Page 17 of Kissed By the Gods
“She has a name,” I answer, wading into this godsforsaken pit of brainless blades and brawn. “I’m Leina Haverlyn.”
I keep my eyes hard, my face smooth, my body rigid, but I can’t help the tremor in my fingers as they clench in Einarr’s mane. I don’t think the others notice, because Ryot covers my trembling hands with his larger, scarred ones.
Tyrston takes an involuntary step back, still clutching at his face. Maxim takes a threatening step forward even as he shoves Tyrston to a set of stairs that circle the outside of the watch tower. “Get to the infirmary,” Maxim barks at him. Tyrston manages to send a seething glance my way before he descends the stone steps.
Ryot dismounts from Einarr like he’s sliding off a sway-backed mule instead of a creature bred for the heavens and the battlefield. He makes it look easy. I lean forward, peeking down at the stone floor of the high tower. Sweet Serephelle, how am I supposed to get off this thing? Like the two of them heard me, Einarr lowers himself to his forelegs while Ryot grabs me aroundthe waist. He lifts me as if I weigh nothing, and although my legs wobble I don’t stumble when my boots hit the ground.
I refuse to falter. Ryot keeps his hands on my waist, steadying me.
Maxim sneers. “Don’t take your frustration out on my ward, Ryot. You’re sore because you got caught making decisions with your cock.”
Ryot doesn’t so much as flinch. His grip on me remains firm, his body coiled tight.
“You think this is a joke?" His voice is quiet, deadly. “You think calling an alarm—pulling the men from their duties, from their trainings, distracting the entire fucking Synod and taking your eyes off the skies to do it—makes you some kind of hero?”
Maxim scoffs, but there’s an uncertainty in his eyes now. He quickly takes in the dozens of men and winged beasts lining the walls that enclose this place from both the sea to the west and the mountains to the east. All of them watching us, most of them now looking at Maxim with scorn. “A joke? She doesn’t belong here. She’s a?—”
Ryot moves so fast Maxim barely has time to react. He steps forward, hauling me with him in one smooth motion—he knows I’ll collapse to the ground without his support—as he slams his fist into Maxim’s mouth. Maxim stumbles back, clutching his face, fury twisting his features as the smirk slides from his bleeding mouth.
“I suggest you don’t finish that sentence,” Ryot says. His voice is a whisper, but it’s anything but gentle.
Einarr screams again, wings flaring wide. Maxim spits blood onto the ground, murder in his eyes. “You’ll regret that. You’ll regret all of this.”
Before anyone can react, before they can say anything at all, boots thud against the stone. The gathered men straighten as a figure emerges from the stairwell. He’s a man in authority.You can tell by the weight of his presence, and the way all the men shut up when he comes near. He’s tall—unnaturally so, his height only accentuated by the lean frame beneath his fur-lined cloak. He is not bulky like the other warriors, not built of sheer muscle, but there is something about the way he moves, like a whip waiting to crack. A real whip rests at his waist, but it’s not like one I’ve ever seen before. It’s blood red, and the strap looks to be made of some kind of serrated metal, not leather.
I expect him to scan the group, to take in the scene before addressing anyone, but his sharp, piercing gaze lands straight on Ryot.
“You were sent by the king to assassinate a traitor,” the man says. I can’t stop a flinch at the thought of the arrow that very nearly pierced Seb’s heart. “Yet, you’ve brought a grounded, a godsdamn woman, to sacred ground, instead. What in the hells have you done?”
Ryot doesn’t flinch. “I’ve brought an Altor to the Synod, Archon Lyathin.”
Archon—clearly another rank, though these titles don’t correlate at all with the soldiers who patrol our villages. Those are captains or footmen or archers. This seems to be an entirely different system.
Archon Lyathin exhales sharply through his nose, a sound dangerously close to amusement—but not the good kind. The kind that means someone is about to bleed.
“An Altor?” He flicks his gaze to me, and then back to Ryot. A single glance, and it’s a dismissal. “That's what you callthis?”
I clench my fists at being referred to as “this,” but I say nothing. Most of my focus is on staying upright.
“You brought a grounded peasant girl into our ranks, and now you’re trying to call her an Altor?”
Ryot stands firm. “She’s Altor.” The warriors around us chuckle, muttering amongst themselves. I can feel the weight of their amusement pressing against me, the doubt thick in the air.
Lyathin stops in front of him, close enough that I can see the sharp angles of his face, the way his lips curl into something just shy of disgust. “There has never been a female Altor,” Lyathin says. “Nor one born of Selencia. Not in our entire history, spanning nearly one thousand years.”
"There is now.” Ryot’s voice is firm, unyielding.
Lyathin’s eyes spark with fury, his hand reaches for the whip lying at his side. “You dare contradict me,SkywardenRyot?” There’s emphasis placed on that word, too. Another rank.
I don’t know what makes me do it. It’s probably not smart. But there’s this unspeakable fury that’s building at the way they’re speaking about me, around me, above me—anything but to me. I’ve been dismissed, deemed an insult to this man’s very presence. Or worse, deemed completely irrelevant.
Even if I can’t make them fear, I want them to at least pause. To look at me andsee.
My scythe is still strapped to Ryot’s back from when he took it from me in the forest. He’s holstered it there with a makeshift sheathe, shoved it behind the sword that crosses his back diagonally and holstered it with leather straps.
I lift my hand, summoning the power inside me that I’m only just beginning to understand. The moment my fingers curl, my scythe answers. It rips itself from Ryot’s back with such force that he stumbles backward. His sword clatters to the ground as the leather straps rip. My scythe lands perfectly in my palm.
The laughter stops.
