Page 48 of Four Ruined Realms (The Broken Blades #2)

Aeri

The Light Mountains, Khitan

Dying is strange. Overall, I don’t recommend it.

I drowned in the twilight. I know I did. I struggled under the surface, holding my breath for as long as possible, but eventually, I inhaled the water. A burning pain like I’d never felt before filled my chest, and then I woke up walking on the Road of Souls—the pathway that leads to the Kingdom of Hells. I only stopped because I heard Royo’s voice begging me to stay. Next thing I knew, I was back. Soaking wet and throwing up mouthfuls of water. I was alive, thanks to him.

But now I’m not sure if we will see another sunset together. It’s late morning, and we’ve reached the foothills of the Light Mountains.

We tie our mounts to trees close to the edge of, but not in, the forest. I haven’t seen Dia since I fed her after supper last night, but I hope she stayed where she’ll be safe. I hope she’s sleeping cozily somewhere. I hope I will see her again.

Royo and I have to hike on foot to find the nests. Once we do, we have to steal an egg from a creature that will happily eat us if we’re caught.

I put my hand on my throat, feeling very mortal. I can freeze time and run, but my power has limits. If one of those birds comes after us, how will I get Royo out alive?

My heart twists as I realize I won’t be able to move him on a mountain. If I push him off the side, we’ll fall and likely both die.

I can’t chance losing him. I’ll have to convince him to stay here.

“Maybe I should go alone,” I say.

He stares at me and blinks a couple of times. “Are you out of your mind?”

I sigh. That went over great. But maybe I can get him to see my logic.

“I know I can move silently,” I say. “Can you?”

He looks to the side and frowns. If we learned one thing from Lake Cerome, it’s that, no, Royo cannot.

The amarth are nocturnal. The best chance we have is to sneak up on them during the day, when they’re asleep, and then kill one quickly and steal the egg beneath it. Which, of course, won’t work if one of us is stomping around like a bee-stung ox.

“I’ll get you close,” he says.

I guess that’s the best compromise. Especially since I’m not sure where the nests will be.

The priest helped me with a text that theorized on the location. The amarth are so large, they’d need old, mature trees to support their weight, so they won’t be at the summit or on the windward side of the mountains where there are scant trees. But as animals, they’d want high ground to avoid predation of their young. So the foothills are out. The writer thought that the birds build their nests not in trees but in the mountainside itself, right above the tree line.

There was no confirmation, though. Apparently, everyone who has been close enough to see the nests hasn’t lived to describe them.

That’s not comforting, but we don’t have a choice.

I’m certain that if my father lives, he will torture and murder Royo in front of me. And I’m not going to let death take him from me—in a strictly-friends way, of course.

Royo slings a pack over his shoulder, and we start hiking. If we can’t find the nests quickly, we’ll have to make camp in the mountains. Which means sleeping in a tent and hoping they don’t find and eat us overnight.

So, it’s pretty important we find the nests well before sunset.

We trek for a while, keeping an eye on the summit. Luckily, the winter outfit I bought at the dress house is keeping me warm. I have a brand-new reason to hate the cold, but everything but my face is nice and toasty. Royo is sweating.

“Can I ask you something?” he murmurs.

We’ve been quiet so that we don’t wake the amarth, but there’s been no sign of them.

“Sure,” I say.

“What’s the story with your necklace? Where’s it from?”

I trip on a raised root, but I’m glad for the distraction. My amulet. That’s right—not only did he feel my necklace while we were kissing, but he saw it when he rescued me.

This is the moment for me to tell him the truth—all of it. To trust him with knowing who I really am and what I can do. That I’m not just a gem thief with incredible sleight of hand, but a thief of time. That I’m how we escaped on the Sol, how Mikail lived in the warehouse, and every other weird “happening” since we met.

I want to tell him, I do, but the words don’t come. It’s not that I don’t trust him. I wish it were that simple. It’s that the knowledge itself is dangerous. When we were in the temple, I read about the relics, specifically the terrible things done to possess them.

For example, my father slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Gayans under the pretense of subduing a rebellion just to capture the Flaming Sword of the Dragon Lord.

When Gaya became a colony of Yusan long ago, part of the treaty was that Gaya would submit to being governed, and in exchange they would keep their relic and figurehead royalty. The colonial treaty held for over two hundred years. But when my father took the throne, he saw opportunity. He wanted the relic, thinking that with the sword, he could defeat Wei. He sowed the seeds of rebellion on the island with new taxes, harsh laws, and increased laoli production. He even had his spies encourage and arm the rebels. Once the Gayans killed a Yusanian garrison, he mercilessly put down the revolt. He claimed Gaya was the first to break their treaty by refusing governance.

