The Beauty of Darkness (59 page)

“Stubborn physician,” Griz grumbled.

“He got lost,” Eben explained.

Griz cuffed him on the back of the head, then grinned sheepishly. “He might be right.”

“
Drazhones
,” I said, and embraced them both too, clapping their backs.

I stepped back, and Lia pelted them with questions. They were only two more soldiers but to have them by her side meant everything to her.

A small crowd milled around, their curiosity piqued by the commotion—and probably the sight of a scarred giant like Griz and his well-armed sidekick.

Pauline walked over and stood beside me, eyeing them with interest. “Are they the soldiers I saw you with back in Terravin?” she asked.

“Yes, but they're more than just soldiers. They're family too,” I said. “My family. Blood kin of another kind.”

She brushed up close, her shoulder touching mine. “I want to meet them.”

 

CHAPTE
R
EIGHTY-SIX

RAFE

The rest of us filed out of the tent too.

They all watched Lia embracing Griz and then Eben. I saw the joy on her face. She spoke Vendan with them, reverting to it as naturally as if it were her own language.

I was glad to see them too, but not in the same way Lia was. Griz was a formidable foe. With every day that passed with no sign of my requested troops, I was reminded that we needed every soldier we could get.

“Why did he call her queen?” Howland asked.

I looked at Lia. She wore a jacket made in the Meurasi style, the red scraps of her wedding dress slashing over her shoulder and across the front. The kavah was exposed. Bones swung from her hip.

Everyone needs hope, Rafe. I have to give it to them
.

“It's just a Vendan custom,” Tavish told him. He looked at me and shrugged.

“Yes, only a custom,” I agreed.

If Lia wanted to explain further, it was up to her.

I turned to go back in the tent, then stopped mid-step when I spotted Jeb walking toward me. Then Orrin. They both grinned and then I saw the general.

“Draeger,” I said.

“That's right, Your Majesty. Your troops are here, as you ordered.”

I studied him, still wary. “
All
of the troops?”

He nodded. “All. With a load of ballistas—and everything else you asked for.”

*   *   *

The camp was silent. Dark, except for a few torches lit between tents. Sleep would be difficult tonight. Tensions were high, but rest was ordered. Necessary. I walked to the valley entrance where the torchlight didn't reach. Only the moon weaving between fingers of clouds lit the meadow grass. Lia leaned against the rocky wall, staring into the valley.

“Company?” I asked.

She nodded.

We stood there, looking into the quiet. We had already said everything there was to say. Done everything we could do. Dalbreck's troops were in place. Our odds were better. Venda outnumbered us only two to one now. But they still had better weapons. Something deep inside me wanted to drag Lia away, keep her safe, but I knew I couldn't.

“We're as ready as we can be,” I said.

She nodded again. “I know.”

Her gaze traveled along the silhouette of ruins on the cliffs, their ghostly edges lined by silver moonlight.

“They were great once,” she said. “They flew among the stars. Their voices boomed over the mountains. And this is all that's left. Will we ever truly know who they were, Rafe?” She turned toward me. “After tomorrow, will anyone know who we were?”

I looked at her, not caring who the Ancients were. All I could think was,
It doesn't matter how many universes come and go, I will always remember who we were together.

I leaned down. Kissed her. Slowly. Gently. One last time.

She looked at me. She said nothing. She didn't need to.

*   *   *

The meadow grass rippled in the breeze. By the next day, it would be trampled. Burned. Bloody. Our scouts had ridden in tonight. The Komizar's army would make it to the valley entrance by morning.

 

 

The crowned and beaten,

The tongue and sword,

Together they will attack,

Like blinding stars thrown from the heavens.

—Song of Venda

 

CHAPTE
R
EIGHTY-SEVE
N

LIA

Nurse the rage.

My heart pounded wildly.

The army was a blur at the end of the valley. A solid rolling wave. Condensing. Rising. Solidifying as the valley narrowed.

