59

It’s morning again, and the campfire at the entry has burned down to ash and ember. I kick dirt over it to completely snuff the flames. My head is filled with light and energy, excited to start my day. Though I’ve eaten no food or enjoyed true rest, I feel… together . Today, I will move closer to my goal. I’ve determined what I’m meant to do. Destroy . I’ve determined who I’m meant to destroy. Jadon Wake .

The more I thought about it through the night, the more Jadon being the One made sense.

Sybel gave me all that I needed to know.

Powerful forces are already after you, Kai, and they will try to influence you, lull you into slumber, trick you so that you never defeat the One.

Jadon Wake is the only person who has lulled me into slumber. He did all of this to grow more powerful and claim control of the realm. Again: fuck Vallendor. If he wants it, then he can have it—

Air catches in my throat, and a chill shoots through me.

That’s the problem, though. Sybel warned me. If the One is not stopped. If that power goes unchecked, the One will move on to the next realm, growing more powerful still, and on to the next realm, and on and on until…

Shit. Shit-shit-shit.

Even if I leave Vallendor and settle in another free realm, Jadon Wake would be there, eventually, and he’d possibly be manifested as someone else. As another siren song wielding a big sword.

I can’t escape this.

Inevitable. Unavoidable.

Okay. So, yes. I will move closer to my goal. And I remain committed to what I’m meant to do, what Sybel pleaded for me to do. Destroy . Stop the One. And I will stop the One. I will destroy Jadon Wake .

Having nowhere to run means I have to move forward. Having no choices means I have only one choice. I stow both Fury and Little Lava in their scabbards, pull on my armor, grateful that my gear is light; my mission, though, is not. Jadon Wake has a huge head start on me—more than twelve hours, and I’m on foot. That gives him at least another day’s advantage, maybe two depending on the terrain.

“Goodbye, cave,” I say, looking around. “Sorry for disturbing your quiet with bullshit.”

Plinking. Dripping. Silence. Just like we found it.

Outside, silver mist rolls across the craggy ground that turns from desert sand and granite to a slick green and yellow. The air feels moist here, not pleasant at all. There must be a body of water nearby, which is probably where Jadon caught the catfish. It’s not a healthy, refreshing body of water, not with a sky and air like this. And there’s not enough light streaming here this morning to crisp it. No breeze to stir it and push it out.

I pick my way down the side of this craggy hill and spot the goopy-looking stream, making the air and these surrounding boulders slick, then sit…sit…doing nothing.

It may be goopy-looking, but at least this stream has a current—it’s alive but neglected.

I find the cleanest, flattest spot on the banks of this creek and wash my face as best as I can without soap. I lament leaving behind the lemon-mint soap from Veril and the peppermint oil from Ridget. Couldn’t be helped. The water is cold and slick, but my dirty hands become less dirty, and that makes me smile.

I dip my hands back into the stream, then run them over my dry hair, being careful to not loosen the braids and lose the luclite threads that help to hold me together. While I’m far from the clean I’d enjoyed after my bath at the Broken Hammer, parts of me are more refreshed.

With no map, I must rely on the rise and set of the daystar to guide me toward my new destination, which is even farther than Mount Devour: Brithellum, home of the Wakes, including Jadon Wake, the One. There, I will fulfill my obligation, destroy the One, and then take my rightful place where the realm meets the sky on Mount Devour—where Veril said I’d survey my realm. My realm.

Day turns to night, and then the sky lightens to day. Then night comes again and day follows once more. I have no food, no water, no tools. I have Fury and Little Lava, but there is no game to hunt. I live by my wits, surviving on the meager offerings the blighted land provides along my way. Bitter nuts. Dying berries. Leaves that taste like pepper. Vengeance and indignation are excellent motivators, but after days of hunger and exhaustion, I find myself flagging mentally and physically.

