Page 22 of Kissed By the Gods
Then she walks out. The door shuts behind her with a low click, and the silence she leaves behind is heavier than her presence was.
Nyrica lets out a long breath through his nose. “Well,” he mutters. “That went better than I expected.” He helps me up to my feet, and I sway a little. “Let’s find you an empty bed, love. We’ll worry about the rest of it tomorrow.”
“The new wards arrived last week. They are strong enough, eager enough—but blind to what the Eternal Wars will demand of them, what the Kher’zenn will take from them. I wish we knew which ones would live through the first year. It would make the work of training simpler—we could focus our efforts on those who matter.”
Letter from Skywarden Bren to Archon Rhyen, penned from the Outpost at Carrisfal in Year 647 of the Eternal Wars
CHAPTER TEN
Hot wax dripson my face. I struggle to raise my hand to wipe it off, but my arm won’t budge, and the wax keeps burning long past when it should have cooled off. I get a wisp of sickly-sweet incense, candle smoke, and the metallic tang of blood.
“Strider,” a voice whispers in the darkness.
I force my eyes open and see a white candle in the center of an empty space. It’s a room, but also … not. It’s boundless, eternal. My eyelids scrape against my eyes like stinging nettles. The white candle drips black wax onto a simple wooden table. It’s the only furniture in the room.
“Strider!”The voice is commanding now, demanding something from me.
What do you want from me? I try to shout, but I can’t get the words out.
Then the candle goes out, and the darkness swallows me whole.
It’s tooquiet in the infirmary.
My mother always talked while she healed us. For every scrape she bandaged, every bone she set, every illness she treated … she was never quiet. She sang aching songs in the old tongue, read stories from pages that were crumbling with age, and mumbled to herself as she mixed tonics and herbs. When fevers raged, she would watch over us, guarding us with her calloused hands and her sad songs.
The loss of her slices through me, but I push it from my mind. This is not a time to grieve the dead—not if I want to remain among the living. Because even here, in the quiet of the infirmary, I’m not safe. Two others are in this room, including Tyrston. He hasn’t been awake since I was brought in last night, but he’ll wake up eventually. So will the other man, who’s been asleep in the cot to my right since I arrived.
At least Tyrston and the stranger won’t be armed—there are no weapons in this little room. Well, no official weapons. I slide my good hand over the fork I hid underneath my pillow when a servant brought breakfast this morning. Its sharp tines are a small comfort, though the separation from my scythe and my shears is a persistent physical ache.
As the morning stretches, I pick at my darkened fingertips, trying to peel the dead skin off.
“That won’t do anything.”
I whip my head up to stare at the man to my right. He’s young, too, and he’s one of the few men I’ve seen here with short hair. It’s dark and curly. There’s a couple days’ worth of scruff on his face, and he rubs his hand over it like he’s not used to it being there. He has the most expressive brown eyes framed bythe longest, darkest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. He’s shockingly … pretty, though I don’t think he’d appreciate it very much if I told him that.
“Excuse me?”
He nods toward my fingers. “Peeling the skin won’t help. The hollowing goes all the way to the marrow.” He gifts me a sweet, shy smile. “Trust me, I tried, too.” He holds his left arm, and there’s that swirling blackness, but in the vague shape of a handprint.
“I’m Leif,” he says. “Ward of the Ra’veth Cast, of the Stormriven Vanguard.”
“I’m—”
“You’re not to talk to her, Leif!”
Leif and I both turn to Tyrston, who’s opened his eyes to fix us both with a sharp glare. The gash on Tyrston’s face from Einarr’s attack has healed remarkably fast. Back at our village, a wound like that would’ve meant death. Though his skin is an angry red, it’s already knitting back together.
“No one said that, Tyrston. Don’t get your drawers in a twist.”
I wince at that, but I’m too focused on Tyrston swinging his legs over the side of the bed like he’s going to get up to say anything about it. My fingers inch under the thin infirmary pillow until they wrap around the cool metal of the fork. I grip it tightly.
“Master Maxim said no talking to her.”
Leif rolls his eyes. “Maxim’s not my master. He’s yours.”
