24. Lyr

24

LYR

L yr hears everything.

He had been waiting in the hidden cellar while he heard the bodymen searching above, but when he heard them leave, he went up the steps so he could listen to Damon and Atticul.

When he hears Atticul tell Damon his greatest secret, he feels the pain from every one of those branded letters on his chest all at once. It's so much he has to lean up against the stone wall and breathe hard.

She has come for him. Jareleezi. Even here she has found a way to hurt him. Deep down, he always knew she would.

He was bound to her table for it. Not an unfamiliar position. Leather straps around his wrists, waist and thighs.

Jareleezi had been enraged, her Gods had told her once more that the only way she would be able to draw Damon Darekul to her would be to send Lyr to him. She demanded another way. She lit twelve fires of different colours and chanted all night while Lyr lay bound to the altar. As it had gone on and on Lyr had felt something, a heat growing in his body. A burning that grew more and more painful.

Lyr writhed on the altar. The heat was gathering in his chest. Every breath hurt. The wooden block bound in his mouth muffled screams as shapes burned their way out of his chest. The four runes.

When Jareleezi saw them, read what they said she was so angry she hit Lyr across the face, but when she looked back at the runes she said, "So be it. I suppose they cannot make their will any clearer than that."

And her dark Gods had marked him. Marked him for Damon Darekul. Made their message clear to Jareleezi.

"Please," Lyr says as he bursts into the wide stone room of the keep. "Please, it's not like that. It's not what he says. I was not meant to seduce you. I was only sent to you."

Damon stares at him. Eyes red. He looks like he might cry. He doesn't seem to be listening. "You were sent to me? By her. By the Hevelikar witch. Is this magic? Did you bewitch me?"

Lyr shakes his head. "No. It wasn't like that. She didn't want to send me to you, but her Gods told her it was the only way."

Lyr's heart turns to ashes. He feels like the runes in his chest are burning cold. He takes a step forward out of the cellar doorway.

Lyr is grabbed by Atticul's bodyman before he can cross the floor of the keep to Damon.

He struggles in the man's grip. "No, please." He needs to get to Damon. He needs to make him understand.

"The only way for what?" Damon says again.

"She wanted you. Jareleezi. The Gods told her I would set you on your path."

"You were going to take me to her?"

Lyr shakes his head. "No. You were to take me from Blackstone Castle and her Gods said it would set you on a path to her. They didn't explain how it would happen. Only that Jareleezi must do this."

Damon's face twists into a kind of broken sneer. "And why do you have my name on you?"

"It was a message from her Gods. To tell her that she had to send me to you. She didn't want to. She asked them for another way and this was their response."

"What response? What does that mean."

"They were angry I think, angry she would not listen to them. She asked her Gods for a sign. A certainty. They put this mark on me. And I am glad of it."

Damon is shaking. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"Because," Lyr is sobbing now, "because if you knew what I was, if you knew I was meant to set you on a path to the last Hevelikar, you would have sent me away or killed me. I'm sorry, Damon. Please. I didn't want any of this."

"You just said you were glad of it."

"Of course, I am. I am glad I was sent to you. I love you."

Lyr tries to remember if he's ever seen Damon cry. Even when he took one hundred lashes, even when everything he owned was taken from him. He did not cry.

But Damon has tears in his eyes now.

Atticul smiles. He moves closer to Lyr, pulling a dagger from his belt. He holds it to Lyr's throat. "Shall I kill him for you, brother? This whore who bewitched you into sin?"

"Show me," Damon says. His voice shakes. "Show me the runes on his chest."

Atticul slices through the front of Lyr's tattered shirt so it falls open, baring his chest. The four runes, silvery red .

"What do they say?" Damon asks Lyr. "Do they say my name?"

Lyr nods. He looks down. "Yes," he says in a small, broken tone. "It's Ur-Ambolk. I don't speak it but Jareleezi told me what they say." He nods to the first one. "That's Da then Mun , Da again and the last one says Rix , the mark over it is the Ul ." He swallows. "DaMun DaRixUl. Damon Darekul."

"So it was all magic? All a spell. None of this was real."

"No. It was a prophecy from Jareleezi's Gods," says Lyr, but he doesn't think Damon believes him.

"False Gods," Damon says tightly. "What were you meant to do to me? Seduce me? Seduce me and tell me to run away with you and then take me to Ismagaar. Did you…?" Damon pauses. "The foribunda." He looks at Atticul. "It wasn't you that gave my whore foribunda on the Azuria Ascendant was it?"