On the dawn of this third day, I scan a forest devoid of life. No chirping birds or croaking frogs. Not even the buzz of a honeybee. Stay focused. Stay strong . That’s what Veril would tell me if he were here. Keep going, dearest . I hear his laughter bouncing off the dying pines and rolling down the steep hillside before me and—

Shit. I lean against a tree and close my eyes, my heart broken and will nearly depleted. Everything in me has broken—from my knees to my toes. And what hasn’t been broken, I’ve lost. My amulet. My memory. Veril. Jadon.

A chill runs along my spine and rolls out over my arms. The humidity makes my skin prickle, and for a moment I fear that either I’ve become feverish or the memory of Veril is making me physically ache. But then a breeze brushes against my ears, face, and neck, and I shiver. I’m not alone here—but I don’t sense danger, either. No glowing amber or blue shine from behind these low failures of shrubs and trees.

Another breeze, this one coming from the north, just like the first…

What’s that?

Pulsing. Keening. Vibrations from the dirt push against the soles of my boots. Soon, red and gold moths drift down from the sky and bump and swirl against my face.

I smile, ready to rejoice, but then I narrow my eyes and scan the forest and those fluttering moths.

Where exactly is my pendant? Who has it?

The pulsing grows stronger, and pressure builds between my eyes and behind my ears. I push my fingers against my forehead. No relief. Just more pressure.

The moths cloud my vision—so many of them now, and that keening… It’s coming from the moths. They shift, no longer a tower about me but an undulating trail that shimmers with gold and red dust, leading away from the forest and down the mountainside.

I stand and follow, winding through the craggy rocks of the wasteland. Down…down…

By late in the day, the rocky gravel and mossy stones give way to richer earth—far from perfect, this part of the desert, but green thrives because of the better access to light. There are sharp, spiky-leafed plants and low shrubs with red berries over there. More low-growing shrubs with purple lavender there. Patches of twisted junipers that soar into the air here. Groves of pine trees that don’t require much water over there; their thin needles remind me of a teen boy’s first mustache. Curious-looking trees with low branches and ironwood trees with dense, hard barks everywhere. The sparkling trail winds around the trunks of these pine trees.

That pulsing in my gut urges me to move on. I take a deep breath and continue my hike, passing dead trees that look healthier than the living ones.

Far in the distance, the faint, unmistakable sounds of battle drift through the trees.

How many soldiers will be at the end of this trail? How many otherworldly? How many angry Dashmala who’ve heard that I drove a pike through the skull of one of their fiercest warriors? Maybe Gileon Wake and his men are part of this battle and that is why the moths are leading me this way. Could Olivia be near? Or Jadon?

The sparkling trail ends at hedges that surround a knoll. I push through the tangled greenery and…

“Well, who the fuck do we have here?” A single soldier sits upon a tree trunk, his legs splayed out, casual, unbothered. He resembles an anteater with his long, narrow nose and nonexistent lips.

I know he isn’t as alone as he appears. I heard the others. Smelled them, too.

Soon, they roll like fog from behind the trees and logs, wearing copper-colored breastplates, grinning and self-congratulatory, as though they’d successfully hidden from me.

They wouldn’t know success even if she pushed through tangled greenery and stood before them.

“Look who’s here,” one soldier sneers, his teeth tobacco-stained brown.

“Wake’s whore,” another soldier cracks.

Eight, nine…eleven soldiers. One me.

I like those odds.

Beyond the forest, the sounds of battle continue.

I point in the direction of the distant fighting. “Shouldn’t you assholes be out there killing something other than my time?”

“Look at her,” Broken Nose hoots. “Look at her weird eyes.”

“Oh no. They’ve gone all screwy!”

“You better watch out.”

The stained-tooth soldier steps forward from the crowd. His hazel eyes glitter cruelly, and the smile cracking on his face reveals an even crueler heart. “Looking for this?” The stained-toothed soldier reaches beneath his breastplate and pulls out—

My amulet! My precious pendant— the object I need more than anything else in this realm —hangs from his dirty fingers.

“Thought you’d never see me again, right?” The soldier with the big ego, this one resembling a donkey with those teeth and that forehead, sidles toward me, his arms folded, a smirk on his lips.

“See you again ?” I say, head cocked. “When was the first time?”

The smirk flinches some. “At the Broken Hammer.”

