Page 79 of HeartTorn

We ride in silence. Even Shanaera’s people have swallowed their manic laughter. They are as dull as the shamblers now, their dead eyes fixed ahead without purpose but with unrelenting drive. I’m woozy, sick in both body and soul, drained of all vitality. It’s difficult to pull thoughts together. I’m vaguely surprised they haven’t killed me already. Surely it would be easier to haul my corpse around, for then they wouldn’t have to bother protecting me from thevardimnar.Perhaps it’s because of Elydark. If I’m dead, and he’s hearttorn, they will never succeed in bringing him back to the citadel.

I grit my teeth. Whatever happens, I cannot let them do to Elydark what they have done to these undead licorneir. Despite his protests, it would be better for him to end upvelrhoarthan like these. If possible I must find a way to end my life and free him of our bond.

“There.” Shanaera’s voice breaks the silence for the first time in many hours. She points ahead across the bare landscape. “Our destination.” She pats my back like she would a dog and croons, “Not much longer now, beloved.”

I lift my heavy head, peer through a fog of exhaustion and pain. The setting sun shines dull rays on the stone walls of Rothiliar House, standing at a little distance—the same empty manor in which Ilsevel refused to shelter from the storm, which ultimately drove us into the shepherd’s hovel. My stomach knots. I hastily retreat from that memory. Better to sink back into the pain-haze.

I come to again at the sound of undead licorneir hooves sparking against stone. I look up to find we’ve entered the once-graceful courtyard of Rothiliar. “Get him inside,” Shanaera barks. Rough hands yank me to the ground. I haven’t the strength to stand; my legs simply collapse under me. “Useless,” Shanaera hisses, her disembodied voice breaking through the cloud of my confusion. “But we’ll soon remedy that. Go!”

Elydark cries out to me. Our soul-tether vibrates with the intensity of his dread, but the chaeora ropes hold him fast. I turn my head, try to catch a glimpse of him over my shoulder. The shamblers gripping my arms hasten me along too quickly into the waiting shadows of Rothiliar.

The inside of the manor feels like a tomb. Twenty-five years now it’s stood vacant, the family who once dwelt here long ago swallowed up in the first wave of thevardimnar. In my addled state, I feel as though their ghosts are watching, silent and solemn, from doorways and behind dust-heavy curtains, fromthe gallery above the entrance hall. Everywhere I look, I expect to glimpse phantoms. But there is nothing. Only more shadows.

“Tie him between the pillars there.” Shanaera’s voice echoes strangely in that cavernous hall. “Be certain you secure him fast. We can’t have him breaking free.”

How she thinks I’ll break free of anything in this weakened state, I don’t know. I would laugh at the notion outright, had I the energy. Instead I sag in the arms of my captors as they bind my wrists and my ankles, spreading me out like a star between two tall, fluted pillars. Is this how they mean to kill me at long last? It seems quite the production for something that could have been done so simply hours ago. But who am I to complain?

Shanaera’s face is half-hidden in the gloom of the hall. The remains of daylight splash through the western windows and spread in long bars across the hall floor, but little of it reaches her. She stands before me, a dark apparition, studying me in silence. I roll my head to meet her gaze. I won’t cower before her here in my last moments. She will not have the satisfaction of seeing fear in my face.

Something trembles up my right arm. Thevelragives a sudden pulse of warmth that floods my heart. It startles me because, for the first time in many hours, it isn’t a pulse of pain. It’s more like . . . relief. But it can’t be. There’s only one thing that could ease my suffering and restore strength to me now, and that’s impossible. But when another pulse flows up my arm and into my heart, I can’t help dragging in a gasp of air. My muscles quicken, and I strain suddenly against the chaeora bonds securing me.

“Morthiel seeks to make himself like the fae kings of Eledria.”

Shanaera’s voice drags my attention back to her. I blink, struggling to piece together what she just said even as another pulse ripples up thevelra. Unaware of what’s happening to me, she touches my jaw with the tip of one finger. “He believes,” shecontinues in that same musing tone, “the only true limitation on humanity is their mortality. According to him, if humans had the immortal lives of the fae, they would dominate all worlds.” Her rotten mouth twists. “Pure hubris, of course. But his experiments have proven . . . interesting.”

She turns from me then and saunters across the hall. Her three companions stand off to one side, their faces unaccountably nervous. Four shamblers entered the hall with us, and they stand at odd intervals around the empty chamber, swaying slightly on their feet, their decayed faces slack. Shanaera moves to one of the nearby windows, and the light illuminates her in such a way, one could almost forget she’s dead. The luster of her dark hair, the golden quality of her skin, is momentarily restored.

