Page 35 of Heir

Aiz’s body ached from the beatings. Her muscles were weak and atrophied from lack of movement. But she was still a child of Dafra’s hard streets, and the guards were so surprised to see her out of her cell that they stared in shock.

Aiz leaped upon Gil, snatching his knife from his belt and shoving it into his throat before she could doubt herself. She felt queasy at the way his flesh gave, at the drag of steel against bone. She ripped the knife out, bringing meat and sinew with it. Gil collapsed and Aiz barely evaded Kithka’s fist as the tall woman lunged for her.

“You’ll die for this.” Kithka whirled, circling Aiz with her daggers out. “You and your clerics.”

The jailer leaped again, fast enough that Aiz couldn’t get out of the way. The back of her head hit the tunnel wall and her knife fell. Aiz blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision as Kithka grappled with her. She let her body go boneless, and then slammed her palms as hard as she could into Kithka’s belly.

The jailer doubled over, shrieking when Aiz wrenched her knife away and stabbed her in the shoulder. Aiz shoved her into a pillar and put the blade to the woman’s throat.

“Do it then, you Snipe bitch,” Kithka spat out. “Make it quick.”

Aiz stared at Kithka, taking in the emaciated frame, the sallow skin, the bruises on her throat and the tattoo on her wrist, a circlet of four flowers, each with a slash through it to mark the children she’d lost. It was a common tattoo in Dafra slum. Stillbirths, fever, illness, starvation. There were so many ways for children to die in Kegar.

Mercy, Mother Div seemed to whisper.

“I won’t kill you.” Aiz eased the knife back. “I am you. We are daughters of the evening star. You do not deserve death. You deserve safety. Your babies in your arms. Food on your table. A warm hearth.”

“I—” The woman looked not angry but confused. Her eyes filled.“My mother said that we were daughters of the evening star. How did you—”

“We are meant for more than this.” Though Aiz’s childhood in Dafra told her to keep the dagger, the voice within told her to offer it to Kithka, who took it, perplexed.

“You’ve heard the Sacred Tales,” Aiz said. “You listened the other day. Our people are meant for better. I aim to give it to them. Let me go. Tell me how to get out of here.”

The guard gazed down at her dead companion.

“He was cruel to the prisoners,” she said. “Especially the little ones. I hated him for it. But what can I do? My family must eat.”

Aiz held her peace. One wrong word, and that dagger could end up in her chest.Give her a moment, the voice within said.Give her grace.

“You speak to Mother Div, yes?” Kithka said. “You tell the stories like a cleric even if you don’t wear the robes.”

A guard called out at the end of the hall. “Kithka? Gil? I heard something.”

Kithka lowered her voice. “Ask Mother Div to guide the spirits of my children to the Fount, girl,” she said. “That they might spend the afterlife bathed in its light.” The jailer shoved her toward a door in the dining room. “Through there. Down the hall. Last chamber on the left. Looks like a storage closet, but there’s a door. Go through it.”

“Thank you,” Aiz said. “Kithka—”

“Go.” The jailer moved toward the voice that had called out. “Before I come to my Spires-forsaken senses.”

Aiz limped through the door. She had no plan if she emerged from the prison. She would freeze in her rags. She had no food or shoes. No way of getting in touch with Cero or anyone at the cloister. If there even was a cloister left.

But exhilaration still buoyed her. She could have been stopped, killed, caught. But she hadn’t been.Daughter of the evening star.

She stumbled into the closet, which was crowded with manacles and chains. Aiz shuddered as she moved them aside to find the door.

Go. Go. Go.Voices behind her, in the hallway. She scrabbled at the handle, stiff with grime and disuse. The voices grew louder, but the door did not budge. She braced her feet and pulled with her whole weight. She was so close.

“Mother, please,” she murmured. “Be with me once more.”

The door squealed open to a tunnel of pure darkness. Fear burned through her veins, a memory of the Hollows.

There is beauty in the dark, and strength.Aiz closed the door behind her and staggered forward, a hand outstretched. She walked until her feet burned, then went numb. With each step she felt weaker. She realized why when purple-black veins began to appear in the rock walls of the tunnel. Aiz reached her hand out to touch the substance and flinched back. It burned.

A faint whistling echoed through the tunnel. It grew louder the farther she went. Stronger.

Wind.

She was on her knees now, crawling because her feet couldn’t support her. And then it was not Mother Div who Aiz thought of. It was her loathing of Tiral and the Triarchs, a lightning bolt that lit her veins aflame with outrage. They were the reason Kithka mourned her children and Cero his father. They were the reason the cloisters didn’t have food and the Snipes didn’t have hope.

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