Page 85 of Horns of Wicked Ebony (Deathcaller Duet #2)

A hush fell as I shut us in. Like even the air needed a moment to recover from Xannirin’s “present.” Rokath bled males before my eyes. Gifted me feathers and bones as tokens of his adoration.

Yet this was…different. Disgust curled in my stomach, hot and sour. Kiira’s lower lip trembled, and she swayed on her feet. Stumbling toward the bed, the High Priestess collapsed onto it. A whimper shuddered in her chest, and she clutched at her heart like she could stop it from hurting her.

In two swift strides, I was there, settling beside her. Her locks spilled like ink onto the blankets. I gathered them gently, twisting them into a knot like I was binding her wound that refused to heal. “You’re safe now. He’s dead.”

“I know,” she whispered through a broken sob. “I–I wasn’t ready. Not for that. Not like that.”

Grem and Zeec hopped up to the mattress, tearing a creak from the bedframe. With a low whine, Grem nudged Kiira’s hands, forcing her to put them in his fur. Zeec curled up beside me, his body warm against the chill.

“That makes sense. Feel what you need to feel,” I told her, drawing circles on her back as soft as the petals of a rose.

Words I’d once ached to hear, but no one ever spoke.

Thankfully for me, finding purpose in leadership, even while I’d been impersonating Vagach, had healed so much of my feeling voiceless.

Learning to fight had done the same for Kiira.

Yet the feeling of being powerless, the memories of it, never truly faded completely.

Panic gripped my throat as I felt hands around my waist, yanking me away from safety.

The smell of blood flooded my nostrils. The stench of alcohol burned my throat.

The moment Vagach had been about to rape me before I killed him surfaced, as piercing as it had been when I flashed back to the moment in front of Rokath.

He’d grabbed me from behind, triggering the visceral reaction, but instead of hurting me, he’d pulled me back from the abyss. Told me to find him in the dark.

“Does it make you feel better that Xannirin did it?” I murmured, smoothing back her hair.

She shook her head, cries softening into hiccups. “I don’t know that I want to read his note either.”

“I can read it for you, if you want.”

An exhale, shaky and slow, slipped out of her as she sat upright. With the back of her long sleeves, she dried her eyes. I went to the bathing chamber and returned with a cloth. She blew her nose into it before casting it aside like it carried too much. “No. I should. Just not today.”

“Fair enough.” I heeled out of my dirty boots. Kiira sat forward and yanked hers off. They plopped against the floor, joining mine in a pile. Then she flopped back, arms across her stomach and staring up at the ceiling. Grem rested his head there too, and Kiira absently stroked his fur.

I settled beside her, noting the whorls in the plaster over our heads.

The bed itself wasn’t terrible—a little firmer than what we’d slept on in Fured but infinitely better than the rock Rokath called a mattress in the war camp.

After weeks of riding, it honestly felt good on my back.

I shifted a little and let out a groan as my neck and shoulders started to relax.

Zeec huffed against my hair as he made himself comfortable too.

Kiira snickered. “No one tells you how grueling riding all day is.”

“No, they don’t,” I replied. “You’d think I’d be accustomed to it by now.”

“You did have a few months break,” Kiira pointed out.

“True.” I paused for a moment, weighing my next words. “Do you want to talk about what happened any more?”

Kiira was silent for a long moment. I turned my head to look at her, watching the tears spill over her cheeks. “I think just sitting here would be nice.”

“That I can do,” I promised, reaching out and giving her hand a squeeze.

When I moved it away, she grabbed it again and held it. I offered her whatever comfort I could then, so fucking glad I could give her what I never received.

Solidarity. Understanding. Love.

The very things I’d once begged the Fates for. Reaching a hand to the skies to save me from the prison of Vagach’s house. Gripping the earth like I could dig my way to my home and away from the torture of being married to him. Shrieking into a pillow as my family perished one by one.

And all they’d given me was their backs. Silence. Stillness.

Until now.

A tear carved down my cheek. Another coated the back of my throat in salt. I choked on them as savage, repressed emotions clawed up from the depths of my being.

Rokath appeared in my mind like a beacon in the dark.

“I’m so sorry you suffered, Assyria, and that I played a part in that during our initial encounters.

I hope my devotion to you now shows you all the love you desire and more.

I will spend every day proving that you are not just wanted. You are cherished.”

“It does,” I told him, my voice weak. More hot tears swept from my eyes. “Never stop.”

“Never,” he swore. “You’re mine. To protect even if I must rip the world apart for you.

To crave like I do my next breath. To possess until all you know is my name.

