Page 37 of The Brute and the Blade

I stare at him, at the eager faces around me...and feel a wave of nausea rise up to choke me. They want me to condone this. To counsel this slaughter of innocents, this massacre of a people I no longer know how to hate.

"I...I don't know," I murmur, each word a shackle around my aching throat. "I don't know what to say, what to think. This is all so sudden. So shattering of everything I thought I knew, everything I thought true..."

I trail off, feeling the weight of their stares, their scorn. Traitor, those stares say. Turncoat seduced by the enemy.

But they're wrong. They're wrong...and the knowledge is a blade in my breast, a brand on my brow. Because I do see the serpent, the spider...but it's not Grok, not the ogres...

It's us. Humans so convinced of our own righteousness that we've lost sight of the line between defense and destruction. Between protection and unjustifiable slaughter.

We've become the very thing we claim to stand against. We've let our fear twist us into a shape as dark and depraved as any monster.

And I don't know how to bear it. How to breathe through this sickening awareness of how far we've fallen, how faithless we've become.

Faithless to the cause, the code, I once held so dear. The code that led me to him. To Grok...and the wrenching want he awoke in me with every touch, every taste, of his savage skin, his scarred soul.

Grok, I keen again, helplessly. Grok, my heart, my home...what do I do? How do I handle this horror, this loss of all I am, all I've aimed to be?

There are no answers. Only the sick certainty that nothing will ever be the same. That I will never be the same.

I'm sorry, I whisper, to him, to myself. To the girl I was, the guileless creature I can never be again. I'm sorry, Grok. Forgive me. Forget me...

For I fear I will never be free of this. Of you...and the wanting, the wildness, you've woken in me.

I fear I will never be whole again. Be home again...

Without you. Within you...where I belong, now and always.

I say nothing more. I trust nothing more, not even my own treacherous tongue. I simply sit there, suffer there, in silence and stillness of my own conflicted heart.

There are no mercies in this bleak and brutal place, this council of killers.

There is only the enduring, the excruciating...

Emptiness.

15

Grok

The mountains rise up before us, jagged teeth of granite and shale gnawing at the underbelly of the sky. Their peaks are wreathed in mist, shrouding the path ahead in a veil of gloom.

It's a fitting reflection of the turmoil roiling inside me, the doubts and desires clashing like storm clouds in my head, my heart.

Behind me, the warband snakes through the narrow opening in a clanking, growling river of steel and sinew. A thousand strong, the fiercest fighters and most faithful followers the Red Mountains have to offer...and yet, as I cast my gaze over their ranks, I can't help but wonder.

Wonder...if their loyalty, their lives, are a price I'm willing to pay. If she, the female who haunts my dreams and my daylight, is worth the blood and bone, the sweat and sacrifice this march, this madness, will surely demand.

"Something troubles you, my Chief."

Sharak's voice, rough and steady as the stones beneath our feet, drags me from my brooding reverie. I glance over to find him pacing at my side, his craggy features set in lines of concern.

"You've been quiet as the grave since we set out," he rumbles, pitching his words low for my ears only. "Lost in thought, in memory of the little human, the Red Blade who cut her way into your heart."

I snarl, the sound more pained than angry. "You know me too well, old friend," I mutter, shaking my head. "Always have, even when I'd rather you didn't."

Sharak snorts, a wry twist to his lips. "Privilege of rank," he grunts. "And the prerogative of the male who's been at your back since we were younglings, shitting our swaddling clothes."

Despite myself, I feel an answering smile tug at my mouth. "Those were simpler days," I sigh, the words tinted with nostalgia, with longing for a time when the world made sense, when I made sense. Before her. Before the wildfire she ignited in my blood, my bones, with touch I can still feel, still taste, like a brand seared into my skin, my soul.

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