Page 28 of Winds of Destiny

Cam

I bite my lower lip and struggle to control the joy surging through the bond of the pearls. I wish I could be there with them sharing in this wonderful moment, but I’m happy that they both get to experience this.

Stop smiling!

It’s kind of important that I not look too happy, seeing as how I’ve been stolen from my lovers by a man who has a grand plan to change the world that is very likely to get every one of us killed. Still, it’s hard, especially since I can feel Kai and Turo’s closeness like a warm hug. It’s pretty clear that the pearls my god gave me are with the men they were intended for.

The most important thing now is to keep my head down and make sure the connection remains strong so they can follow me. I don’t know what I’m going to do when they catch up, but…

I flex my fingers, and a few stalks of grass bend low right beneath my hands. Hmm. Maybe I do have an idea about what I’m going to do.

“Camrael,” Dian calls out to me. I turn toward where she’s struggling to hook the largest lion’s harness up to Embros’s chariot. “Help me with this.”

“I’m coming.” I head toward her, carefully not looking at where Embros and his people are gathered around one of his men. He was wounded in the ambush and has been getting worse and worse over the past few days. The smell of rot is plain in the air.

Not my business. I’ve read plenty about treating wounds, but I wouldn’t volunteer to help any of these bastards unless my own life depended on it.

Dian, though… I’m all right with helping her. I wouldn’t go so far as to call us friends, but she’s helped me stay sane over this past week. It’s bad enough that I’m surrounded by Kamorans who kidnapped me; the fact that their king is a madman is enough to make anyone question their sanity.

“What the hell does he mean?” I’d demanded that first night once Embros left. “How could he possibly kill a god? Why would he even want to?”

Dian didn’t have to answer me, but she did. Her words were short and to the point. “He’s been dreaming of Inarime as long as I’ve known him,” she said, “since he was a boy. Our oldest legends say the everwinds began because the people of Inarime killed their mighty three-headed god, hoping to gain power from it. Instead, that death doomed the city, sinking it into the sea. The god’s sacrifice powered the unending winds as well.

“He doesn’t want to kill our gods, exactly,” she went on. “He wants to combine them into a new chimera god, more like a resurrection. He thinks he can raise the city that way.”

“A chimera…” But that didn’t work. “We can’t match the original three heads, though.”

She smirked. “He thinks we can get close enough. Snake,” she said, pointing in Embros’s direction. “Lion.” She pointed at herself. “And goat, but a ram could work.”

Which was why he needed Kai. I suppose he might be able to use me in a pinch to get the right symbolism—Ophiucas is a horned serpent, after all, but he’s confined to the bay. From what the Dellians told me, Carnuatu can and does appear wherever he wishes at will, but Ophiucas can’t do the same or he’d have left the bay years ago. Could this magic free him? It didn’t matter—Dian was right, a ram is a lot closer, and with the deal Embros has made with Kai’s father… Yeah. Clever bastards.

Getting more information out of Dian was difficult. She didn’t want to talk with me, Embros, or anyone other than her lions. Still, whenever Embros came over to us, she diverted his attention from me to herself. Even the night he came over and announced he was taking me to bed, Dian interceded on my behalf.

“No,” she snapped at Embros as I sat on the ground with my arms around my legs, frozen in fear. “Who is your wife, hmm? Who do you owe your body to?”

Embros had tilted his head like he didn’t quite know what he was looking at. “Being my wife isn’t a title you’ve reveled in so far, Dian. I would think you’d be happy for a break from warming my bed.”

“On the contrary,” she said, her tone haughty. “I refuse to be pushed aside by a second spouse. You haven’t even bothered to properly wed him yet, so don’t insult me by taking a concubine while I’m right here .”

Embros had stepped in close, placing his heavy hands on her shoulders. “I know what you’re doing,” he murmured in a low voice. “Has our future husband captured your sympathy, hmm?” He shook her once, hard. “If you’re really jealous, I expect you to behave that way tonight.”

With that, he’d taken her away to his part of camp, leaving me alone with a pride of lions who weren’t happy that their mother was abandoning them. I was filled with both shame and gratitude—I couldn’t fathom going from Kai and Turo to Embros and being able to maintain any sort of dignity or to pretend to be pleasured. That night was a long, lonely one.

When Dian returned the next morning, she looked exactly the same as when she’d left, but the way she moved spoke of aches and pain. Even as I’d opened my mouth to speak, she pointed a finger at me. “Not a word out of you,” she’d hissed under her breath. “I make my own choices, do you understand? I want neither your pity nor your sacrifice.”

