Page 36 of HeartTorn (WarBride #2)

TAAR

The undead licorneir move in an unnatural gait, all the grace of their being lost in death, though they’ve retained both their power and speed. The landscape slips past my vision in a blur. Though I know this land better than I know my own face, I can make no sense of it, no sense of the world, of reality. Pain dominates everything, and weakness turns my limbs to straw.

But the velra around my wrist continues to burn like fire, deep down to the bone. Which means Ilsevel is still alive. Surely she must still be alive. I would know if she was dead.

“Let me kill her,”

I’d begged. The words had slipped from my lips even as the undead grabbed my arms and dragged me away from Ilsevel’s body. “Let me kill her, Shanaera. Grant me that mercy at least.”

How could I leave her like that? The cruelty of it was beyond imagination. And what if the vardimnar struck while she lay there, so helpless? That she should die of those burns was bad enough; I couldn’t bear that her soul would be devoured as well.

But Shanaera had refused. “What? And cripple you still more?”

she’d snapped. “I need you strong, Taar. I need you fit and full of rage, not weeping over a dead bride. No.”

She cast a last look over her shoulder to where Ilsevel’s burnt remains lay abandoned beneath the uncaring sky. “Let’s hope she survives long enough for us to accomplish our purpose.”

With that she’d mounted her vile creature, spurred it into motion. We left the valley and the bodies of the netted licorneir and the headless corpses of the undead I’d decapitated in our struggle. And my wife. My burnt, suffering wife.

The other three undead licorneir carry Nuviar, Minuvae, and Corymar, who laugh in lunatic glee at their triumph, little caring for the companions they lost to my blade. The others—Kydroth, Varoris, Sairdara and the rest, at least nineteen in total—shamble in silent formation behind them, their faces blank, their spirits absent.

Last of all comes Jomaer, leading Elydark, who is hobbled with chaeora ropes. I feel the effect of those evil bindings on his spirit. Gods damn it! What possessed me to ask him to give up his freedom like that? And how could I let him agree? My only selfish thought had been for Ilsevel. I’d believed I could save her, that my will alone would be enough to draw the healing power of heaven to my aid.

Now she lies dying an excruciating death, while Elydark and I are led like lambs to our own slaughter.

“You know,”

Shanaera says after what feels like many hours of silence, “when I first heard of your foolish marriage, I didn’t believe it. That you of all people would form a velra bond with a human? It’s laughable! And now look at you. Weak as a sightless zhor pup.”

She chuckles mirthlessly, glancing down at my bound body, slung like a sack of bones over her saddle. “Pathetic.”

Some warning instinct still functioning in the depths of my numbed brain perks up its ears at this statement. Who told Shanaera? Several times now she’s intimated that she knew about my marriage to Ilsevel. But where would she have come by that information? So few people know and none of them are connected to her.

An answer scratches on the edge of my understanding. In this moment, however, with the weight of sorrow, shame, and despair pulling me into ever-yawning depths, I cannot face it. Perhaps if there was some hope of surviving the next few hours it would be worth exploring, but now? The mystery might as well die with me.

I turn my head dully, looking back the way we’ve come, as though I could somehow send my clouded gaze all the way back to that valley and the wife I left there. Instead I see only the shamblers—the spiritless undead. Those faces I know, those comrades with whom I once fought for the cause of Licorna. How many more of my people have the Miphates taken into their cursed citadel? When the last of my living Licornyn riders join with Ruvaen to assault Evisar, will they be faced with an army of our dead friends?

As though in response to this dire thought, black lightning rips suddenly across the sky. My heart drops. I feel the pull of the velra, even now trying to draw me back to Ilsevel, to protect her from this evil. But it’s useless. I am many miles from her now. There is no help for her, no hope.

“Halt,”

Shanaera says, holding up one hand.

The shamblers stop and sway weirdly on their feet, their empty eyes staring straight ahead. The other three urge their mounts closer to Shanaera’s, and Nuviar shades his single eye as he peers up at the sky. “Should we bring his licorneir up?”

he asks, casting me a swift glance. “He’s not turned; he’s still susceptible.”

Shanaera considers, rotten lips pressed in a line. Then: “No, keep them separate. I’ll draw the sigil.”

She dismounts and, to my rising horror, pulls a vial of shining liquid from one of her travel bags. I recognize the contents immediately: licorneir blood. Harvested just last night, unless I miss my guess. My stomach knots as she proceeds to pour a thin line of the star-bright blood into the ground, drawing careful shapes. Though I do not understand it, I know it is Miphates spellwork. No Licornyn would ever willingly learn such craft, nor can I imagine brutal Shanaera perfecting it to such a degree that she could render a proper sigil in blood on dirt. It must be part of the Miphates’ control over her, instilling skills where there should be none.