In this life, in the next, and the one after, where I will find you bleeding and broken and burn whomever dared to make you feel that you are anything less than a fucking alter upon which to worship. ”

His words rewound time and pieced the fractures of me back together.

Overcome, all I could do was send warmth back through our bond before the tide dragged me out.

Wave after wave crashed through me—of grief, of rage, of trauma.

Kiira held my hand tighter, and together, we wept for everything we’d lost. Everything we’d had to suffer because of our sex.

“United, we are stronger,” I murmured through a throat thick with emotion.

“We are,” she whispered back.

“Xannirin freed the fallen,” I rasped. “He made rape a crime punishable by death.”

She turned over then, and I mirrored her. Her eyes were puffy and red, no doubt a reflection of my own. “He did?”

I nodded, another wash of tears dripping onto the bed. “Apparently, many volunteered to join those going to the wall.”

A half-smile tugged up the corner of her mouth. “Who wouldn’t? When the alternative is being forced to do something you don’t want.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” I laughed, the sound coarse and watery.

We hugged each other then, silent witnesses to the changes occurring because of our insistence. Because we were tired of being used, abused, and broken, all for the male’s gains. When we separated, I dried my eyes. “Fuck, I really need to wash my face now.”

Kiira laughed, pushing herself upright. “And your mouth with soap. You curse like the soldiers who have served for decades now.”

I couldn’t deny that. “At least once a day, I realize I sound exactly like Rokath. Barking orders, making thinly veiled threats, intimidating the soldiers.”

Kiira followed me into the bathing chamber.

A deep tub stood against one wall, while a basin and mirror greeted us straight ahead.

Between the two was a chamber pot, thank the Fates.

I’d had enough of latrines for my entire lifetime.

I turned the taps and filled the washbasin so we could both wipe the grime and tear stains away.

“He’s starting to sound like you too. Stopping to consider others’ feelings on the matter,” Kiira commented, finding another cloth to dry her face and tossing me one too.

“I guess that’s the point of a mating bond, isn’t it? Two souls becoming one.”

“It brings out the best of both of you. Holds the rest of us to a higher standard. Shows the world what true devotion is. Makes us believe in sacred bonds.” Kiira listed off a litany of other repercussions to our blessing.

My mind flashed to the portrait Kiira had insisted Rokath and I do before our departure. The copy I had in my bags. The moment stood so clearly in my mind, I didn’t even need to look at it again to bring back the feelings that standing over the bloody battlefield, staring up at my mate, had evoked.

That drawing was supposed to spread the mythos of the two of us like wildfire. I sincerely hoped it did. It was so different, wanting to be seen, rather than trying to hide.

I squared my shoulders and looked at myself in the mirror.

The girl who once sought refuge among the garden plants, praying for her violent husband to pass her by, flickered behind my reflection. But I didn’t look away. I saw her, acknowledged the part she played in my story. Thanked her for never giving up.

Because if she had, I wouldn’t be standing here, on the precipice of winning a war, with my mate by my side.

You’ve got this, Assyria.

It was time for me to display the true fire that lay inside me. To bring the males of this army to their knees in veneration of my power.

But most importantly, it was time to make the Angels fear me too.

This time, I wouldn’t just survive; I’d lead. With Kiira, with the former priestesses, with the fallen…we’d carve a new future in blood.

“Ready to take our rightful place as leaders during this war?” I asked the High Priestess, who had suffered as much as any of us for Xannirin’s ambition. For the war waged against the Angels. For being the only female to stand against her two male cousins.

“I am,” she replied, shaking her hair out.

Then, she twisted it around her finger and secured it at the base of her neck with a leather strip.

“May the Weaver open wide our path. May the Giver bless our magic so that it never fails us. May the Reaper turn her eye onto the Angels. May the Fates witness our rise and bolster our success.”

Each prayer, struck like a war drum, reverberated in my bones. “May your thread hold strong, High Priestess.”

Kiira’s answering grin was as vicious as my own. “May your gift never fade, Szélhámos.”

With disjointed groans, Grem and Zeec rose, shaking out their fur. Their nails clicked as they landed on the floor. Kiira and I pulled on our boots, and I secured my helmet again, before we slipped into the hall.

Shouts dragged us outside like a rope around our waists. This transition, yet again, would not be an easy one, but we’d already done it once, and we’d certainly be able to do it again.

They’d buried us before, thinking we were weak.

Not realizing they were planting fire-mouthed, thorny seeds.

And now, we’d bloom by their side in battle—sharp, devious, and wicked.