I’d nodded, my heart in my throat, and that had been that.

Embros hadn’t called on either of us since then, too deep in his own thoughts and plans to remember us. That was good…until a morning like this one, when he was pulled away from higher pursuits to deal with a dying soldier.

“Allow me one chariot, my king,” one of the other soldiers, a woman with long brown hair held back with a brass cuff, says nervously. Her face looks similar to the dying man’s. A sister, a cousin? “Let me take him back to Kamor to be buried with our family.”

“And lose another able fighter as well as a chariot?” Embros sounds amused, but from his body language, he’s far from it. “Impossible.”

“But if he…”

I can’t see the expression on Embros’s face, but it’s enough to kill his soldier’s objection before she finishes voicing it.

“On second thought,” Embros muses, “perhaps I can spare you after all.”

“Please,” the woman whispers, paling as she falls to her knees. “Let me, let me make amends to you, my king. Let me take back my hasty words!”

“Words can never be unsaid,” Embros says. “Thoughts cannot be unthought, but at least those aren’t likely to get you killed.”

“My king, I beg of you—”

“Yes.” Embros reaches out and lays a hand on the woman’s head, then loops one finger into the top of her brass clip and pulls until her neck makes a sharp arch. “Beg me. Perhaps it will do you some good.”

The soldier, to my surprise, doesn’t say another word. She closes her eyes, reaches out, and grasps the dying man’s arm in an iron grip. Embros laughs as his hand begins to glow.

The other soldiers back away, putting as much space between themselves and their king as they can without giving offense. The kneeling woman’s mouth drops open a second later, and she gasps, the air followed by a great gout of dark blood. The man she’s holding onto follows suit a second later, and then…

The kneeling woman collapses, and they both breathe their last breaths. Embros killed them in less than ten seconds. He doesn’t give either of them a second look, either, just turns on his heel and heads over to us with a pleasant smile on his face.

Dian and I finish harnessing the lion to his chariot just before he reaches us. “Nearly too late,” he says, green flashing through his eyes as he mounts up. “Get the others done faster, you hear me?”

“I hear, my king,” Dian says, then nudges me. It’s been a damn week; I ought to remember this part.

“I hear, my king,” I say. The words stick in my throat, but it’s a matter of life and death to spit them out at this maniac whenever he asks for praise.

“Good.” He turns his chariot away, and I sag for a moment. Every conversation I have with Embros leaves me feeling like I’ve barely escaped with my life.

“What a shameful waste of meat,” Dian mutters as she moves on to the next lion. It takes me a moment to realize she’s referring to the two people Embros has poisoned.

“What, you…wanted to feed them to your lions?”

“They’re underfed as it is,” she says, discontent clear in her voice. I can see what she means, actually—the beasts are as shaggy and intimidating as ever, but their ribs are clearly visible through their coats now, and there’s a sharp gleam in each glowing, golden eye whenever they look at the people here. The ones who aren’t Dian, at least.

“They need more, but of course that bastard won’t let me loose them to hunt,” she goes on. “Too afraid that I’ll let them run off.”

“Would you?” I ask as I heft the central shaft of one of the chariots up and swivel it so that she can get the next lion’s harness into place.

She shakes her head. “He would only kill them if I did. Besides, we’re close to the sea now. We might even be there by tonight. Chances are fair he’ll let me free them anyhow once we get there—he gets far less pleasure from murdering animals than people.”

Good point. Also… “What the hell are we going to do once we get to the sea, swim?” I ask under my breath. Not that I couldn’t swim, but from what I remember of my geography, Inarime is fairly far from all edges of the sea. I’d never make it, and I doubt most of these men have any idea how to keep themselves afloat.

“Not with all the vipers in the water, we won’t. Another of his little tricks.” She nods her head at Embros. “He’s been seeding it with his creatures for decades now. There are enough water vipers swimming through the sea that they’ve done in most of the fish that used to live there. He can control them when they’re close to him, of course, but the rest of us?” She rolls her eyes. “We’ll have to hope the boats he commissioned are up to the task. He’s got a whole fleet of them stowed farther west, but he tied some up close to here before we set out for Zephyth.”

Boats? He’s got boats? It makes sense—how else would we keep going once we hit the water?—but there’s nothing good about this news.

Kai and Turo don’t have a boat, and Embros isn’t likely to leave one behind for them, either. Shit.

If they don’t get to me soon, it’ll be too late. There’ll be no way for them to follow me into the sea.

Hurry, Turo. Kai, please. I shut my eyes and pray, not to Ophiucas, but to my lovers.

Please, hurry.