Page 61

Love you, Memnon…forever and always…

Roxi’s voice is a whisper down our bond, like the last smoke that curls up from an extinguished flame. It’s only then, only as the final notes of her voice fade away, that the whole godsdamned world grinds to a stop between one breath and the next.

I’m feeling my mate’s…death.

My chest spasms as a sharp, cutting pain slices through it. I collapse over my horse, the pain tightening my throat. I cannot breathe, cannot think?—

“ROXILANA!” I bellow, her name ripping from my lips.

My power explodes out of me, wiping out everyone two wagon spans away—both friend and foe.

I straighten on my steed as I wrestle with my magic, trying to get it under control so I can actually do something beyond killing everyone all at once. It’s bitter agony, forcing my power back into me. So much of it leaks out, and I can feel it gnawing on my conscience like a termite on wood.

ROXILANA! I think I’m still shouting. My eyes burn and blur and I cannot tell if it’s from the rain or tears. My steed moves as though he can hear my thoughts, charging through the thick of the fighting and trampling bodies in our wake.

I throw out my power, frantic to locate her. The blue ribbon of it snakes between cavalrymen and foot soldiers, forming a path that I drive after, heedless of the arrows and swords I’m galloping into.

Abruptly, the line of my magic turns downward, and?—

No, no, that blood-soaked body cannot be hers. But then I see that long, cinnamon hair and Ferox’s dark form draped over her body, his nose nudging her, as though trying to rouse her.

“ROXI!”

Maybe I swing off my horse, maybe I fall. Then I’m racing to her side. My knees hit cold, wet mud and cooling blood.

Roxi’s blood.

A sob rips from me. Her neck has been partially severed by an arrow.

When I try to push Ferox off her, he turns to me and snarls.

“I’m trying to save her life, damn it!” I roar, my magic shoving the panther fully off. Arrows and swords are still flying by us.

Leaning over her, I press my hand to her throat and force my magic inside her, ignoring the way my chest feels as though it’s collapsing inward. Roxi’s body arches at the violent thrust of my power, but it doesn’t heal.

I shout out my frustration.

“You will not leave me,” I tell her. “I forbid it.”

The girl who entered my mind and woke my magic. Who saved my life and owns my entire godsdamned soul. She cannot leave me alone in this world.

Determination washes over me. I forbid it.

I scoop Roxi up, clenching my jaw at the cold, limp feel of her in my hands. She’s riddled with arrows, but already my magic is there, wrapping around the projectiles and yanking them out.

Acidic, soul-destroying fear rides me, but I fight it back just as I do all my other opponents. This is not the end. Not of her, nor us.

I dash to my horse and, with the aid of my power, hoist us onto the beast. Ferox is there, pace for pace, the panther’s ears flattened and his tail twitching.

“We are going to save her,” I tell him. Already a plan is forming.

“Yah!” I shout at my horse, nudging the beast into action.

Cannot be dead, cannot be dead . Even as I think it, I feel that ache in my chest deepening, as though something is eroding away, bit by bit. Something essential. My magic spills out of me, and I can feel my hair lifting.

I cannot lose control yet. I need all the power and focus I can manage for this.

I drive my horse toward the Roman temple perched on a nearby outcropping.

If anyone is capable of saving Roxi, it’s the gods—Sarmatian, Roman, I’ll take any of them so long as they hear my broken prayers.

Several of my men have left the fighting to follow me. I glance down at Roxilana again, and a dark, desperate thought takes root.

I pull the reins on my steed, drawing him up short. The warriors around me slow.

“Gather all the injured enemies you can and bring them to the temple,” I command, and then I am off again like a shot, heading for that colonnaded entrance.

My horse is still galloping when I swing off him, Roxi cradled in my arms, Ferox like a shadow at my heels.

Barging into the temple, I rush to the back of the space, where the altar is. There’s incense burning on it and fire blazing in nearby braziers, but the priests who lit them must’ve fled with the fighting.

Sweeping the incense aside, I lay Roxilana out, choking back a sob at her limp form. Her rich, cinnamon hair is partially matted to her face and neck, and her skin is paler than usual.

Every second that passes, she moves farther into the afterlife. At some point, her soul will wander too far, and she won’t return.

I must be quick.

My warriors follow me in, but for now I ignore them.

Grabbing my dagger, I raise my hand, my power gathering in my veins, my hair lifting off my shoulders. With a swift slice of my blade, I cut my palm open, letting my blood spill forth, onto Roxi and the altar.

“Papaios—Pluto, I give you my blood in exchange for the life of my wife!”

Nothing. Not even a stirring in the air. Just my wife’s ever-cooling body.

But of course the gods would not act on that plea. Blood for a soul? That is hardly an exchange worth making.

Katiari and Zosines come in then, each of them dragging a severely wounded Roman.

Once I see their captives, I exhale.

I do know an exchange the gods might not overlook.

My sister nearly drops her prisoner when her gaze lands on my queen, horror spreading across her expression. “Roxi,” she chokes out. She swallows. “Is she…?”

“No,” I say, viciously, my gaze pinned on Roxi’s blood-spattered face.

Going to save you, my love.

“Gods,” I call out again, “give me my wife back, and I shall send you many souls.”

Katiari gasps. “Memnon,” she says, alarmed, moving closer. “Whatever you’re thinking of, don’t. You seek to meddle in fate itself.”

