aimed at Reyker, threatening to kill him if he didn’t let me go. One was a Bog Man, his clothes caked with mud. The other was a young woman with bronze skin and oval-shaped eyes, like the Sanddune natives sold as thralls in the Auk Isles.
“Stop!” I sat up, spreading my arms wide, putting myself between Reyker and the riders. “He’s not hurting me. He’s my friend. Please, lower your weapons.”
“This yeetozurri is your friend?” the woman asked in a lilting accent. “Your screams say otherwise. Who are you? What are you doing in my desert?”
“Lira of—” No. Not of Stone, not anymore. “I’m Lira, and this is Reyker. We were attacked by Dragonmen. We’re lost, and our horses—” I noticed the mount she rode, his smoke-gray coat, his brand matching the one on Reyker’s neck. “That’s my horse.”
“And mine,” Reyker said, pointing.
They had three other horses with them, tied to the ones they rode—Reyker’s, and the horses Ulver and Einar had stolen from the Sons of Stone.
“They were no one’s horses when we claimed them.” The woman’s brows rose. “Your name is Lira? Like the first god-gifted daughter of Glasnith?”
“Yes.”
She shared a look with the Bog Man, and they lowered their weapons. “It seems you are a long way from home. I am Zabelle, and my companion here is Mago. This desert belongs to us—to all the nomads. If you seek aid, there is a safe place I can take you. But him …” Her eyes slanted toward Reyker. “His kind does not deserve shelter. They invade our desert, seize our camps, rape and slaughter and steal.”
Reyker shook his head. “I’m not your enemy. If you help us, I’ll prove it.”
“It’s true,” I said. “He’s not one of them. I swear it on my life.” The two of us stood, our hands clasped together.
Beasts of the Frozen Sun Page 21
