Drothiker

She stirred.

Her throat burned, tongue dry as a firewood.

She couldn’t breathe, her lungs and heart were coated in darkness. Her mind, her body, her soul—

She couldn’t move, couldn’t open her eyes.

She was this darkness, this horror. She’d ceased to exist.

“Faolin,” someone called her name. The voice so distant … as if she was underwater and the call had come from the surface.

But she wasn’t underwater. Water wasn’t meant to me so utterly dark … it was meant to be freezing. Anything but hard, as the rocky ground beneath her.

“Faolin.”

Faolin’s eyes cracked open, and roared agony at the onslaught of moon right atop her. They shut again.

“Dim the witchglow, Vurian,” demanded a feminine voice.

The light from behind her lids fell. “Sorry,” muttered a deep male voice. “Still learning how to control the damn thing.”

“Up, girl,” snarled the same harsh voice. Familiar—it was too familiar.

Faolin opened her eyes at the pure command and jerked up. The headrush blinded her for moments before her eyes adjusted.

“Thought you wouldn’t survive,” Levsenn grumbled from where she sat by Faolin’s legs.

Standing over her, the Lady of Wolves had a disdained look on her face. “Your task was to live,” she groused. “Not to get otherworldly darkness inside yourself, foolish girl.”

Faolin rasped, “Survived, didn’t I?” Her limbs were the weight of the mountains, darkness coated the edges of her eyes. “What’s happening?”

“I found you beside this lad,” Prime Raocete said, gesturing to Undesin leaning against the cave wall behind her, shy smile on his lips. “Scrawny little thing.” Indeed, the body seemed as if he would shrink any minute now.

“Is she—is she safe?”

Vur frowned scornfully from where he stood cross-armed between Prime Raocete and Levsenn. “No—Syrene fled. We don’t know where she went, or what she did in the arena. Levsenn and I woke up in this cave too, an hour ago.”

But that’s not who Faolin had meant. Still, she looked over to Undesin, hoping for an explanation. The boy’s face reddened when everyone’s gaze drifted to him. “I—I don’t know. One moment she was there and everyone on the platform fell unconscious, and the next, she grabbed you all and hauled you from the arena with … with an uncanny pace. It was like she disappeared.” He shrugged. “I had a good sense to run. Then I found you a few yards from the arena.” He jerked his chin to the prime. “She found me there.”

Faolin rubbed at her chest. As if doing so will ease the cracks in her. “What happened to … me?”

It was Levsenn who replied, “Deisn Rainfang transferred her darkness in you to gain some sense of herself, to tell Syrene everything … and well, to stop Ianov’s destruction.” The siren’s sapphire eyes met Faolin’s. “We’re not yet aware of the effects it must have had on you, or your mejest.”

Faolin’s skin went cold.

“Weak lass,” the Prime of Wolves growled. “It was easy for her to get that darkness in yourself because you had cracks in yourself. You were not integral as you should have been.” She bared her teeth viciously. “Did you let Jegvr break you?”

Vur and Levsenn stiffened. Because they knew it was not Jegvr that broke her … this gaping wound in her chest threatening to swallow her whole was due to anything but Jegvr.

I wanted to travel the world with you.

Her heart strained, and cracked, and bled. But she could not let this sorrow swallow her. She would not let tears win.

Vur scrambled to change the subject. “Deisn—she was controlled by—”

“We should have anticipated that,” called a familiar voice from deeper into the cave.

Faolin’s blood thrummed.

The Lady of Wolves stepped to her side and motioned to the direction of the female voice, clearing dark cave, illuminated by a dozen witchglows, for Faolin.

A female figure approached them. The witchglows lining the walls slipped their light and shadows on and off her as she drifted by, her caramel braid catching the starlight of the witchglows. Faolin could not perceive the woman’s face thanks to the darkness caking her eyes.

But there was no mistaking the gait of the fierce warrior, the high shoulders and unbending posture.

Faolin leapt to her feet—even as her vision darkened at the rush, her head heavy—as her former-duce, Hexet Evreyan, stepped before her, a tight smile sketched at her face. Faolin found her hand’s two fingers lifting to her brow and bowing her head. “Czar.”

The duce didn’t bother correcting that she was a duce no more. Hadn’t been for four decades—Hexet had ceded her position as the Duce of Tribes to Syrene the night Adlae Alpenstride had been slaughtered. Forty-one years ago, right after a ten-year-old had made the first run for her life with the Sword of Ondes in hand.

Faolin had learned that only a few hours before Deisn had had her thrown in Jegvr.

After the duel between Deisn and Hexet, when Deisn had thought she’d slain the duce, Hexet’s body was planned to be burned on a pyre—like every other duce’s. But an hour before the grand tradition of setting the cabin with the pyre inside aflame, before people from all the tribes had assembled to say their goodbyes to the duce, Faolin had managed to slip in the small cabin, and sneaked the duce out.

Bleeding and barely breathing. But alive.

Faolin had known Hexet was alive—known, because she had been alive. Her oath hadn’t killed her.

She’d found the nearest cave and then informed the Lady of Wolves. They’d appointed a healer, then killed him to ensure Hexet’s survival remained a secret.

Then that night, Raocete and Faolin had been a few yards from the cave when the prime had filled Faolin in about the real duce somewhere out there, and appointed Faolin to hunt for the daughter of Hexet Evreyan. The prime hadn’t been able to give Faolin complete particulars of the daughter, because a messenger had come rushing saying a fight had broken lose in her pack.

Raocete had let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll impart with you later,” she’d said and followed the messenger.

Deisn had attacked Faolin the moment Raocete had vanished behind the crowd of trees. She’d asked for the details on the heir—Faolin wasn’t foolish enough to confirm whether she had any specifics or not. She’d simply brawled with Deisn—until the poison had started working in her system.

When the haziness had overtaken her, when Deisn lay bleeding on the ground, last Faolin remembered was two pairs of strong hands seizing her and hauling her.

She’d awoken in the Voiceless Pits the next day. And in its labyrinth for twenty-five years, hopeless to ever abscond, she’d let the information of an heir slip from her mind. Until it had hit her in the crypt at the fortress a week ago. She hadn’t been sure whether Hexet had survived or not, only that there was an heir she needed to provide sanctuary to.

Now in a different cave, Hexet, healed and well, asked, “How is my daughter?” Her voice serene, motherly.

“She’s …” Faolin scrambled for words. Syrene positively hadn’t been fine. Faolin remembered the lack of life in the duce, an invisible burden on her shoulders. “She’s faring.”

Vur added with a smile, “You’d be proud of her.”

Levsenn rolled her eyes, and Faolin didn’t fail to notice as Vur tracked every movement in her beautiful face. “Proud is an understatement,” the siren stated. “Because your duce—former-duce—was proud even the first time Syrene had swung a sword without cutting herself.”

Raocete bristled, the thought of a soilkin living among them so well-hidden setting her at unease no doubt.

Undesin asked, “What happens now?” The boy was so quiet that Faolin had almost forgotten he was present among them. Perfect for spying, Faolin thought, but didn’t say.

Faolin gazed at the former duce, waiting for an order.

But Hexet only said, “I’m your duce no more. I’ve freed you from the obligation to wait for my orders, to kill for me.”

Faolin felt the darkness in her stirring.

“You’re bound to my daughter now, Faolin Wisflave.”

TO BE CONTINUED …