She finishes the work just as the darkness hits. One moment I am surrounded by hell—the next, strong hands grab me, pull me down from the saddle, and shove me into a circle of shining starlight, simmering with the memory of song. It’s not as powerful as Elydark’s sphere of protection. But it’s certainly better than nothing.

I kneel in the center of that sigil, my body bowed and broken. The velra pulses. I concentrate with all my being on that pain, waiting for the moment I know must come—the moment when the vardimnar swallows up Ilsevel’s soul, and I lose her. Forever.

But though the darkness continues to churn and roil, though the hunger pushes against the boundaries of my feeble protection, still the break does not come. Somehow she lives on. Is it possible I missed it? That the horror of the vardimnar simply dulled the moment of sundering? No. The velra remains alive. Throbbing, burning, draining me of strength with every passing moment. But alive.

A figure appears in the darkness before me, silhouetted by the sigil’s glow. For a moment I think it’s Ashtarath herself, appearing from the depths of her hell to claim my soul. The next moment, however, my vision clarifies. Shanaera stands before me, studying me with her dead eyes. I force myself to meet her gaze steadily, though another jolt of pain brings a grimace to my lips. Strange—I dreamt so many times over the years of a chance like this. Of seeing her again. Had the gods permitted it, I would have leapt at the opportunity for one last conversation, to beg her forgiveness, to reassure her of my ongoing love despite all that happened between us.

Now that the longed-for miracle is here, I want nothing more than to take up my sword and put an end to this grotesque half-life of hers once and for all.

She smiles a little, as though reading my thoughts. “Did you know,”

she says in a hauntingly conversational tone, “that Morthiel found his reanimation spell worked more effectively on subjects saturated in virulium?”

I don’t answer. I merely look at her, refuse to break her awful stare.

“They’ve been trying for years to reanimate humans, of course.”

She steps into the sigil and crouches before me. Reaching out, she pushes a stray lock of hair out of my eyes. It’s such a familiar gesture, half-forgotten in the three years since her death. My skin crawls in response. She draws her hand back and rests her elbow on her knee. “But humans are such frail creatures. Licornyn, they’ve found, are better, due to our fae blood ancestry. We’re built stronger, better suited to such strong magics, which tend to burst the corpses of human subjects just as they begin to move about.”

Her lip curls. “It’s a bit grim to watch.”

I draw a long breath through my teeth. “I didn’t know you’d become a student of necrolipha.”

“Oh gods.”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t give two shakhs about any of the Miphates’ little games.”

“What do you care about then?”

She tips her head to one side. “The same things as ever, my love. Restoring Licorna to the Licornyn. Driving humans from our realm.”

“You’ve got a strange way of showing it.”

She laughs at this. It’s eerily like the laugh I used to know, with that little hitch at the beginning before giving way to a loud bellow. But it’s not the same. The Shanaera I knew laughed rarely, but when she did, it was with real mirth. This creature laughs too often, and there’s always a coldness to the sound.

The vardimnar breaks. Suddenly, completely. Where there was darkness, there is now late afternoon sunlight, so bright it nearly drowns out the glimmer of the fading sigil. I gasp at the abruptness of it. Tension I’d not realized was bracing my frame goes out from me in a rush, and I nearly slump to the ground. Frantic, I reach out along the velra, searching for the break I know I will find.

But I don’t find it. The velra remains intact, stretched and searing, but unbroken. Which means Ilsevel is not dead. Impossibly and yet undeniably, she is still alive out there. My heart lurches, whether with relief or horror, I cannot say. Did the vardimnar pass over her because of her suffering state? It seems unimaginable, for the darkness of hell claims everyone within its grasp, and yet . . .

“Get up.”

Shanaera grabs me by the shoulder, hauls me to my feet. She kicks the lines of fading unicorn blood, blotting out the sigil, before dragging me back to her undead unicorn. I cast a glance back to where Elydark stands, head low and still hobbled in those awful ropes. I want to cry out to him but cannot summon the will.

We ride in silence. Even Shanaera’s people have swallowed their manic laughter. They are as dull as the shamblers now, their dead eyes fixed ahead without purpose but with unrelenting drive. I’m woozy, sick in both body and soul, drained of all vitality. It’s difficult to pull thoughts together. I’m vaguely surprised they haven’t killed me already. Surely it would be easier to haul my corpse around, for then they wouldn’t have to bother protecting me from the vardimnar. Perhaps it’s because of Elydark. If I’m dead, and he’s hearttorn, they will never succeed in bringing him back to the citadel.

