Page 47 of Four Ruined Realms (The Broken Blades #2)

Sora

The Western Pass, Khitan

There’s something off about Mikail. Something in the way he’s looked at Euyn and me the last two days has been strange. I noticed the same hollowness haunting his eyes before he destroyed the crown. Which can only mean he’s planning something—some type of betrayal or secret. I’m not sure what it is yet, and I’m running out of time, since we’re nearly to the ice caves.

It’s late at night, probably one bell in the morning, when he signals for us to stop our horses.

In the distance, about a hundred and fifty yards from us, sits a towering cave sixty feet tall, maybe more, and there’s a small building nestled in the entrance. Mikail called it a mausoleum. It looks like a windowless stone house.

Why you’d put a body in one of those for all eternity is beyond me. But they believe in different gods.

Maybe theirs are kinder than ours.

Euyn has ridden on the other side of Mikail since we left Loptra and avoided me when we camped overnight. I’m not sure if it’s out of cowardice or respect, but he’s also keeping his distance from Mikail.

I’ve had time to calm down and consider what Euyn said. As much as I hate him for not telling me about my parents, he is correct that Daysum would not have been free. No one would have believed a commoner over Seok. The Count of Gain remains the real problem, even though Euyn is not fit to rule.

However, one issue at a time. My mother used to tell me to just focus on the next step when the whole problem was too daunting. We need to bring the head of Staraheli to Quilimar and convince her to help us murder King Joon for the successor to matter.

My mother, who I hated for years because I thought she traded her own daughters for gold. I haven’t begun to unravel all of those feelings. There simply isn’t time to work through it now. But there’s a thorny comfort in knowing the truth.

Euyn stops ahead of us. He dismounts, crouches closer, and scans the horizon.

“Two guards by the mausoleum,” he whispers. “Two patrolling.”

Taking out four guards isn’t bad. Well, until you start thinking about them as people you’re murdering, as stolen souls.

We found luminae in Loptra. It’s a glowing flower, and the pollen can be turned into a poison dust of the same name. It’s on my lips and in my pocket. Luminae kills with a slow, burning sensation as if you’ve been lit on fire, but it affects the mouth first, disabling the tongue. Erlingnow would’ve been kinder, as it is the fastest death, but I couldn’t find any. Every realm has its own toxins, its own ways to kill.

I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to murder anyone in Khitan other than Seok, especially not guards protecting something sacred to them. These aren’t disgusting noblemen or a gang who’d devour me as soon as look at me. But if the only way to save Daysum is to kill innocent men, then that is a trade I accepted long ago.

I want to shrink from this, to run, but I don’t. Instead, I steel myself and dismount from my horse alongside Mikail. We tie the horses to a tree. People have to die for Daysum to live. It’s a simple exchange.

Except there’s nothing simple about it. I don’t want to kill these guards or steal a head that belongs to their worshipped hero. Staraheli led downtrodden people against an oppressor—something I can relate to. A feeling of wrongness envelops me. I try to shake it off, but it clings. This isn’t a mark I have to kill or a life-or-death situation. This is a prize.

And not all of us kill for sport.

Still, on Euyn’s signal, the three of us approach the mausoleum from the side. We are nearly there when Euyn disappears. Strange. I glance at Mikail, but he doesn’t seem concerned, so I’m sure it’s fine—just another part of the plan I wasn’t told about.

We go another few steps, our feet silent on the white ground, but a guard turns and notices us. I take a breath, ready to seduce him, but Mikail grabs my arm and flings me down.

I hit the snow hard and cry out. I remember too late to muffle the sound, and now we have his full attention.

Even though I felt Mikail’s hand on my arm and I know he threw me, I try to convince myself that I merely tripped. Mikail is my friend and ally. He wouldn’t hurt me.

But then he mutters something in a language I can’t understand.

The guard runs over. He shouts something, and Mikail responds, putting his arms up. He points to me and says something again—it must be Marnan. The word he uses sounds like a Khitanese slur for the pleasure houses, though. I stare up at him, bewildered, the insult stinging. What is he doing? Who is he right now?

Mikail stares at me with hate in his eyes. And then he knocks twice on the scabbard of his sword.

The signal.

I get to my knees and focus only on the guard. He’s not much older than us, even though he has a long twisting beard. His eyes are slightly too close together, but I look at him as if he contains all the hope in the world. As if I’ve suddenly fallen in love.

Once he locks eyes with me, I tip my head and let the hood of my jacket fall back. I don’t have to speak the language for this to translate. Tears swim in my eyes, and I part my lips.

“Help me,” I whisper in Khitanese in case it loosely translates.

He doesn’t seem to understand me, but he knows I’m begging and at his mercy. The nobles in Yusan love this act—the damsel in need of rescue. I assume it transcends borders, but I hold my breath, waiting.

The guard hesitates but then extends his hand to me. I show nothing but gratitude as I take his arm and slowly stand.

“Thank you,” I say in Khitanese.

It is a shame he won’t be able to understand my last words to him.

I lean forward and kiss him, giving him a mouthful of poison. He starts choking immediately, his fingers grasping at his lips and neck.

I look back at Mikail to avoid watching the guard suffer. I brush the snow off me as the man falls to the ground. “A bit overkill, don’t you think?”

He’d said he was going to pretend to be a cheated husband leaving me at the caves and therefore at the mercy of the Marnans, but I didn’t expect him to throw me.

“No, we had an audience.” He points to the tunnel entrance. I turn just in time to see two men collapse from crossbow bolts to the neck. “Are you all right, though?”

“I’m fine,” I say.

His gaze barely meets mine before he stares at the mausoleum, his eyes all hunger. “Let’s go, then. We don’t have much time.”

I don’t know where the last guard is, but he’s probably dead.

Mikail walks with careful but fast steps. With his back turned, I pause and remove a bottle from my pocket. I pour a drop into the guard’s open mouth. The guard had tried to show me kindness and got nothing but pain in return. But he doesn’t have to die.

I read in the temple that the antidote to luminae is actually made from the same source—the liquid in the stem and leaves of the poison flower. Like the poison, the antidote is slow acting. It stops the burning from spreading and gradually brings down inflammation. The guard won’t be able to move until morning, and of course he’ll remember the pain, but he will live.

It’s the best I could do. We needed him out of the way, but for minutes, not forever. Mikail and Euyn wouldn’t have understood why I wanted to spare him, so it was best to do it quietly on my own.

Euyn meets us at the entrance to the mausoleum. Surprisingly, there is a bronze door, patinaed green, on the cave side. I suppose it makes sense to have a door—they had to get the body in somehow. Mikail said Staraheli would be in a glass coffin, so perhaps they open the door for viewing.

Disturbing, if you ask me, but perhaps they think that about our funeral pyres.

Mikail pulls at the handle, and eventually, it begins to open. Strange that there wasn’t a lock. Euyn helps him, pulling as well, and together they shift the heavy door wide enough for us to creep inside.

I brace myself for what I’m about to see.

We squeeze in, them first and me last. It’s pitch black in the small room except for the ray of light coming from the doorway. But even in the dark it’s clear: the room is empty. No glass coffin, no body of Staraheli.

“What now?” Euyn asks.

He takes another step inside. All of a sudden, a cracking sound echoes through the room.

There’s barely a second to move before a net springs up from the floor.

It was all a trap.