Page 39 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom (Faeted Seasons #2)

Vareck

The Nameless didn’t bleed, which meant they didn’t die. Not really.

You could hack them to pieces, set their corpses on fire, watch them crumble into ash, but they’d always come back, reeking of death and ruin. They weren’t alive. Not in any way that mattered.

But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy killing them.

The surrounding canyon was scorched by the midday suns, heatwaves rising off the stone like steam from a forge. Red rock stretched high overhead, cracked and jagged. The air tasted like dust and sweat.

I rolled my shoulders and readjusted the grip on both swords. My fingers twitched with anticipation.

Sadie wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and smirked. Her twin axes gleamed—one darker from old blood, the other freshly cleaned and itching for a stain.

“I count twenty coming in,” I said quietly.

“All right,” she said, nudging my elbow. “First to ten wins.”

I gave her a sideways glance. “And the prize?”

“Bragging rights and a crisp high five.”

I snorted. “That’s not much of an incentive.”

“Spoken like a sore loser.”

Movement caught my eye against the cliff wall. The Nameless came crawling down the stone like roaches, limbs cracking at odd angles, spines bowed and eyes hollow.

“On your mark,” I said, spinning both blades once.

Sadie grinned. “Get set.”

“Go!” we said in unison.

The first dropped between us with a hiss of displaced air. I ducked under its swipe and drove my sword straight up through its sternum. It gurgled, body jerking as ichor sprayed from its mouth.

“One.”

Sadie rolled her eyes, then took three steps forward and slammed her axe into the neck of another as it leapt at her. The blade hit with a sickening crunch. She kicked the twitching corpse off the axe, spraying black everywhere.

“One,” she repeated.

More emerged, crawling from cracks in the canyon floor, scuttling from behind boulders, rising out of the sand like summoned nightmares.

A Nameless lunged at me from the right. I pivoted on instinct, brought both swords across in an X, and sliced through its chest. It hit the ground twitching, and I finished it with a boot to the skull.

“Two.”

Sadie was already in motion, a spinning force of steel and fury. One axe caught a Nameless in the shoulder, the other swept its legs out from under it. She kicked it in the head before it could rise.

Before she could call out the number, a second screeched and barreled toward her, claws raised.

She sidestepped, grabbed it by the wrist mid-swipe, and drove her axe into the joint of its elbow, then the side of its neck. It collapsed in pieces. “Three!”

I fought two at once, my swords flashing, movements tight and deliberate. I severed the first’s leg, then opened its chest with a wide horizontal slash. The second caught my arm, claws biting in, but I spun and drove my blade through its throat, twisting hard.

“Four,” I muttered.

Sadie’s axe embedded in the skull of another. “Four!”

I slashed at one’s throat with the tip of my sword. “That’s five.”

“That one was already dying!”

“They never really die, so it all counts.”

“Then so do mine,” she huffed, kicking her next opponent in the ribs and cleaving its head off midair. “Five!”

A Nameless leapt from the ledge above me. I caught its fall with a blade through its abdomen, then flung it into the canyon wall where it crashed into another body. They both cracked the stone, and didn’t get back up.

Sadie whistled. “Nice move, but jury says that only counts as one.”

“Six.” I laughed, but there was no time for more.

We moved in a blur—back-to-back, breathing hard, cutting through the swarm. Sand sprayed beneath our feet and blood sizzled in the heat. My arm burned where the claws had caught me earlier, but I ignored it.

Sadie grunted, “Nine.”

“Eight,” I shot back.

“You’re going down, Your Highness.”

“Not without taking a few more with me.” I arched backward, swinging the sword over my body to behead another one, putting us equal once more.

The last two came at once.

Sadie tackled one to the ground, buried both axes into its chest, and yanked them out with a roar. It spasmed once, then stilled.

I locked blades with the other, shoving its claws aside, and delivered a brutal headbutt. It reeled. I followed with a strike that split it from shoulder to hip.

I turned toward her, breathing heavy. “Ten.”

Sadie wiped ichor off her cheek. “Ten.”

We stared at each other, then spoke at the same time. “Draw.”

But the fight wasn’t over.

Something shifted in the air.

Thicker. Heavier.

A single Nameless stepped out from the canyon shadows.

This one was taller. Broader. Less grotesque and far too human in its movements.

It didn’t charge. Didn’t shriek.

It smiled.

Sadie lowered her axes slightly, eyes narrowing. “They always send the creepy ones last.”

I said nothing.

Its mouth moved, voice like caverns; far reaching and hollow of any emotion. “You’re too late, cursed king.”

My jaw tightened.

The thing took another step. “We know where she is.”

I didn’t blink, didn’t breathe.

“You can’t save her now.”

Sadie’s lips curled into a snarl. “Shut up.”

“Hail the Queen that was promised,” it hissed. “Her blood?—”

I struck.

Blades crossed, then split.

The Nameless’s head dropped into the sand.

Still smiling.

The body collapsed moments later.

Silence.

Just the wind. Just the blood. Just the weight of what it had said.

Sadie exhaled beside me but didn’t speak, our game long forgotten. I cleaned my blades on the cloth at my hip, jaw locked tight.

