Chapter 12

Ahazy tower rose above a steaming, rocky landscape. Everything was various shades of red, as if Sorcha watched it all through stained glass. Hot air filled her lungs with each breath, rasping over her tongue and burning her throat. The hiss of steam and a distant voice echoed in her ears: words spoken but not understood.

A golden figure stood beside her, one hand reaching out. The Saint. Magnificent and fierce, he towered above her and she tilted her head back, moving to meet him. She wanted him—to be held, cradled by a being of eternity. The security he offered. Protection.

But from what?

He wavered, his gold skull shifting, jaws opening.

“Sorcha.”

Her name cut across the vision. Sensations faded, the burning becoming memory. She turned to Adrian, caught off guard by the easy tone of his voice. He looked at her strangely, as if he might have been worried. For her? Surely not. Sorcha shook off the fleeting thought, pulling at the rope around her wrist. It was connected to another rope stretched from Epona’s saddle to Nox’s. Revenant had insisted. The whole group had been furious with Sorcha’s escape in the Silvas. No one wanted it to happen again.

“You were somewhere else, weren’t you?” Adrian asked.

She nodded, reaching for her waterskin to wash out the lingering taste of dust and heat from her mouth. It had been so intense, a few heartbeats in another place, the vision clearer than so many others had been. The Saint had been so close and yet so very far away.

“The murals in the temple,” Adrian jerked his head to where it lay several days’ ride behind them. “Is that the full history of the Saint?”

“Of course not,” Sorcha’s face scrunched. “That’s only what came later.”

“What came before?”

She sighed. “Are you truly curious?”

“A smart man understands his enemy,” he responded, chin lifting slightly.

Would it matter if he knew? Sorcha decided it didn’t.

“Once in Ostos, there were two brothers who received the dead and judged them. Haran oversaw the living, Hakan oversaw the dead. If you lived a life worthy of them, you remained. But if you displeased them, you would be sent to Bram.”

“Bram?” Adrian asked.

“A devil,” Sorcha shuddered. Souls sent to Bram spent eternity in his darkness. There was no escape. Not unless the Saint came for you. “He’s not spoken of in our texts much.”

“Are you afraid of the devil, then?”

“Aren’t you?”

Adrian shrugged. “What happened to the brothers?”

“After eons together, they succumbed to the greed for power. They fought, one wanting more power than the other and Hakan—who became our Saint—was banished to our world. For a time, he appeared as a man; unchanging and living for centuries. He performed countless miracles. Trees fruiting in the dead of winter. Cities built overnight.” She paused, lowering her voice. “He resurrected the long dead.”

“And your people embraced him.” It wasn’t a question, and he did nothing to mask his contempt.

Sorcha chose to ignore it, carrying on. “The Aureum Sanctus grew around him. He promised to ensure our place in Ostos and be our sole judge. When he was killed, he became the golden Saint you saw on the temple walls back there.”

“How do you kill a god?” Adrian asked.

“Temple historians say he was killed by a sword gifted to the heretics by Bram.”

“And you believe all of this?” Adrian shot her a disbelieving look.

Sorcha shot him a hard glance, mouth pinched. “Do you want to know? Or are you just trying to keep me talking so I don’t decide to slip out of these ropes and run?”

“If you think you could get far on foot, you’re mistaken.” He tugged gently on the rope between them, and Epona adjusted her stride to get closer to Nox. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t, he asked, “How did oracles become important?”

“The oracles came to speak for him, an extension of himself.”

“How important are your visions, priestess?” Adrian glanced at her, dark eyes meeting her quick glance. She blushed, belly tightening.

“Important,” she said. But how important? While Kahina Kira and Rohan had always carefully cataloged her visions and dreams to add to the extensive library, others had rarely questioned her second sight. Even Ines had only asked a handful of times. The only thing that seemed to matter was that she was the vessel.

“Tell me about the Saint.” Adrian spoke softly, keeping his gaze forward as they rode. His dark hair was pulled into a knot at the back of his neck, his grip loose and easy on the reins. Behind him the mountains loomed, snowcapped peaks sharp against the blue sky, framing him and presenting a sharp contrast. “Our world is full of gods and goddesses. Even in your Golden Citadel there were temples to numerous deities. How does the Saint compare?”

Sorcha straightened, curious about the religions he’d grown up with. While the existence of other deities was taken as fact, the Aureum Sanctus embraced the belief that the Saint was the only one who truly cared for his believers. None of the other gods and goddess promised to return to their people, remaining removed—occupants of other realms who might or might not bestow their favors.

The Amor Aeternus, the sacred text that contained the secrets of the Aureum Sanctus, was rumored to have been fashioned from the Saint’s heart. Few had even seen it, let alone touched it. Eventually, Sorcha would have become one of the chosen. But to her knowledge, only Kahina Kira had studied it. It held the story of the Saint’s birth and death but also promised that one day he would be reborn. Those secret pages shared how it might be possible.