Thirty thousand men, women, and children meant nothing to him. Who knows what he would do to get the Sands of Time, but I have to imagine he’d kill me without hesitation. And if Royo knew, it would only put him in danger.

I can’t. I can’t risk it. I won’t risk him.

“It reminds me of my mother,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I never take it off so that a piece of her stays close to my heart.”

Royo looks relieved. I’m not sure why.

“I miss my mother, too,” he says. “I get it.”

“Was she a priest?”

I’m thrilled to change the subject. Lying to him feels like a torch pressed to my throat. But the truth can cut like a knife even when you don’t want it to.

He shakes his head. “No… Well, I don’t think so. I guess somebody had to be a keeper, though, right?”

“You said she died ten years ago?”

“In Tamneki.”

“What happened?” I ask.

He rubs his face. “That’s the thing—I don’t know.”

I tilt my head. That’s…weird.

His eyes take on a far-off look. “We were in the capital, and I woke in the middle of the night and she wasn’t in the room. It was two bells in the morning, and I waited for her until sunrise. Then, at dawn, I reported her missing. The next day, the king’s guard found her body.” He pauses and looks at the ground. “They said it was an accident. That she drowned in one of the canals. But…she knew how to swim.”

Royo takes a shaky breath, and I think about how awful it must’ve been for him to have found me drowned in the hot spring. My chest squeezes.

“Everyone just shrugged it off,” he says. “She was burned on a capital funeral pyre, and I went home alone. But it never seemed right to me.”

“Why is that?”

“My mother never just left without telling me where she was going and when she’d be back. And I didn’t even know she’d left the room the night she disappeared. That, with the fact that she could swim, it just… It don’t make sense.” Then he shrugs. “But maybe I don’t want it to. Maybe a mystery is better than the truth.”

I walk, making footprints in the fresh snow. I can picture it all: Royo younger and unscarred, sitting in a room, waiting for a mother who never returned. It cracks my heart into pieces. But what were they doing in the capital?

“Are you from somewhere near Tamneki?” I ask. “I thought you were from Umbria.”

“No, I’m from Umbria. We went to watch the Royal Tuhko Championship. It was…” He pauses and clears his throat of the emotion clogging it. “It was a birthday gift. She’d saved up for years to take me.”

The guilt in his voice rings clear, and it wrenches my soul. Royo blames himself not only for what he does, but also when people he loves are harmed. Which makes no sense, but it’s one of the most endearing things about him.

“That was very kind of her,” I say.

The lump in his throat bobs. “She was kind.”

Mine…wasn’t.

Mama was charming, and I loved her completely. I missed her for so many years, and all I’d ever wanted was to have one of her perfumed hugs again. But just because you love someone, especially as a child, doesn’t mean they’re perfect or even good. I’d managed to overlook the bad. Like how she used to call me a “little unloved girl” when I was young. That she’d want me out of sight any time she found a man she liked. That she didn’t mourn me after she thought I’d died.

Over the years, I created a perfect mother, cobbling together select good moments. And that is who I remember—the charismatic beauty striving for a better life for us. But there were more bad memories than good.

I duck under a tree branch as we continue up the mountain.

To some extent, she blamed me for being born female. Then again, to some extent, every girl in Yusan is cursed. It wasn’t until I got to Khitan that I realized it’s not the same everywhere. And it wasn’t until Sora—how she cares about her sister and how she cares for me—that I realized I shouldn’t have been made to feel bad for my birth. You can only lie to yourself about being loved for as long as you don’t know what real love feels like.

Royo would rather not love anyone, but his love is deeper than the West Sea.

The bells pass, and we continue up the mountain, keeping an eye out for nests and amarth. Mikail said the animals are white, so it will be difficult to spot their plumes with all of this snow.

We keep going, and I start to wonder if we’re even on the right mountain. The texts referred to the mountain range, and we chose the central, largest one, but maybe they inhabit a different mountain. I wonder if we should go all the way to the summit to get a better view. We are quickly losing daylight, and we’ll have to make a choice soon.

“Do—” I begin. Royo clamps his hand over my mouth, his palm on my lips.

I stare at him, confused and surprised. And then my surprise turns to fright. His eyes are wide, his muscles rigid. His hand is locked against my face, and he’s looking at something past me.

