Page 87 of Kissed By the Gods
I imagine a younger Ryot running through a house filled with laughter and little girls tugging at his sleeves. I imagine him happy. It’s a strange picture, but not an unwelcome one.
It’s what makes me start talking.
“My father used to play the recorder,” I say, turning my face toward the horizon, too, and closing my eyes. “Badly, but we’d dance anyway. My brother Levvi would twirl in the moonlight with his beau, my friend Irielle, until they collapsed from exhaustion. In the spring, my mother would make these honey cakes with lavender—the whole house would smell like sunshine. There was so much to hate—the soldiers, the work, the Collection that hung over us like a noose. But I loved home. Gods, I loved it so much.”
He nods once, an acknowledgement that loving is the sharpest ache of all.
“You can carry them with you,” he says.
“Is that what you do?”
“Every battle I fight—every swing of my sword, every bruise I earn, every bone that breaks, every drop of blood I lose—is for them.”
I search his eyes now, the color of blue right before the world goes black. They’re a dangerous swirl of banked emotion.
“Not for the gods?”
He looks to Einarr, who hasn’t moved but is watching us with those sharp, sharp eyes. The setting sun brushes over his wings, and they catch the light, as if they’re drinking in the colors around them. They’re a shade darker than shadow, with hints of indigo and violet when he shifts.
“The gods get the victory,” Ryot finally says. “The glory. The temples built in their names, the people singing hymns in the streets, the priests on their knees. But my sisters? My sisters get what’s left of me. Even if only I know it.”
Ryot jumps to his feet, all lithe movement and grace. “It’s time for evening meal.”
Just like that, this moment between us is folded away, tucked behind that shield he wears so well. His mask is back in place, his blue eyes have gone hard, like black ice. Gone is the boy who ran from his sisters; the man before me is a weapon. He’s once again the Ryot the gods and the Synod shaped in their image—a warrior, through and through.
But now I know. Ryot of Stormriven doesn’t fight for duty—he fights for love.
“The Veil is shrouded in myth and mystery, and its meaning shifts with every border crossed as you travel throughout Aesgroth. In Nyrrhild, the people of the frozen north whisper of a graveyard for fallen gods. In Aish, the nomads speak of a paradise beyond death, a heaven in place of Lako’s Seven Hells. In Selencia, the ignorant waifs trust that the Veil itself is alive. But here in Faraengard—the last true cradle of wisdom in all Aesgroth—we understand the truth: the Veil is no god, no grave, no afterlife. It is simply a wall. One that divides the divine from the mortal.
Notes of an unknown scribe at Elandors Veil in Year 287 of the Eternal Wars.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Winter is days away.
The trees have surrendered the last of their leaves and stand brittle against the sky. The ground has gone stiff and hard, as if it is bracing for the ice and snow that will blanket it soon. Frost laces the stone walls of the Synod every morning, and even the light is thinner now, washed out and weary. With winter imminent, a strange quiet has descended across the Synod—a false kind of peace.
The Kher’zenn don’t attack in the winter. The Elder says the cold weakens their draegoths. It makes them slow and sluggish. They’ve never attacked after the snow falls. I look up at the bleary sky, heavy with the promise of snow, and cup my hands over my mouth, blowing out a warm exhale.
For the first time since I’ve arrived, warriors laugh freely. The tension that used to spark in the air—as man and beast kept a constant eye on the horizon and on the sky above—has dulled. Even Ryot has eased up slightly. Maybe, for once, he doesn’t feel like the world is about to end. We’ve shifted from combat drills to survival training—how to endure, how to survive the cold, where to find food, how to dress a wound in the field. Before, wewere preparing for the Kher’zenn. Now, we’re preparing for the spring—when I’ll climb Elandors Veil to claim a faravar of my own.
And when the worst of winter sets in, Ryot will leave. He’ll fly with Einarr to Selencia. He’ll see the rot that’s been festering for years. He’ll see the broken villages, the hollow-eyed children, the empty granaries.
He’ll finally see what I’ve been trying to make them understand—that Selencia is dying behind them while the Altor keep their eyes trained across the sea.
Every day that we wait, another mouth goes unfed; another body weakens under the harvest that was stolen; another child cries themselves to sleep. Because the Kher’zenn aren’t the only ones who threaten to destroy us. Humans can be just as brutal as the monsters from our nightmares. We’re perfectly capable of ending ourselves.
We don’t need death demons to do it for us.
Time is a knife against my people’s throat, and every delay cuts a little deeper. So, for once, I welcome the bite in my toes, the sting in my nose, the way the cold gnaws straight through my skin. Because every shiver, every breath that freezes in my lungs, brings us closer to the day help might finally come to my people.
I spare a fleeting glance for my blackened fingertips—the chill bites deeper there than it ever did, but Elowen says there’s nothing to do for it. I shove my hands into the pockets of my new fur coat and continue my walk to her herb garden, which is tucked on the east-facing side of the Synod. It gets bright morning light, but I don’t like coming here—the grandeur of Edessa in the valley below symbolizes everything I hate about this place, about these people. It reminds me of everything my brothers are lacking, things as simple as food and warm coats.
But I need some kind of root that treats frostbite, which Ryot says I must learn to identify and harvest myself. If I can’ttreat frostbite in the field, he said, I won’t survive the climb up Elandors Veil. I expect to find Elowen elbow-deep in the soil, muttering about how no one respects her tinctures, and I plaster a friendly smile on my face for my friend.