They knew where she was.

That made one of us. For what felt like a week we’d been traveling toward the Fold.

The desert plains giving way to canyons told me we were getting close.

That and the increase in run-ins we had with the Nameless.

They bled through the gap between the realms, spilling out into the hellish atmosphere of Eversus.

Every spare moment, I spent sleeping, hoping to dream of her, but every time she evaded me.

Even with Corvo playing go-between for us, the time never synced quite right.

Sadie was exhausted taking watch so often.

Meanwhile, I was a different kind of tired.

The anxiety that clawed at my chest every second of every day made it hard to function.

“What do you think he meant by ‘the queen that was promised’?” Sadie asked.

“No idea,” I replied. This wasn’t the first time the Nameless referred to her as a queen, or more specifically, their queen.

It happened every encounter. The final monster would step forward spewing prophetic bullshit about Meera being destined for Evorsus.

In the beginning I entertained it, hoping to get more information, but the Nameless picked up on that and ended its own miserable life.

If a rise was what they were looking for in me, they’d found it.

Since then, Sadie or I cut them down regardless of the words they said.

Meera’s sister was more than admirable on the battlefield.

She was a godsdamned machine, wielding axes and unlimited fury.

The first time they taunted her about Meera she went into battlelust, and I had to stay back until she finished slaughtering the party that found us.

Since then, we’d both been more on edge but we didn’t speak of it.

“Hey,” Sadie said, bumping me with her shoulder. “She’s going to be okay. Corvo would have told us if something bad happened.”

“Would he?”

Sadie arched a brow. “You know he would. Mercurial as that cat is, he has a soft spot for Meera. Him being gone right now is a good thing, because it means he’s with her and no news is good news.”

I sighed. “I hate how things ended between us before the split.”

“I’m sure she does to. Instead of spending your time worrying about the worst imaginable scenarios, maybe think about what you’re going to say when you see her again.”

My jaw worked, but I didn’t answer right away. There were a hundred things I wanted to say, and none of them seemed like the right place to start.

She gave me a pointed look. “Don’t tell me you’ve been trudging through hell all this time without thinking about what you’re gonna say.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I said finally.

“And?”

“And I don’t know.” I blew out a breath, watching the dust swirl at my feet. “I want to tell her I’m sorry. That I should have been faster?—”

Sadie cut me off with a snort. “You’re going to waste your first words by telling her you should have run faster? That’s not what she needs.”

I shot her a look. “And what is it that you think she needs?”

“The truth. Your truth. And not the polite king version. You’ve crossed a literal desert and fought off countless Nameless to get back to her.

Something tells me there is very little you wouldn’t do for her.

” I dipped my chin, and she continued. “She knows you’re sorry.

Fuck wasting time on apologies. You need to tell her how you feel and then show her. ”

“Show her?”

Sadie smirked. “Yeah. You’re not exactly the type to stand around reciting poetry, so lean into what you’re good at. Actions. The kind that leave no doubt in her mind where she stands with you.”

I huffed a quiet breath through my nose. “You make it sound simple.”

“That’s because it is. You’ve done all of this to get back to her. That’s already half the speech done for you.”

I let that sit between us, the crunch of sand under our boots the only sound for a few steps. She wasn’t wrong, but I still had worries. “What if she’s not ready to hear it?” I asked.

Sadie didn’t even blink. “How would you know she’s not ready to hear the truth unless you speak the truth?”

We walked in silence for a few more steps before I said, “What would you say, if you were me?”

Sadie grinned. “Easy. ‘I’d cross every godsdamned desert, cut down every Nameless, and burn the Fold to the ground if that’s what it took to get back to you.’”

I huffed a quiet laugh. “It sounds insincere. Rehearsed.”

“It is rehearsed and cheesy,” she said again. “But you mean it.”

“The problem isn’t saying it. It’s not even meaning it. I would end realms for her, commit unspeakable acts if it meant keeping her safe. You were right when you said there is very little I wouldn’t do,” I murmured as we walked. “I just don’t know if it will be enough.”

“Seriously, you could say what you just said to me. Don’t think about it not being enough,” Sadie said.

“Instead of going into the conversation with the outcome you want from her, go in with honesty and an open mind. You’re not the only one who’s been through hell this entire time, and knowing my sister, she’s done some thinking of her own. ”

Her words sank in, heavy but steadying, like a hand on my shoulder before a fight. I didn’t answer right away, just kept my eyes on the shadowed cut of canyon ahead. The heat was still oppressive, but the air had shifted, cooler now, threaded with the faint metallic tang of the Fold.

Sadie must have felt it too. She rolled her shoulders, tightening her grip on her axes. “Almost there.”

“Yeah.” My voice came out low, the weight of what waited ahead pressing in.

She gave me a sidelong glance. “Then you’d better have those words ready.”

I kept walking, the image of her—of Meera—burning behind my eyes. “She’ll hear them when I see her.”

The wind shifted again, carrying a sound from up ahead. A scrape of stone. A whisper of movement. Shadows stirred along the canyon wall, and the heat that had baked us all day bled into the chill of oncoming night.

The Fold was upon us, but we weren’t alone.