Page 44

Traitors And Heroes

Pollux leans back, just slightly, and I can’t help but huff a quiet chuckle. Everyone wants to get away from the Shadowraith when they realize what he is. They haven’t figured out I’m the one they should fear now.

“We haven’t met.” Vos strides across the room to squat in front of Pollux and study him. “I’m—”

“Voserian.” Pollux spits in Vos’s face. Actually spits. “Eidolon’s traitor general.”

Instead of slicing his throat, Vos shows remarkable calm—more than I would have—and wipes his face before offering a grin even while his eyes remain deadly. “It’s all perspective,” he says. “To you, I’m a traitor. To them…” He tips his head at us. “I’m a hero for standing against a tyrant.”

Pollux scoffs. “Hero, my ass. Is it tyranny to try to save the world?”

“It is the way Eidolon’s going about it.” Vos gets to his feet and drags over a chair someone left in the corner, wood whining as it scrapes across the stone.

Pollux straightens as much as his metal bindings will allow, enough that they have to be cutting into him. “Either we all die, or a few are sacrificed.”

I start forward. “Those are human beings—”

Reven catches my arm and tugs me back against him. Lips at my ear, he says, “A brainwashed zealot can’t be turned.”

I scowl.

Pollux’s pale gaze spears me with a look of pity. Pity for me. “For the greater good,” he says.

“For the sake of expediency, let’s agree to disagree on that.” Vos pulls out a long-bladed knife I recognize as Wanderer steel. He turns it over in his hand, examining it casually. “You know we’re going to kill you.”

Pollux doesn’t even look at the knife, just straight forward now. “Go ahead.”

“Give me something,” Vos offers. “Information. Do that, and I’ll make sure your death is fast and relatively painless.”

Pollux clamps his mouth shut.

“Good information, of course.” Vos leans back, feet stuck out before him, visibly at ease. “Something juicy. Usable.”

Throat working, Pollux’s gaze drops to Vos’s face. “I would never betray my king. His cause is just. Righteous. He’s the only one who can save us all from the sovereigns who have done nothing to help their people. The goddesses will answer us again after we rid the world of you .”

Reven is right. This man is a zealot. If this is what Eidolon’s followers believe, I understand why his numbers have grown. I may be a princess, but I’ve lived most of my life amongst the struggling people of Aryd, listening to their frustrations and fears. Hearing some of that fear become hatred. People, especially in dire situations, will follow anyone who gives them an enemy to fight. I’ve seen it firsthand.

“Even a just cause in evil hands can be poisoned until it rots.” Vos cleans his nails with the tip of the knife as his voice turns musing. “I wonder how I shall enjoy killing you? Drawn and quartered perhaps? Or buried up to your shoulders in sand and left for the animals to pick at slowly?” He glances at me. “I got that from our Wanderer friends.”

Pollux pales slightly, but his lips also flatten.

“No,” Vos decides. “I know how. Do you want to know?”

No response.

“I’m going to cut off a small piece of you every day. It will take quite a long time before I get to anything vital.” Vos makes a tsk ing sound. “The pain…”

Pollux goes chalky, sweat beading his brow, but determination continues to seal his lips shut.

My irritation with the lack of progress is like an itchy scab to be picked at. He’s not going to break. Anyone can see that.

Vos rubs his hands together, almost gleeful. “How about a demonstration?”

Faster than it takes to inhale, he’s up and using the side of Pollux’s chair closest to the man’s right hand as a cutting board. Despite the way Pollux yells and thrashes, it only takes Vos a second to use that knife with a crunch I feel in my bones.

Pollux howls in pain as something small and pink drops to the stone floor.

Vos picks it up. “Just the tip of your pinkie finger,” he says, examining it. “Looks so strange disconnected from the body, doesn’t it?”

Then, without so much as a glance in our direction, he tosses it at Bene, who stands beside me. The Devourer catches it in his mouth and chews. “Not the best human I have tasted.”

I smile and translate.

Somewhere deep down I know it’s wrong that I’m not secretly, quietly horrified. That I want to see this man suffer. But after everything that Eidolon has done, shouldn’t I want that?

Shaking in pain, Pollux’s mouth drops open in horror, his gaze zipping between Bene and Vos and Vos’s knife.