Atticul laughs. "I told you when you came to my cabin that I did not."

"That was part of your plan to seduce me too. You took foribunda on the Azuria Ascendant, to force me to take you."

Damon sits down heavily on one of the wooden chairs. He looks broken.

"No," says Lyr. "No, I didn't. I don't know who gave it to me?—."

He's cut off as Atticul slaps his face. Damon does nothing. He barely even looks over.

Lyr blinks away tears. What can he say? He could deny he took the foribunda himself but what good would it do? If they were alone he could make Damon understand. He knows he could. He could kneel in front of Damon and tell him exactly what had happened. He curses the fact he never tried in all the time they had together on Sanvicta .

But it's too late, and Lyr can see how it looks. He's a Hevelikar spy, a demon thing, sent to bring him down.

Lyr knows it then, deep in his heart. Damon is such a good man. A man who, despite everything that has been done to him, is honourable. Who lives with the heavy weight of things he has done, things he was forced to do. How can he ever understand the darkness of what happened to Lyr in Jareleezi's chamber?

At that moment three more bodymen march into the keep. One of them, taller than the other two says, "He's not here, Your Grace," he breaks off, seeing Lyr in the other bodyman's arms. "Oh. I see you found him after all."

"Yes, we did," Atticul drawls. "He was in the fucking cellar you claimed to have searched."

"I'm sorry, Your Grace," says the bodyman, as one of the other two steps forward and takes hold of Lyr so he has two men flanking him. One gripping each arm.

"Let me kill him for you, brother," says Atticul. "I'll do it happily. I should have done it in Pellex."

Damon says nothing. He's frozen, like he can't react.

Lyr struggles in the arms of the bodymen, begging, "Please, Damon—" One of the bodymen hits Lyr with a closed fist. It's a blow that would have knocked him down if the other two men weren't holding him.

Lyr looks at Damon's face. Being hit doesn't matter. All that matters is Damon. But Damon is looking at Lyr and seeing nothing but betrayal.

"Well, Bastard?" says Atticul, bringing his blade back to Lyr's neck. "Do you want this traitor dead?"

"Do what you want with him," Damon says.

Lyr swallows. He expects to die now. He wishes Damon would hold the blade himself.

"Very well. You know there is a price on this whore's head? He escaped the dungeons under the Rose Palace somehow. And Selim wants him back to interrogate further about his foul dealings with the Hevelikar." He nods to his bodyman to uncover Lyr's mouth. "Bred for sin by the Hevelikar were you? How many other men have you seduced for their evil ends?"

Damon isn't looking at them. He's looking down at the tabletop, face grey.

"None," says Lyr. "I wasn't sent to seduce him. I was sent to Damon because of a prophecy."

"Revolting," says Atticul happily. Still loving every moment of his victory. "Perhaps Jareleezi wants you back. Selim could offer her a trade when we find her. You for the Books of Alios."

"She'd never trade the Books of Alios for me," Lyr says. "She'd likely kill me for failing her."

Atticul ignores this. "It seems this whore of yours is quite a prize. I should have kept him for myself from the start."

"No whore of mine," says Damon softly. "It seems he was never mine. It was all Hevelikar lies."

Atticul addresses his bodymen, "Take him to the ship."

They start to move, marching Lyr out of the keep. Lyr struggles. Hard. Hard enough that he manages to break free. He turns, dodging Atticul and running back up to the keep. He races to Damon who has come outside, looking dazed, looking like a ghost. Lyr grabs Damon and the runes on his chest glow bright.

And Damon, like the skilled soldier he is, grabs Lyr by the wrist, forces him back an arm's length and punches him in the face.

Lyr goes down, down into the dark. The last thing he hears is Atticul laughing.

Lyr wakes on the Azuria Ascendant, in a dark room with bound wrists. He lies on the boards and sobs quietly to himself until there comes the docks, a prison cart and another cell under the Rose Palace.

All the while he feels the cold grip of Jareleezi. Are the Dareks really going to try and trade him back to her after they have interrogated him for all he knows?

The terror of it is so great it almost blots out his grief. His memories of her are fractured in places. A few are vivid but most are hazy. He remembers her dark chambers. Being bound, being drugged, being hurt. He remembers her chanting.

When he thinks of it feels like a memory cracks open. He remembers Jareleezi's chants as she cut swirls into his thighs and things forming in the room around them. Demonic creatures. Black and glistening like they were wet or oily.

He remembers a voice saying they must be brothers. Damon Darekul and all his Hevelikar brothers.

Only Hevelikar blood can save us. Like before.