“The Saint will return,” Sorcha replied, voice flat. My blood, my body, will ensure it she thought, but kept that fact to herself. Instead she said, “He keeps his promises. What gods do you follow do the same?”

“I follow no god.”

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” Sorcha turned, studying his profile, waiting for his dark eyes to find her. Epona snorted, as if the horse might be aware of the uneasy desire Sorcha felt beneath her breastbone each time Adrian’s eyes found her, the intensity in them crushing her into a new shape.

“If there is something after this,” Adrian waved a hand, taking in the whole of the world—mountainous terrain, the Black Tomeis, White Snake, and the weight of his crushing past. “Do you think I’m anxious to meet it?”

Hundreds of thousands of people had died as the White Snake slithered across the continent. There would be more deaths in the coming years as the destroyed farmland failed to produce. The population that had supported and maintained the cities and kingdoms was scattered. Prince Eine had done what he could to ensure the survival of basic infrastructure, but this was war. In the end, the empire only cared about control and expansion. Each death along the way might not have happened at the tip of Adrian’s sword, but the blood was still on his hands.

If there was an afterlife—if the Saint plucked his soul from the stream of time and dropped it into eternal torment, would Adrian be met with a sea of angry dead? Sorcha couldn’t imagine living a life so full of death and knowing there would be no release, only an unending existence of horror.

Sorcha might embrace the idea of nothingness. Already, it flickered at the edges of her mind. For years she’d repeated the prayers and knelt in the temple before a relic, absorbed the rituals and practices of the Saint into herself, making it an integral part of her. She’d believed in the Saint, and continued to, but her faith had never been tested. Weakness was creeping in, fear and doubt splitting her in two.

She wore the Saint on her skin, kept him in her mind, knew his power in her bones. But her heart quickened with terror when Ines and Rohan surfaced in her memories. Those last moments in the temple haunted her. Would she truly see them again? Would the Saint pluck them from the stream and return them to this world? Living, breathing, and whole in mind? It had all been so simple, so easy to believe before Prince Eine had ripped her world apart.

“No,” he said, breaking through the whirl of questions in her head. “I do not believe there is anything after this. We’re here now, doing what we can to survive.”

“The man who kills everything he comes across talks about survival?” Sorcha snorted. The word struck her as an odd choice. Adrian, Wolf, and monster of Eine, didn’t seem to be the kind of man who had to fight for his survival.

“You’ve been sheltered in your golden temple with people who waited on you hand and foot,” Adrian responded without emotion, his words all the more unsettling in its lack of feeling. “You have no concept of world beyond yourself. Even now, with the changes you’ve experienced, you have no clue.”

Sorcha opened her mouth, a sharp denial poised on her tongue, but Adrian stopped her.

“You don’t understand survival yet. But you will.”

* * *

For the first time in a week, Sorcha wasn’t tied to her saddle or Adrian. At the clearing in the woods, she’d stopped thinking of him as the Wolf when—Stop! Don’t think about it!

They’d come out of the Silvas and made their way through a region of low mountains and hills dotted with farmland. It wasn’t winter here, sheltered by the surrounding mountains—autumn lasted longer in this part of the world with hints of summer lingering beneath. She’d enjoyed the ride through the landscape, though it was abandoned here as well, just as it had been before the Silvas.

She tried not to think about that too much either.

Smoke from the encampment fires caught her attention first. They crested a ridge to find a city of tents spread out before them—waiting and expectant, ready for the Wolf to arrive. A rider came out and met them, passing over a sealed scroll and sharing news.

The men around her had been relieved. They didn’t say it, didn’t express it in any outward fashion, but she could feel it. They’d lost too many in the woods; several had been killed by the werewolves. The others had been wounded and would remain with the Horde as the others carried on the search for the relics.

Adrian and Revenant had spoken softly as they entered camp, faces serious, but she’d been able to catch enough information to piece together what was happening now.

This was a small part of the Horde. There was a city to take. A king to kill.

Now, Sorcha watched the city in the distance.

The city was mostly dark—eerily quiet—and much smaller than the Citadel. She wouldn’t have considered it a city at all, more a castle surrounded by a small town and fortifications. But it was the largest collection of buildings they’d come across so far.

Cautes would fall in two days. It appeared to be almost abandoned now. The only lights remained around the castle, groupings of bright torches—what might be men moving along battlements or on top of towers.

Was this how the Golden Citadel had appeared before the battle truly began? There had been the siege, the slow buildup to blows being exchanged, the hurriedly constructed siege engines approaching with a terrible certainty.

Had the Wolf and his men watched from the darkness, contemplating all those lives being lived? All those people praying to their gods that the morning would be like any other, that what they had known would go on, that the sun would break over the horizon and the Horde would have vanished?