I grit my teeth. Whatever happens, I cannot let them do to Elydark what they have done to these undead licorneir. Despite his protests, it would be better for him to end up velrhoar than like these. If possible I must find a way to end my life and free him of our bond.

“There.”

Shanaera’s voice breaks the silence for the first time in many hours. She points ahead across the bare landscape. “Our destination.”

She pats my back like she would a dog and croons, “Not much longer now, beloved.”

I lift my heavy head, peer through a fog of exhaustion and pain. The setting sun shines dull rays on the stone walls of Rothiliar House, standing at a little distance—the same empty manor in which Ilsevel refused to shelter from the storm, which ultimately drove us into the shepherd’s hovel. My stomach knots. I hastily retreat from that memory. Better to sink back into the pain-haze.

I come to again at the sound of undead licorneir hooves sparking against stone. I look up to find we’ve entered the once-graceful courtyard of Rothiliar. “Get him inside,”

Shanaera barks. Rough hands yank me to the ground. I haven’t the strength to stand; my legs simply collapse under me. “Useless,”

Shanaera hisses, her disembodied voice breaking through the cloud of my confusion. “But we’ll soon remedy that. Go!”

Elydark cries out to me. Our soul-tether vibrates with the intensity of his dread, but the chaeora ropes hold him fast. I turn my head, try to catch a glimpse of him over my shoulder. The shamblers gripping my arms hasten me along too quickly into the waiting shadows of Rothiliar.

The inside of the manor feels like a tomb. Twenty-five years now it’s stood vacant, the family who once dwelt here long ago swallowed up in the first wave of the vardimnar. In my addled state, I feel as though their ghosts are watching, silent and solemn, from doorways and behind dust-heavy curtains, from the gallery above the entrance hall. Everywhere I look, I expect to glimpse phantoms. But there is nothing. Only more shadows.

“Tie him between the pillars there.”

Shanaera’s voice echoes strangely in that cavernous hall. “Be certain you secure him fast. We can’t have him breaking free.”

How she thinks I’ll break free of anything in this weakened state, I don’t know. I would laugh at the notion outright, had I the energy. Instead I sag in the arms of my captors as they bind my wrists and my ankles, spreading me out like a star between two tall, fluted pillars. Is this how they mean to kill me at long last? It seems quite the production for something that could have been done so simply hours ago. But who am I to complain?

Shanaera’s face is half-hidden in the gloom of the hall. The remains of daylight splash through the western windows and spread in long bars across the hall floor, but little of it reaches her. She stands before me, a dark apparition, studying me in silence. I roll my head to meet her gaze. I won’t cower before her here in my last moments. She will not have the satisfaction of seeing fear in my face.

Something trembles up my right arm. The velra gives a sudden pulse of warmth that floods my heart. It startles me because, for the first time in many hours, it isn’t a pulse of pain. It’s more like . . . relief. But it can’t be. There’s only one thing that could ease my suffering and restore strength to me now, and that’s impossible. But when another pulse flows up my arm and into my heart, I can’t help dragging in a gasp of air. My muscles quicken, and I strain suddenly against the chaeora bonds securing me.

“Morthiel seeks to make himself like the fae kings of Eledria.”

Shanaera’s voice drags my attention back to her. I blink, struggling to piece together what she just said even as another pulse ripples up the velra. Unaware of what’s happening to me, she touches my jaw with the tip of one finger. “He believes,”

she continues in that same musing tone, “the only true limitation on humanity is their mortality. According to him, if humans had the immortal lives of the fae, they would dominate all worlds.”

Her rotten mouth twists. “Pure hubris, of course. But his experiments have proven . . . interesting.”

She turns from me then and saunters across the hall. Her three companions stand off to one side, their faces unaccountably nervous. Four shamblers entered the hall with us, and they stand at odd intervals around the empty chamber, swaying slightly on their feet, their decayed faces slack. Shanaera moves to one of the nearby windows, and the light illuminates her in such a way, one could almost forget she’s dead. The luster of her dark hair, the golden quality of her skin, is momentarily restored.

“What might eternal life mean for the Licornyn?”

she muses. “No one else in all the worlds boasts the gifts we enjoy. No one else, not even the great kings and queens of Eledria, have bonded with licorneir as have we. Were we also as fearless as the fae, as unafraid of our own demise, what might we accomplish?”

She turns then, teeth flashing in a grimace. “We could rid this world of the Miphates. And when that was done, why stop? Why not smite the blight of humanity from existence? Who would stand against us and our licorneir?”

I cannot concentrate on what she says. Another jolt from the velra floods my veins with prickling warmth. It hurts, but like the hurt of a sleep-deadened limb coming back to life. I can’t explain it. Could it be the bond has been severed? Was I mistaken all along to think a broken bond would break me in turn?