“What might eternal life mean for the Licornyn?” she muses. “No one else in all the worlds boasts the gifts we enjoy. No one else, not even the great kings and queens of Eledria, have bonded with licorneir as have we. Were we also as fearless as the fae, as unafraid of our own demise, what might we accomplish?” She turns then, teeth flashing in a grimace. “We could rid this world of the Miphates. And when that was done, why stop? Why not smite the blight of humanity from existence? Who would stand against us and our licorneir?”

I cannot concentrate on what she says. Another jolt from thevelrafloods my veins with prickling warmth. It hurts, but like the hurt of a sleep-deadened limb coming back to life. I can’t explain it. Could it be the bond has been severed? Was I mistaken all along to think a broken bond would break me in turn?

Shanaera approaches me again, pushing aside one of the shamblers who stands in her way. “Morthiel will be delighted when I bring him another virulium-laced body,” she says. “Regular dead make for poor subjects, but virulium reacts tothe spell differently. It retains soul-essence, unlike these others.” She stands before me once again, her death-filmed eyes sharp with eagerness. “He won’t question who you are. He doesn’t concern himself with the people of Licorna, only with what they can do for him.”

With those words, she reaches inside her tunic and withdraws something. Something which, held up to the last of the fading sunlight, does not gleam but instead seems to catch that light and drag it into its depths, crushing and compressing it to nothing. A little vial of darkness.

Virulium.

“No!” I gasp. She has my attention, utterly and completely. I know what she intends to do now. She doesn’t want me like the shamblers, a spiritless meat-bag to be ordered about at will. She wants to make me like her—a broken soul trapped in an animated corpse. She’s been telling me as much all along, only my mind was too addled, my body too weak to understand. She’s going to fill my veins with virulium, just as she and her people were filled at the time of their deaths. Then she’s going to kill me and carry my primed remains back to Morthiel.

Roaring, I strain against the bonds. My strength is returning now, faster than before, and though the chaeora ropes bite into my flesh and cut off circulation, the sudden surge is enough to make Shanaera take a step back. “Don’t be a fool, Taar,” she snarls. “Do you want to end up like these cretins? You must take the virulium. You must become like me. I know I’m not what I used to be, but I’m stronger than ever. And Morthiel is refining his work all the time. He doesn’t want eternal life as a walking corpse. He is determined to correct all the little imperfections, to make me beautiful again. He will do the same for you, all the while thinking he holds our will in his thrall. By the time he learns different, it will be too late. You and I will be as we once were, and not even death will be able to separate us.”

I strain again, yanking at the ropes. The power burning in my muscles is not unlike the rush of virulium, only brighter, hotter. If I could just break one arm free then maybe I could . . .

Shanaera reaches out. Her dead fingers brush my cheek, a tender touch were it not so chilling. “I wish I could have killed your bride,” she says softly, like whispering a lover’s secrets. “I wish I could have severed your bond. But I can’t have you too broken, or the virulium might kill you outright.” She lets her gaze run down my body slowly, shaking her head. “She will be dead soon. And you will forget her. In the ages to come, she will fade from your memory, a mere shadow from a distant time. Whereas our love will go on. Our love will be the foundation of a new Age of Licorna. No one will doubt then or in the centuries to come that we were meant for each other.”

She tips her head toward me, smiling. “But I will enjoy killing you, Taar.” She lifts the vial to the level of my eyes. “You wouldn’t begrudge me a little revenge after all these years, now would you?”

My whole soul fixates on the sliver of cut glass in her hand and that slice of oblivion contained within. The demon’s blood. Gods! How I used to crave it. In moments of quiet, I would dream of the taste and the surge of raw power coursing through my veins. I could be kneeling in prayer while my heart longed for the darkness and the taste of blood on my tongue. Breaking free of its hold was the hardest thing I ever did.

Even the smallest taint from the edge of Lurodos’s blade was enough to send me over the edge into bloodlust madness. An entire dose, after years of abstinence? It will flood my veins and burst my heart through my shattered ribcage.

“Don’t do it, Shanaera.” I shake my head as she pulls the stopper from the vial. “It will destroy me.” I yank again at the ropes, muscles straining. “There’ll be nothing left of my corpse for your Morthiel to remake.”

“Well,” she says, gently swirling the contents of the vial, “I suppose that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

She lunges. One hand catches me by the back of the head while the other raises that vial to my lips. In the same instant, a sudden pulse of power rushes from thevelraup my right arm. Twisting my head away from her, I grasp hold of the chaeora rope and pull.

The fibers strain—the pillar cracks.

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