But Cautes wasn’t the Golden Citadel. The buildings surrounding the castle were dark. Even the little villages and homesteads leading to the encampment were empty. The whole world appeared to be inhabited by ghosts.

Sorcha shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold despite the warmer air. Loneliness touched her—a familiar friend—and she turned away from the city, back toward the tent she’d been shown to when they arrived. Adrian’s tent.

Somewhere, one of his soldiers shadowed her—Ivo or Imre. Neither one she knew well despite having traveled so far with them already. But as soon as she’d paused to contemplate the city on the hill waiting for death, the man had melted away.

A spiced floral scent filled her senses—a familiar scent. Sorcha turned in a circle, searching for the source. The Kahina Kira had worn a similar scent. Kira with her red-painted hands and rubies at her wrists and throat. The scent had clung to her—closer than a second skin. Sorcha half expected to see the woman step out from between two tents.

None of the faces around her were those of her family—the priests and priestesses who had been closer than any blood relative could be. The scent of cooking meat replaced the spicy floral. Had she merely imagined it? Recalling it out of desperation for the comfort it might bring?

Slowly, avoiding the curious stares as she went, she wove her way back through camp. In each grouping of tents, a large fire sat at the center, usually being tended by a woman, though, sometimes a young boy rotated the spitted meats. It was hard to understand how anyone could eat knowing what would come in the next day. Blood. So much blood. So much death that the stink of it all would spread for miles around, cling to them all—a trailing wake of decay.

But the camp ate and watched the living city. She wondered how it appeared to them, if they saw shades of their homes and families. Adrian had said the men in the square hadn’t seen her as a person, so how could they relate to the unwitting victims.

“Priestess!”

Sorcha turned, pausing as she swept her gaze over the maze of tents nearby, searching for the speaker. An older woman with sharp eyes and thin mouth was walking toward her with long strides and an air of intention. Her head was wrapped tightly in a dark blue scarf, and she wore simple black blouse and trousers with sleek knee-high boots the same shade as the scarf.

“Yes?” Sorcha asked, taking a step back as the woman walked right up to her.

“I’m Toren.” The woman put her hands on her hips and looked Sorcha up and down, eyes full of speculation. Her accent was strange to Sorcha, not one she’d heard before. But that wasn’t new. So many of the accents she’d heard in the prince’s court had come from faraway places. “The prince sent me to meet you. To make camp life a little easier.”

Sorcha nodded, swallowing.

“The prince values you,” Toren said, lips curving into a bitter smile. “For now.”

“Oh,” Sorcha said, not sure what other response she could give.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had that realization herself already and was more than aware the prince’s sentiment wouldn’t last forever.

“Come,” Toren said, gesturing toward Adrian’s tent—her tent. “I spent the last ten minutes wandering around camp. I have some things for you.”

Sorcha fell into step beside the woman, shooting curious glances her way. Toren had a short dagger belted at her hip, but that was the only weapon Sorcha could see. Her clothes were clean and well taken care of, not at all what Sorcha would expect from a woman who had been traveling with the Horde for an extended period of time.

“They say you’ve bewitched him,” Toren said, raising an eyebrow. “Have you?”

Sorcha laughed and crossed her arms, trying to keep herself from breaking apart. “How could I bewitch the prince? I’ve spoken to him once.”

“No.” Toren furrowed her brows, confusion crossing her face. “Not the prince. The Wolf.”

Sorcha opened her mouth and then shut it. Adrian’s banner came into view, rippling in the lazy breeze that shifted the smoke from the fires. They wove through the remaining tents, large circular constructions, similar to the ones she’d seen at the main encampment when he’d taken her from the Golden Citadel.

The fire in the circle of tents was unattended, though it burned as if fresh logs had been added moments before. Sorcha glanced around and saw two men, possibly one of whom had been sent to follow her, coming from two tents behind them.

Toren reached Adrian’s tent and went in ahead of Sorcha, holding the flap back.

“Have you enchanted the Wolf?” Toren asked again.

“No?”

A question, not a statement as Sorcha had intended it to be. And beneath the doubt was a growing suspicion—that Adrian moved through the camp always searching for her face. Not because he’d been charged with her safekeeping but because something had changed between them in the Silvas.

Sorcha lifted her chin, meeting Toren’s curiosity. But the woman shrugged, moving past her toward the center of the tent where a crimson trunk sat in the light—new and an obvious gift from the prince. Toren glanced at the low cot piled with furs where Sorcha slept, then to the opposite spot where Adrian slept at night.

“He’s told the camp to leave you alone, instructed his men to guard you. Not only on the prince’s command but his own.” Toren’s eyebrows went up, and she tilted her head to the side. “These men have been with him from the start. They’ll be there at the end as well. But you won’t be. I wouldn’t trust them to keep you safe. They’ll protect him from anything and everything, including you.”