Vos leans in, almost nose to nose with the man, all feigned casualness gone. He’s a hardened fighter staring at a politico who probably never dirtied his hands with soil, let alone blood.

“I’m not going to take a whole finger at a time,” Vos warns him quietly. Deadly. “I’ll take the tips of your fingers first. And then the second knuckles. And then the third. Feeding every little piece to my bloodthirsty Devourer friend here. I’ll take my time, leaving you in agony for…” He steps back, examining Pollux from his feet to the top of his head in a slow sweep, like he’s counting up all the ways he’ll dissect the man’s body. Then he smiles in a way that makes him look bloodthirsty, too. “Months, I calculate.”

There’s no escaping the shiver that creeps down my spine. I knew Vos had been a general for Eidolon, but this is the first time he’s ever shown this side. The things he must’ve done, what he carries inside him after years of serving the king…

“Oh goddess,” Tabra whispers from my left.

I want to take her hand and squeeze it, feed her strength and a stronger stomach, but I don’t. She chose to be here—she should find her own strength. I won’t always be around.

“Let’s leave Pollux to consider his options,” Vos says, gesturing toward the door.

“Wait!” Pollux’s call is both resentful and desperate as we walk away. “Eidolon brought his most valued prisoners here.”

Prisoners. Who? Vida’s family? Or more valuable than that? I pause. Actually, what I should be asking is why ? Why bring them to Aryd?

“Most of them he’s had returned to Tyndra,” Pollux says.

“Why not leave them in Tyndra in the first place?” Trysolde asks.

Pollux considers the King of Wildernyss, eyes narrowing as he realizes who he’s talking to. “Too valuable. He needs them under his heel, close enough to kill himself if needed.”

“You said most—there are some still here?” Vos asks.

“One.”

Only one. How helpful could that be?

“Who?” Vos demands.

Pollux shifts as much as he can against his restraints. “I don’t know her name. But she’s a sand nymph. She was too sick to move. I understand he’s had her for years—”

She’s still alive? The thought splinters through me.

“She used to work for him,” Pollux says.

I’m going to kill this bastard.

Part of me balks at the thought, not sure if it’s me or the Shadows.

The rest of me leans into it.

Instead of backing off, I start forward, reaching for a power—any power, I don’t care. Except suddenly Reven is standing between me and Pollux.

“Get out of my way,” I snap.

Reven steps into me, one hand taking mine, which is already glowing purple, and the other cupping the back of my neck. My entire world narrows to a pair of diamond-bright turquoise eyes and the feel of his skin against mine.

Instantly, the glow dissipates, and with it, the fury that overtook me. Fear crawls under my skin. How did I get so angry so fast?

Even though I’ve got a handle on myself again, Reven doesn’t let go of me, doesn’t turn his gaze away, though he gives me a bit more space. His fingers knead my neck in what I think is supposed to be a soothing manner. I wonder what he’d do if he knew my body was waking up at that touch, at his nearness, the scent of him. It hasn’t been long since we shared our bodies, and that memory wants me to chase it.

He directs a question to Pollux without looking away. “Where is this prisoner?”

“I don’t know. Down here in the dungeons somewhere, I’d imagine.” Pollux looks at Vos. “You said one piece of information. By her reaction, it was a juicy one. You promised—”

Vos plunges the knife he’s still holding into Pollux’s belly. Reven and I whip around in time to see the blade’s upward stroke slide up under the ribs, no doubt piercing the man’s heart. Pollux’s eyes go wide, and he gurgles. With a sickening suck of sound, Vos yanks the knife back out and Pollux grunts again. Then, slowly, he slumps forward, going limp, held up only by the metal bindings lashing him to the chair as blood dribbles onto the floor.

Vos kept his promise of a quick death.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Reven says to him.

Vos flicks him a look that is more closed off than I’ve seen him be with Reven, even lately. “I owe you too much for that.”

Reven’s expression darkens. “I wouldn’t know about that anymore.” He lets go of my hand like he just realized he’s still holding it and steps back, putting distance between him and…all of us.

Vos shrugs. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. I do.” He wipes his blade on his pants and sheaths it in the knife holster at his hip. “Let’s go find this sand nymph.”