The second the war camp was on the horizon I knew I wouldn’t tire.
Being so close, it was like Lisane called to me, and I was fated to answer.
And either the other men fed on this, or they were as excited to see our destination as I was, because we traversed the plain in what felt like record time, with the sun beating down, and wind at our backs, until we reached the outskirts of the camp.
Word of our arrival had already spread, and curious onlookers, soldiers and civilians both, had come out to greet and stare. We’d put a sheet over the cage holding the Deathless, but passersby could still hear him moaning, and while some men held their children over their heads to see us pass, other frightened fellows pulled their braver women back.
The circle of mages protecting the camp parted to let us through, and we took the main road into the center of the camp itself, which was where I wanted to see and be seen—and wanted everyone to hear.
“I am back, with a Deathless!” I bellowed, whipping the sheet off of the cage. The creature inside was standing, leaning against the bars with its eyeless face, and one of its hands reached for the sheet, making it look like it was stretching out for the commoners. Some men shouted, and one woman screamed.
There was the sound of a more coordinated procession coming up, boots and metal beating in turn, as Jaegar himself pushed through the crowd, surrounded by a group of soldiers. He appeared to inspect the Deathless from afar, then archly asked, “And?” He looked around, encouraging everyone present to feel his disdain. “I seem to recall you promising a solution to them. This doesn’t seem like one—he seems quite alive. ”
“I needed to bring it here, first,” I exclaimed.
But the truth was. . . I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen next.
As mindless as the Deathless were, I refused to believe that they didn’t serve a purpose, like all other living things.
They had a reason for what they did, and why they did it, and somehow Jaegar was the key to that—so I watched the creature carefully, to see if it had a reaction to him.
It did not—but it was steadfastly looking to the east for some reason now, even though it didn’t have eyes, and I was sure it had not been before.
“Kill it!” shouted someone from the back of the crowd, and there was a murmur of assent. I moved to block the cage with my body—if the thing died now, before I’d solved this mystery, everything was truly lost.
“I agree,” Jaegar said. He snapped, and the soldier nearest him raise a bow, setting his sight between the cage’s bars.
“Wait!” called a woman.
My heart leapt, and whatever in me that was still beastly growled.
Lisane pushed through the crowd in the same dress I’d ravished her in, only now it was more torn, and the Deathless appeared to be looking at her.
Lisane
The day of Rhaim’s arrival I was tortured by thoughts of how everything could go wrong—and it was unfair that that pain alone was not enough to empower me.
I listened as best I could through the heavy fabric of the tent, waiting for Rhaim’s arrival, for my father’s cruelty, and most of all, for my brother to rescue me.
I had all but given up hope, kneeling down, wringing the fabric of my dress repeatedly on my thighs, until every piece of it was wrinkled, when I finally heard the sound of someone cutting open my door.
I tensed, in case I was wrong to be pleased—but then my brother appeared, just like he’d promised. He put a hand out to me. “Hurry!”
I took it, and let him pull me out of the tent.
We ran the same as everyone else was running, for the center of camp, to see. Helkin was dressed plainly, and I looked like—I didn’t even know. My dress was torn, and stained with ichor and my own blood now in several places, but people let us through, thanks to Helkin’s spirited shoving, until we were at the nearest perimeter of the group, and then my brother turned to me.
“This is for you,” he said, holding an object out to me. My father’s key—for Rhaim’s collar. “May it free you from your cage. ” I grabbed it, as he took my head and kissed it, before running back through the crowds the way we’d come, looking to escape, too.
People were already shouting for the Deathless’s blood, and my father wasn’t doing anything to discourage them—so I elbowed through the final few and shouted, “Wait!”
Rhaim saw me first and anyone could have read the look upon his face—it claimed me like a clawed hand.
I pulled up short though when I saw the Deathless in the cage behind him, and felt the horrible creature’s full attention on. . . me.
Rhaim noticed it as well, appearing concerned, and reached to protect me, but I stepped away on purpose.
The thing that the Deathless possessed instead of a face, just a blank expanse of skin over a gaping maw, was mine alone.
It appeared to want me.
Or. . . something I held.
I reached under my skirts quickly and untied Love’s Lost Tear from the portion of my poor dress that I’d hidden it in, and hoisted it aloft. The Deathless’s attention was gained at once, the thing not slavering for me, but for what was in my hand.
“It wants the gem,” I told Rhaim, showing him the thing I held, and watched realization bloom across his face. “It wants the gem!” I shouted, far more loudly, so everyone could hear, twisting my wrist so they could see my fingers wrapped around the stone.
Each of them had seen the Tear around my father’s neck before—but with Castillion’s help, and ability to portal, the Tear had been mobile.
“What have you unleashed?” Rhaim demanded of my father, coming up behind me. I found his hand and planted the key into it.
My father’s eyes were for the Tear alone. “Give that back,” he said in low warning.
“I will not!” I said stridently. “It does not belong to you! It belongs to Drelleth!”
But why had my country had something so poisonous within its borders—in its throne room, no less?
