Chapter 2

“ M erritt! ”

I’m thrown backward with the impact of the Divh’s crash back to earth. Another eruption of dust explodes skyward. I think I hear Nazar’s voice, but I have no time for him.

My head canting dangerously to the side with the weight of my braids, I scramble over the promontory’s edge, ignoring the rocks and the scrubby brush that rips at my clothes and hair. The mighty Gent didn’t catch Merritt after all. Instead, my brother lies in the shallow lee of a rocky outcropping. The Divh sprawls on the far bank of the stream, knocked back into the ruined forest, trembling violently. I gape at the monster, then back at Merritt as I race down the slope.

My brother has rolled to his side, his body outstretched. The arrow is embedded in his back, its dull gray flanges sticking out wide like a horse’s plume, terrible and dire.

“Merritt,” I gasp, dropping to my knees. The cold, cruel point of the arrow juts from his chest, stained crimson with fast-flowing blood. Merritt’s eyes are wide and glassy. I take his hands, wishing I could give him my strength, my stubbornness, that he might live and I might suffer in his place.

The Divh groans in the clearing by the stream, its breath heavy and harsh. My brother’s body shudders as Gent’s does, the two of them still echoing each other’s agony, and I grip Merritt’s hands more firmly.

“You will not die, my brother,” I command as his wild gaze finds mine, this bright and foolish boy. There is no more superiority in his eyes, no more youthful disdain. Instead, there’s fear. Fear and hope and endless yearning for my words to be true. “You will not die but rise in glory, defending the Tenth House as our champion. From the steps of the Exalted Imperium to the farthest borders of the Western Realms, you will ride forth. You will not die.”

“Talia,” he whispers. Panic chases through me. I’ve dressed animal wounds after vicious attacks—men’s wounds too, when marauders ambushed our riders. I know death, and I know the burst of blood that spills from Merritt’s mouth, painting the world in red. Still, I can do naught but hold this fragile warrior child in my grasp. He is my brother, and he cannot die. He is my brother, and?—

“You will not die,” I say again, more sharply. Merritt’s pain-filled stare drifts back to mine. He seems ancient in this moment, not a boy at all anymore, but a man who’s learned too late the wisdom of the world, too late and too soon at once. I sense him slipping away and I pull him awkwardly close, trying to avoid the tip of the brutal arrow that seems to have cleaved its way through even bone, so firmly has it punched through my brother’s suddenly too-small body.

I shudder as Merritt collapses into me. I’ve been taught not to cry, but the unbending of my brother’s body is my undoing as well. Tears spill forth, sobs wracking through me. I can almost imagine Merritt’s spirit, desperately fighting to leave, but I am equally desperate. You cannot die.

Finally, my mind registers that something else is wrong. Where are our retainers, come to help with Merritt? Where is Nazar?

Then a new sound penetrates my ears.

Screaming.

I whip around, but I can’t make anything out beyond the promontory’s peak. Still, I mark the crash of battle on the other side of the rocky outcropping—the clatter of swords, the pounding of horses’ hooves, the cries of men. Marauders!

The warrior! As soon as his image flashes into my mind, I cannot unsee it, I cannot undo it. No one else was in the forest, was there? I rushed back too fast, too fast! I didn’t ask his name; I didn’t ask his business. I let myself be turned around and now...and now…

I suck in a huge breath. I have no sword, no shield. But they’ll be coming—for me, if not for Merritt. No one will believe my brother has survived that arrow through his back. If I can hide him in plain sight, hide us both…

Hauling Merritt against me, I drag him along the rocky slope. Several paces on, I see a shallow ditch flanked with boulders. I stumble into it, half pulling Merritt’s body over mine, facedown so the arrow’s foul gray plumage is easy to see for anyone looking. If they think he’s dead, they’ll not glance twice, I know. They won’t look for either of us.

My brother convulses again, though the breath has all but left his body.

“Shhh, Merritt, shhh,” I croon, clutching him close. “Lie still. They’ll think you’re dead. They’ll leave and we’ll find help, I swear it.”

The cries of battle surge closer. Above me, pressing down as if to cover me more completely, my brother shivers again.

Or…not exactly shivers.

