A Heart of Blood and Ashes Read online

  A hard taskmaster, as Maddek’s mother had sometimes been.

  Had Ran Ashev come to care for this woman? While imprisoned and tortured, had his mother tried to help Yvenne because she cared for and trusted the frail woman—or had his queen merely used Yvenne for her own ends?

  Using her to aid in an escape that resulted in Ran Ashev’s beheading.

  His heart aching fiercely, Maddek wrapped Yvenne’s forearm again. He knew not what to believe. He knew not what to trust. Did he betray his parents by keeping this woman alive? Did he risk his people by aligning himself with her?

  Those answers were not visible upon her skin. But with open eyes, he saw what needed to be done. He saw how to best serve his parents and his people. He would use Yvenne for his own ends. He would protect her.

  But he dared not care for her. Not when doubt still lived within him. Not when her claims might still be exposed as lies.

  Not when his parents were still unavenged.

  CHAPTER 7

  YVENNE

  Yvenne woke to darkness and a hard hand clamped over her mouth. At her back, a steely form held her tight, heavy arms and legs locked around her own. Panic struck, terror increasing when her struggles moved her captor not a bit.

  A warning hiss of air in her ear made fear drop away.

  Maddek. It was Maddek who held her.

  Heart pounding, she halted her struggles. Not all was darkness. Through the canopy of trees, the sky had lightened. Shapes and shadows resolved as her eyes accustomed themselves to the night.

  Something huge moved through the dark. Yvenne stiffened again as a deep lowing sounded from high overhead—and close. So close. The noise was answered by another resonant call. The tread of heavy feet shivered through the ground. A dozen shadows passed. Some blocked all the light from above, others were smaller. Beneath the dim sky, she had the impression of smooth dappled skin, long necks and longer tails.

  Giant reptilian foragers. But they were not foraging now. Instead the herd moved quickly through the forest.

  Yet Maddek’s tension did not seem like the simple tension of avoiding the bull or a protective cow with a calf. Because even after the foragers passed, still he held her silently, his back against the boulder, his hand over her mouth as if he expected her to startle or scream.

  A nervous snort and the stamp of hooves drew her gaze to the horses staked near the trees. Restless, they were all in motion, pulling at their tethers.

  Then settling as two forms flitted around their legs. Fassad’s wolves. As if their presence were a calming hand from the warrior himself, the horses went still.

  Except for Yvenne’s mount. The wolves only agitated the smaller horse more. It reared against the leather lines, its panicked neigh ringing through the forest. Behind her, Maddek’s body stiffened, and Yvenne realized that what she had thought was steel tension was only the resting hardness of his form.

  Now he was tense.

  A tremor shook the ground. Another.

  Not the foragers returning.

  Right hand still clamped over her mouth, Maddek released her waist and signaled with his left. Through the dark, a form peeled away from a tree. Silver rings glinted upon her face—Ardyl. Even as the earth shivered again, the warrior darted toward the horses.

  Not to calm Yvenne’s mount, as she thought. Instead Ardyl’s blade flashed and sliced through the tether. The warrior melted into the shadows between the other horses as Yvenne’s broke away, whinnying and wildly tossing its head.

  A roar ripped through the darkness. Though Yvenne had known a predator must be out there, never had she heard anything so loud as that roar. Instinctual terror jolted through her limbs. Maddek’s arm wrapped around her stomach again as if to prevent her from bolting, his broad palm muffling the fearful whimper she couldn’t halt.

  The frantic horse screamed, wheeling around on its hind legs to run. Too late. Thunder seemed to shake the small clearing and death rushed out from the dark. Huge jaws clamped onto the horse’s hindquarters and tossed the animal off its hooves with a vicious shake of its thick neck.

  Hind legs useless, the horse thrashed on the ground. Its shrill neighs pierced the night. Huge talons pinned the barrel chest and with a mighty clamp and twist of jaws, the horse’s neck broke.

