Page 84 of A Chill in the Flame
“You’re in Tarkhany,” she said carefully. “Can you say Tarkhany?”
The fae-beast hissed again, testing the word slowly as it stretched the vowels, elongating the final sound. She shuddered against the chill of its word but rallied herself for bravery.
“Good, good. Look at this. Look what I’ve made.” She gestured at her serpent, urging the abomination to drink in its features, to acquaint itself with the winged snake on the sand. “This is why you’re here. This creation needs someone to keep an eye on him. You will be his master. It will answer to none but you and me, do you understand?”
The new demon did not move toward her, but it dipped its head in a similar curiosity, not knowing why it had been brought into the world, understanding little of the earth or its purpose. All it knew was that it existed, and it listened to Ophir.
“Yesss,” it responded, hunching its shoulders once more. She noticed a smoke-like quality begin to spill from the demon as it spoke, as if each word created tendrils of mist that crawled into the world.
“I need you to keep it out of sight. You should do your best to remain hidden, too. Don’t bring it into cities or villages, okay? Especially not in full daylight. The forests, the wilds, the desert, the sea are all fine, but I can’t let people know about my creature. Not this one. It would give too much away. Can you do that?”
Yes, it confirmed. It could.
“One more thing?” She arched a brow at the human-adjacent monstrosity. It opened its mouth, smoky tendrils of sulfur and rancid meat emanating from its depths. It looked at her with its terrible, sunken eyes. “You have one other purpose, and I don’t care what you have to do to accomplish it. Use your gift for speech to spread a message. Tell Berinth, wherever he is, that I’ve already killed his cohort, and I’m coming for him next. I believe he’s in hiding now, so you may have to wait until he’s in public. I don’t just want him afraid: I want to bury him. When the moment is right, spread the message so that everyone, everywhere, can know exactly how evil he is. He’s a murderer, but he deserves more than murder. Revenge needs to be so much more thorough to be meaningful.” Ophir realized she was monologuing to an abomination that could barely string a sentence together. She shook her head, cutting herself off. She returned her eyes to the black, beady eyes of the monster and emphasized her final point. “I want him afraid—I want this monsterterrified. Do whatever it takes to scare the ones who did this to my sister. They should never know peace again. It’s what they deserve.”
It was a half-truth. She’d killed one pathetic human outside of Henares, after all. But the fearmongering she might achieve with the help of her slippery-tongued creation would make her vengeance so much sweeter. Make him tremble. Give him nightmares. Make him wet his britches at the sight of her monstrosity and the carrion of its smoke-like words.
She smiled to herself as she turned toward its new beast.
It flapped its wings once, then twice as it tested its gift for flight. With a beckon, the winged serpent reared up onto its two hind legs, long black tail twisting on the sand behind it. It began to flap its wings, joining the demon as it became airborne, bound for anywhere that it might stay hidden from prying eyes.
She watched them go before turning her eyes to the glowing lights of Midnah.
Thirty-nine
“Do you want to play a game?” Dwyn asked, sweat drippingfrom her head onto her tawny horse.
“Not even a little bit.” Tyr was too tired for her games on the best of days. This was not the best of days. The unwashed scent of dirt, travel, fur, and animal joined the thick, distorted quality to the air as visible heat undulated around them.
Each word came out with burned, sluggish exhaustion as she tried to rally their spirits. “Over there? In the distance? Let’s play a game where we guess whether that lake is a mirage or an oasis. Whoever wins has to tell the other a secret.”
“It’s a mirage. They’ve all been mirages. This is the fourth time we’ve played this game.”
“Four? No. It can’t already be four.”
He glanced at her to see if she was wilting from heat stroke and winced at what he saw. Her forehead and cheeks had taken on a sizzling, tomato quality. He didn’t want to be empathetic but couldn’t help the uncomfortable feeling at clear signs of suffering. “How are you holding up over there? Am I losing you to the sun?”
She blinked her eyes hard, perhaps trying to summon moisture. “Well then, why don’t you guess mirage and winthe game? Then I’ll tell you.”
He sighed. It was his fourth day in the desert, and if they ran out of water, their bones would soon join the drifting sand. Every once in a while the hot, dry wind would pick up, flinging the sand against any exposed bits of skin, stinging them with the force of hundreds of tiny glass daggers. He’d love for it to be an oasis in the desert, just as much for Knight as for him. There was so little water left, and if they didn’t find a fresh source soon, well…
He wasn’t sure he could handle his horse dying in the desert because they’d gone on a fool’s errand after a princess who didn’t want to be found. He tried to swallow, but there was no saliva left to soothe his throat.
“Fine. It’s a mirage.”
“And I guess oasis.”
“How do you have the energy to talk? Can’t we just shut up and die in peace?”
He expected another wise retort, but Dwyn didn’t respond. They wandered toward the glimmering silver in the distance, allowing their horses to plod forward at the slowest of paces. They couldn’t risk their mounts expending any unnecessary energy. So they pointed them toward the distant, metallic shimmer and clung to whatever remaining drops of hope sloshed in their nearly-empty waterskins.
Forty minutes later, he didn’t have the energy to be disappointed that he was wrong. He was thrilled to be wrong. Excitement bubbled through him the moment he realized they were in fact approaching a watering hole dotted with fresh vegetation. It filled him with the sort of unspeakable joy that one gets to experience only a few times in one’s life. He jumped off of Knight’s back, immediately taking care of his mount so that it could wade into the pool and cool itself.
Dwyn appeared proud of herself but too tired to properly gloat. She didn’t bother to take care of her horse first, which was precisely the behavior he expected from someone so selfish. Tyr’s disapproving scowl became a permanent fixtureas he tended to her mount while she waded into the water.
“You’re such a bleeding heart,” she said from where she knelt on the banks of the pool, hair dripping from the water. Tyr still hadn’t made it to the water’s edge as he busied himself unsaddling the horse she’d abandoned. She began to strip at the water’s edge, dropping her clothes in a pile on the bank as she dove into the pond.
He wanted to roll his eyes at her, but he was too relieved at the sight of water, and genuinely eager to do the same. It was Dwyn who cried out in surprise as he pulled his shirt over his head and began to tug at his pants. He’d expected her to use the opportunity to express disgust, but she was something of a nudist, and too sun-touched at present to antagonize him.