Squinting hard, I fix on the point just below his left shoulder, where beneath his tunic sleeve, Merritt’s warrior band is deeply embedded in his bicep. He received that sentient cuff when he was twelve. I hadn’t been a part of that ceremony, of course. I know next to nothing of the private, sacred ritual. But now the loose fabric of my brother’s sleeve trembles violently, shifting as something moves beneath it. In my mind’s eye I can see his warrior band, wriggling against Merritt’s skin as if to shuck itself free from my brother’s dying arm, an arm it no longer considers worthy of protecting or defending.

“Stay with me, Merritt.” To keep him steady, I grip Merritt’s shoulder with my right hand, then entwine my left hand with his as his fingers slacken. “We’ll get you help, we will.”

Where is Merritt’s Divh? I can’t see anything from my hiding place. Another shard of panic knifes through me. Divhs die when their warriors die, disappearing back to their own plane. So, if the monster is still here—if it lives, then there’s hope.

I lift Merritt’s body a bare inch to peer out, but the Divh no longer sprawls across the river, its enormous bulk gone. And when I look back at my brother, I know the truth.

By the Light, no. Merritt’s eyes have turned distant and cold, staring into nothing. His body is yet more diminished, thinner than it was, a mere shroud of the boy who’d fairly burst with laughter and chatter and life. I try to speak, to cry, to do something , but I’m locked in place, covered in Merritt’s blood. Everything around me is frozen still, except… I frown in confusion. Except Merritt’s warrior band.

I reach out to lock my hand in his, drawing it close as I stare at his upper left arm. I transfer his hand to my left and slide a new knife out of my right wrist sheathe and into my palm, then cut his tunic sleeve away. What I see makes my mouth go dry.

While the rest of the world has stopped, my brother’s band, that sacred symbol of the bond between warrior and Div…keeps moving .

Squirming, almost. Slipping and writhing like a living thing—then snapping free with impossible speed to race down his arm.

“What—”

I jerk back but can’t dislodge my left hand in time.

My skin seems to melt into Merritt’s, my finger bones on fire. The warrior band appears to be a simple circlet of leather as wide as my hand, but it might as well be a fire snake as quickly as it moves, and before I can pull back, it leaps with sudden viciousness onto my wrist.

“No!”

I can’t escape it, though. The acid from the band slices through my skin with a savage heat, searing me bloody. It tears its way up my left arm, shredding my tunic sleeve, burying itself into my bicep like some flesh-eating monster.

For a moment, I register nothing but the shock of it, then that too is burned away with a roar of such agony I start to scream. Only I can’t seem to catch my breath, can’t clear my eyes as smoke and fire wrap around me. Nausea then horror flood over me by turns; time seems to stop, sputtering and cracking—or is that the sound of my bones breaking? No sooner does it pass then another scorching wave strikes me, over and over again.

When I finally manage to make any noise at all, it’s little more than a ragged pant, my gasp barely squeezing by the rising gorge in my throat. I’m coated in sweat and blood and suddenly cold…so cold.

I crawl out of the ditch, out from underneath Merritt, but I’ve lost all sense of place. Where am I—and why is Merritt so still and small below me? Why am I surrounded with the smell of charred and blackened skin?

New shouts ring out in the distance, curdling death cries that cut through my delirium. Agony swamps me in ever-sickening waves as I wrench my gaze away from Merritt’s empty eyes.

The truth of my position crashes back down on me.

I can’t stay hidden another moment. I have to go—to fight!

I turn away from Merritt’s shallow grave, struggling to ignore my throbbing arm as I stagger forth. My legs are too heavy, my head too light despite my blood-soaked hood and filthy cloak. I sway beside Merritt, a stranger in my own skin, the heat from the warrior band biting all the way to the bone. Another cry of raw pain rises in my throat, but only a tortured groan escapes.

A horse screams again beyond the hilltop, and I lurch forward almost blindly toward the sound. I follow the edge of the rocky promontory as it runs along the banks of the stream, until I’m splashing through shallow water at its end. With every step, my head clears, my senses sharpen. I finally emerge from behind the small hill and take in the field before me.