  Silence fell. Shaking uncontrollably, Yvenne watched as the trap jaw lifted its broad head, snout raised to snort the air. Her mother had described the giant reptiles to her before. Never had she imagined the predator’s sheer size, the powerful haunches that seemed to overbalance the small arms, or the massive teeth. Never had she imagined its smell, thick and eye-watering, like a chamber pot left unemptied for a full turn of the moon. Its unblinking eyes searched the clearing, but although the trap jaw seemed to look directly at the other horses, even at Yvenne and Maddek, they were either not seen or deemed no threat—or the beast decided one horse was enough.

  Lowering its enormous head, the trap jaw clamped giant teeth around the dead horse’s shoulders and lifted the heavy animal. Legs dangling limply from its mouth, the predator carried the carcass from the clearing, its steps thunderous.

  Maddek’s big hand slid from her mouth to curve around the front of her throat—a calming touch, not to choke. “A bull,” he told her softly, his deep voice low in her ear. “We might have killed it but that outcome is never certain. Better to lose a horse than a warrior. And better to lose one mount than to lose them all.”

  Yvenne had not questioned that. “Yes,” she whispered.

  His broad thumb stroked the line of her jaw. “You will take the half-moon milk this morn.”

  The drink that would force her menstrual blood to flow. Not to prevent pregnancy, as it was usually used, but to prove she was not already with child.

  As would be best. Yvenne knew not what lies her father would say to separate her from Maddek, and although she would go to him a virgin, not all women bled on their moon night. The half-moon milk would leave no uncertainty.

  She nodded into his hand. “I need rags.”

  “I will speak to Ardyl and Danoh,” he said. Then his body shifted behind hers and a wave of pain crashed through her every limb.

  Only gritted teeth stopped her agonized scream. Frozen in place, she breathed shallowly. Everything hurt, as if her muscles were springs coiled to the breaking point and beaten with a steel rod.

  Another agonized hiss escaped from between her teeth when Maddek’s strong arm easily lifted her to her feet.

  “You must walk.” His voice was low but implacable. “Though it hurts.”

  Though it hurts. That was how she’d done everything her entire life. So she would this, too.

  She shuffled toward the stream—and a laugh escaped her when she realized that, for the first time in as long as she could remember, her shattered knee ached no more than any other part of her. She was like a broken doll, put back together.

  Put back together stronger.

  Crouching beside the stream was a new agony, but she forced herself to sink to her heels and stand a handful of times before finally settling in to wash. The linens stained with her brother’s blood had dried into an itchy and hardened cast around her forearms. Yvenne rinsed them as best she could. Her satchel held new linens but it seemed foolish to wear anything clean now, when travel would just soil it again.

  Arms wrapped in wet cloth, she shivered while hobbling back to where the warriors had gathered in a circle to break their fast.

  Fassad was skinning three lizards. Yvenne recognized their type. Scavengers, they often swarmed Syssia’s refuse piles. With dark green skin lightly covered with scraggly dun feathers, they were the size of a dally bird—and she hoped as tasty.

  The warrior offered Yvenne an apologetic look as he gave her a skinned leg. “We do not risk a fire this morning.”

  Raw, then. Her mouth already watered and her empty stomach had
not a care.

  She sank her teeth into the white meat and her entire body revolted. Never had she tasted anything so foul, as if the fresh meat had already rotted. But she chewed, gagging, then forced herself to swallow.

  The warriors ripped into theirs. She did not even wonder if the manners of Parsatheans were as uncivilized as she’d heard, for there must be only one way to eat this lizard: as quickly as one could. Yvenne wished to eat as quickly as they did. But she could not manage the great tearing bites and swallows that Maddek took. Her throat would not allow her, revolting harder the bigger the mouthful she took—and the tiny bites she managed, she battled to keep down.

  A throat cleared. “Do you see beyond what is seen?”

  Her gaze flew to the young warrior who had asked it. Toric, who still wore furs over his broad shoulders though the others only wore the leather spaulders that served as light armor. The same braids fell back from his forehead, and his clean-shaven face was broad, his dark eyes holding hers—for the barest moment, before his gaze dropped.

