Page 19 of Kissed By the Gods
No. I simply stare at the death demon that’s a few feet away, my mouth agape.
Despite all the stories, I never imagined the Kher’zenn would be so beautiful, so terribly perfect. His smile unwinds, smooth and languid, crippling and captivating. I reach a hand forward, desperate to touch him.
The air around me resists, thin and charged, like I’m reaching through something unseen—but I push on until I break through the barrier.
He needs me.
The Kher’zenn reaches his hand forward, too, as if we’re lovers long separated, until our fingers brush over the head of his creature.
Agony.
This is not fire or ice or anything so simple as pain I’ve felt in the flesh. It’s deeper, something inside me disintegrating until there’s nothing but the Kher’zenn and his endless hunger sinking into me.
And then I’m flying. No. Falling. My body slams into the ground as I’m kicked away from the Kher’zenn. The bones in my hand shatter at the impact of a boot. It should hurt, I think, but there’s nothing except an aching void in my fingers. I clutch at them gasping, trembling. The Kher’zenn watches from where he sits, on the back of his creature, head tilted, his silver eyes endless and consuming. His smile doesn’t waver. If anything, it deepens as he raises his other arm to the sky and a bird—a bat?— takes flight with a speed that should be impossible.
“So sweet,” the Kher’zenn murmurs, voice languid and lush.
A sword winks out, cleaving his head from his shoulders. The draegoth he was sitting on hisses, its lips curling back to reveal rows of needle-like fangs, each one glistening with something black that drips from the tips. It lunges, snapping at Ryot as he twists midair, jumping back with an agility that’s not human. From the heavens, Einarr plummets, his hooves striking the draegoth’s skull with the force of the gods’ judgment. The impact sends cracks rippling down its serpentine neck. The draegoth reels, a soundless shriek tearing from its throat. It lunges again, snapping blindly for Einarr, but the faravar is already gone, and Ryot plunges his sword through the creature’s weakened skull. It falls to the stone floor, as silent in death as it was in life.
Like a floodgate bursting, the aftermath of the battle washes over me—the tangy smell of mortal blood and something else that’s sickly-sweet; the ragged breaths of men and the beat of faravars’ wings as they search the heavens for any last threat. The carnage of the creatures’ and the Kher’zenn’s bodies litter the ground.
Voices seep through next, but they’re garbled.
I close my eyes, trying to find a sliver of myself, but I’m learning that violence doesn’t just take from you. It reshapes you into something else altogether.
“Did we sustain any deaths?” Archon Lyathin asks, his voice clipped.
“None,” someone else reports, someone I’ve not met. “But they did get a strix out. Caius and Faelon are in pursuit.”
“They won’t catch,” Lyathin responds. He’s furious. “Whatever they were after, they’ll know now.”
The man doesn’t answer.
“How did they get past the islands? Send a scouting team, now!” Lyathin barks.
Someone laces their fingers through mine, the warmth startling against my frigid skin. Their firmness, their steadiness,is a stark contrast to the tremors coursing through my body. I drag my eyes open to find a familiar hand holding mine.
Ryot.
He’s sitting next to me, his back pressed against the stone wall. He’s not watching me—his eyes are on Einarr, who is snorting and pumping his wings off the high tower. They’re focused on each other. Ryot’s got a fresh lash across his neck, and blood trickles from it steadily, yet he trails his fingers over mine in a slow, careful way. The warmth from his hand stings. I had the beginnings of frostbite once, and when my mother brought me close to the fire, the numbness gave way to an increasingly intense burning. That’s what Ryot’s hand on my flesh feels like, like he’s bringing it back from the brink of decay.
The markings that crisscross some of the men’s arms—which I thought looked like some strange tattoos—now dot the fingertips of my left hand.
Not tattoos. Are these … scars?
The center is ashen, the skin there dead, and then it blackens at the edges, the color bleeding outward in delicate tendrils, spreading even under my fingernails.
“What is that?” I ask, my eyes on my fingertips. My voice is husky, heavy with exhaustion and shock.
My voice brings the organized chaos on the tower to a standstill. All talk of motives, of scouting teams, of strix and disposing of bodies and getting the injured to the infirmary, comes to a grinding halt.
Ryot squeezes my hand, more of his warmth easing into my rotted flesh. The burning feeling grows and expands, until it feels like there are hundreds of bees stinging my fingers. If I had any energy left, any at all, I would rip my hand from his, but all I manage is a weak twist of my hand in his. He ignores me as warmth continues to spread.
“That,” the Elder answers, “means you’re an Altor. Any other mortal would’ve died at the touch of a Kher’zenn.”
I look up to find all the men staring at me again. The Elder is leaning heavily on his cane, but there’s still a quiet strength in the way he holds himself. He’s studying me like I’m a puzzle with half the pieces missing. Like he’s uncertain of the full picture, but he recognizes the shape all the same. Lyathin’s gaze lingers in a way that makes me want to hold Ryot’s hand and not let go. He’s staring at me with something deeper than distrust. I think I’ve ruined his carefully ordered world just by existing.
And Ryot … his eyes stay on me for a second too long, like he wants to look away but can’t.
