Page 40 of The Dead Saint

“The man who kills everything he comes across talks about survival?” Sorcha snorted. The word struck her as an odd choice. Adrian, Wolf, and monster of Eine, didn’t seem to be the kind of man who had to fight for his survival.

“You’ve been sheltered in your golden temple with people who waited on you hand and foot,” Adrian responded without emotion, his words all the more unsettling in its lack of feeling. “You have no concept of world beyond yourself. Even now, with the changes you’ve experienced, you have no clue.”

Sorcha opened her mouth, a sharp denial poised on her tongue, but Adrian stopped her.

“You don’t understand survival yet. But you will.”

* * *

For the first time in a week, Sorcha wasn’t tied to her saddle or Adrian. At the clearing in the woods, she’d stopped thinking of him as the Wolf when—Stop! Don’t think about it!

They’d come out of the Silvas and made their way through a region of low mountains and hills dotted with farmland. It wasn’t winter here, sheltered by the surrounding mountains—autumn lasted longer in this part of the world with hints of summer lingering beneath. She’d enjoyed the ride through the landscape, though it was abandoned here as well, just as it had been before the Silvas.

She tried not to think about that too much either.

Smoke from the encampment fires caught her attention first. They crested a ridge to find a city of tents spread out before them—waiting and expectant, ready for the Wolf to arrive. A rider came out and met them, passing over a sealed scroll and sharing news.

The men around her had been relieved. They didn’t say it, didn’t express it in any outward fashion, but she could feel it. They’d lost too many in the woods; several had been killed by the werewolves. The others had been wounded and would remain with the Horde as the others carried on the search for the relics.

Adrian and Revenant had spoken softly as they entered camp, faces serious, but she’d been able to catch enough information to piece together what was happening now.

This was a small part of the Horde. There was a city to take. A king to kill.

Now, Sorcha watched the city in the distance.

The city was mostly dark—eerily quiet—and much smaller than the Citadel. She wouldn’t have considered it a city at all, more a castle surrounded by a small town and fortifications. But it was the largest collection of buildings they’d come across so far.

Cautes would fall in two days. It appeared to be almost abandoned now. The only lights remained around the castle, groupings of bright torches—what might be men moving along battlements or on top of towers.

Was this how the Golden Citadel had appeared before the battle truly began? There had been the siege, the slow buildup to blows being exchanged, the hurriedly constructed siege engines approaching with a terrible certainty.

Had the Wolf and his men watched from the darkness, contemplating all those lives being lived? All those people praying to their gods that the morning would be like any other, that what they had known would go on, that the sun would break over the horizon and the Horde would have vanished?

But Cautes wasn’t the Golden Citadel. The buildings surrounding the castle were dark. Even the little villages and homesteads leading to the encampment were empty. The whole world appeared to be inhabited by ghosts.

Sorcha shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold despite the warmer air. Loneliness touched her—a familiar friend—and she turned away from the city, back toward the tent she’d been shown to when they arrived. Adrian’s tent.

Somewhere, one of his soldiers shadowed her—Ivo or Imre. Neither one she knew well despite having traveled so far with them already. But as soon as she’d paused to contemplate the city on the hill waiting for death, the man had melted away.

A spiced floral scent filled her senses—a familiar scent. Sorcha turned in a circle, searching for the source. The Kahina Kira had worn a similar scent. Kira with her red-painted hands and rubies at her wrists and throat. The scent had clung to her—closer than a second skin. Sorcha half expected to see the woman step out from between two tents.

None of the faces around her were those of her family—the priests and priestesses who had been closer than any blood relative could be. The scent of cooking meat replaced the spicy floral. Had she merely imagined it? Recalling it out of desperation for the comfort it might bring?

Slowly, avoiding the curious stares as she went, she wove her way back through camp. In each grouping of tents, a large fire sat at the center, usually being tended by a woman, though, sometimes a young boy rotated the spitted meats. It was hard to understand how anyone could eat knowing what would come in the next day. Blood. So much blood. So much death that the stink of it all would spread for miles around, cling to them all—a trailing wake of decay.

But the camp ate and watched the living city. She wondered how it appeared to them, if they saw shades of their homes and families. Adrian had said the men in the square hadn’t seen her as a person, so how could they relate to the unwitting victims.

“Priestess!”

Sorcha turned, pausing as she swept her gaze over the maze of tents nearby, searching for the speaker. An older woman with sharp eyes and thin mouth was walking toward her with long strides and an air of intention. Her head was wrapped tightly in a dark blue scarf, and she wore simple black blouse and trousers with sleek knee-high boots the same shade as the scarf.

“Yes?” Sorcha asked, taking a step back as the woman walked right up to her.

“I’m Toren.” The woman put her hands on her hips and looked Sorcha up and down, eyes full of speculation. Her accent was strange to Sorcha, not one she’d heard before. But that wasn’t new. So many of the accents she’d heard in the prince’s court had come from faraway places. “The prince sent me to meet you. To make camp life a little easier.”

Sorcha nodded, swallowing.

“The prince values you,” Toren said, lips curving into a bitter smile. “For now.”

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