Page 15 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

Chapter fourteen

Scarlett

K or’Tar is disgruntled this morning, I assume because he didn’t get to mount his mare. Horny toad more like than horse. Bastard can’t keep his cock from gravitating toward Winifred. We’ll have to let them sleep outside tonight.

Within the grasp of the north, it was too cold to let them sleep outside, but tonight we’ll make it well into the meridian. The temperatures should be moderate, and we’ll rest in a town.

We eat a meal of bread and dried meat, then mount up. Because the horses are so large and powerful, we can trot them much longer than a standard mount. We break only once when we’ve passed the snows, then make it to Galhad at sundown.

Galhad is a large commerce town, and we easily slip into the procession. I wear an eyepatch, which is much less suspect than showing my swirling black void to the world. We reach a discreet inn off the well-trodden path and stable Kor’Tar and Winifred together.

He nuzzles her immediately, and she leans into the affection. It makes my old, cynical heart pitter-patter to watch these creatures love on one another.

Zane pays for a room and orders us dinner at the bar while I find a table out of sight. I keep my hood high until I’m well-hidden in the shadows of the corner, farthest from the hearth despite the chill. He joins me, sliding his chair up to mine so he can hold my hands to his lips and blow on them.

“How are you?” he asks between puffs.

An instant retort of sarcasm and doom is on my tongue, but I hold it back. I am the eldest sister, Spider Queen of the Underbelly, and the woman who needs to lead. My actions and my speech need to reflect my position, my status.

“I’m cold, and tired, but well.”

Zane’s brow furrows. “Bullshit.”

I huff a laugh. There goes that.

“I can feel her stabbing the walls at the back of my mind. She’s a mud-kip, biting and gnawing, but as soon as I reach for her, she disappears, escaping my grasp.”

Zane reaches into his bag and pulls out the golden-tinged blood vial of my sister, Alyse.

“No,” I say, pushing it back. “I’m in control. It’s just uncomfortable.”

He takes a deep breath. “Some before bed to keep her at bay.”

I nod. “A wise decision, my king.”

He clenches his jaw and looks around the room. “You test my hunger.”

“Oh?” I ask, sliding my hand from his knee to his inner thigh. “What hunger?”

“My hunger for a hot meal…” He grabs the back of my neck and I suck in a sharp breath. “Maybe I should take the one between your thighs.”

“There may be limited opportunities to do so,” I say with a teasing lilt.

“Then I will have two dinners tonight. ”

A barmaid brings our stew and bread, giving me an unsteady once-over that lingers on my eyepatch. She sets the tray down and Zane pushes a copper coin across the table. I’m too hungry for any more playful sex talk, and it seems Zane is too.

We tuck into the bowls of food and tough bread. It’s far from the worst meal I’ve ever eaten, but everything needs more salt. I realize it’s because Fynren’s been buying it all up to cure meat and pickle vegetables for the long, hard winter ahead and the multitude of mouths we need to feed.

When the meal is done, we retire to a washcloth bath and grayed bedsheets. We make love again, slowly and deliberately. It breaks my heart, but I let the thoughts drift away on every moan. Tonight, and every night we have left, I will think only of him.

Zephrom is scratching deep furrows into my skull and pouring black inside. Ashai sews puppet strings into my hands and legs. I wield sharp, poisoned blades that cut down the ones I love.

Lily screams as I gut her and vomit black into her stomach. Strings thread through her body and make her the queen’s doll. I hand her a blade and we advance on Alyse. She puts up a golden shield around her, but I dissolve it with a flick of my wrist, absorbing her magic.

Lily cuts into Alyse’s throat before she can speak, then pours the same darkness into her. I march on to a blue halo projecting from the sky that calls me forward. My golden little sister hovers in the air, a child one moment and a scarred adult the next.

She opens her eyes. She’s confused, but then her gaze flicks to the blade in my hand and settles back on my face. I take a step forward, but the blue halo burns and slows my movement. I fall back and circle her.

“You’ve come to kill me?” she asks, turning in midair to follow my movement.

You were supposed to be me. My voice sounds like Ashai’s and I want to rip it out of my throat. I want to scream, do anything. But I’m powerless. I’m back in the Dark Room, strung up by her magic and helpless. I can only watch as she destroys what I love.

Reina lifts her chin. “You can’t have me. I’d rather die.”

I don’t want to kill my baby sister. I don’t want to hurt my little sunshine.

There is no stopping this. You are mine. I made you.

“You don’t own me!”

I feel my fangs growing with her defiance. I can bite back. I can take.

The light burns my skin as I push forward. Ashai loses her grip and I thrust the blade into my own stomach. Pain lances my chest and I gasp for air as I fall to the ground in this empty void.

Reina drops from the blue halo of light and steps up to my side. “She’s in you, isn’t she?”

I nod as the salty tang of life fills my mouth.

“You’re going to die, aren’t you?”

“Me? Never,” I gurgle through blood bubbles.

