Page 49

The first crisp chill has entered the air when I ride next to Katiari, the two of us heading for the training grounds to practice shooting from horseback.

“How’s your tattoo healing?” Katiari asks, nodding to my upper arm, where, beneath my kurta, a stylized panther now adorns my skin. I received it shortly after our recent victorious battle against Zoutoula and his warriors.

“It throbs, and it will probably make archery a pain today, but other than that, it should be?—”

Between my legs, I feel a gush of something warm and wet.

I glance down, trying to figure out what the wetness is, even as it keeps coming.

I’m not…peeing, am I?

I lift my tunic up enough to see blood darkening my trousers. So much blood. More than there ever is during my monthly cycles.

I make a small, sharp noise. “Katiari …”

My sister-in-law glances over, her gaze dropping to the juncture of my thighs. She hisses in a sharp breath.

Tha-thump-tha-thump-tha-thump.

I can hear my rapid pulse and my harsh exhalations. I know what I’m seeing, but—no, there must be some other explanation.

No . Please, Vesta, Api— any benevolent god out there. Please, not this.

“Oh, Roxilana,” Katiari whispers, “no.”

It’s her sorrow that makes it real.

Fear rises like a tidal wave, replacing my shock and every rational thought.

Roxi? Memnon’s voice moves through my mind.

He’s so close—I can make out his mounted form up ahead—yet it feels like we’re an ocean apart as he steers his horse toward me. I can feel your fear. Is everything all right?

Katiari’s inked hand grasps my forearm, and I jerk in surprise at her proximity. I don’t know when she moved her horse so close to mine.

“Roxilana,” she says, her brows pulled together and her voice soft. Too soft. “We need to get you to a healer.”

My eyes drop back down to the juncture of my thighs. I’m still holding up my tunic, and that bright-red blood is still spreading.

I can feel myself nodding, and I’m dimly aware of Katiari taking the reins from my hands and turning our horses around. But I’m not really here in this moment.

Behind us, I hear Memnon shout.

Roxi, what is happening? he asks down our bond, his voice alarmed.

I pinch my eyes shut, feeling that awful, awful wetness between my thighs.

The baby… I feel my hope breaking, shattering. I think we’re losing the baby.

There’s no word for this loss. Nothing that can encapsulate losing something so beloved before you even had it. And the grief, the grief is a leviathan, sorrow and longing and hope—such sweet, brilliant hope—dashed upon the rocks of reality.

There’s cramping and pain, clots and blood, and eventually, a tiny body, one that fits neatly in the palm of my hand.

I stare down at it, trying to understand this unending ache. No one sat me down and told me this part of life, this part that would absolutely break my heart.

Memnon and I go out early the next morning, Ferox following behind like a sentry. Here the landscape is dotted with kurgans, the area nothing more than a graveyard for the venerated dead.

Using our magic, we unearth a hole in the ground. Perhaps if the child were born alive, a proper grave would be made, but neither Romans nor Sarmatians have burial rites for those who are born without ever drawing breath.

I lay a piece of fine linen over the ground and place my child on it, their body wrapped in the orange veil I wore the day Memnon found me in Rome. Memnon unsheathes a slim dagger from his belt and places it in the grave, the weapon four times as large as our child.

“From the gods that made you to the gods that take you, I bid you ride with our ancestors in the heavens till the day of reckoning,” Memnon says, his face stoic. “I await your embrace in the afterlife, my child.”

My eyes prickle, but no tears come. Neither of us have cried, though I can feel our combined grief across our bond. We’re drowning in this pain.

I press a hand to my child’s body. I have no eloquent words, nothing that can spin the mess of my emotions into something poetic and beautiful.

“I love you,” I say simply. “I will always love you.”

With a shudder, I remove my hand, and Memnon and I fill our child’s grave up with dirt. We use a bit more of our magic to make a small mound.

After we’re finished, Memnon wraps his arms around me and pulls me down to the grass next to the small kurgan we’ve made. It is there, cradled in his arms, that I finally allow myself fall apart.

“It will be all right, Empress,” Memnon says, his own voice wavering as he strokes my hair. “Sometimes, this is life too.”

I shake my head. I know what he says is true, but I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear any placating words, not even from Memnon.

The grief sucks me under, and I haven’t surfaced from it when a rider heads our way, carting a saddled horse with him. A horse that looks concerningly like Memnon’s.