“I’m not dangerous,” Sorcha said, watching as the woman lifted the trunk lid and removed crimson clothes—riding trousers and gowns meant for travel. These were rougher and sturdier than the ones he’d gifted her in the Traveling City.

“Aren’t you? But you’ve already said no.” Toren came toward her carrying a high-necked dress of heavy cotton lined with a shade of red so dark it was almost black. She held it up in front of Sorcha, gauging the size. “What men find dangerous about women is everything. Even if you were not an oracle or child of the Saint, they would find you dangerous.”

“Why?” Sorcha whispered, unable to stop the question, her mind racing.

“Because you’ve caught the attention of a man who has lusted for nothing but blood all his life.” Toren studied Sorcha, looking from the dress to her face. “This is a good color for you. I assume you don’t require help dressing?”

“No,” Sorcha said.

“I will have a bath prepared, and you’ll be able to change into something clean. You won’t be here with us very long, but as long as you are, I’ll make sure you’re comfortable.”

“You have bathing tubs here?” Sorcha couldn’t disguise the surprise and excitement in her voice.

“It’s a glorified bucket,” Toren said with a laugh. “But yes, I’ll have it sent over soon. Are you hungry?”

“Very.” Sorcha’s stomach rumbled and she pressed her hands to her abdomen.

“I’ll have food sent over as well.”

“Thank you,” Sorcha said, emotion collecting in her throat and behind her eyes.

“You’re welcome,” Toren said, gesturing to her right in a vague way. “If you need anything, I’m a few rows away. The banner at our tent is green and blue.”

“You have a banner too?” Sorcha had only seen a few in this camp. From what she’d been able to discern, it meant a soldier of some kind of rank, more than a foot soldier.

“Yes.” Toren nodded. “My husband will fight in the morning with the others. He’s honorable and stands beside his men in battle. Sometimes, I go with him. But not this time.”

“What’s different about this time?” Sorcha asked, curious.

“You.”

* * *

Sorcha heard Adrian’s voice before the tent flap parted, cold air sneaking in to curl around her shoulders. She was sitting in the warm water, arms around her knees, steam billowing up to dissipate above her head. She didn’t move, startled but not scrambling to cover her nakedness. He’d seen enough of her in the Mapmaker’s rooms—half naked under the unforgiving light of day, her tattoos telling a story only a few could understand.

For a moment—less than a second—Adrian’s face was open to her, surprise crossing his features. But it passed, and he was once again closed to her. The flap fell back behind him, cutting off the cool air and muffling the sound of men talking around a fire nearby.

Adrian didn’t speak as he crossed to his desk, moving a scroll to study the map beneath it. Parchment rustled and his leather armor creaked as he shifted from one foot to the other. He didn’t speak. He ignored her completely.

Sorcha dipped her cupped hands into the water, lifting them slowly, letting the water slip between her fingers. The sound filled the tent, echoing alongside the rustling pages—making strange music.

“Have you eaten?”

“What?” Sorcha asked, realizing a second after she spoke what he’d asked. “No. There was a woman. She said she’d have something sent over but it hasn’t come yet.”

“Toren?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Sorcha nodded to herself. Good. A scroll was unfurled behind her, something heavy set on the table. She waited, wondering when he’d leave. Would he leave? How long could she wait? How long would the water stay hot? Already, it was barely warm. She’d put off getting out several times, hesitant to leave the warm water soothing her saddle-sore muscles and relishing the quietness of the tent. She’d been enjoying the space to not think.

“Do you plan to stay in that bucket all day?” Adrian asked, something close to humor touching his words.

She turned to find him watching her, leaning one hand on his desk.

“And if I am?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Adrian sauntered toward her without breaking eye contact and knelt beside the tub. She stopped breathing, eyes wide as he dipped a cupped hand into the water near her thigh, letting it fall from his fingers—mirroring her gesture from before.

“It’s getting cold.”

Her heart thudded in her chest—hard against her ribs, climbing up her throat. Adrian held her gaze, eyes black with challenge.

Have you bewitched him? No. When she’d denied it earlier, she’d been so confident in the truth. But now? He looked as if one word from her mouth could change their situation in a heartbeat.

There had been men in the past, a handful of friends who had become lovers. But no one she could name in this moment. Each face, each name, vanished the moment this man dipped his hand into her bath. Adrian. The Wolf.

Monster!

Sorcha couldn’t let herself forget it.

“Don’t you have someplace to be? Checking in with your men? Sharpening your sword?” she asked, putting derision and ice in her voice, willing him to stand and walk away.

Adrian continued to hold her gaze, and tension grew between them.

A buzzing sound grew in Sorcha’s ears, rising in pitch as she clenched her jaw around whatever else she might have said. Walk away, she thought, because if you stay, I think I could change my mind about you.

“I do,” he said, standing with a creak of leather, turning away from her.