Reina kneels. “Just don’t die before we’re done.”

I grit my teeth through the unending pain of Ashai’s dominance, of her desire to be free of the prison of her own making. A tear slides down my face, burning a path that’s icy cold in its absence.

“We will win.”

Reina reaches for my face—

Consciousness grips me with a gasp. My heart beats so violently I think it might be trying to depart my chest. I wouldn’t blame it. I swallow hard and breathe the stale air of the inn. My chest is covered in sweat. I’m too cold and too hot at the same time.

Zane fidgets on the straw mattress beside me, still sleeping.

Small miracles.

“You will not survive this.”

Ashai speaks in the queen’s voice. My mother’s voice.

I have one memory of her being kind. It’s a simple thing, just a stroll through the garden. She was pregnant with Reina, and my father pushed a carriage containing Lily and Alyse. I remember white flowers. She picks one for me. Her smile…

It was the first and last time I remember seeing her smile.

Grandmother died that day, and Mother changed.

My fingers skate up the runic marks on my forearms and a realization I’d hidden in the back of my mind bursts forth. Ashai has been hunting and hurting my family for centuries. My grandmother was a victim too, and probably her mother, and hers. Who knows how far back the depravity goes?

I grit my teeth and whisper to the night, “I don’t care if I live, as long as you die.”

“Pathetic girl, I am the essence of life, the goddess of what makes you, you. There is no future without me.”

“Lies,” I snarl. “Yegress is the god of life.”

Her laughter rings in my mind.

“Existence is not the same as being alive. If only you knew what I’ve done for your species, maybe you would be on my side.”

Pain bleeds through my thoughts and I look down to see my nails puncturing the runes on my arm. The marks don’t hold. They bleed and fade, leaving only pain and a few drops of crimson behind .

Ashai’s runes are irremovable, unchangeable. I am her vessel. She marked me so.

And I will make her rue the day she did this to me, if only for a fraction of time before her eternal demise.

I lay back and blissful darkness takes me swiftly.

Another two days’ ride gets us to the edge of the Hollow Forest. Very inappropriately named, the forest is thick and sweltering despite the season. We shed our extra layers miles ago, and it still doesn’t feel like enough.

A sign is posted in the middle of the road into the forest stating that monsters lie ahead, and if we’d like to remain in one piece, we should turn back now.

A sheaf of worn parchment pinned below the wooden sign reads, “Wanted: Razor Fang pelts. 200 gold for good quality.” The bottom of the page has a stamp for Myrlin’s Fine Wares in Illyan territory.

“Think we’ll have time for a detour?” I ask.

“Maybe next time, love.” Zane dismounts and pats Kor’Tar on the neck. The horse chuffs, sounding almost like a laugh.

I slide out of the saddle and look up at the white mare my youngest sister brought home from her journeys. “Do you remember the way back?” I ask.

Kor’Tar pads the ground and bobs his head.

“Damn horse really understands us,” Zane says.

“Alastair said he could. Did you doubt it?”

Zane shakes his head. “He’s just a beast.”

“And what are we?”

He looks at me, his glowing gaze trying to penetrate the layers I’ve built around my nightmare.

“Beasts of a slightly higher power. Language, our winning tool,” he says, patting Kor’Tar again.

“And our downfall.”

He takes a deep breath. “It’s not yet written.”

The urge to scoff and tell him all the ways he’s wrong forces its way through my mind to my mouth and I bite it back, swallowing until the lump in my throat turns to tears.

“My monster,” Zane whispers, coming to my side.

I blink, trying to push down the need to cry, but it’s coming. I’m so tired. I’m so weak.

So weak. Give in.

I take a shaky breath. “More shield.”

Zane reaches into his bag and pulls out Alyse’s vial. I take a small sip and begin weaving the web of golden light that holds her out in my mind. After a few moments, or maybe a hundred, there’s an impenetrable wall, and I feel nothing at all.

“Better?” Zane askes.

I open my eye and nod. “Better.”

“We don’t have as much of this as I’d like,” he says, inspecting the vial.

“If we hurry, it won’t matter.”

Nothing matters but her death.

Zane’s gaze zips from my lips to my empty socket to my eye. “Why?”

“Because we will see Alyse again sooner,” I say, turning back to Winifred. I grab my bag and relieve her of the saddle and reins. “Run home now, you brilliant bitch.”

She whinnies in a high tone that sounds like laughter .

Fear of pain.

Mate is dying.

My mate.

The air is sucked from my lungs as I feel terror like never before.

No safe way home.

Mate is dying.

Fear of pain.

Must fight. Must win.

“Scarlett?” Zane grips my shoulder and I come back to my body, several steps farther into the forest.

Can’t die. Must fight. My mate needs me.

Our baby needs me.

The desperate cry pulls me into the mind of the panicking creature. I can see through its eyes. All eight of them.

Hope saturates my being, and purpose is breathed back into my lungs.

I look at Zane.

“We’re needed in the forest, my love.”