“You don’t understand what you’re holding, girl,” my father intoned, and then looked to the nearest archer. “Kill the creature, the mage, and the girl. ”
“You will have to kill the mages,” one of Rhaim’s friends said, stepping up, as a storm began crackling overhead.
The archer paused in fear, as Rhaim lunged forward to protect me—without having taken his collar off yet—then Jelena jumped out of the crowd.
“The unicorn queen saved your lives! Give her time to explain!” she shouted. She had a bag strapped across her shoulders, and I was sure that Finx was inside it.
I freed myself from Rhaim and held the stone up for all to see. “I think the Deathless follow this, though I don’t know why. And I think that Castillion the Spiked has been portaling around the continent with it, encouraging the Deathless to emerge. ”
“And when defenses weaken, or protective magic runs low. . . they would come for it here,” Rhaim said thoughtfully, looking at my father. Over his shoulder, the Deathless was reaching reached for the stone with one monstrous hand, pinning itself against the bars of its cage to get to it.
“It doesn’t matter what you think you know—you must give it back! You don’t understand!” my father said, grabbing the sword off of a nearby soldier to stalk forward.
“Then those of us who’ve been fighting for you would like answers,” said Rhaim’s tall, tree-like friend. Rhaim unfastened the bolt of his collar and tossed the black metal ring into the cage, so no other mage could get it.
“How do we stop them?” I demanded, shaking the Tear. I would have crushed it in my palm if I were sure that that would work. Silence fell around us as the storm above started up, everyone present awaiting answers. My father’s face was as stony as the gem itself, unchanging, showing neither shame nor hope for mercy. “My mother died, because of you,” I shouted at him. “Why?” I then realized that it didn’t matter. “No. I don’t care. Because there was nothing that was worth her death—or any of the other peoples’ who died or were displaced by these things,” I said, casting a look back at the Deathless behind me. “If you won’t apologize, Father, then I will! It is a horrible thing that has been done! And I will undo it, as best I am able!” Rhaim stood close behind me then, resting a hand at my hip. I placed my own hand atop it meaningfully. “It came from Drelleth—and back to Drelleth it goes!”
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly, for my ears alone.
I licked my lips. “Yes. Please. ”
“Anything for my beloved moth,” he whispered—and then pulled me through a portal.
Rhaim
I brought us as close as I could get to Drelleth’s castle, inside a gated pavilion, in front of a massive and ornate edifice, where all the former warriors and kings of Drelleth were celebrated in stone, and covered in bird shit. It was hauntingly empty, probably because most of Jaegar’s people were off at his war.
“This was as close as I could get—I’ve never been inside,” I told her, as she looked up at me.
“It’s okay,” she said, hitching up her skirt to tie, like when I’d seen her that one day in the river, beating laundry. She reached for my hand, and held the stone in the other, ready to drag us both up to the throne-room—but I held back.
If the stone summoned the Deathless, which I was sure it would—we’d be attacked, outside of the war camp’s magical protection.
The only question was how long it would take.
And how long I could hold them back for her.
I took her face in my hands, blistered from pulling the vines for the cage to meet her. “I love you,” I said simply.
I watched the knowledge of what I was going to do pass through me and into her and she gave me the look I had spent my entire life waiting for.
“Rhaim, no,” she whispered.
“I love you,” I repeated, and continued, “and my love for you has been my greatest triumph—next to teaching you magic,” I teased and tried to smile. But tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and it killed me that I didn’t have time to kiss them away. “This is how I die. ”
I felt the ground shake—we both did—the Deathless coming to claim the stone that was theirs, and inside of me my beast rose up, eager to meet the on coming challenge, knowing his time was near.
“I can’t,” she began, placing a fist to her stomach, as I shoved my beast down for the time I had left. “Rhaim—don’t leave me. You promised. ”
“All mages know how they die, Lisane. But because of you, I have been lucky enough to know what it means to be alive. ” My eyes searched her face, memorizing everything about her, one last time. “So kiss me, my lovely moth, that I may die content. ”
Lisane flung herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck as mine bound her waist. Her lips met mine, parting instantly, and it would’ve been foolish to say that I would remember the taste of her, the feel of her, forever, when I knew I had such little time left—but we were both compressing all the memories we would never get to have into one sweet moment in time. Our love, our hunger, our strength—everything passed between us, just as it was meant to be.
I was hers, she was mine, and as long as I knew that, then fate could have me.
“I love you,” she said, when she was forced to pull away, because I was setting her down. The hackles on the back of my neck were rising up, soon the Deathless would be pouring toward the castle. “I will always love you,” she whispered.
I caught her hands and placed one of them atop my chest, above my mage-mark. “I know you will, little moth,” I told her calmly, even as I began to hear horrendous groans. “But if you see my beast again Lisane. . . do not give him a second chance to bite you. Kill him on sight. Promise it. ”
“Rhaim!” she protested, stricken.
“Do it so that I may die in peace,” I said, urging her with my eyes.
I watched her close her eyes and swallow. “Yes,” she exhaled, when she opened them again.
I ran my hand up her jaw to stroke her cheek with my thumb one last time. “Then go catch the world on fire, Lisane the Flame,” I said, before releasing her, to run to the castle’s gates.