“I’m bringing her back.” Even I hear the lawless, desperate edge in my voice. The pain in my chest is worsening; it’s becoming hard to breathe around.

“It’s blasphemy,” my sister says softly.

“Fuck blasphemy. The gods will listen to me.”

Katiari shudders at my words.

I begin incanting a secret spell, one my father once spoke of in whispers before I had magic to wield. The words are in Mochica, but I understand them all the same.

“ A life for a life, a soul for a soul, take what I offer and return what I’ve lost. I call Uvagukis Roxilana, Queen of Sarmatians, back to the land of the living, and I deliver another to take her place .”

Grabbing Katiari’s captive, I pull him to me long enough to slice his neck. His blood sprays across my riders’ boots, and he sags in my arms. “A life for a life.”

I cast his body aside and turn to the altar, looking for any sign that my beloved lives.

But Death still has her in his clutches.

Zosines’s wounded prisoner is beginning to panic, jerking against my blood brother and crying out in his feeble attempt to flee.

I cross over to my rider and roughly haul the Roman away from Zosines.

“ A soul for a soul ,” I call out as I drag my blade across this soldier’s throat as well.

Blood decorates the temple walls and floor, and still, my queen’s body remains lifeless.

Another. I beckon with my fingers to the other Sarmatians entering the temple with their prisoners. Though many of them might find my actions abhorrent, they hand over their captives all the same.

Again and again, I whisper the incantation; again and again, I cut soldiers’ throats. And again and again, blood sprays, and they fall.

Five men have been sacrificed. Now seven. Now nine. The bodies are piling up in the tight, dim space, yet my warriors continue to bring more and more prisoners.

Nothing changes on the altar, but within me, my power builds. I feel it building. Can sense the crackle of lightning running through it.

I’m bringing you back, Roxilana.

Once close to a dozen men lay scattered on the ground before me, I sense something enter the room.

Not a god, exactly, but a presence nonetheless.

Something familiar and beloved. My magic swarms it, and I try to draw it to me like a fish on a hook.

But this essence fights the pull of my power, and for the first time in my life, I have found my magic too weak to complete the task.

Come back to me, my love , I beg.

My power fills up the temple, pressing on the walls and my warriors, thickening until it feels as though reality itself has been carved out by my power alone.

“Gods, release my wife to me!”

Still nothing. If the gods are watching, they want more. So does that essence that lingers in the room.

There is a lake of blood beneath me. I draw it all into me, letting the blood boil away and more power amass. More than I have ever used. Other things have long since boiled away, precious things that I might miss if Roxi and I survive this moment.

But considering my wife might not survive, I do not give a fuck.

“Helllllooo, berrrreavvved kinnggg,” the Hungering Ones whisper.

Not bereaved, not yet.

My skin throbs from the intensity of my gathered power, and my eyes seem to pulse from it.

Not enough .

I force the indigo cloud of my magic back into my flesh, gritting my teeth against the burn of shoving it into a body already overly full.

“Gods!” I call out. “Take my power! It’s all for her.”

Nothing.

I bite back a sob.

In a final, desperate move, I grab a section of my hair—my pride and power—and saw through it, debasing myself for these entities. Visions of the last time I did this overlay this macabre moment.

“You’ve ruined your hair,” Roxi said.

“It was frightening you.”

I’m going to hear that soft voice again , I vow to myself.

I drop my shorn hair like an offering, then hack away at my beard. “Release her, I beg of you!”

The warriors that remain in the temple back away.

Rakas, Thiabo, Zosines—even my sister retreats from me.

These are Sarmatians who’ve fought at my side for years, who’ve killed dozens of people for reasons far less noble than this, and yet it’s now, when I’m trying to save their queen, that they decide I’ve done something unconscionable.

The gods themselves seem distant, maybe even…affronted.

Only Ferox remains unwavering at my side.

But there’s that beloved presence, so close I can almost touch it.

Who needs the gods when I am nearly one myself?

With an anguished growl, I gather all my boiling magic and move my hands to my mate’s chest, the sheer quantity of it incinerating me from the inside out.

“Roxilana, I call you back,” I say, my voice hoarse. “My queen, my soul mate, my truest friend, I cannot do this without you.” I ready my magic. “Please, come back to me.”

I shove all of my vast power down my arms and through my palms, propelling it into her body. It’s like lightning in a touch. Enough to fell forests and annihilate armies. Enough to bring my mate back from the dead.

Roxilana’s back arches like it did on the battlefield, but this time—this time I hear a ragged inhalation.

Alive.

She’s alive once more.

I make a noise that’s part sob, part exalted roar.

As rapidly as I can, I force more power into her body, willing it to not just restart her heart but to heal her.

The sinew of her neck stitches itself back together, faster than I’ve ever seen it, and I sense the rest of her arrow wounds mending themselves.

My mind itself feels aflame. Things are burning in there—things I fear I will never get back.

My father warned me of this. The cost of our magic.

I find I don’t care, that I would pay this tithe a thousand times over for my wife’s beating heart.

As soon as her injuries heal and her chest continues to rise and fall in a steady rhythm, my legs give out, and I only just manage to catch myself on the edge of the altar. I can feel my shoulders shaking, my body heaving.

I press a weary kiss to Roxi’s forehead. “My Roxi, my eternal soul mate.”

I did it. Robbed fucking Death himself.