39
Raker killed all of them. In rapid succession. Easily. His blade flew, spinning, cutting down, besting even immortals. I’ve always known it would take little effort for him to kill me, but now … seeing it … I’m grateful he saved me. Again. But it doesn’t erase the time he didn’t.
The time he decided his duty, or whatever else, was more important than helping someone.
It was years ago. It was before … before all of this. Still, those days have marked me in more ways than the carvings on the base of my spine. I have pinned my hatred on him for so long. He represented everything I hated about the wretched king’s guard I was taught to fear since I got my markings. He was their leader. He was the warrior without marks on his armor.
There’s only one person I can think of that would be able to defeat him, and he’s on his way here.
“The God of Death is coming,” I say as we race past rows and rows of statues dedicated to him.
“Let him come,” Raker says, not looking as worried as he should as he cuts through the wild parts of the untamed garden with his blade.
“Even you should fear the gods, Raker,” I say through wild breaths.
In a burst of unchecked anger, Raker’s arm juts out, his sword glimmering, and he slices the air in a flash. The nearest statue is reduced to rubble.
I swallow. Part of me expects the silver-haired god to emerge from the fiery depths of the underworld right now and strike us down. But he doesn’t. By some small mercy, he doesn’t.
And at the edge of Lord Rodin’s lands, we slip into the quiet of a forest without incident.
The rest of the day we walk in silence before camping in a final stretch of woods, protected by the starlight necklace Raker kept with him.
I barely sleep, expecting the God of Death to appear at any moment, surrounded by his demons. But the sun rises, just like I must.
You rise, I tell myself, even though I’m tired. Even though I don’t really want to. My knees crack as I get to my feet.
“Why do you say that?”
I blink. I didn’t realize I said it aloud.
Raker looks at me expectantly.
“It’s something—it’s something someone used to say to me. He said you rise, always. Sometimes I have to remind myself why. Because sometimes
rising is hard.”
He looks deep in thought.
I start to make my way out of the clearing, but his voice stops me.
“Aris,” he says. And for once—for once, he says my name like a plea.
Slowly, I turn to face him.
He’s right there. And he says the last thing I would ever expect: “I remember you.”
I tense. My pulse stutters. No. I wouldn’t believe him if I couldn’t see his face, if he hadn’t lowered his hood, as if to show me. To show me what he shows no one else.
He’s towering over me, just like he did that day as he keeps going. “I told them to throw you onto the streets. Not into the prisons.” Anger flashes in his eyes, hard and blazing, before disappearing. “I didn’t know they disobeyed. I didn’t know … I didn’t know they—”
“Carved their names into my back with rusted blades?” I say, my voice quivering. Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I won’t waste more of them on those worthless guards.
His eyes shudder, for a moment. And for that moment, I see a flash of true emotion. Hurt. Fury. Conviction.
“I should have known. I should have stopped it.” His gaze sears into mine as he says, “I’m sorry.”
All the words I was about to say die in my throat.
Because never in a thousand years would I think Harlan Raker would be apologizing to me.
I open my mouth. Close it. In the end, I just shake my head, and say, “It doesn’t matter.”
I make to keep walking, but his hand catches my wrist. That one touch.
That one touch sends fire through my blood. I turn to look at him, and his eyes are blazing into mine. Shining, glorious gray, like clouds before a storm.
“It matters, Aris,” he says. “You—you matter.”
I don’t know why those simple words go right into the center of me. I don’t know why they make my eyes burn. I’ve blamed myself and hated myself for so long that anyone seeing past the worst I’ve done … anyone caring about me at all … “I don’t,” I say, meaning it. “You said before that you are nothing beyond your rage and vengeance. I’m … I’m the same, Raker. Maybe I was someone, once. But that person is gone. I have one last thing I want to do.
One last thing worth fighting for. And then … and then there’s nothing left for me.”
His eyes harden. He looks angry. “So what? You’ll just let yourself die?”
I shake my head. “No. But I’ve known from the beginning what I signed up for. That … that most likely, the end of this journey is the end of me.
