Page 18 of A Spell of Bones and Madness
It wasn’t exactly a choice she had to make. She needed this man’s help—any help she could muster, really. And Katrin had to trust that at least Leighton would not bring her to someone that felt ill will toward her—or so much that he would send her away without an explanation.
“Have you read of the Trojan War? The stories long before our time?” He handed her another worn book that looked eerily familiar, its weathered pages, simple clothbound cover.The Odyssey.“The story of how they won the war is only briefly mentioned in this book, however the tales of the heroes have been passed down through generations among our people.”
Heart clenching, Katrin reached for the book. She would not cry, not in front of a man she barely knew, a fierce warrior, so it seemed. “I—I don’t think I understand.” Sweat began to build at the base of her neck.
“The Trojans were vain; they believed themselves to be untouchable until the war, and that fateful day when the isles retreated—or rather, pretended to retreat—they rejoiced. Left in the place of the foreign soldiers was a wooden horse. Yes, they had lost men, but they had seemingly won the war. So they wheeled thegift inside their gates and threw a celebration. Little did they know, men from the isles hid within that horse, and as they slept the city burned.”
Katrin’s eyes widened and she choked on air. “Are you—are you saying we are to hide inside a horse?”
He could not mean for them to actually build such a creature? The only person that could piece together something so grand, so ostentatious in the short period of time they needed was…Callax—Cal.One of the kinder of the Grechi and brother to Nikolaos, but he was not supposed to live in this realm and yet there the old man sat. She had heard stories of the god when she was a child, the gray-haired man that worked in a forge in the sky, creating weapons and ships for the most noble of soldiers.
“Not exactly. I am saying we will hide in a hydra.” The God of Craft smiled.
Katrin’s heart stuttered a few beats. What did he mean they would sneak in through the gates of Alentus in a hydra? The god’s face was steadfast, still kind in the way his eyes sparkled at her, but no hints of humor showed. Seated beside Cal, Katrin placed the book back on the table in front of them, reaching for the tall goblet of wine he’d poured for her. Acid swirled in her stomach at the thought of tricking Edmund and Khalid with such an object. Cal had been right—she would need a large glass of red for this conversation.
“I am not entirely sure I understand. You expect us to erect some grandiose wooden creature—large enough, mind you, that our crew can fit in—and sneak into my castle without being caught?” Katrin couldn’t help but stutter on the words.
“Crafting and transporting such a thing is not of concern. I am able to do both with little effort.” The old man smiled, cupping his hands in front of him. “But we will need one volunteer to sell the ruse. To lead the object in through the gates. If the men believe it is a gift, I am sure their pride will look right past what is occurring.”
“But you are one of the original pantheon of the Grechi. What about the Binding Law? What about interfering in the will of the Fates? There will be consequences.” He couldn’t aid her, not through magic, the balance would shift and there would be irreversible consequences.
Cal lowered his voice, leaning in closer to Katrin as he spoke. “These are times of war, Katrin, the consequences are worth it.”
He was insane. The plan was insane. But it was so insane it might just work.
Chapter Twelve
Ander
Thick, hot crimson blood. It was everywhere. Sliding off his brow into his eyes. Running from his wrists and thighs and throat. Seeping into the stone that lay beneath him in the dungeons. Ander tried to squeeze his eyes shut, tried to block out the screams that filled his head, echoed in the room that confined him. Tremors crept up his skin as fire-hot tonic was shoved once more down his throat. It would only be moments now—until the cuts on his skin began to close, the blood drying up and crusting over bruises that peppered his arms and legs.
Then it would begin again. A damning cycle he could not fight his way out of.
The routine had repeated fifty times? One hundred? He had lost track at this point. During the first few days, Ander used a jagged rock to mark the walls. One slash on the left of the window for each time food came, marking the mornings and evenings. Another slash for each time the kings came. It was bearable at first, the welding pokers hot from the fire branding his skin, the way they peeled each nail from his body, how delicately they would take layer after layer of his skin. An unending torment he suffered through for her.
Would have suffered through for Katrin.
But that was before she stepped through the door of his dungeon, coppery brown hair waving down her back, glaring golden eyes that brought him to his knees. He thought she was there to rescue him—to take him home, to hold him in her arms and thank the gods that he was safe after all he’d sacrificed. Then she spun that same golden blade Edmund had held in her hand, a crooked smile plastered on her face. Katrin had not forgiven him, so much so that she turned on not only him, but her own people.
It appeared she had not left the isle at all—not fled from Kohl. Had she been in on this the whole time? Waiting—letting the men ruin him first before she took her turn and ripped what little hope he had left straight from his chest? Ander could have sworn that Khalid and Edmund had asked him where his ship went, where she went. But hadshebeen merelyThe Nostosand not the woman he loved? So it was not an illusion of her in the corner all those days, his only saving grace. It was actually her, reveling in his destruction. What a fool he was.
She made her first cut, the blade digging from the base of his wrist to his elbow. The second, from his ankles to his knees. Thethird, across his throat, licking the blade clean of his blood. She celebrated each cry she drew from his lips, how that crimson liquid flowed from his mouth as he choked, gasping for what little breath he might have left. Then she poured the vial of onyx liquid down his throat to start again.
“For your lies,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “For thinking you were worthy of my trust. When have you ever earned it? Earned affection? Now this—your blood on my tongue—I will not regret. It’s almost amusing that you thought I might rescue you—that I could ever love you. You are broken. You are nothing.” She slid that thin knife back into his flesh, tucking it below his ribs as he sputtered out more blood.
How many times had Ander repeated those same words to himself? So many he actually began to believe them, but it hurt just the same to hear them out loud from another. To know the woman he gave everything to protect now looked at him as no more than scum at the bottom of the ocean.
Ander shouldn’t have expected any less from the daughter of Aidoneus, born of pure terror and madness in the deepest dungeons of his kingdom. Katrin was destruction, a ruiner of sanity and hearts. The harbinger, destroyer of peace and worlds and him. She was not hope.
Hope. Hope. Hope…?λπ?ς.
“Get out!” Ander rasped, choking on his own blood. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” A flare of silver light burst from his wrists where the golden shackles bound him to the table. Fog began circling on the floor.
“My, my, my…aren’t you strong. I should have known it would be harder than that to break you.” A deep, haunting laughter echoed off the decaying walls. A man’s voice, not that of the woman who had just stood before him, knife in hand.
Not Katrin.
Edmund.