  All of them were looking to her. Each had finished with their lizard. And were waiting for her to finish, too, she realized.

  So the Parsatheans’ manners were not so different from a Syssian’s—but their faces were. Oh, all the features were in the same places and the coloring was similar. Yet rarely did Syssians so plainly wear their thoughts and emotions. Fear, anger, even joy were hidden away.

  These warriors concealed little. Now they watched her with undisguised curiosity.

  “No,” she said, returning her gaze to Toric. “Though my mother could, I have not that gift.”

  And was sorry for it. Her mother had taught her what lay beyond the walls of their tower chamber by using that sight. After her death, seeing beyond the reach of her own eyes would have helped Yvenne many a time.

  She might have known why Maddek had come for her.

  “Not that gift?” Eyes narrowed on her, Maddek wiped his fingers on the red linen folded over his wide belt. “You have another?”

  She met his gaze and he did not look away. “Not a gift as you mean—nothing that will benefit our alliance.” Not after Zhalen severed her fingers. “I do not possess the goddess’s sight. But I believe Vela has mine. I can feel her looking through me, seeing what I see.”

  Uneasiness seemed to pass through the warriors as they frowned and exchanged glances.

  Kelir spoke. “Always? Even now?”

  “Yes.” Such a familiar touch at the back of her mind that Yvenne hardly noted it.

  “She looks through you as she looks through a priestess?” That came from Banek, the older warrior who had shown her such kindness the previous night.

  Yvenne could not answer him directly, for she had no knowledge of what a priestess did, only of what her mother had told her about the goddess. “I hope Vela also looks through them. I hope not all she knows of humans and men is what I have seen.”

  That thought appeared to unease the warriors, too—apart from Maddek, who only studied her with that unwavering gaze. “And what of your brothers? Their eyes are the same as yours.”

  “Yes. But they do not have Vela’s sight.”

  “It is said that Aezil does. It is said that before taking Rugus’s throne, he sacrificed one of his own eyes to gain the sight.”

  “That is said,” Yvenne agreed. “I have no knowledge of its truth, however. Only that he has lost an eye. But my brother Tyzen, who serves as Rugus’s minister, has seen no evidence of such dark magics. Thus far, it is all insubstantial rumor—perhaps even one started by Aezil himself, so that his missing eye would not be viewed as a weakness but as something to fear.”

  “You trust that minister’s words?” Maddek’s tone said that only a fool would.

  “I do.” Always would she believe her younger brother. And Tyzen had not said the rumors were false—only that he had not seen evidence of their truth. “I also believe Aezil would attempt that sacrifice if it gave him the power to see as my mother did. But it would not be Vela’s sight that he would gain. He would need to appeal to another god. Stranik, perhaps—and we know his priests did the same.”

  The same priests that the alliance’s army had defeated ten years before. She knew that Maddek had witnessed the horror of exactly how those priests had appealed to their god with the blood of Farian children.

  Now darkness moved across his expression before his features hardened again. “Did Aezil poison King Latan?”

  She took another bite of lizard and forced it down. “He did—after he, Lazen, and Cezan killed every heir that stood between my father and Latan. And then my father bragged of his success in finally securing the Rugusian throne for his line.”

  “Did Zhalen also brag when he murdered our king, and then our queen?”

  His father and mother. Her chest tight, Yvenne simply nodded.

  Sheer rage and grief seemed to take hold of his body. Rigidly he stared at her, eyes hot with loathing.

  Ardyl’s voice pierced the burning silence between them. “Is it true what your brother said—that Zhalen set his male warriors upon our queen?”

  Bile that was more sour than the meat shot up Yvenne’s throat. Anger tightened her fingers upon the bone.

  “I cannot speak of her,” Yvenne said.

  Expression like stone, arms braced over his broad chest and feet squarely set as if prepared for a blow, Maddek told her, “This you may answer.”

  “Yes, he did,” Yvenne spat with the force of all the hatred inside her. “He set upon her himself. As did his personal soldiers. As did my brothers Lazen and Cezan. There were many reasons for me to kill them both, but that was the most recent. So I rejoice in their deaths and their blood on my hands.”

