It can’t be.
Vexx hesitates but walks forward, God Knife tightly fisted in his hand. He stops a few short strides from the cloaked woman. “Remove your hood, or every warrior here will send their blade sailing straight toward your heart. You have three seconds.”
One. Two.
She folds the hood back, and my heart lurches.
Helena.
Beside me, Rhonin tenses, and if I’m not mistaken, even gasps. If the wraith is still within Helena, I cannot tell. She looks much the same, though it’s difficult to see the truth with the snow, torchlight, and shadows. The wraith is sneaky, that much I know. I cannot trust the girl before my eyes.
“Well, well,” Vexx says. “The Knife Thief. We meet again.” He motions to two of his warriors. “Check her for weapons. Don’t forget how quick she is.”
Helena is so young, barely marked as grown in Northlander terms. And yet the way she stands there, arms lifted at her sides, chin high, spine strong and sure, she seems a thousand years old, confident as any goddess, any queen. There’s not a single remnant of unnatural presence, nor any hint of the rattled girl from the lake, and I have to wonder if that was all the wraith’s doing, and if this is the real Helena.
The warriors strip away her cloak, revealing no weapons. She’s no longer dressed in gold, the vulnerable material of her silken gown. Instead, she’s clad in the bronze leathers of Vexx’s men.
The general clasps his hands behind his back, feet spread wide, studying her. “Did you kill my men and take their clothes?”
A wind catches her hair, blows her scent in my direction. She doesn’t smell like flowers, but she doesn’t smell like the pit of the world either.
“No,” she answers Vexx. “Your men were already dead, but yes, I took their clothes.” She looks down at herself and meets his gaze again. “Clearly.”
As Vexx closes in, prowling toward her, his warriors step away, and Helena lowers her arms. She fixes her glittering eyes on Vexx as he approaches.
“Raina Bloodgood is dead,” she informs him. “That’s the only reason I’ll take you to her.”
At her words, my knees go weak, but Rhonin pulls me upright. Still, I sway on my feet, a hollowness yawning inside me, swallowing my heart.
Helena must be lying. She must be.
Vexx meets her toe to toe, nose to nose. With a light hand, he brushes Helena’s jet hair from her face, tucking it back at her temple where he runs a thumb over her angled brow. She flinches at his touch.
“Odd. Last time I saw you, you still bore the bloody mark of my fist.” He peers back at me, and for the first time, Helena glances my way. “Funny how injuries keep vanishing,” he adds. “I’ll have to do a better job next time.” Vexx faces Helena. “If you’re lying, girl, I will drag you from here to Winterhold behind my horse, and I will enjoy every second. You’ve cost me enough as it is.” With that, he steps back and sweeps his arm in a gesture. “Now. Lead the way, my lady.”
Broad shoulders back, Helena turns toward the caves. Vexx positions two warriors at her sides, and he falls just behind. Whatever happened between these two before Helena found Raina and me, it made enemies out of them.
A smothered half-groan, half-sigh rumbles in the back of Rhonin’s throat. I look at him as I limp along, glancing where the key hides, but there are men all around—in front of us, behind us, beside us—and he only stares straight ahead, focused on the rugged, snowy landscape.
And Helena.
In the reach of firelight, she climbs the rough and bouldered incline that leads to the very cave where I left Raina.
Vexx tosses a wicked smile over his shoulder. “Be sure to bring Un Drallag.”
Pulse thrumming against the cuffs at my wrists, Rhonin nudges me forward. Already, I can feel a hum in the air, the way the atmosphere thins around a coming crisis. I just don’t know what that crisis is. I’ve either shackled my soul to the Nether Reaches even surer by damning Raina to an early death, or something else lies ahead that might see me taking even more lives. Not that it matters.
Whether I like it or not, my soul is irredeemable.
With lumbered steps, we climb until Helena says, “It’s just ahead. Follow me.”
The second those words leave her mouth, Vexx halts us, his warriors coming to a standstill, each one scattered a few feet from another across the hillside. The two warriors following Helena seize her, and again, she glances at the cave and then at me, this time with wide and worried eyes.
Vexx props a foot on a rock and rests his hands on his hips. He nods to the two warriors flanking her, one of whom holds a torch.
“You two. Onward.” He looks pointedly at a man and woman to his right. “And you two, hold her. She stays within sight.”
The man and woman grab Helena, twisting her arms behind her back, while the other warriors vanish into the cave’s darkness, their light a glowing orb that soon snuffs out. There is no sound. No movement. Just a black abyss in the side of a cliff.
Vexx waits a few minutes, but when the warriors don’t return, he motions to someone else. “Go.”
Hatchet ready and torch raised, an Eastlander creeps into the darkness with a hint of caution in every step. The torchlight soon extinguishes, and again, nothing.
Vexx looks toward the red sky and roars. He stomps toward the cave and screams into it. “I’m tired of these games! You either come out here and drop your weapons, or this girl’s blood and yours will flow through this ravine like a river. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve already acquired the most important part of this mission.”
Brandishing the God Knife, he heads toward Helena, staring into her eyes. When he speaks, his voice is loud enough that if Raina is still inside that cave, she will hear him.
“Your witch friend has a chance to live,” he says. “She can bow before the Prince of the East and beg his mercy for what she did to him. I can’t say that he’ll oblige, but if the two of you keep toying with me, all hope is lost. And as for that bastard,” he jerks his head toward me and waggles the God Knife, “his destiny has arrived. Very soon, Un Drallag and Neri will be no more. They’ll both return to the Shadow World, and any chance of Thamaos’s greatest enemy being set free and allowed to interfere in the prince’s plan will have been removed.”
Ah. Vexx means to kill me, not that I didn’t already know this, but he plans to do it with the God Knife, the only weapon that can kill a god, so that Neri’s soul returns to the Shadow World, along with mine. But perhaps the wraith and prince don’t know as much about me and the God Knife as they think.
Vexx tilts Helena’s chin with one hand, then fists her hair at the crown and yanks her around, her back to his front, facing the cave. Dangerously, he presses the God Knife against her throat.
Aiming his voice toward the cave, he says, “Your call, witch. Does your friend live? Or die?”