Page 21 of Humans Don’t Have Horns (A Crown of Blood and Magic #1)

Chapter Thirteen

Siean

I walk back to Renya in a haze as the blood-curling screams of the guards ring in my ears.

The sight and sound of them being eaten by the demichad will haunt me until my dying day.

I think of Didia, the head guard who just ripped apart.

His mother is the main cook in the palace.

How will I ever face her again? After surviving what he did not.

He was her only child, named after his father who died at the hands of the Butcher while she was pregnant. The fucking Butcher. For fuck’s sake.

After several hours on foot, I reach a small Renyan village on the border.

I ask the head of the village to arrange a carriage and a horse.

The villagers are startled by my bloody appearance and the urgency of my words.

I am in a carriage pulled by four horses for maximum speed, with food and fresh clothes, in no more than twenty minutes.

The generosity of Renyans is well known, yet it never ceases to move me.

“They are generous only to Renyans.” I can hear Lian’s self-righteous tone in my head .

Lian. It is too painful even to think of my sister’s name.

I have so longed for her all these years.

She was not just my sister but my best friend. But that is lost. Everything is lost.

I feel so hollow inside. Lian’s words of reproach burn me.

The rancor of the Butcher, surprisingly, managed to wound me as well.

He would have killed me. I saw the burning hatred in his eyes.

I saw death on him. He has killed so many of my people, but when she touched him, he was a different thing.

I would never believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes that the Butcher could love a Puresoul.

I would have believed pigs could fly sooner.

That he would love my sister, the daughter of Rod, is beyond fiction even.

Yet I know what love looks like. I was once looked upon with that emotion.

But it has gone. All who once loved me are lost to me.

I failed to save them all: my mother, my sister, my brother, and myself.

That’s why I pushed Anya away. Let her think the worst of me. I should be used to people thinking the worst of me by now. So I just let her go. It was like turning a knife in my heart. In a way, I was surprised to find I still have a heart at all.

Anya always hated Tilil. But she didn’t know the half of it. She doesn’t know how many she has poisoned to death or what she is capable of. So I showed her the worst of me. Better than her knowing I was protecting her from the monster that is Tilil. I will not have blood on my hands again.

But then I nearly killed my sister. If not for that damn demichad, she would be in Rod’s hands by now.

Better the fire than the poison, better the quicker death, I tried to convince myself in the carriage.

She was right to say it’s a good thing Mother is dead.

Our mother knew the death from Tilil’s favorite poison.

I need to remind myself to breathe at the panic the memory evokes.

Oh, Goddess, you are crueler than Sun could ever be.

My sister thinks me a monster. I never even touched a Cursed One.

But there’s no point in telling her and the Butcher that.

They wouldn’t believe me, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care.

It’s been years since I found out what my health potion was made of.

And that the Cursed Ones can’t live without their horns.

I wondered, at times, how many of them had died so I could live.

But I didn’t choose this. I didn’t ask to come back from the dead.

What do they know of dying? Of the pain of life being sucked out of you? What do they know of resurrection?

My deaths were not quick. They took days.

Days of paralyzing pain and fear. The cruel poison of a monster.

She enjoyed it. The slow progression of it.

Tilil could use any poison, but she chose the most sadistic of them all.

The Renyan kiss is produced from the venom of a tiny spider called the Streaky for its bright blue-and-red stripes.

No animal or insect alive has such awful venom: one that guarantees a prolonged and excruciating death no matter the victim’s size.

And my mother knew. She was such a gifted healer that she knew what was killing us and that only a Renyan could have poisoned us.

But true to Renya until the very end, she would never tell.

Because to admit to the Aldonians that Renyans use such poisons, to tell them of our secrets, would be a betrayal.

There is an antitoxin. She knew that too.

But she would rather die, in the worst way, than betray Renya.

And I might have found it noble if she hadn’t known it was killing me as well.

I ride with no stops, and arrive at Milasurey at noon.

Tilil is in a meeting with the council. She hates those meetings, but she must keep up the appearance of a free council.