Sorcha watched him retreat from the tent, pushing the flap aside and escaping into the open air. She ran a hand up her arm, smoothing out the goose bumps, telling herself it was the cooling water that left her cold and not his departure.

* * *

Dinner arrived in the form of an invitation. Well after she was out of her cold bucket of water and dressed, Adrian opened the tent flap and asked if she would like to eat by the fire. Sorcha agreed, wanting more warmth and light, the sky over her head and the feel of the breeze on her face.

The fire at the heart of this circle of tents was unattended, Adrian’s men off doing other things within the camp or in their private tents. She’d watched how they were treated by the rest of the Horde, and it was with the utmost respect. In most areas, she’d seen several men sharing a tent, but not the ones she’d traveled with.

The Wolf and his men—his pack—weren’t subject to the rules and hierarchies of the Horde.

Sorcha moved a stool as close as possible to the fire, making sure she wouldn’t singe her skirts, as Adrian passed her a fine porcelain bowl filled with meat in brown gravy and a piece of bread.

“Where did you find such lovely dishes?” she asked, unable to stop herself.

“Do you think we’re all barbarians?”

What was in that question? Humor? Derision? Sorcha looked up, catching a muscle twitch at the corner of his mouth. Amusement then.

“I didn’t expect an army to travel with such delicate items,” Sorcha said, stirring her bowl and searching for anything too suspicious to eat. “I didn’t expect you to be so human.”

Human? Sorcha bit down on her tongue, cursing herself for even opening her mouth.

Adrian didn’t respond, and the fire popped—a log collapsing in a shower of sparks. He moved to add another to the stack, wiping his hands on his trousers before picking up his own bowl. He sat across from her, always at a distance, unless there was some kind of necessity.

Maybe she’d been mistaken about the moment in the Silvas. His arms had come around her at the edge of that clearing—when death had been so close she could smell it—but it hadn’t held that edge of desire. Only fear. And the moment in the tent earlier when he’d dipped a hand into her bath was nothing more than Adrian testing the temperature. There was nothing else between them—captor and captive, killer and victim.

Knowing that, it didn’t matter if she asked questions, did it?

* * *

“What was your childhood like?”

Adrian paused, surprised by her question. She seemed softer to him somehow beside the fire—less angry and defiant. He hadn’t expected that from her.

“Will you tell me?” she asked softly, eyes focused on the bowl cradled in her hands.

He considered her question. It had been a long time since he’d thought about the years before he became the prince’s favorite killer. Adrian had lived longer with the prince than without him. Life before the empire felt like a dream—even less solid than memory. His father had been a king, and there had been a queen, as well as brothers and sisters. Some had died, and the others had been married off, shuffled around the empire until everyone had forgotten where they’d come from and who they’d been. If his siblings were still out there, he had no idea where they might be found. Or even if they could be. He wouldn’t know them by sight, or even name, at this point.

His father had been offered the same terms as countless kingdoms before him, as countless kingdoms after.

Accept my terms and you will live.

Adrian’s father had looked at the waiting Horde and accepted the conditions. It made no sense to fight—a little kingdom with no army, small and insignificant—and sacrifice so much when it was all so inevitable. His father was practical and valued the lives of his people more than whatever honor might have been found in trying to withstand a relentless empire.

“Do you know what the prince does with the people who accept surrender terms?”

Sorcha shook her head.

“The families—kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, whatever they might be—are broken up. They’re sent to the four corners of the empire, married off to one of their countless cousins, moved into minor positions of state beneath the prince’s most trusted people. They’re buried so deeply within his court, in his way of life, so there is never any hope or chance of escape. Until you forget what your life had been like before.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“Yes,” he replied softly. “I was separated from the family I’d been born into and forged a new one within the Empire of the White Snake.”

“Have they been good to you?” Sorcha’s voice held curiosity and a hint of disbelief.

But he knew her life had been similar. He’d spoken to the priests from the other temples they’d come across. The Oracle, the Vessel of the Saint, was chosen as an infant—taken from her birth family, given to the temple.

“Were the priests and priestesses in your temple your family?”

“Yes,” Sorcha said, brow wrinkling. “Of course.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“And these men,” she said, waving at the camp around them, “they’re as close as brothers?”

“Some are.”

“Some?”

“There was someone who was my closest friend.”

“But isn’t anymore?”

Adrian shook his head.

“How did you come to be the Wolf?” she asked, picking at her plate, keeping her eyes down. “I’ve heard stories.”

“There are many stories,” he replied.

“Tell me which ones are true.”

“All the bad ones.”

He hesitated, watching her. There was no judgment in her expression, only curiosity. A desire to understand.

Adrian began to speak, and he was surprised at how easily it all came, the words flowing out of him. His father had been an advisor in Prince Eine’s court. He stood beside the throne, an aging man with a sharp eye and a carefully blank expression, but Eine wouldn’t let Adrian stay. Adrian had been sent to live with the prince’s older brother. Prince Thueban had been fighting in the east, expanding the empire, growing their riches and lands. Adrian had learned to fight there, grown up there, and he’d been given a new name and a fresh future. Soon, it was as if his life had always been this and nothing else.