What could scare him like this?

I follow his line of sight. He’s staring at a nest—or more aptly, the sleeping amarth on top of it.

Chills run through me, my shoulders trembling. Good gods, what is that?

A bird taller than I am stands with its back to us, its head tucked into its wing. I brace myself, ready for an attack, but it’s asleep, steadily breathing. Then I look up at the trees.

I really wish I hadn’t done that.

There are at least a dozen more sleeping in the branches. And I can’t tell how many more are in the trees farther along the mountain, but I’m guessing a lot.

The sheer terror of it hits me at once. We are outnumbered and exposed. If any wake, we will be eaten before we make it a few feet. I realize how foolish I was to think I could easily kill one of these things. As if it was the size of a chicken.

Every muscle in my body wants to turn and run, but we’ve come this far. I take a breath. I have to see this through. Alone.

I signal for Royo to wait. He silently argues with me until I point to his boots. Then he balls his hands into fists but reluctantly nods.

On silent feet, I hold my breath. I go a little closer until I can smell the bird. Gods, it reeks of rotting meat and death. I try to focus and breathe through my mouth, continuing until I can peer inside the nest.

This is easily the most absurdly dangerous thing I’ve ever done. If I survive, I should rethink my life choices.

The nest is about waist-high to me, carved into the mountainside and lined with sticks, rocks, and spit-covered down—that’s probably why it smells. But inside the nest are black eggs, including a solitary one at the edge.

That’s it. That’s what we need! And I won’t have to kill an amarth to get it.

It’s strange that the amarth is not sitting on this egg. Either she abandoned it or she rotates the eggs for warmth. I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t second-guess a gift from the gods.

I grab my amulet and freeze time. Then I lean down and pick up the egg. It’s half the size of my torso and ice-cold. It must’ve been abandoned, which is oddly comforting. I unfreeze time and start running.

I only held time for a few seconds, but I’m already exhausted. I force my heavy-feeling legs to work, my body to run down the path. Royo picks up on the hint and starts sprinting, too.

Full speed ahead, I don’t look behind us. I can’t. It feels as if the amarth will stay asleep so long as I don’t turn back. I run in front of Royo, who took out a dagger, but he sprints holding it.

We go so fast and I’m so light on my feet that I pray he doesn’t fall trying to keep up. Fleeing for your life with the love of your life gives you a strange amount of energy even when you’re dead tired.

I just keep looking ahead. I try to believe that everything will be okay. That Royo and I will make it.

But I can’t help it. I glance over my shoulder. I have to make sure he is with me.

Royo’s a little behind me, but he’s staying in my tracks. It’s clever.

I face forward and barely avoid slamming into a tree. I muffle a scream as my face comes within inches of an oak.

Lesson learned.

Heart pounding, I pay attention. I steady my breathing and focus on carving as straight and safe a path as I can, but it’s sharply downhill from here. This is not the way we came, but it’s the fastest route off the mountain. I don’t worry about my steps or balance, because the second you overthink it is the moment you fall. But I can’t tell Royo that. We need to continue in silence. We need to just keep going.

It took us five bells to reach the nest. It takes less than one bell to hit the foothills.

But we do make it.

We pause at the base of the mountain, where the ground finally levels out. We aren’t safe yet. We won’t be until we get on our horses and ride far away, but we’re off the slopes.

We’ve done it. We got the egg before sunset.

I’ve run with the egg cradled in my arms this entire time, and I readjust to make it more secure against me.

Royo nods at me, breathing so hard he’s red-faced and wheezing. I don’t think he runs much—he’s more of a stand-and-fight kind of guy.

I let him catch his breath. I’m relieved that our horses are still tied to the trees. We might actually make it out of this. If we gallop, we can put two miles, maybe three, between us and the mountain before sunset. I’m not sure about the birds’ hunting radius, so the more distance, the better.

Royo stands straight, ready to run again. We take off a little slower than I’d like, but I stay with him, matching his speed.

We’re halfway to the horses when the wind swirls. I squint, throwing my arm up to shade my eyes as white falls from the sky. I think it’s a snow squall, but then I realize it’s not snow. It’s…down.

Feathers rain on us. Then I see giant wings. And claws.

An amarth lands in the snow. It is powerfully built like an enormous, white eagle, except for its gruesome, humanlike face. Its sharp brown eyes home in on the egg I’m cradling.

Gods, we’re dead.