And … I’ve made my peace with that. I’m willing to die for this.”
He searches my gaze for something. Weakness? Anything short of pure conviction? What he finds has him scowling. “And how do you plan to kill these gods, Aris?”
I lift a shoulder. “With my sword. I’ve learned it’s a good one.”
“The one you don’t know how to use?” he sneers, and I see right through him. He’s trying to get me to doubt myself. He’s trying to get me to change
my mind.
“I do,” I say. “You trained me.”
His nostrils flare. I can almost feel the words between us, the ones he doesn’t say. We stare each other down.
I turn away again, and his fingers fall from my wrist, as he lets me go.
We walk for miles without stopping, until the ground becomes so dry, there are cracks in the dirt.
“We’re about to reach the desert,” I say.
Raker nods like he knows.
We reach the last spring that’s marked on the map. We drink from the running water and fill our pouches. It might be the last water we see for a
while.
It’s the forty-first day of the quest. Maybe if I use the oaths on my sword, I can portal to a Great House and gain passage back to the gates in time to make it through. Maybe this journey does really kill me. Either way … I’m almost to the gods. I’m almost to the end of this.
“Ready?” I ask Raker, as I stare at the endless sea of sand. Somewhere out in that desert sits the creature even Vander Evren couldn’t face.
I’m not afraid of anything, Raker said. He looks hesitant now.
“Let’s get this over with,” he says.
The dunes shift in sparkling shades of sunset. Flecks of silver are speckled throughout, catching the light, before being covered by another layer.
“I wonder how many things have been lost here,” I say, thinking an entire city could be buried below, and we wouldn’t even know it.
Raker’s eyes are on the horizon. His sword is already in his hand. It’s as if he can sense something I can’t.
But it doesn’t come. We walk the entire day, and through the night, without any movement at all. Though we’re protected by the starlight necklace, the demons don’t pierce these sands even beyond the light, just like they didn’t pierce the mists. Which only makes me more afraid of what is slithering within them.
Every brush of wind makes me tense. I turn at even the slightest shift in the dunes. Nothing.
I start to wonder if the creature Vander mentioned has moved on. Maybe his own effort was centuries ago—I never asked. Or maybe this beast has better things to do than torment two humans.
We drain our pouches, washing our faces and soothing our throats. I wish for my high collar again, if only to hide my face from the dust. Then the thirst begins.
We don’t speak. We just keep moving, feet dragging through the heavy
sand.
Until my foot doesn’t move.
I frown down at it. I try to pull it free, but it doesn’t budge. “What?”
I jolt with pain as nails sink into my flesh— And pull me under.
I don’t gasp. I shut my eyes, shuddering as the sand scrapes my cheeks and slices against my clothes.
What feels like a lifetime later, I’m finally deposited in another part of the desert. I emerge clawing and gasping, shaking away the sand that has scorched every inch of exposed skin.
It’s everywhere. I blink the grainy dryness away—and the dunes in front of me begin to shift. They rise, sand flinting, glittering, making shapes.
They make … people.
I tense, watching as the worst of my memories form around me.
My sister and I slipping out of the house in the rain to pick wildflowers.
It was my idea.
Her eyes widening as the lightning strike came right toward her—and the rush of air from her lungs as I pushed her out of the way.
I shouldn’t have pushed her away.
In that moment, I thought I was saving her. I acted on instinct, without question, putting myself in danger instead of her. Always instead of her.
Instead, I unknowingly sealed her fate.
As quickly as they are formed, the glittering sand falls away, and another gust of wind brings more figures.
My mother. Combing my hair in front of a mirror.
“Look at yourself, love. You’re beautiful.”
I shake my head. “I’m ugly. I’m strange.”
The markings were a sign of my recklessness. My irresponsibility. My sister could have died.
She bends down to my level. “You are you, Aris. And that makes you perfect. Don’t ever hide from yourself.”
“You’re the one who tells me to hide!” I yell, getting up from the chair.
“You make me feel wrong! Maybe I should go outside like this,” I say.
“Maybe if the knights drag me off to the prisons, or to the king to cut me up and study me, I’ll deserve it!”