But there was tension between the brothers. Empress Isolde favored Prince Thueban. She’d built the Traveling City to be near him, forsaking her seat in the Summer Palace—following her oldest son’s progress across the continent. Prince Eine was envious, and it poisoned him. But with Thueban expanding the empire, Eine had grown comfortable ruling from the Summer Palace. When his brother had sent word that he planned to return to take his place on the throne, Eine made a choice.

Prince Eine devised a plan to kill his older brother and take the throne for himself. But Eine would not survive if Thueban attacked. And anyone who had supported him would die with him. If the brothers went to war, Adrian’s father would die because Adrian’s father was in Eine’s court, a trusted advisor.

Adrian went to Prince Eine and offered his loyalty. He would kill the man who had raised him, who had become a second father, in the hopes that his birth father would live. Eine was elated. Even then, Adrian had a reputation on the battlefield. He was not yet the Wolf, the Monster of the White Snake empire, but his name was known.

Prince Eine sent Adrian back to the Traveling City with a contingent of men. His instructions were to take the city, execute Prince Thueban, and escort Empress Isolde back to the Summer Palace.

If you do not defeat my brother, I will know you have betrayed me, and your father will die. Then I will hunt you down and kill you. But if you are victorious, I will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

Adrian would never forget the bleak expression on his father’s face beside the throne. There was no escaping that twist of fate. Finian had gone with him. Finian. That was a name he hadn’t thought about in several years. One he’d avoided until now.

“I returned at the head of a small army and killed the man who had raised me.” He looked down at his hands, pale in the light of the fire, seemingly clean. “I proved my loyalty.”

“And you did it alone?”

“No,” Adrian said, hesitating. “Most of the men here have been with me from that first battle.”

“Most,” Sorcha asked. “Have you lost many of your friends in battle then?”

“Yes.” Adrian leaned forward and stirred the fire, sparks rising. “But there was one who left.”

“I didn’t think anyone left the Horde alive. I’ve heard stories about deserters being hunted down. Is that true?”

“It is.”

“How did this man leave then?”

“We made a deal,” Adrian said.

“I didn’t realize monsters made deals.”

Monster.

Looking up, he found Sorcha’s eyes on him—luminous green in the firelight, the crackling flames reflected back at him. It was impossible to read her face. He couldn’t tell what she thought of his history in the empire. But he didn’t want her pity, not even her understanding.

That’s a lie.

“It seems like a sad life,” Sorcha murmured.

Adrian stood and set his bowl down, swallowing a lump in his throat—wanting to ignore the offer of kindness in her voice. Distrusting it as much as he distrusted his reaction to the woman who could be nothing more than a way to accomplish a goal.

“Make sure you have one of the men with you if you decide to leave the tent.”

He walked away, the heat of her gaze boring into his back.

* * *

Sorcha finished her dinner, listening to the sounds of the encampment. Going back inside the tent didn’t hold any appeal. There were too many hours between now and when full dark would arrive. She would be forced to retreat to its confines then. Adrian would have to return then as well.

Their conversation haunted her. The parallels between their lives were surprising. Taken by the temple and the empire at a young age, raised within a confined world, believing there was no other option available. She’d been the oracle, the Saint’s chosen. And Adrian was the empire’s most powerful monster.

He’d told her how the empire viewed everyone outside their close-knit world as animals, cattle to be driven before the Horde, to be made to serve a purpose.

Unless Prince Eine invited you into his circle and you accepted his terms. Then there would be grudging acceptance. It had happened. In the temple, they’d heard the stories of the wealthy or aristocrats accepting the prince’s offer to join his empire. He took the families into his court and split them up, divided and conquered even within his kingdom, and made sure they were always watched by his closest advisors.

To Sorcha, that didn’t sound like acceptance.

She hadn’t wanted it when it had been offered. Not when emissaries arrived with scrolls sealed with purple wax, and Kira read them aloud to the gathered temple. She hadn’t wanted it when another offer had been extended to King Roi, and the man had addressed the residents of the Golden Citadel.

But there had been those who had accepted—disappearing in the night, gone without any warning. There had been empty villas and businesses. The court had thinned rapidly. Many had remained, refusing to believe such a tyrant would keep his word. And Kira? Sorcha hated the feeling of betrayal that rose when she thought about the older oracle. Her teacher. Her confidant. Her mother.

Mother.Mother in every way that counted aside from birth. There had been no other woman in Sorcha’s life who was influential. Was she out there? Had she escaped the Horde, fled the prince? And if she was alive, why had she left Sorcha behind?

With a sigh, Sorcha left the circle of tents, wandering off into the encampment, wanting to think of anything other than Kira and the fall of the Citadel.

