My mind pitches from thought to thought. “What does that mean? For us? If the prince succeeds?”
“Thamaos wanted absolute rule, and he did not care how many lives were destroyed for him to attain it. I am certain he is even angrier than before, having spent centuries in the pits of the underworld. If he is brought back from the grave, he will not stop until every person living in this shattered empire bows to him. He would start a war in Tiressia first and foremost, to bring down Fia. After that, I do not know. The world is much bigger than Tiressia. There are other lands to conquer, other rulers to dominate, even a few living godlings. He could change the entire world as we know it, unless I stop the prince from taking Colden to the Summerlands and keep this—” he pats the knife “—safe.”
A sudden feeling of loyalty washes over me. For Tiressia and its people. For Alexus. Even parts of our world that are only stories to me. Can I find my sister and help Alexus too? Help him save Colden Moeshka and protect a queen I’ve never even seen?
“When the god battle was over,” Alexus continues, “King Gherahn demanded that Un Drallag travel to the Summerlands and retrieve the God Knife. It was said to be lost in the Jade River or in the sands where it might never be found again. The sorcerer went to the coast, but in truth, he was tired. He had a wife by then, a child on the way. He wanted a life that was more than the one he lived under the king’s thumb as a spy, an assassin, a weapon. So he abandoned the only home he had ever known and fled to the northland valley where he’d been a spy once upon a time. The God Knife was never located, but Un Drallag could feel it calling to him. There is such power in this knife, Raina.” He touches it. “It would be better if it didn’t exist, but there are no gods left to destroy it.”
Dread pools in my stomach. “My father said that the blade harkens to the one from whose body it was made. Is the blade calling to Thamaos now?”
That thought terrifies me, that I might’ve been carrying around a relic that summons a dead and dangerous god.
“No, that isn’t true,” he replies, tilting his head, looking at me like he needs his next words to sink deep. “The blade calls to its maker, Raina,” he signs.
After a pregnant moment, he reaches over his head, grabs a fistful of his tunic, and strips off his shirt. With the fabric wadded in his hands, he leans forward again, elbows on his knees, and pulls his long hair to one side.
His back is beautifully made, wide and tapered like wings, like I noticed at the stream. But the skin from his shoulders to his waist is marked with scars, rough and raised, like those on his chest.
The firelight catches on the silvery skin, shimmering. Emboldened, I drop the blanket from my shoulders and move to my knees. There, nestled between his legs, I touch one of the runes on his shoulder blade. He flinches at first, but chills rise the more I admire.
Because it is admiration. His marks look like they were painful to receive—branded or carved—but they’ve left him looking like an artifact, something to be studied, understood, deciphered.
I want to know the history behind each line.
“Do you recognize them?” He looks up, searching my face for some response that I clearly don’t have to offer.
I shake my head. “Only that they are runes.”
“How closely have you examined the knife?” he asks.
“I know it by heart.”
“I am not sure you do,” he says, slipping the God Knife free from its sheath. “Let me show you something.”
He hands over the knife. Once again, the blade is so warm to the touch.
“Look into the stone,” he signs. “Hold it to the light.”
I’ve held the God Knife near the candles on my worktable a few times, enough to know what it looks like. I’ve never stared deep into the amber, though, and when I do, I’m more perplexed than ever. Faint markings that I’ve never noticed before hide inside the stone. I peer harder and twist the hilt toward the firelight, rolling it between my fingers. A dozen or more runes are either etched into the pommel itself or forged into the stone.
My hands still, and a rush of awareness hits me. The marks are the same as the ones on Alexus’s body.
“Those are runes, yes,” he signs. “Elikesh runes. The young man who forged that knife used runes and his own blood to bind him to the blade. Runes can act as an—” he pauses, like he’s hunting for the right word to sign “—enclosure,” he finally says. “They trap necessary magick within objects, like a knife. Or within…people. They can also forge a connection.”
I’ve heard of such things but only in lore. I’ve even seen runes—they’re engraved on some of the old stones inside the temple. But those methods of magick are ancient and archaic, practiced when the last gods still lived. I don’t even think godlings in faraway lands use runes anymore.
Sitting back on my heels, I touch the mark over Alexus’s right breast. He takes the knife, re-sheathing it, and clasps my hand in his, pressing my palm against his fire-warmed skin.
“The God Knife calls to Un Drallag, Raina,” he whispers. “It’s been trying, all these years, to return to its maker’s hands. Its haven, its home.”
A question flutters across my mind, chased by an answer I’m sure I already know.
Heart racing, I ask anyway, my fingers faltering around my words.
“And has it?” I sign. “Finally found home?”
A lump builds in my throat and tension in my fingers as I wait for his reply.
He lifts a hand to my cheek and traces the curve of my jaw, looking at me with those otherworldly eyes. “Yes.”
27
Raina
Alexus Thibault is Un Drallag.
The sorcerer who forged the God Knife. An Eastlander from the Tribe of Ghent.
A three-hundred-year-old man.
My head aches from all the thoughts ricocheting across my mind. His life threads. They’re so frayed because they’re tattered with age. And the Summerlander magick on the blade—he could see it because he’s old enough to have learned to read it, possibly in the Summerlands. And now it makes sense why the God Knife warmed against my thigh in the minutes before he charged the green and every other time he was around.
Because it knew its maker was near.
I sit so still, staring into his stormy eyes, unsure what to feel. In some way, I’d sensed his antiquity. He exudes permanence, sure and unceasing as the stars in the sky. I’ve been drawn to that part of him from the moment our eyes first met.
“Say something,” he signs.
I touch his sharp cheekbone, caress his strong brow with trembling fingers, then trace my touch across his soft lips. He holds my gaze all the while, letting me study him, letting me think.
“You should be my enemy,” I sign.
He’s an Eastlander. They’ve taken so much from Tiressia. So much from me.
“Yes. If birthplace decides who is good and who is not, then you should hate me.”
But it doesn’t, and I know that. I also know that he fled a life he didn’t want, duty he did not choose, all to make a better path for himself and his family.