She raised her arms to call light and the moon disappeared behind the clouds, plunging the room in shadow. In that first dark, she heard only Bacchus’s sepulchral laughter. And then a heavy thud. Like a sack of flour hitting the floor.
A man in black bent over Ilior’s dead body. A glint of steel flashed and then the man in black turned. Julian—no, Sebastian Vaas—swiveled on his heel, his dagger wet with Ilior’s blood. His expression was cold with hate.
“You want more like this?” Sebastian swept the bloody dagger to indicate the dead. “Give in, sweets. It happened. Nothing can change that. Find the power in that pain or give up.” He flipped the dagger deftly in his hand. “Up to you.”
Selena shook her head wordlessly as the first bolts of ice struck her arm, her wounded shoulder, her stomach. Bacchus stepped through the false vision, closer to her, over her, and rained down his cold. Selena curled into a ball, flinching with every shard of ice, losing her healing magic, losing her fire under the barrage. When she could no longer move, the Bazira ceased the attack, unhurried in triumphant. She watched, trapped in the frozen shell of her own body as Bacchus gripped her wounded shoulder and lifted her up.
“Accora promised you phantoms of my devising,” he seethed, his breath fetid against her cheek. “She told you I’d torture with imagined visions of pain, suffering, death. And so I have. But she has never realized, not in all the long years of her blasphemous pilgrimage, is that the truth is always more frightening than anything one can imagine. You, Selena Koren, should know this better than any.”
Bacchus inhaled deeply, and then exhaled over Selena’s face a cold mist that smelled of the darkpool. “The truth,” he breathed and Selena felt the darkpool vapor infect her thoughts, her mind.
“My god,” she whispered.
“No, girl.” The dark priest of the Bazira held her aloft; his single black eye reflected her own stricken visage and nothing else. “My god,” he said, and plunged his hand into her wound.
The Sacrifice
The visions came, swirling like eddies of wind catching a pile of rotted leaves. Images fluttered past her in a cyclonic churning of time. Back, back it swirled, shattered, and then the disparate visions came together in a whole, like the shards of Accora’s greenhouse…
Skye lands on Isle Saliz. With her is a hulking female Vai’Ensai. The Vai’Ensai’s skin is a deep green, almost black, and her body is packed in muscle. She wears leggings, boots, and a fur vest that covers a barren chest. Steel rods pierce her ears, and the horns on her head sprout from every part of her skull, like a morning star. She flexes her wings and roars…
The maelstrom turned, the visions swirled and resolved.
Accora lifts a vial of yellowed liquid and Skye takes it. Skye is beautiful in the multi-colored light of the greenhouse. Her black hair gleams with red, as do her dark eyes. She is dressed for battle, though it is early morning and she has been a guest for some time. Skye is always dressed for battle.
She examines the vial of liquid and then shrugs her shoulders and hands it back. Accora looks panicked. “You are Aluren, he is Bazira.” She is begging.
To this, Skye laughs, deep and throaty, and says in her husky voice, “You know as well as I, names mean very little.” She rises to leave but stops to admire the tray of pinned insects posted to a beam. She trails her gauntleted fingers over the stowaway mantis. “So beautiful.”
The maelstrom turned, new visions coalesced to replace the others.
Accora is in the keep, in her chambers. Skye sits beside her. The old woman’s face appears placid but desperation lurks beneath. She hands to Skye a torn piece of parchment. Illuminated manuscript.
“The Ho Sun words,” Accora says. “You can read them?”
Skye holds the parchment reverently. “Aye,” she says, awed. Skye is never awed.
“Names,” Accora says, “mean very little. Unless they mean everything.”
Skye nods. “May I keep this?” She doesn’t wait for a reply, but gently folds the paper and tucks it into a pouch at her waist.
Accora’s hand snakes out and grabs hers. “I have given you…everything. Help me, now.”
Skye removes her hand. “You have given me nothing I wouldn’t have found for myself. I had my own suspicions.” She smiles. “And your vengeance doesn’t interest me.”
Another twist of foul wind, another vision.
Skye is walking to the shore; her immense Vai’Ensai stands close to her side. A skiff waits to take her to her ship, away from Saliz. Accora chases after her.
“I will tell them,” the old woman screeches. “I will tell them what you are.”
The Vai’Ensai turns and snorts hard, her hand on her broadsword. Accora stops short, falls into the sand.
“What I am,” Skye says, bemused. “If you knew what I am, truly, you’d have answered my one question instead of regaling me with tale of his awful perpetrations on you. One question.” Skye raises one gloved finger as Accora’s face breaks open in desperate hope. “Will he stand in my way?”
“Yes. Yes! Powerful beyond reckoning,” the old woman says. “He will choke the seas with his magic and not even you will be spared.”
Skye nods thoughtfully. “Very well. I’ll see what I can do.” And then she is in the skiff, her Vai’Ensai pulling the oars toward her ship, until Saliz and the woman on the beach are distant.
Selena reeled as the visions swirled a final time and then vanished. What she had seen rattled her in some deep core of her being where fear was born. But she could not ponder it now. Not while Bacchus violated her as he did. Dimly, she was aware that she had been screaming but her ragged voice had tapered away to nothing. She peered down to see Bacchus’s hand, buried up to the wrist, in her chest. His head was thrown back, his face a lustful grimace of bliss for surely her wound was as close to touching the Shadow face as he would ever come.
Cold. The word wasn’t strong enough. It was a kind of insanity all its own. A cold so deep she could no longer remember warmth. A line drawn, on one side there was before and the other after, and before was gone. Like the Calindari. Like the Zak’reth. Gone. There was no going back to before the wave, before the wound. Before she had known heat, and after she knew only this…
Selena closed her eyes to the horrid, filthy sight of Bacchus relishing her wound, lost in his own visions. She stood pinned against the wall a few paces from Accora. The pain was excruciating, and then numbing. Frost rimed Selena’s brows, her lashes, hair that fell around her face. Her fingers were clenched into fists, and locked against her chest, as if she could hold onto some sort of warmth. There was none.