It had cost me two days to reach this place.
And now? I was upheaving what little I managed down, writhing on a straw mattress late into the night. All for nothing. And I was too weak to ride. I couldn’t even walk.
I just had to cling to the hope they would return.
Two more days passed and I could feel every bone protruding from my ribs. I was delirious and couldn’t hobble more than a few yards outside my cabin to relieve myself.
Trying to make the trek to the keep was impossible now.
I’d made it this far, and this was how it would end. I would never know what happened to everyone else. I’d die from starvation or fever, whatever won out first. I’d been fighting the former as best I could by boiling the rawhide straps of the horse’s tether in a leftover pot until it was tender enough to chew, but it wasn’t enough.
Eventually, I set the mare free, before the temptation became worse… I’d die either way, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of slaughtering a horse. Foolish, perhaps, but it was one act I refused to commit.
Hours passed as the hunger grew. I fantasized about conjuring a hearty venison stew, but the principles of magic wouldn’t keep the casting forever. After my stamina dropped, the pangs would be back. Worse so, perhaps, because my stomach had adjusted to its fill.
It was better to hold onto magic to keep the stove warm during the course of the night, to boil the little well water I could manage. At least the effect of those two castings was true.
Another night and I couldn’t distinguish the walls from the ceiling, let alone the floor. I was struck by tremor after tremor. Sweat drowned every one of my pores, drenching my clothes and sticking to my flesh like a second skin. The festering wound at my thigh was molten fire. It seared late into the night.
I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sleep. It was like my time in the dungeons all over again, only this time infinitely worse.
Blayne was dead. Darren was king.
The villain marching on Caltoth was the broken boy from the cliffs.
Because of me. I had abandoned Darren when he needed me most. I’d assumed his brother would live… And why wouldn’t he? The palace had the best healers in the land.
Surviving had been more important. I’d needed to save my family and warn the rebels. But now…
It wasn’t Blayne’s army at the border. It was Darren’s.
The new king was committing acts he could never take back, and when the truth came to light—if it ever did—it would be his orders that tore the country apart. His words that sent innocent men and women to their death.
Darren had watched the only person he loved pass away, alone. I’d left him to darkness and despair and a country on the brink of war.
“I’m afraid of what my love for you will make me.”
Now we knew.
Would it have made a difference if I had stayed? Or would the Black Mage have been the first to condemn the king killer like the rest of them?
Why had Darren wanted me alive? To rot away in a cell? Or something worse?
The realization cut into my chest, twisting like a knife.
Someone had to stop him.
It couldn’t be me. Not anymore.
It wouldn’t be much longer until… the end.
But someone else needed to rise.
To save Jerar.
To save the boy from himself.
Before he destroyed the world.
15
When I awoke, I was in the Realm of the Dead and the gods had taken me far away from my mortal toils. There was bliss that came from ethereal freedom and no physical corpse to remind me of hunger and thirst and pain.
And then I felt something cool pressed against my skin.
I wasn’t supposed to feel.
But the sensation was so familiar that I had to open my eyes. I wanted to understand how I could still feel something akin to before.
I found myself peering into blue eyes as familiar as my own. I had been staring at them since the day I was born.
Alex fell back in his chair, swearing. “Thank the gods!”
He wiped a pale wrist against his clammy forehead, breathing deeply in and out of his nose. He did this for another minute or two while I swallowed, unable to think. Finally, he managed a shout: “She’s awake! Ella!”
There was the sound of boots squeaking outside and then a door creaked open to reveal my best friend, her expression equally wild.
“Ryiah!”
I blinked up at both of them, but my throat was coarser than sand. I could only manage to cough, hacking as I tried to push myself up off the straw.
My brother leaned forward to help as my friend charged forward with a flask she pressed to my lips. “Drink,” Ella ordered. “It tastes like death, but it will help with your throat.”
I took a sputtering sip, and then another. She wasn’t wrong. The liquor tasted like rot, but after there was a slow-setting chill.