Their pace was leisurely. Unworried.

They had no need for worry. I'd already seen them approaching from the cliffs at the entrance to the valley before I rode back to take my position. I had seen how far they stretched, how unstoppable they were. Even the trail they left behind them was staggering, like the dust of a star shooting across the sky. It reached back for miles. They marched in ten divisions, infantry at the lead, followed by what looked like supplies, artillery, and herds of brezalots. More infantry followed, and then a fifth divison of soldiers on horseback. There was a heaviness to this division, something thick and weighty and more foreboding than the rest. There was no doubt in my mind that was where he rode, in the middle, within quick reach of all divisions, keeping a close watch on his creation, sucking in its power and breathing it out again like fire.

The army's slow pace wore on nerves—just as he'd calculated.

A squad of their scouts had spotted us, then raced back to their front lines, probably reporting our pathetic numbers. Five thousand of us defended the exit of the valley—five thousand that they could see. More were ready to stream in behind us. The Vendan pace continued syrup slow, unflustered. We were merely a stone in the trail to be trampled underfoot. Even if the whole Morrighese army blocked the exit, the Komizar wasn't worried. If anything, we only whet his appetite. At last he was getting the first course of the feast he had anticipated for so long.

Morrighan.

I heard the name of the kingdom on his lips. Amused. Sticky and cloying like a jelly drop in his mouth. He swallowed it down like a treat.

If rage pulsed in my veins, it was masked by the fear that roared in my ears for the thousands who stood behind me. This might be the day they lost their lives.

Rafe and Kaden sat on horses on either side of me. While I was dressed to be recognized, their clothing served an opposite purpose. Both wore black cloaks with the hoods drawn—the uniform of Morrighese Guardians. Jeb, Tavish, Orrin, Andrés, and Griz were in a line behind us, wearing the same. We didn't want them recognized too soon.

“He's playing with us,” Rafe said, his eyes locked on the slowly progressing cloud.

Kaden cursed under his breath. “At this pace, we'll be fighting by moonlight.”

We couldn't rush forward. We needed them to come to us.

“It's just past midday,” I said, trying to calm myself as much as him. “We have hours of daylight yet.”

And then a horse broke free from their front lines. A distant speck at first, but then charging, fast. I heard the ratchet of the ballistas as it stormed toward us. But something about its coloring was wrong.

“Wait!” I said.

It wasn't a brezalot. And there was a rider.

As it drew near, I knew.

It was the Komizar.

He stopped a hundred yards off. He held his hands up to show he wasn't armed.

“What the hell is he doing?” Rafe asked.

“I request a parley with the princess,” he called. “Alone!”

A parley? Had he gone mad?

But then I thought,
No. He is deadly sane.

“And I bring a gift of goodwill,” he called again. “All I ask for is a moment to talk—without weapons.”

Both Rafe and Kaden balked, but then the Komizar reached behind his back and swung a child down to the ground.

It was Yvet.

My heart stopped. The grass swallowed her up to her waist.

I remembered the day I had seen her huddled in the market with Aster and Zekiah, clutching a bloody cloth after her fingertip had been cut off. She looked even smaller and more terrified now.

The Komizar dismounted. “All yours,” he called, “just for the price of a few minutes.”

Rafe and Kaden railed against it, but I was already unbuckling and handing them my sword and knives.

“Our archers can take him down, and we can have the child too,” Rafe argued.

“No,” I answered. Nothing was ever that simple with the Komizar. We knew each other too well, and this was a very clear message to me.

“And when do I get Zekiah?” I called back to him.

He smiled. “When I've returned safely to my lines, I will send him. And if I don't make it back—” He shrugged.

He was enjoying this. It was a game, theater. He wanted to draw it out, squeeze all the game pieces a little tighter in his fist.

