Page 8 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

Aya had lost count of the days.

At first, she’d tried to track the sun’s position in those brief moments of lucidity. But then, her mind had become too muddled, her dreams too sharp, too realistic, and she couldn’t determine what was true and what was imagined.

Had Tova been leaning against her shoulder?

Had Aya dreamt of the feeling of her blood on her hands?

“She looks half dead,” Andras’s rough voice muttered from somewhere beyond where Aya sat bound to the skiff’s mast. Aya blinked, the fog in her vision lifting enough that she became aware of the pain that curled around her body.

Thick ropes dug into her chest, adding to the ache that radiated just beneath them.

Her fighting leathers were caked with dirt and blood, the material hot to the touch from the sun.

Evie’s face came into view as she crouched before Aya. Her pale skin had grown tanner from their time at sea.

“She does, doesn’t she?” Evie mused, her head cocking as she took Aya in. The saint stretched out a hand, and Aya hated herself for the way she flinched.

“Be calm,” Evie murmured, setting her hand against Aya’s cheek. Healing light pulsed from Evie’s palm, warm against Aya’s skin, which tingled beneath the power. She could feel the tightness in her face, swollen from the heat and the sun and Andras’s fists, receding.

“There,” Evie remarked as she sat back on her heels. She was dressed in a tan tunic and brown britches—had she been wearing those all along? Aya couldn’t remember. Evie’s fingers were gentle as they tucked a piece of hair behind Aya’s ear. “More presentable for our esteemed hosts.”

It took several long moments for Evie’s words to settle in Aya’s hazy mind. Her fear was a distant thing, numbed by the agony that radiated through her with every breath. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat.

“You’re a fool if you think Kakos will welcome you with open arms,” she croaked, the words thick on the sandpaper of her tongue.

They’d be lucky if they were killed on sight.

Gods, let them kill us. Please, let them kill us.

Evie fixed her with a saccharine smile. “I would be a fool indeed to approach Kakos so directly. Though I do return with one of their esteemed warriors.” She flicked an appraising look at Andras. “Did you know, Aya, that Andras was trusted by the king himself to carry out his assignment in Tala?”

No, she hadn’t known. She had tried, those first few times she woke, to garner some information.

To stay still, so that she might listen, might hear something of use.

But it had been fruitless. Much like the days, Aya had lost her grip on the snatches of conversation she’d overheard until she couldn’t differentiate dream from reality.

She dragged her gaze to Andras. There was a smugness in the tilt of his chapped lips, a pride she wanted to smother.

“Do you think your king will forgive your failure?” she rasped.

The pleased looked vanished from the Diaforaté’s face. “I aided your bitch queen in advancing Kakos’s cause,” he spat, taking a menacing step toward her. “Your Dyminara friends are dead. Dunmeaden is in ashes thanks to my aid.”

The pain of that truth was equally sharp, and Aya clung to it. “And yet she fooled even you,” Aya pressed. “Or did you know she intended for me to call down the gods?”

“All the easier to kill them—”

“Enough,” Evie cut in, her hand extending toward where Andras was reaching for the knife sheathed at his hip.

Aya blinked, her heart stuttering in her chest.

She recognized that blade.

Take the knife from Tova’s chest…wipe it clean…

Evie tracked her gaze with a satisfied smile, as if she were remembering, too. As if she were relishing it.

“Ready the flag of surrender, Andras,” she ordered.

Aya forced her gaze away from the glint of metal and turned her attention to the saint.

Perhaps the dehydration had weakened her sense of self preservation.

Or perhaps she truly simply did not care anymore.

Not with the memory of Tova’s broken neck pushing against her conscience.

Whatever her motives, she recognized the desperation laced within them as she said, “Surrender? I didn’t know humility was a trait of a saint. ”

Evie raised an appraising brow. “It is not. But patience is.” A slow, knowing grin tugged at her lips.

“I commend your efforts, but you forget, dear Aya, that I have fought in battles the likes of which you could not even fathom. Childish taunts will not work with me.” She crouched once more, her fingers warm as they cupped Aya’s chin.

“I trust you’ll be on your best behavior when we arrive in Sitya. ”

Sitya. The southernmost port of the Midlands that was now under Kakos’s control. Aya barely had time to tuck that information away before Evie was continuing on, her voice far too gentle for Aya’s liking. “I hate to think of the consequences should you continue to attempt to defy me.”

Aya braced herself. “Go to hells,” she gritted out.

Fast as an asp, Evie’s power struck her, hard. It tightened around her, merciless, as she thrashed against the ropes that kept her bound.

“I would have preferred the seven hells over the prison the gods trapped me in for five hundred years,” Evie rumbled.

Pain lit Aya up from the inside, so intense her vision blurred. Her eyes slammed shut, but there was no relief. Because there was Tova, always Tova, broken and dead because of her.

…tell me you won’t use your power…

Somewhere, in the depths of Aya’s mind, Galda’s voice was making itself heard; a distant roar of Control that had followed her around for years.

But it was buried under the howl she imagined Tyr had made when he’d been burned to death with the rest of the Athatis, a howl she swore she could hear now as she bit back her own scream.

The pain heightened, and Aya’s jaw ached as she clenched her teeth, her eyes wrenching open to meet Evie’s smirk.

Control.

But it was Evie who was in control, Aya no more than a puppet on her string.

Aya’s pain grew, pain and fear and rage and guilt, because she could not stop this, she could not stop this .

Tears slipped down her cheeks, her chest heaving against the pressure of the rope as the agony went on, and on, and—

“Your Holiness,” Andras called, the thud of his boots heavy across the wooden deck. Evie’s power vanished as she stood. She chuckled at the way Aya slumped against her bindings.

“We’re nearing the port.” He fastened a white flag to the mast, the pulleys creaking as he raised it high above Aya’s head. “Good timing, too. Weather approaches.”

Aya’s head felt like lead, the echoes of Evie’s pain still etched in her bones, but she lifted her chin to take in the blanket of gray and brown clouds bearing down on them. It took Aya a long moment to realize strands of her hair no longer whipped across her cheeks.

The steady wind was gone. Instead, the air had turned thick.

Oppressive.

She longed for the breeze to return, to send the salt of the sea stinging across her skin. It had been a different sort of pain—one to soothe her.

Evie considered the sky. “It is not weather that approaches,” she remarked softly. Her gaze flicked back to where Aya was bound. “Get her up.”

Andras’s touch was rough as he removed the ropes around Aya’s chest, the pressure of them lingering like a phantom touch.

He fastened another length of rope to the one binding her hands and hauled her to standing.

Her weakened legs immediately buckled beneath her, and she bit her cheek to swallow her cry of pain as her knees collided with the deck.

Andras laughed and yanked the rope again. Aya scrambled to get her feet beneath her, her body screaming in protest as she pushed herself to stand.

“Good little dog,” he sneered.

Aya’s hands curled into fists, the bite of her nails sharp against her palms. Her power stirred somewhere deep within her, but Evie’s control held fast.

“Leave her, Andras,” the saint instructed. Her gaze was fixed on the shoreline, where the edges of a city were coming into focus. “There will be time enough to play once we’re done.”