I’ll never forget the shock on her face. I never raised my voice at my mother. It wasn’t fair of me to do so. All she ever did was for my protection.
I know that now.
But it was easier to blame her for my problems. My mom never screamed back at me, and maybe that made her an easier target for my anger.
The thought roils my stomach now.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper from the sidelines, feeling the twist of guilt as the sand falls away. “You were perfect, Mom.”
In a flash, the sand rises in a column, right in front of me. My mother stands there, twisted and wrong. Her normally smiling mouth is curled into a smirk. “Perfect? I couldn’t get the doors open. If I could … maybe we could have all gotten out. Maybe we wouldn’t all be dead. Maybe you wouldn’t be a ghost of your pain and worst memories, walking.”
I swallow. “It’s not your fault,” I say, meaning it. “It’s hers.”
“And what have you done about it?” She takes a step forward. “I lied.
You aren’t perfect. You are weak. You are an embarrassment. You should have died that day. The world would be better for it.”
It wouldn’t hurt so much if I didn’t agree with her.
Tears sting my already sand-crusted eyes, running down my torn-up cheeks.
She steps forward. “Your sister, she was perfect. She was always better than you. Prettier. Kinder. She could have made the world better. You? You just want to kill. Hatred lives in your heart. Love lived in hers.”
The sand thickens, twisting around me, blocking the rest of the desert, trapping me with her. It circles like a cyclone, howling, her words echoing.
The air is being choked away. My senses are, one by one, being snuffed out. My knees buckle. Slowly, I sink to the ground.
“You are nothing. You are worse than nothing. You are the reason everyone is dead. You are a poison. You are a curse.”
My breathing becomes panting as I try to suck in air that isn’t there, my lungs filling with sand instead.
As I fall forward, the last words I hear are spoken right into my ear, as if my mother bent low to tell me, “Do the world a favor and die this time.”
I stay down. For the world. For everyone that would be alive if I had just stayed down. If I had just died when the lightning struck me.
Sand brushes over me, covering me like a blanket. Soon I’ll be buried, just like the rest of this desert’s secrets.
And the world will be better for it.
For a while, only the sand whispers. Then there’s nothing. A thick layer has overtaken me. I can’t even feel the sun anymore.
The world is quiet below.
Until another voice ruins it.
Stellan. There he is, in the echo of a memory. “Why do you rise?”
“Leave me alone,” I say, the words barely reaching my lips.
“Why do you rise, Aris?”
“Leave me. Please.”
“Why are you doing this? Do you even have a reason?” The voice is above me now, as if he’s trying to find me under the layers of sand.
A reason.
He sighs. “You don’t, do you? Not a good one, anyway.” He starts to walk away. I feel his steps receding, leaving me here.
Fury lances through me, my veins igniting. I couldn’t feel my body before, but now I feel every limb, every bone, every muscle. They’re all tensed in rage. I shake with it as I break through the crushing weight of the sand.
I can’t even see the ghost of him—I can’t see anything—but these emotions will not stay buried. My voice is unrecognizable, a primal growl. I don’t need to just tell him. I will tell the entire galaxy if I need to. I will fill universes with my fury. I will shake the stars loose with my rage.
“I’m doing this because she killed her! She was my sister, she was innocent, she was everything, and that goddess fucking killed her because she fucking could! And now … I’m going to kill all of them. I’m going to burn those merciless gods to ashes, even if I burn with them. Even if I am skinned and broken and bleeding and all my bones are shattered, I will drag myself to those gods, and I will end them, and if it kills me, then I will die with a smile on my face, because it will have been worth it. They will be scourged from this world—and then, only then, finally then, will I know peace.” My voice is a screaming rasp. “These ghosts … they’re right. I am a blight. I am not honorable. What I want is revenge. That’s all I want. That is the only reason why I’m doing this.”
Blinking, panting, I finally see the shape of Stellan, in the sand. The shape of all of them, every single person I have loved and lost. All staring at me, on my knees, shaking with rage.