Therefore, she is stuck with Bina, the head of the opposition, in those meetings.

I shouldn’t interrupt such a meeting. Tilil gets irascible from them.

And she wouldn’t want to hear of the demichads for the first time in the presence of the head of the opposition.

But those meetings can last for hours, and the delay can cost so many lives.

My guards’ deaths already haunt me. I can not wait.

I enter the council hall, and all eyes turn to me. I changed into the clean clothes the villagers gave me, and still, I’m dirty and smeared with blood.

“What is the meaning of this?” Tilil asks with an expression that may appear concerned. But monsters don’t feel such things.

“A demichad attacked us on our way to Modos. I am the only survivor.” The sob that escapes me is real. I do not mean to sob, but I let the emotion burst out of me.

“That is impossible,” one of the council members cries, aghast. “Aldon defeated the demichads. No one has seen them for a hundred years.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time Aldon has made up truth to serve its rulers,” Bina says wryly. I hate that old hag. Being supported by her rubs me all the wrong ways.

Tilil looks at me, and I can tell she is furious. “Where was this?” Her voice has lost that honeyed tinge she likes so much.

“In Aldon, about an hour from Modos, on King’s Road.” And then I add because they all seem to miss the emergency of it, “More are coming.”

“How can you be sure?” another member of the council asks.

“That more are coming? Maybe it was just this one.” I promised Lian I would tell them she was dead.

Telling them she spoke to the demichad would also be wrong.

I remember what the Butcher said to her, that I would tell them of her powers.

But what else can I do? How can I make them believe it wasn’t just one demichad?

If they stay in their smug disposition, millions will pay for it with their lives.

“It spoke to Lian, and it said they were never defeated. They were asleep,” I tell them as they all look at me like I’ve grown a second head. Except for Bina and Tilil. My aunt smiles at me, a smile that has always given me the creeps. It never means anything good.

“It spoke to your sister, and then it killed her? And only you survived?” she asks, tilting her, still smiling in amusement. She doesn’t believe me. Goddess, I am so fucked. I will survive this though. That is my curse. Always to survive.

“That is what I said,” I answer through clenched jaws. I’m not in the mood for her fucking game. We both know I’m lying, so she can just get on with it.

Then that hag Bina rumbles, “Our submission to Aldon is due to their defeating the demichads. If the demichads are back, Renya can walk free again. ”

“Millions are going to die!” I snap at her, losing my temper. “What is wrong with you? We need to save the people. Can’t politics wait?”

“And how are we to save them, Siean?” Bina asks. “Our Queen will turn to Aldon for military protection, since we no longer have an army, and they will tighten their grip on us in return for it. But if they never defeated the demichads, what is the point in that?”

It doesn’t matter what Bina says. She is one of seven council members.

She is the only one who ages, the only one not to consume the Cursed Ones’ horns.

And after the part she played nine years ago in creating the shitstorm I call my life, she should wake up every morning with gratitude to still be breathing. Righteous crone.

I am still startled by what she says. If Aldon can’t protect us, no one can. They are the only ones with an army since the War of Light. What was the point in hurrying and warning them? We are all going to get eaten by the fucking demichads.

***

The white houses of Milasurey are the perfect canvas for the pink light the sunset casts on Renya.

The sweetness of the jasmine is thick in the summer heat.

Tilil left an hour ago to Aldon to warn them of the demichads.

She hasn’t punished me yet, only said I was to think of my actions until she returned.

The waiting is just part of the punishment.

The dread of the expected cruelty, the memories of blood and the female screams too hard to suppress while waiting.

Sometimes I’m not sure whose blood it is, whose screams pierce the air.

But Tilil can no longer hurt anyone I love.

I made sure of that. I let Anya go. I secluded myself.

Let her punish me. I’m too tired to care anymore.

Bina has been trying to speak to me since the meeting. I’ve been avoiding her. I hurry to my chambers, exhausted and craving a bath to wash the remains of blood from me. The remains of Didia.