* * *

In the morning, there would be fire and death—screams and the stink of guts and blood.

No one in Cautes had accepted the prince’s offer. Join me or die. He’d extended it as always. But Marius put too much faith in thick walls. The people who had not fled were now trapped.

Death had arrived, and the reek of fear coming from the city was overwhelming.

What would follow would be anything but cold and calm. The prince demanded torture and fear. Terror was a weapon, one he wielded expertly. He needed the next city, and the next, to know the horrible things that happened when the Horde arrived. There was control in fear—the inability to resist. Adrian understood it and used it.

Expectations and eagerness buzzed throughout the camp. Some of the men were resigned and accepted what the day would bring without any joy for it. The men here had been through many cities. They were the survivors of countless battles. Most of them, if not all, would make it through the day and come back to their fires still smoldering in camp. They’d remove the armor and wash the blood away, then rest and wait for the next city they’d be ordered to kill.

Cautes was a small city compared to some. One that could have been easily handled by any general of the horde. But it was personal for the prince. A rumor had reached him: Marius was interested in collecting Saint relics in an effort to outmaneuver the empire. So, the prince sent Adrian personally to make sure Marius died.

He wondered if they might find the missing bone from the Silvas inside the Cautes. After the gates were destroyed and any resistance had been dealt with, he would bring Sorcha in to find it. He didn’t want to touch the bones. A year ago—a lifetime—he would have said he carried no superstitions. He was a cold and logical man. And while the world contained many things he couldn’t explain—magic and monsters—the Saint seemed different somehow.

The Saint could resurrect the dead and that they returned as they’d been in life.

Growing up, he’d believed with certainty no one could come back from the dead. He’d sent many people off to meet their end—to fall into that place with no way to return, often in bloody and terrible ways. He’d never considered they might come back.

But the way the prince had talked about the Saint had gotten under his skin.

As they traveled to uncover more bones, and finally found the woman, he’d seen the insides of the temples and encountered the believers who followed this creature. For centuries, they’d worshipped his bones and believed he would return to change the world. But none of them, not one, had been able to tell him in any detail what that change might be. They’d babbled about people rising from the dead, about the world being made new, and disbelievers being taught the error of their ways.

Prince Eine believed them.

And deep within the Traveling City, the empress lay dying. Poison.Death. Treason. It had been whispered about behind closed doors, in hallways when people thought there might be no one to overhear. The prince knew something of what ailed the empress, but he spoke to no one. Once, Adrian thought the prince would confide in him about such things. Hadn’t he earned his trust? And yet, the empress lay dying, and the prince remained silent.

The Saint had become an obsession for the prince. He was filled with ferocious determination. It was unlike anything else. Not his desire for the throne, his desire for power, to expand his empire, or to be the myth and leave the legacy he dreamed about. Nothing meant more than finding the Saint.

A woman’s cry broke through his thoughts—a familiar edge to it tickling across his brain. To the left, he could see a small group of men standing in a circle. He heard one of them laugh, and in the middle, he saw a face he knew. Without a second thought, he moved in their direction, a hand on the hilt of his sword.

Sorcha stood in the middle of the group, hands at her sides, cheeks red with embarrassment or anger. A blond man wearing a maroon leather jerkin smirked at her, then leaned in and reached out a hand. He was one of General Zlatko’s men—a face Adrian had seen in battle, but he couldn’t remember the man’s name. A tough soldier, skilled with a bow and arrow but better with a short blade.

“Come, priestess, bless me for tomorrow.” The man leered, a glinting promise of pain in his eyes.

She leaned away, taking a step back, but the crowd around her didn’t move as the blond man grabbed her upper arm. A smile split his face, something inhuman lurking beneath it—a killer for the joy of it, a torturer for the pleasure of it.

Adrian moved quickly as Sorcha pulled her free hand back and slapped the man across the face. The blow connected with a sharp sound, but he didn’t even flinch—the smile remained firmly in place. His knuckles whitened as he jerked her forward, raising his hand to return the slap.

But Adrian was there, slipping his blade strategically between the man’s ribs, watching as his raised hand fell limp. But the hand holding onto Sorcha’s arm remained. The group around them stepped back, eyes wide with recognition. With a jerk, Adrian pulled the blade free and kicked the man behind the knees so he went down, tugging Sorcha down into a painful bent position. Blood soaked the man’s tunic and flowed into the trampled grass, the dry earth soaking it up greedily.

The men surrounding them were silent. Blood pounded in Adrian’s ears, buzzing at the back of his brain, drowning out everything. Everything except Sorcha—face pale and eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

The man he’d stabbed still gripped her arm.

“Don’t,” she whispered, shaking her head.

The word failed to register with him until he’d brought his sword up and severed the man’s hand at the wrist. Blood spattered Sorcha—streaking across her crimson dress. Anger suffused him, crawling along each vein, thundering in his head.