My stomach twists when I realize that it is Memnon’s horse.

The rider has barely reached us when, not bothering to dismount, he says, “A band of Bastarnae warriors have been spotted half a day’s ride from here. They are armed and appear to be heading our way. Our sources suspect they’ve allied with Dacia.”

My breath catches. Another fight? The last one was not even a week ago.

Memnon must have a similar thought, but rather than alarm, I feel the rising heat of his anger and bits of his thoughts.

…dare they interrupt my child’s funeral? …will give them pain unlike any they’ve ever known…

He releases me gently, then stands, his mounting fury rolling off him in ominous waves. “How long do we have?” he asks.

“Until nightfall.”

Memnon looks down at me. “I’m so sorry, Roxi.” Because he has to attend to this, he means.

I bite the inside of my cheek and nod, trying not to cry all over again.

He kneels and kisses me, an apology and a pledge wrapped into the action. You watch over our child, all right? I’ll be back to hold you this evening.

I grab on to his forearms as though I can keep him here. I don’t want him to go, not into battle. I cannot bear the thought of possibly losing him too.

You will not lose me , Memnon says adamantly. That, I vow .

When he stands again, his jaw is hard, his face resolute. Memnon moves over to his horse and swings himself into the saddle in a single, fluid movement.

“Let’s be done with this,” Memnon says, his face grim. “My wife needs me.”

And with that, they ride off.

I watch their forms until they disappear from view. I fight the need to reach across my bond with Memnon just to hear his voice and make sure he’s okay.

It’s then that I realize I was supposed to follow him into battle. In my grief, I forgot that pledge entirely.

The next breath I take sounds like a sob. Do I run for camp and try to catch up with the men?

Stay , Memnon insists, his voice strong as iron. I will take care of this.

I draw in a shaky breath and sit there, miserable. As I stare out at the grassland, my eyes keep snagging on the kurgans dotting it, all of them are so much bigger than the one Memnon and I just made.

One of the closer ones, in particular, is obscenely large, and my eyes keep returning to it. At its summit, the sun glints off something.

I lean forward, squinting to better see what has any right to shine so brightly on a day like today. The longer I stare at it, the more it seems to mock the meager grave I’ve given my child.

In a huff, I stand up. Still, my abdomen aches and I’ve been bleeding on and off, but damn it, I’m going to climb up to that kurgan and rip whatever bit of wealth rests on top of that pompous mound and fling it into the fucking afterlife.

Getting to the man-made hill, then climbing up it, takes longer than I thought it would, mostly because I am sore and slow, but the entire time, my eyes stay fixed to its apex.

Only, when I get to the top of the kurgan…there is nothing . No sword, no polished metal. Just grass and more grass.

I walked all this way, left the grave of my child, for just a trick of the light.

A tear rolls down my cheek.

Above me, a cloud passes away from the sun and the sky brightens, and once more, that thing glints again.

I peer at it, moving closer. There is still no metal object, but there is something . It looks almost…like a thin film suspended in midair. My eyes widen.

I’ve seen this before. Memnon’s father led us through one when he visited.

A ley line entrance.

Unfortunately, I cannot rip this thing off the mound. But I can traverse it.

I don’t know what possesses me to even think the thought or why my feet creep closer, until I’m less than an arm span away from it.

For a long time, I gaze at the ephemeral surface. Cautiously, I raise my hand and touch it. Whatever substance it’s made of, it ripples ever so slightly beneath my fingers.

Emboldened, I push my hand forward, letting the ley line swallow up my fingers. It looks eerily like part of my hand has been lopped off, but I know that’s not true. I can feel my fingers just fine.

I marvel that while part of me stands here on the earth, a portion of me is elsewhere. And maybe elsewhere is where spirits go—where my child has gone.

I glance over my shoulder. I should get back—if not to camp, then at least to the grave I sat beside.

Facing forward once more, I take in the smooth surface of the ley line entrance. I can’t help but notice that these entrances seem to exist atop funerary mounds.

Maybe this really is a portal to the afterlife. It definitely feels as close to death as I’ll ever be short of dying myself.

I reach forward, letting the strange surface swallow my forearm up to my elbow. I’m too curious to be worried, too grief-stricken to be afraid. So I act on my most foolish impulse yet and step fully onto the ley line.

I am a fool. I’m going to die here, in this in-between space.