It’s utter chaos. More than two dozen marauders are striking down our scant five soldiers, who are obviously no match for the attack. Adriana lays in what looks like a dead faint off to the edge of the field.

No…not a faint, I realize, as bile rushes up into my throat. Blood coats her hair, and her face is misshapen, her body collapsed and still. No.

“Adriana!” I scream, but no one can hear me. Men and horses crash together, swords clang, and everything’s washed in dust and blood. I even see Nazar— Nazar! Rushing on foot into the melee, his hands clutching a sword I know the old man has no hope of wielding. Fury spikes through me. He’ll die. They all will die!

With an instinct I can neither understand nor control, I clap my right hand to my left bicep, my need to stop this—stop all this—so great, so terrible?—

“No!” I cry. My voice grows and grows, filling the canyon with a bellow loud enough that the very trees flatten before me, the mountains tremble, the air fractures and flows away.

Except…it isn’t my voice that’s roaring with such unfathomable force.

Or not my voice alone.

A wall suddenly crashes down beside me, thudding into the ground so hard, I go flying—only to rebound off another wall that’s solid, smooth, and… green .

I yank myself back from its surface. It’s warm to the touch, warm with the texture of hairless hide, like the skin of a lizard or a snake, but it’s a wall…a wall. A wall that’s closing in on me!

I whirl around, seeking a way out, but the wall ends not in thin air but in the smooth ebony of a new surface that ends with the cruel jutting curve of…claws? Yes, jet black claws stretch out from the ends of these hide walls, and I instinctively crouch down, lifting my arms to protect my face, even as the dust chokes off my vision and the booming noise continues to rage above me.

I can’t stay here! The creature above me draws in another breath to bellow, and I scurry forward like a beetle, bursting out from between the walls of sleek black talons.

Before me on the field of battle, I can see the truth. I am too late—far too late. A dozen or so riders are racing away in fear, none of them wearing the distinctive green livery of the Tenth House. I thrust my feeble arms forward, unable to do more than scream.

The giant above me leans forward as well, his own arm sweeping down in a grasping arc a mere handspan behind the desperately fleeing horsemen—but they escape into the forest. If any of them had originally thought to return and give fight, those ideas are drowned in the full-throated howl of the monster above me, a thunderous tide that almost reminds me of?—

“ Gent? ” I whisper, the word so soft, I’m not sure I’m even speaking at all.

The howling stops.

I stagger forward, unable to fully comprehend the sudden silence of the field in front of me— how can so many men lay so still? Then I turn and slowly crane my neck, peering up…up…dizzy with confusion as I stumble back several more steps, trying to see, to understand.

Above me, three times taller than Gent had been, stands…a colossus.

A giant. A god.

It’s—it’s almost like the Gent I knew before, but impossibly, insanely different. Still bear-shaped with improbably long front limbs, still horned. But where Gent’s fur was a muddy sage, this Divh is cloaked with deep silver fur over dark green skin. Where Gent had a single horn protruding from its snout, this Divh sprouts horns from its temples as well—and its shoulders, elbows, and knees that I can see. This Divh can’t be Gent. Everything about it seems mightier, especially its upper body, its arms now thicker than our entire manor house and, yes, long enough to sweep an army from its path. Unbidden, Merritt’s excited declaration about the Divh who’d been in this valley before us comes back to me, icy horror on its heels.

“Gent,” I say the forbidden name again, my voice still far too raspy to do more than die in the dusty air. Still, the giant Divh hears me. It cocks its enormous head forward and slowly, laboriously drags one foot away from me, then the other, its talons scoring deep fissures in the earth as I stagger fifteen more steps away from it. In that one small step, it’s now well beyond the stream, back amid the shattered trees, its movements almost tentative as its huge black eyes focus on me behind a central ebony horn.

Then it drops to the ground so heavily, I’m thrown several paces, crashing to the ground in a heap. The earth shudders with the booming impact of Gent’s knees as they flatten splintered tree trunks and dig into the ruined field. The goliath lowers its head, still watching me as it stretches its thick paws forward.

All at once, I finally understand what’s happening, and a fierce, unbridled wonder sweeps over me for the barest moment, forcing back the wrongness of all I’ve seen this day.

The Divh…is bowing .

To me.