I remember what Vander said about the monster that makes you an enemy of yourself. I wonder if I’m looking right at it.
My lip curls. “Go ahead. Do your worst,” I say to the invisible creature making these shapes, digging a blade into my ever-bleeding wound.
I unsheathe my sword and stab it into the sand below, using it to steady me. Slowly, on shaking legs, I rise. They continue to tremble as I take a step forward. The sand shifts beneath me, but I do not fall. I dig my feet into the ground and stand firm.
A wicked, twisted laugh leaves my lips. “I have lost my entire family. I have lost everyone I have ever loved. This world is not large enough to hold my fury. It wants to knock me down?” I scoff. “I would like to see it try.”
My hands tighten around my hilt, and my blade’s energy runs through me, invigorating me. “My worst nightmare has already happened, and I’m still standing. I’m not afraid of anything,” I bellow.
And the sand drops away to nothing. The dust vanishes with the wind.
Everything settles.
Raker.
I race through the dunes, squinting through the grit—and that’s when I see him.
The Warrior Without Marks on His Armor. The Battle-Ender. The Devil’s Blade. So many names. And he’s earned every single one.
His hood is partially up. He’s battling an invisible source with the frenzied fury of a duel. His metal sings, it glimmers, it moves in arcs like water, he was made for this, he is the best at this. His face is almost expressionless, but I know him. By now … I know him. I see the coiled rage in the set of his shoulders. I watch as it bleeds into his movements.
They become more hurried. More reckless.
The illusions … they’re getting to him. I wonder what he’s seeing.
I’m not afraid of anything, he said. I think he believed it too.
But it seems even devils have demons.
When I get closer, his eyes close, like he can’t bear to even look at what’s appeared. What’s so bad that he can’t face it?
He winces. Winces.
It’s instinct to reach for him.
I take his arm, trying to pull him out of this dream, but instead of leaving with me, he lashes out, nearly slicing me through my middle. I barely jump away in time.
My chest is heaving. So close. He was so close to killing me.
I remember the circle of dead knights. I remember their heads, cracking against the stone floor, over and over and over.
A lick of fear slides down my spine. He can kill me so easily; I’ve known it this entire time. But I’ve never been afraid he might actually do it until now.
He’s not himself. He thinks I’m someone else—
“Aris,” he growls. I blink. He knows it’s me. And he still swung his blade. “Aris, leave me alone.” It’s an order.
I should. It’s the smart thing to do.
But aren’t those the same words I said to Stellan? I begged him to leave me to die, but he never did. Even his illusion didn’t leave until I was standing. Until I was free.
I will be a hand in the darkness. I will pull him out of this.
“I’m not leaving you,” I say, yelling so he hears me over the roaring sand.
His face twists into a mask of cold, cruel amusement. It’s as if the worst of himself has taken over. All the tenderness, all the understanding, has vanished. It’s been replaced with the callous, heartless warrior I encountered in the rain. “You never did have great survival instincts,” he spits. “But me—you won’t survive me.”
I have a feeling he’s right. But still, still, I stay.
He can tell, even with his eyes closed. He shakes his head. “You are a fool, Aris. Searching for shreds of humanity in a broken world. Searching for care that has never existed. Looking for beauty”—he spits the word —“in monsters.”
His blade is still battling that invisible beast. His eyes are still firmly shut. I take a step forward and duck, barely missed by the metal again.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice just a rasp in the whirl of sand. “I see beauty in dark places. If that makes me a fool, then so be it.”
I reach for his hood, to pull it down completely, but he shoots back, then raises his sword right in front of him, a barrier between us.
“You ask why I hide? Why I wear the hood? The mask? The helmet?” he yells, face twisted. “I hide because I can’t even look at myself, Aris,” he says. “The things I’ve done … you have no idea.”
“I can imagine,” I say, inching closer. I just need him to open his eyes.
Maybe if I touch him— He senses me immediately and turns, raising his blade again. “You can’t,” he spits. “If you knew all the blood on my blade, you would run, Aris. You would cower. You wouldn’t look at me the way you do. You would never call me beautiful.” He laughs cruelly. He’s trying to scare me
off.
