Chapter 46

Hands cushioning my head, body stretched across the ground, I’m lulled by the fronds of grass painting secrets on my cheeks. By the warm, dappled sunlight that drips upon my face, breeze rustling through the peach tree arched overhead, jostling leaves and making the branches creak.

My belly is heavy, hands and lips and chin sticky with peach juice, eyes shielded by the rim of my cap as I dream of a life where I could stay out here forever. Disappear and let everything else just … fall away.

An aching niggle between my legs pulls my mind from the clouds, a thread of dread stitching through my chest with thoughts of what I did today. That rebellious, beautiful, hideous thing.

It was right. I know it was.

I owed it to myself—to ease some of that suffocating pressure and give myself some room to breathe.

Even so, the aftermath threatens to swallow me down a cleft in the soil.

I stuff the thought aside as Gael groans beside me, and I sense her stretching out her limbs, peeling my eyes open in time to see her sit up.

I tip my hat, heart sinking. “Time to go?”

Golden coils of hair blow across her face as she twists, squinting at the sun that ignites the blue bursts around her pupils. “We have another hour before the light starts to fade and the Irilak get brave enough to creep close, but I think we should probably go soon. By the time we get back to my house, the guards will be getting antsy. I’m going to wash my hands in the brook just over the hill. Be right back.” She pushes to her feet and slowly wanders up the rise, dropping out of view.

I let my eyes sweep shut again, toes stretching, mind drifting, chasing some sounds and dismissing others. Feeling a cold, incorporeal pressure scribble across the pads of my feet, my eyes snap open, heart flipping a beat as I edge onto my elbows, looking down the spine of the gully and into the thick tuft of jungle that plugs the far end.

It doesn’t take me long to see them shading the deeper pockets of shadow in messy clusters that float and sway and pulse and flutter.

The corner of my mouth turns up.

Irilak.

Too many to count—big and small, tall and round. Some have their bleached faces exposed, beady eyes pinned on me. Others watch from beneath their vapor veil, peeking out from behind tree trunks and steel-blue shrubs.

“I’m going to have to catch some mice …”

A muffled scream comes to me on a shove of wind that hits the side of my face. My head whips to the right, stare lashing in the direction she went. “Gael?”

Seconds drip by as I push into a seated position, ears straining, dissecting every sound …

Another muffled scream—sharper this time.

A spear of icy panic impales me.

I’m on my feet, legs churning, hand weaving up beneath my shirt and gripping the hilt of my blade, ripping it free before I even have time to think. I rise over the hill, looking out across the clearing caught in the curl of a rushing brook, dominated by a large tree that shades three men I don’t recognize.

They’re wiry, dressed in patchwork clothes, faces knotted with rabid rage that spits from their twisted lips as they kick at a gagged and bound figure on the ground, swathed in a shimmer of gold.

Gael.

Crouching beside her, one of the men tries to maneuver a sack over her head, and she kicks and bucks, her muffled screams battering the air.

I plunge into that cold, dead place deep inside that drops my heart in an icy lake, sprinting across the clearing like an arrow shot to kill. Lips peeling back, a snarl rips free, my hat flying off my head as I spear toward the man who has a fistful of Gael’s dress, catapulting through the air—landing a kick to the back of his head that drops him like a bag of bricks.

I hit the ground hard and roll through the grass, hair unraveling, stabbing my blade into the soil and grinding to a crouching halt. I flick my head up, seeing him twist into a groaning knot of muscle and sinew.

The other two run at me, belting brutal words.

Gael tips to the side, her wild, frightened eyes pleading with me as she jerks at her bound wrists, moaning muffled words through the blue material stuffed between her teeth.

I rip my blade from the soil and charge to the tune of crackling thunder.

Dropping low, I slide between the men and dodge their flailing hands, slashing my blade through the back of an ankle. Reaching Gael, I saw through the bonds wrapped around her ankles, then slice my blade through the rope binding her wrists, a muffled squeal dragging my attention to her wide, wild eyes.

The hairs on the back of my neck lift.

I kick my foot out and whip it around, swiping the legs out from beneath the man who was just about to swing at me, clambering atop him when he falls. Knees straddling his chest, rage tunnels my vision and scrunches my fist into stone.

I crack at his face, feeling his nose crunch beneath the brutal force. I swing again and again and again—knuckles splitting as I release my wrath on his skull.

He stops trying to shield his face. Goes limp between my legs.

Still, my knuckles collide with his cheek, his mouth, his temple—blood splashing up at my face with every crushing collision.

“Orlaith!”

Gael’s distant voice niggles at me, and I look up through the veil of my bloodlust, fist halting mid-swing. Lungs halting mid-draw.

She’s standing atop the hill, dress torn, kohl blurred across her bruised cheek, knees so skinned they’re bleeding down her shins.

Something hard and cold clouts my temple.

I drop.

Drift.

My body lightens … loosens … my limbs shifted for me. Lifted. My head flops forward, something tight binding my wrists, my chest, leaning me back against something hard and rough.

A boom of thunder rattles the ground and electrifies the air, cutting a gasp through my lips.

Someone fists my hair, ripping the weight of my head off my shoulder, settling a cool sharpness upon my bared throat.

My eyes pop open, a deep throb pecking at my temple as I take in a pair of pale blue orbs and a face slashed with wrath.

I’m certain it’s my own dagger poised at my throat.

A surging pressure bloats my brain, and I feel a warmth leak from my nose, dripping off the tip of my chin. My vision splits, feet threatening to slip out from under me, but there’s something bound around my chest, keeping my back against the tree.

Rope.

A slow, lazy blink, and my gaze drags past the male hissing his rancid breath at me to the man on the ground with a gory face.

Unmoving.

Another is crouched over him, hand wrapped around the back of his bloody ankle.

My focus shifts, sharpening on Gael—on her knees at the tip of the rise, hands gripping her face as she screams.

My mouth falls open, a single word rasping free. “R-run …”

I’m backhanded so hard my head whips to the side, teeth rattling, eyes rolling back.

I barely feel a thing, my flesh and muscles nothing more than a numb tomb that houses whipping, scolding lashes of caustic fire grubbing at the underside of my skin. Blood whooshes through my veins, the hissing drum morphing into a slither of noxious voices that chant a deadly tune …

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

Another gush of blood pours from my nose. I taste it on my tongue as a fork of lightning scribbles through the clouds rolling across the sky, blotting out the light.

“What’s this?”

The words somehow manage to dig past the hissing chant, and my gaze rolls to the male before me lifting the black jewel strung around my neck. His eyes ignite as he beholds it like he’s wielding all his dreams come true in the palm of his hand.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

“Would you look at that,” he spits past a grill of yellow teeth. “Think I’ll have that, you little bitch.”

I groan.

He tightens his fist around the gem and pulls.

I hear the chain snap; feel the heavy weight of it slip free from around my neck. The voices stop, that pressure abates, as though whatever it is inside me just sat up and listened.

My shell peels down, and the man stumbles back a step. He gasps, my startling reflection bouncing off his wide eyes—shimmering back at me.

Murderer.

My skin begins to tear in agonizing increments, cracking me open one searing split at a time. A flock of sizzling death untangles from that cleft inside my chest, and my mouth falls open, muscles immobilized by the blazing trails shredding me apart as I scream the howls of a hundred tortured souls rattling the chains of their mortality.

He only has a few more seconds to take in my shattered beauty before all the ugly pours out.