“You’re alive right now because we have a castle to take in the morning,” Adrian said in a low voice. The man on the ground let out a low animal sound of pain. “If you survive the battle, I’ll kill you.”

Sorcha lifted defiant eyes, meeting his cold gaze—likely seeing the anger he made no effort to hide. Tears trembled on her lashes, and blood flecked her cheeks. She sagged, but he was there, tugging her upright and slipping an arm around her knees, lifting her before she could pull away. She was stiff in his arms, holding herself rigid as he walked away from her attacker.

Could she feel his pounding heart? For a split second, the desire to keep walking filled him, to walk beyond the tents, beyond the camp, out into the world to see what it might hold beyond all this blood and death. But he crushed it, turning to where his men were camped, furious that his order to shadow her had been ignored.

“I had an eye on her.” Revenant stepped from between two tents, face impassive. “I wouldn’t have let it go any further.”

“It had already gone too far,” Adrian snapped, holding Revenant’s gaze. “The prince would be displeased.”

Displeased was mild. If something had happened to her, the whole camp would have died. Revenant knew that. And yet, the man had let her wander into a dangerous situation. Sorcha shifted in his arms, and he instinctively held her warm weight tighter against his chest. He glanced down at her. She didn’t look at Revenant, keeping her gaze averted, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Put a guard on her,” Adrian said, jerking his chin in the direction of his tent. “Magnus or Aldo. They’ll stay with her tomorrow. We leave at dawn.”

Revenant nodded and disappeared into the camp. Adrian clenched his jaw, teeth shut against whatever he might say to Sorcha, whatever comfort he might offer her. There was nothing, so he said nothing at all.

Reaching the tent, he pushed through the heavy flap and let it swing shut behind them. The spicy scent of his armor polish and the citrus soap she’d used in her bath permeated the air. The opening in the center of the roof let in enough light to see by, and later, there would be a fire. For now, the fading daylight streaming in was enough to be able to see the tears tracking down her cheeks. Anger washed over him. Anger at the men out there, at Sorcha for leaving the tent and the small circle of protection around it.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, glancing up at him. “You didn’t have to maim him.”

He didn’t respond. There had been no consideration on his part—no thought before action. He’d seen the man’s hands on her, the way her face had paled with pain, and he’d stepped forward with a naked blade.

Adrian dropped her onto the cot, the pile of furs and blankets cushioning her fall, and a sound of surprise escaped her. He turned away, pulling his gloves off as he went, and moved to the desk to consider the map that lay spread out across the surface. He waited for her to speak, to thank him or accuse him, to call him a monster or worse.

But she said nothing else.

After he killed Marius, they’d leave the Horde—stepping beyond their protection and reach—and head out into the unknown in search of the Saint’s relics. He’d studied the various destinations on the map and discussed the locations with his men. There were temples to the Saint everywhere, but not all housed a relic. Those were fewer, farther apart, and there were whispers about supernatural defenses.

He traced the coastline to the south, a cliff face with a curling filigree of gold and bone. A copy of the one on Sorcha’s collarbone, which brought to mind the way it had flowed beneath his gloved finger in camp when he’d seen it for the first time. Then again in the Mapmaker’s room. It was different on paper, not like the living, changeable thing it seemed to be in her skin. He turned to find her watching his hand, wondering if she’d been thinking about that moment by the fire too.

“We leave the horde the day after tomorrow and carry forward on our own.”

“Because of me? This?”

She pulled up her sleeve to expose the red marks left by the soldier’s grip. Anger flared instantly at the sight. He shook his head as he moved away from the desk and crouched down before her, studying the mark. It wouldn’t bruise. In an hour, it would be gone. But he wouldn’t forget how he’d reacted. That was something he needed to consider. His orders were clear, and emotion had no part in it.

“My name is enough to keep you safe.”

“Then what was that outside?” she asked, laughing bitterly.

“A mistake on my part,” he admitted.

“Mistake?”

“I should have been clear. Not everyone is privy to the prince’s desires.” Adrian stood, turning away from her, and moved to the medicine chest beside the washstand. There was a cream there for bruises. He found it and returned to her, holding the milky glass jar out to her. “Take this. It will help with the bruising.”

“And Revenant?” She took the jar and opened it to sniff the contents. “I thought he knew.”

“You saw him?” It was a stupid question, but he had no answer for her. He had no answer for himself. He went back to the maps—the country around them, with several detailing the layout of Cautes.

“I’m not deaf, Adrian.”

He glanced over his shoulder, a thread of humor weaving through his words. “Am I no longer a monster to you, then?”

“Would you prefer it?” she asked sharply.

His name in her mouth, her voice in his ear, was like finding a tender spot, a newly discovered section of bare skin, unprotected. He wanted to hear her say his name again.

“You can call me whatever you want.” He shrugged. “It makes no difference to me.”