“I’m not leaving,” I say steadily.
“Then you will die.” He says it like a promise.
I shake my head. My voice is unyielding. “I’m not afraid of you.”
His is pitying. “You really should be.”
He lashes out again—and this time, his blade meets mine.
The ringing of their joining echoes through the desert, muting the roaring winds for just a moment. The force of it spirals down my veins.
The one blade he can’t break. He pushes, growling as if he’s trying. He’s trying.
I push back, teeth grinding together, feet sliding. I put every shred of energy and rage and feeling into that one motion. Slowly, in a high-pitched wail, our blades begin to slide together as I get closer. Closer to him.
“Open your eyes, Raker,” I say. My arms are shaking with effort. We’re too close now. One sudden move, and he’ll skewer me on his metal. My voice is a whisper. “Please.”
He shakes his head, then shoves against my sword, hard. I stumble back, and I should take this chance to escape. To survive him. But instead, I hurl myself forward, and my blade meets his again with bone-splintering force.
I press down, trying to get closer, but he blocks his face with his sword, using it like another mask to hide behind, just another sheet of metal to use as a wall between him and the rest of the world. Between us. But in these last few weeks, those walls have slipped. I’ve seen beneath the mask, beneath the warrior, beneath the deadly reputation, and that’s why I won’t let him succumb to this. I won’t let the worst of him win. We break apart for a second, and then my weapon slams against his again.
“Raker,” I say.
But it’s like he’s lost.
Whatever he’s remembering, whatever he’s fighting, I know he’s trapped in his darkest moments, just as I was. The darkest parts of himself.
He was a stranger before this quest, but now … he knows me better than
anyone else.
And I know him.
I know him.
I will be a map through the darkness. I will be a hand, pulling him out of it.
Our metals scrape together. He makes to move, but I move first. And instead of striking—I release my sword. It thuds against the sand.
What a stupid thing to do.
But sucking the poison from my blood was stupid. Summoning an ancient immortal to save him was stupid. What’s one more stupid thing.
He lunges to attack me again. And instead of reaching down for my blade
— I reach for him.
My knuckles brush along his cheek, before pushing his hood back completely. It falls away, revealing his full face.
And his blade settles against my throat. I go still. One move and I’m dead. One breath and this entire journey will have been for nothing.
I fight to keep my voice calm. “Raker. You’re not yourself.”
His mouth twists into merciless amusement. “That’s where you’re wrong, Aris. This is me. Not whatever you pretend I am.”
I shake my head, careful against the blade’s edge. “No. No, it’s not.”
“You don’t know me,” he growls. “You don’t know anything at all.”
I swallow. My pulse beats along the metal. “I know your father was a fisherman. Your mother was a seamstress. You had siblings, once. You grew up near the ocean.” He bares his teeth at me in rage, but I keep going. “You became a warrior to help your family. Your reputation is that you are a
cruel, merciless knight. And you are.”
My voice breaks.
“But that’s not all you are. You use your skills to save too. You’ve saved me. You’ve trained me. You’ve … made the nightmares stop. I haven’t had them in days, and I think it’s because I finally feel safe. Even in a world of dangers, even when you’re the exact person I was taught to fear, when I’m with you, I’m not afraid. Not anymore.”
That makes him inhale sharply. His grip on his sword loosens—then tightens. It presses so hard against my throat, it becomes hard to talk. But I don’t stop.
“You told me you are nothing, nothing beyond your rage and vengeance, but you are not nothing. You matter, beyond your blade. Beyond your skills.
You matter to me. Because I see you,” I say, breathless, as a tear slips down my face and lands on his metal. “I see beneath the mask. I see beneath the armor. I see past the fury, past the vengeance.” One of my hands reaches up to his, the one that’s gripping the sword against my throat.
His skin is burning hot. His fingers are trembling.
“I see you, Raker. I see past the blood on these hands. I see past your mistakes, and I hate that you can’t look at your reflection, because …
because I never want to stop looking at you, Raker.” Careful not to move forward even an inch, my other hand reaches up to slide across his cheek.