Shanaera approaches me again, pushing aside one of the shamblers who stands in her way. “Morthiel will be delighted when I bring him another virulium-laced body,”

she says. “Regular dead make for poor subjects, but virulium reacts to the spell differently. It retains soul-essence, unlike these others.”

She stands before me once again, her death-filmed eyes sharp with eagerness. “He won’t question who you are. He doesn’t concern himself with the people of Licorna, only with what they can do for him.”

With those words, she reaches inside her tunic and withdraws something. Something which, held up to the last of the fading sunlight, does not gleam but instead seems to catch that light and drag it into its depths, crushing and compressing it to nothing. A little vial of darkness.

Virulium.

“No!”

I gasp. She has my attention, utterly and completely. I know what she intends to do now. She doesn’t want me like the shamblers, a spiritless meat-bag to be ordered about at will. She wants to make me like her—a broken soul trapped in an animated corpse. She’s been telling me as much all along, only my mind was too addled, my body too weak to understand. She’s going to fill my veins with virulium, just as she and her people were filled at the time of their deaths. Then she’s going to kill me and carry my primed remains back to Morthiel.

Roaring, I strain against the bonds. My strength is returning now, faster than before, and though the chaeora ropes bite into my flesh and cut off circulation, the sudden surge is enough to make Shanaera take a step back. “Don’t be a fool, Taar,”

she snarls. “Do you want to end up like these cretins? You must take the virulium. You must become like me. I know I’m not what I used to be, but I’m stronger than ever. And Morthiel is refining his work all the time. He doesn’t want eternal life as a walking corpse. He is determined to correct all the little imperfections, to make me beautiful again. He will do the same for you, all the while thinking he holds our will in his thrall. By the time he learns different, it will be too late. You and I will be as we once were, and not even death will be able to separate us.”

I strain again, yanking at the ropes. The power burning in my muscles is not unlike the rush of virulium, only brighter, hotter. If I could just break one arm free then maybe I could . . .

Shanaera reaches out. Her dead fingers brush my cheek, a tender touch were it not so chilling. “I wish I could have killed your bride,”

she says softly, like whispering a lover’s secrets. “I wish I could have severed your bond. But I can’t have you too broken, or the virulium might kill you outright.”

She lets her gaze run down my body slowly, shaking her head. “She will be dead soon. And you will forget her. In the ages to come, she will fade from your memory, a mere shadow from a distant time. Whereas our love will go on. Our love will be the foundation of a new Age of Licorna. No one will doubt then or in the centuries to come that we were meant for each other.”

She tips her head toward me, smiling. “But I will enjoy killing you, Taar.”

She lifts the vial to the level of my eyes. “You wouldn’t begrudge me a little revenge after all these years, now would you?”

My whole soul fixates on the sliver of cut glass in her hand and that slice of oblivion contained within. The demon’s blood. Gods! How I used to crave it. In moments of quiet, I would dream of the taste and the surge of raw power coursing through my veins. I could be kneeling in prayer while my heart longed for the darkness and the taste of blood on my tongue. Breaking free of its hold was the hardest thing I ever did.

Even the smallest taint from the edge of Lurodos’s blade was enough to send me over the edge into bloodlust madness. An entire dose, after years of abstinence? It will flood my veins and burst my heart through my shattered ribcage.

“Don’t do it, Shanaera.”

I shake my head as she pulls the stopper from the vial. “It will destroy me.”

I yank again at the ropes, muscles straining. “There’ll be nothing left of my corpse for your Morthiel to remake.”

“Well,”

she says, gently swirling the contents of the vial, “I suppose that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

She lunges. One hand catches me by the back of the head while the other raises that vial to my lips. In the same instant, a sudden pulse of power rushes from the velra up my right arm. Twisting my head away from her, I grasp hold of the chaeora rope and pull.

The fibers strain—the pillar cracks.

Then the rope snaps in two.

I grab Shanaera by the throat. Startled, she drops the vial, which shatters on the floor. Virulium eats into the stone, and a dark miasma rises in hissing coils, but it sinks in fast and vanishes.

“No!”

Shanaera chokes. Nuviar, Minuvae, and Riluan are in motion already, rushing to her aid. Riluan draws a sword, prepared to hack me in two. “Stop!”

Shanaera cries, waving her arm to warn them off even as she twists against my grip. Riluan hesitates, gaze darting from her to me.

A crash sounds against the door, like the pound of a battering ram. Another hit, and the door bursts open. A blazing star incarnate erupts into the hall, soulfire radiating with roaring song. And clinging to the back of that star—suffused in purple flames, her hair blowing, her eyes shining with fierce songlight—my wife.