I knew Rafe and Kaden were both a heartbeat away from signaling the archers. The sacrifice of one child for the beast himself. A child who could die anyway. A child who would
likely
die anyway. And our prize was in our grasp. But it was a choice that came with a price, one the Komizar had already calculated. The air was taut with the decision. He stood there, unafraid, knowing, and I hated him more deeply. How much was I like him? Who was I willing to sacrifice to get what I wanted?

“The Komizar's fate will come later,” I whispered. “Do not lay a hand on the beast yet.”

I rode out to meet him, but when I was still ten yards away, I dismounted and waved Yvet forward. Her wide frightened eyes turned to the Komizar. He nodded, and she walked toward me.

I knelt when she reached me and held her tiny hands. “Yvet, do you see those two horses far behind me with the cloaked soldiers?”

She looked past me at the thousands of troops, her lip trembling, but then spotted the two dark cloaked ones. She nodded.

“Good. They will take care of you. I want you to go to them now. I want you to run and not look back. No matter what you see or hear, you will keep going. Do you understand?”

Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“Go,” I said. “Now!”

She ran, stumbling through the grass. The distance seemed like miles, and when she reached them, Kaden scooped her up and handed her off to another soldier. My stomach jumped to my throat. I swallowed, forcing the bile down.
She made it
, I told myself. I wrenched my breaths to a slow rhythm and turned back to face the Komizar.

“See?” he said. “I keep my word.” He waved me forward. “Let's talk.”

I walked to meet him, looking for lumps, bulges in his clothing, a knife waiting to pay me back. As I drew closer, I saw the lines in his face, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the toll my attack had taken on him. But I also saw the hunger burning in his eyes. I stopped in front of him. His gaze rolled leisurely over me.

“You wanted to talk?”

He smiled. “Has it come to this, Jezelia? No niceties?” His hand reached up as if to caress my face.

“Don't touch me,” I warned. “Or I will kill you.”

His hand returned to his side, but his smile remained chiseled on his lips.

“I admire you, Princess. You almost did what no one else was able to do in the eleven years of my rule. That is a record, did you know? No other Komizar has ever ruled that long.”

“A pity it's about to come to an end.”

He sighed dramatically. “How you still hang on to things. I care about you, Jezelia. Truly, I do. But this?” He waved his hand toward the troops behind me as if they were too pitiful to consider. “You don't have to die. Come over to my side. Look at all I have to offer.”

“Servitude? Cruelty? Violence? You tempt me so,
sher
Komizar. We've talked. You can go back now.”

He looked past me at the troops. “Is that the prince back there? With his
hundred
men who stormed the citadelle?” His tone was thick with mockery.

“So the Viceregent has come running to you with his tail tucked between his legs.”

“I smiled when he told me what you'd done. I was impressed that you rooted out my moles. How is your father?”

“Dead.” He deserved no truths from me, and the weaker he thought we were, the better.

“And your brothers?”

“Dead.”

He sighed. “This is all too easy.”

“You haven't asked me about Kaden,” I said.

His smile disappeared, and his expression darkened. I knew him well, too. Kaden was a blow he couldn't hide. There was something in this world he had loved, after all. Something he had saved, nurtured, but it had turned on him. Something that pointed to his own failure.

A small rush of pebbles suddenly streamed down from the cliffs above. He looked up surveying the empty ruins, turning to look at the other side. The silence of held breaths gripped the valley.

He looked back at me and grinned. “You thought I didn't know?”

Ice filled my belly.

He turned as if to leave but then stepped closer to me instead.

“It's the girl on the terrace that's bothering you, isn't it? I admit I went a bit too far. Caught up in the moment I suppose. Would an apology change your mind?”

Caught up in the moment?
I stared at him. There were no words. No words.

He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I suppose not.”

He turned and walked back to his horse.

The rage came, blinding, bright, consuming.

“Send Zekiah!” I yelled.

“I will, Princess. I always keep my word.”

KADEN

I handed Yvet to a soldier. She choked on sobs, but there was no time to comfort her. “Take her to Natiya,” I said.