His body flinches, shaking with a chill. Still, his sword does not drop from my throat. One sudden movement and I’m done. I’ll bleed out all over this sand.
“I see the good. I see the bad, and everything in between. I see you. I see you, and one day you will see a shred of what I see.” I say it like an order.
Like a promise.
“You see what you want to, Aris,” he says, his voice just as cutting as his blade. He presses it deeper, and I feel a sharp flash of pain.
A drop of blood drips down his metal.
Shit. I should stop. I should give up.
But no. I’m not wrong. Even as I’m bleeding, even as he’s moments from slitting my throat, I think back to our journey. I think back to his actions— not his words.
My voice is a choked whisper. “I have seen you be both merciless and kind. I have seen you kill and rescue. I have seen both the best and worst of you. I’ve seen it all. I have seen the evil in you, Raker, which is how I know the good exists. It’s how I know … how I know you won’t do this.”
“You don’t know me,” he growls, his hand trembling. His blade scraping against the thin, fragile skin. More blood spilling onto his metal.
“I know enough,” I breathe. Sword still against my throat, I do something foolish. Slowly, so he can feel my intention, I lean closer. I pause, waiting to feel the hot gushing of blood. I wait to feel the shock of death. But he’s
moved with me.
He hasn’t cut me down—not yet.
Heart hammering, I press closer still, my face right in front of his. His eyes are still shut. I lean in until the metal stops me.
“I see you,” I whisper an inch from his lips. I feel him … feel his arm trembling. His fingers flexing beneath mine, as we both hold on to his sword. “I see the monster, and I’m still looking. I see the darkness, and I’m not flinching.” My shaking voice sharpens. “Your blade is against my throat and I’m. Not. Leaving.”
He is the greatest warrior on Stormside. He is an infamous killer. But right now, with his sword against my pulse, he is hesitating. He is shaking.
Gently, so gently, I pull back an inch, the blade following, only to see his face still twisted, as if he’s locked in an invisible battle.
“Open your eyes, Raker,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. The pain clear on his face—I want to take it away. I want to heal it, the same way he has healed me.
“Open your eyes. Please.” My voice breaks on the word.
The sand surges, circling, enclosing, caving in, as if to drown out my words. And that only means it’s working.
“Open your eyes,” I scream, because this sand … this sand will not silence me. It will not silence those moments where we have fought, and survived, and lived. Against all odds, we have endured, and even though I have hated him, and cursed him, every step of this has been side by side, and if he wouldn’t leave me behind before … neither will I.
The sand rages. It’s roaring. So. Am. I.
“I SEE YOU,” I bellow. “I see you, Harlan Raker. I see you, and I like what I see. I want to see more. I want … please. I want …”
Tears spill, sliding down my neck, mixing with the blood.
Fuck it. If these are my last moments, then I won’t let a single word go unsaid.
“I want you, Raker. I want to find you again when all of this is over. I want to see what life might look like beyond the misery. Beyond the vengeance. You make me want to see what’s left for me. You make me want to build a life in a world of ashes. So please. Please. Open your eyes. Open
—”
He does.
And his sword drops between us.
“I see you too,” he says, eyes locked on mine, steel blazing through the
desert.
I see you.
I know he does. Because at some point during this journey the moat I kept around myself lowered a bridge to him. He knows about my nightmares. He knows about my markings. He knows about my sister. He knows my fears and weaknesses and the things that make me smile.
Everyone else who knew me at all is dead. I almost just joined them, at his hand.
My knees buckle in relief, and he catches me around the waist. No one gets close to him. Everyone is too afraid. I should be too. He just almost killed me. But I throw my arms around him anyway. Together, we sink to the sand, knee to knee. I feel his arms curve around me tentatively as if he
has no idea how this works, as if he hasn’t embraced anyone in a long while.
“I thought—I thought you were going to kill me,” I say, breathless, my cheek against his neck. Our hearts are both beating wildly, right against each other. I feel his hand against the back of my head, as he holds me to him.
He says nothing. He only holds me tighter.