I blink at him. “Okay.”

“We fought, you and I,” he insists.

I lift my eyebrows. “Okay. If you say so.”

Hee-Haw grimaces—men hate being forgettable. “I cut your cheek. My blade—”

“Had the snake venom,” I say, pointing at him. “I almost died by this much ,” I say, pinching my thumb and index finger together. “But you couldn’t finish the job. Bet you hear that a lot, don’t you?”

His face goes red, but before he can respond, I swipe my hand and use wind to throw him against the closest pine tree. There’s a crack of his head against wood, of that violated wood splintering. Then there’s a rush of wind as that tree falls, its branches and needles serving as a shroud for the soldier who almost killed me by this much.

Is he Number Sixty-Five?

The moths darting around my head flit away. They’ve brought me here, to my amulet; their job is done. And now it’s time for me to do mine. I slowly pull Fury from her scabbard and hold my breath as the guard swings my amulet from his grubby finger, not looking quite as frightened as he should. I slowly release that air, and it wraps around my head like smoke. “I suggest,” I say, starting off politely, “that you return my property. Unless you want to end up buried beneath a tree like your friend.”

“And I suggest,” the soldier says, “that you kiss my arse.” And then he pulls down his dirty breeches and shakes his dirtier ass at me.

His comrades laugh.

I smile. “Go ahead and laugh.” I meet each soldier’s eyes. “I hope each of you have put all your affairs in order—that you wrote those last letters to your sweethearts, that you’re wearing clean underwear.” My hand now buzzes around the hilt of my sword.

Ready to work.

Three soldiers rush me, swords and axes held high above their heads.

I sweep my hand, knocking all three into the sharpest, craggiest boulder. I don’t even wince hearing that abrupt crunch of three separate spines against rock.

That’s…sixty-eight.

Two more soldiers flank me.

I send wind from my hand, lifting both high into the sky—they scream and scream—and then swipe my hand down, dropping them—they scream and scream until they don’t.

Sixty-nine, seventy…

“Why don’t you fight without your sorcery, bitch!” another soldier spits.

I twist my hand in the air.

The soldier clutches his throat. His veins push against his forehead.

I cup my ear with my wind-whipping hand. “What’s that you said? Bitch, what?”

He gags until he’s the purple of turnips.

I’m striving for eggplant.

I twist my hand once more.

Seventy-one!

The soldier with the filthy ass and my pendant backs away from me. “You put that sword down,” he says, “and I’ll give it to you.”

“Put my property down,” I say, easing toward number seventy-two, “and I’ll let you live.”

Nasty Ass spits on the ground, then spits on my pendant. “There. How you like that?”

I pluck Little Lava from her sheath and whip her at Nasty Ass—but I don’t aim for his head. No, I want the hand holding my amulet. But I’ll have to be satisfied with taking all five of his fingers.

He screams, and his severed fingers fall into the dirt. Plop, plop, plop, plop. The last finger, the one still wrapped around my gold chain, pops into the air and lands at my boot. Shrieking, the soldier clutches his bloody hand and collapses to the ground.

Pain shoots through my chest and my bones, my heart, my core… Too much exertion. But at least my amulet is right there. My body begs for it.

But there are three remaining soldiers to dispatch before I can find release.

Before I can muster up another blast of wind or swing Fury, though, the surviving three soldiers scatter in every direction. Saloroaches have more courage than these men.

Alone now—well, among the living—my eyes fill with tears, and I kick away the soldier’s thumb. Finally freed from one captor after another, the amulet swirls with colors, and now those colors blur because I’m crying and can barely breathe and my head bangs and I want to tear off my clothes and dance naked in the woods. Moths, hundreds of them, swoop down from the sky. Sparkles and dust everywhere—the moths are happy, too.

I drop to my knees and crawl over to my amulet, creeping like it’s a grasshopper and will bounce away if I move too quick. But the pendant doesn’t move. It just beats, and the beating in my body keeps time with it.

Hand shaky, I slowly reach for the pendant. My finger touches the moth’s onyx thorax. “Hello, beloved.”