  Eyes closed, face drawn into tortured lines, Maddek bowed his head. As did the others. Which was not just grief and rage, she realized. It was gratitude. Respect, because she had taken the vengeance they had not.

  But an arrow through Lazen’s throat and a dagger in Cezan’s back had not been enough. It would never be enough.

  Kelir’s gaze was like fire. “Would that we had known before we let his carcass go.”

  Yvenne might have told them. But Maddek did not seem prepared to rescind his vow to tear out her tongue for speaking more.

  “Where is Vela’s curse upon them?” Ardyl’s anger was directed toward Yvenne but seemed meant for the goddess instead. “If she sees as you do, then she would have known. By Vela’s law, a rapist is cursed and should be punished. We have encountered those who have been marked and broken by her power. Yet Zhalen is not?”

  Her rage echoed Yvenne’s at a younger age. Now she gave the same answer Yvenne’s mother had.

  “Vela can only touch those who have invited her in.” Such as those who quested for her, or the Nyrae warriors, or the priestesses who tended her temples.

  Though even if an invitation was given, the goddess did not always accept. Yvenne’s mother had prayed for Vela’s strength, as had Yvenne.

  But now she was glad the goddess had not answered and avenged Maddek’s parents or her own mother. For instead Yvenne would do it herself.

  Perhaps that was Vela’s answer.

  Ardyl’s gaze finally fell away from hers, her voice bitter. “Then why does she not touch the nearest priestess and break Zhalen?”

  “Because she does not need to,” Yvenne said softly. “My father’s curse is here. I am his curse.” She looked to Maddek. “You are his curse. Are you not?”

  “I am,” he said gruffly, voice thick with emotion. New rage, new grief, new purpose.

  Holding his gaze, she said, “I prefer to believe that Vela’s gift is to allow us the satisfaction of breaking him. Will you not visit pain upon my father, agony as he has never known?”

  His eyes gleamed. “I will.”

  Hanan’s ruddy staff, how the bloodlust in his gaze
spoke to hers. This was not only about vengeance, however, but also law and justice. Heart thundering, she looked to Ardyl again. “So you see. We are her curse. As are all rulers and citizens who do not allow such offenses to remain unpunished.”

  “And unpunished they will remain if we wait here much longer. We must ride,” Maddek said to her, and reached for the lizard leg in her hand. “Discard the rest of that. You can hardly choke it down.”

  “Do not take it from me.” Fiercely, she yanked it away from his reach. “I cannot remember the last time my belly was full. I will fill it, even if with this. I will finish it as we ride.”

  If she was to ride. Her horse was dead. Perhaps Maddek meant to leash her behind his mount and force her to run.

  It mattered not. She would finish her meal while being pulled along the ground.

  His dark eyes searched hers before he nodded. His gaze swept the others. “Ready, then.”

  The warriors broke from the circle, heading swiftly for their mounts. Yvenne could not move so quickly. She hobbled after Maddek, but when impatience darkened his expression and he bent as if to lift and carry her, she stopped him.

  “You said I was to walk to ease the stiffness,” she reminded him. “This is my only opportunity, unless you intend to drag me behind your horse.”

  “Do not tempt me,” he said, but no heat was in it. Swiftly he saddled his mount, fastening his rolled furs and satchel to the back.

  Without ceremony, he gripped her waist and lifted her astride, then leapt up behind her.

  And Yvenne was sorry her horse had been eaten, but this was much better than desperately clinging to its mane and praying she wouldn’t be jolted from her seat as they raced through the forest. Never had she felt more secure than with Maddek’s hard chest at her back and his arms at her sides. When his horse abruptly moved forward, she had no fear of falling.

  With Maddek behind her, she had no fear at all.

  They only went a few steps, to where Danoh stood beside her mount, sorting through a leather pouch tied to her saddle. Already astride, Ardyl joined them, a pile of rags in her lap and a vial in her hand.