“Of course.”
Daniel started to hurry back, but Luther spoke his last parting words of wisdom.
“You are a good man, Daniel, but you must soon bring your mind to the things beyond this world. The hour comes when a war will bathe Dezrel with blood, fire, and death. I would hate to see you caught on the wrong side.”
Daniel couldn’t help himself.
“And what side would that be?” he asked, glancing back.
“There is safety in Karak’s arms,” said Luther, his smile kind but his eyes glinting with danger. “Good day, lieutenant.”
Daniel snorted and pulled at the collar of his shirt as he returned to the Blood Tower.
“Safety,” he muttered, thinking of those cold eyes. “Bullshit.”
V alessa had thought she knew pain. She thought she understood torment. But she’d never known this. In the light of the moon, she knelt on her hands and knees and prayed for death. It didn’t matter if it was a blasphemy. It didn’t matter if she cursed the gift her god had bestowed upon her. She wanted the agony to stop. That was all that mattered. To make it stop.
Her form shifted and twisted, and she felt every interminable inch. It throbbed, unending, with pain and failure. She felt knives twisting inside her, felt fire burning outside her, felt hatred within her non-existent veins. The light of Jerico’s shield had left her weak, and nearly broken whatever essence kept her together. It had taken all her focus to flee, and in the shadows of the forest she waited for her strength to return.
“Damn you,” she whispered. She felt her lungs solidify by her thoughts so that air might press through, felt her tongue gain form so that it might speak the curse. Each moment was torture. But she said it anyway. “Damn you, Jerico, damn you to the Abyss a thousand times.”
This was her failure, of course. She’d been given a second chance at taking down Darius, not Jerico, but she had ignored the wishes of her god. She’d thought to impress him, as if that were possible, using a life and form granted by his hands. She was nothing without her deity, and despite the hatred and agony, her confrontation with Jerico had helped her remember that. She tried to be thankful. It was better than crying out her fury against Karak. She worshipped him, loved him, accepted his authority over her, but never before had she hated him so. Not like this.
It was no longer a matter of pride, revenge, or faith. She needed to kill Darius for her freedom. The fires of the Abyss surely would not burn her so. She was a child of Karak.
Valessa focused her prayers, begging for forgiveness, begging for his touch. Day and night swirled over her, but she was aware of it only distantly. She did not sleep. She did not eat. She did not live. With each minute, each prayer, she felt herself growing whole. Her skin regained its color, and her naked form assumed the clothes she once wore. Her daggers, having never left her hands, started to glow once more. The pain in the center of her being faded, becoming only the constant ache she had learned to accept. Looking to the sky, she hoped Karak had not yet abandoned her, had forgiven her for her weaknesses.
Seeing the red star, she smiled. An even greater surprise, she felt liquid running down the sides of her face. Valessa touched her cheek, and when she pulled her fingers away, she saw them stained red. Tears of blood. Perhaps grief was not yet lost to her.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the night. “I will make you proud.”
It had been several days, though how many she did not know. But darkness was about her, the red star above her, and with a single-minded purpose she ran.
7
The days had not gotten any easier, despite Sandra’s hope otherwise. The flesh around the wound in her stomach had tightened and scarred. After mere minutes of walking it would start to ache. Teeth grinding together, she’d fought on, and it wasn’t until the second day that Jerico noticed how badly it hurt her.
“You should have told me,” he berated her as she lay down on a soft patch of grass. His hands pressed against her waist, and she shivered.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry?” said Jerico as his hands began to shine white. “I could have helped you, Sandra. Besides, worry’s what I do.”
His healing prayers subdued the pain, but when he finished, she saw the look on his face, the trepidation. Something was wrong, but he wasn’t telling her what. Night after night he had to pray over her so she could sleep without sobbing from the pain. The scar continually flared red, as if trying to reopen. She’d seen Jerico close the most brutal of wounds. This shouldn’t have been beyond him, yet, somehow, she sensed it was.
She tried to not let him see her fingers brush the scar from time to time, each touch always more painful than the last.
“Enough,” she told him as the sun dipped beneath the horizon on the third day after leaving her brother’s hideout. “I can’t…my legs can’t take any more.”
Jerico nodded, and as she sat, he began preparing a fire. She rubbed her calves and watched him. It hadn’t been a lie. The constant walking was murder on her body, something she was far from accustomed to. Again, she’d hoped it’d improve with time, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Jerico looked spry as ever as he gathered kindling for a fire, and that was with him wearing armor and carrying their supplies on his back. Whatever the paladin was, Sandra was starting to believe he wasn’t human. He unwrapped a small strip of dried, heavily salted meat he’d bought from a town they’d passed through. Stabbing it with a stick, he held it over the fire, and its smell awakened Sandra’s hunger.
“Kaide must not be tracking us if he hasn’t found us by now,” she said, staring into the fire. “We don’t need to use such haste, nor avoid every village we encounter.”
“The northern folk are loyal to your brother,” Jerico said, turning the meat. “I’d rather he not know our every move.”
She pulled her knees to her chest and curled her arms around them.
“You speak as if he were an enemy.”
“I pray he isn’t.”
She ate her portion of the meal, surprised as always by how hungry she felt come nightfall. Jerico finished before her and began removing his armor piece by piece.
“Why do you always wear it?” she asked him.
“Easier than carrying it. Besides, ever since the Citadel fell I never know when the next fight will be. I’d sleep in it, if it were at all comfortable.”
“And use your mace for a pillow?”
He chuckled.
“Help me with these straps, will you?”
With the rest of his armor piled to the side, she made a show of waving her hand before her nose. In truth, the smell of leather and sweat didn’t bother her much, but the gesture always earned a smile from Jerico. She removed her own worn shoes, stretched out before the fire, and closed her eyes. It felt so good to be still, and if not for the pain in her stomach, she might have drifted to sleep. Instead, her mind wandered. She thought of the Irons twins; her niece, Beth; and most of all, her brother. With each day of travel, the Castle of Caves neared, and her friends grew that much farther away.
Jerico sat beside her, and she shifted so she might rest against him. She felt his hand stroke her hair once, gently. His fingers were rough, calloused from his gauntlets and the constant training.
“Do you wish you had stayed?” he asked her softly.
A tear ran down her face, and she nodded.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I knew I would regret it when I left. Maybe when Kaide has finally won, and this whole damn fight is over…I just want my brother back, Jerico. I hope my leaving hurts him. I hope it eats at him, makes him realize just how much he’s lost because of it. Is it wrong for me to pray for his misery?”
“I think your heart’s in the right place,” he said. “Though I’d prefer you pray for his vengeance to leave him, instead of misery taking its place.”
“I just want to slap some sense into him,” she said, and she laughed to force away the rest of her tears. “Truth be told, this is the first time I’ve been on my own in years. We’ve always been so close…”