Chapter 24
he air is charged, heavy. And it weighs on us all. ‘What the hell did you hear?’ Caz murmurs after several minutes ofT riding. ‘Because the tension right now feels like more than dick talk.’ A long sigh frees from my lungs. ‘I’m sorry, but I do not want to talk about it.’ ‘Okay,’ she replies, giving my arm a squeeze and letting me have my silence back.
Caz is right. The tension is so taut it feels like it could snap at any second.
But I can’t talk to her about it now. Not until I’ve got my head straight about what I’m going to do with this new – treasonous – information.
Besides, the way Elska skulks through the woods, she and Kyor could easily appear behind us without me noticing.
For now, the dire wolf is out in front, scouting and setting our pace – a rapid one that only seems to get faster.
It’s only when the foliage grows thicker and the density makes it appear impenetrable that Elska finally slows to a stop. ‘How is it possible that this place looks scarier in the daytime than it did at night?’ I ask, trying to break the crushing tension that’s haunted us all day.
And I know I’m not the only one who feels it. The fact that Benny hasn’t even asked for a food break, despite the fuss he made about not having had time for breakfast, is evidence enough. If the tension is still there when we make camp, Kyor will notice. He’s many things, but unobservant isn’t one of them.
It twists in my gut. I find I don’t want to keep this from Kyor but what choice do I have? He’d kill Benny if he knew. I know he would.
Though my mind is focused on Kyor’s potential anger, it’s hard to ignore my own, simmering beneath my skin. Zelle helped me just as much as the Eastern Isles group. He believed in me and made me believe in myself, not to mention the fact that he was the only person in the High Hold I ever heard speak about my parents with fondness.
If it wouldn’t draw Kyor’s attention to the situation, I wouldn’t think twice about calling Benny out. Telling him just how fucking mad I am.
It’s shit. All of it is shit.
And it’s not the only thing I have to deal with.
As we gaze into the unyielding darkness ahead of us, a rustling whistle billows through the undergrowth, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. ‘We stick together,’ Kyor says grimly as we reach him. ‘No more solo pee breaks.’ He looks at me pointedly and I try to keep the panic off my face.
Did he hear us?
He can’t have or he’d be tearing Benny apart limb by limb. ‘We’ll ride for a couple of hours into it, then we’ll set up camp within the forest,’ he continues, moving forward. ‘We don’t want to be moving when
night truly falls.’ We all nod, sober and nervous.
The time for talk is done, and we move slowly as we head into the thick wall of trees. Within the first few steps everything is already so dense that I’m not sure I could find my way back out.
I could always climb a tree, I remind myself. It was how I made it through the forest last time.
I’m not the only one visibly nervous. The tension in Kyor is marked, and it makes my gut churn. He knows something, something that’s scaring him, and I need to find out what. ‘Stop!’ I call out, my voice escaping before I have a chance to second- guess what I’m about to say. ‘I’m riding with you,’ I demand of Kyor before twisting back to Caz. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ She shakes her head. ‘No, not if it’s what you want.’ It is. I think. Right now, in this, I need to be with him. But not for my sake. For all of ours.
If Kyor is surprised by my demand, he doesn’t show it, his face still carefully blank.
Elska lopes back to me, and I climb onto her back, settling in front of
Kyor. The strength of his body eases some of my rising tension, but the rigidity in his frame is telling. He’s keeping something back. ‘What’s going on?’ I murmur to him when we’ve outpaced the others. ‘You’re clearly spooked. Tell me the truth.’ Silence meets my question. ‘Talk to me, Kyor,’ I insist. ‘If you want me to trust you ever again, then you need to tell me things. Tell me what’s got you so freaked out. Because I know you, and I’ve never seen you like this.’ He leans forward until his lips are just touching the shell of my ear, mirroring Ruben’s actions from earlier. ‘We’re being followed,’ he whispers.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
‘By whom?’
‘Not who,’ he whispers back. ‘What.’ Well, that doesn’t sound good. ‘Well, what then?’ I ask, trying to steady my pulse.
He hesitates before the answer finally falls from his lips. ‘A Myrkr.’ My jaw drops only for a shocked laugh to break free. The Myrkr are nothing more than a child’s fairy tale.
Be good or the Myrkr will get you. Wasn’t that the line? I don’t really remember. My parents weren’t the type to buy into folklore. In fact, the last time I heard the word was probably when I interrupted poor old senile Rohan during one of his scribing sessions with Caz.
I wrack my brain, trying to recall the tales. ‘They’re no laughing matter,’ he mutters back, and the grimness – the fear? – in his voice makes my stomach lurch. ‘There were three, right?’ I say to Kyor, still struggling to believe this is real, but there’s not a hint of joviality in his tone. This is no prank. ‘Three servants of Mortidem?’ ‘The strongest siphons in existence,’ he confirms. ‘They can drain the magic right from you.’ His use of the present tense causes that prickling to once again spread across my skin, but the words also stir a memory within me – of the book I found in my father’s study when searching for answers about Issen magic. I only flicked through the folklore book because the tales it told were irrelevant to me. Or so I thought.
Now, though, I’m clawing at my mind to try to remember any scrap of information about the monsters. My dim recollection is that they’re immortal, immune to all magic, and heralded by the cry of crows.
If the tales are true, even Kyor’s lightning wouldn’t so much as burn a hair on their heads … because he wouldn’t have his lightning to call. ‘You really think trying to scare me now is a great idea?’ I ask, because my guts are indeed quivering. He can’t be serious. ‘It’s good that you’re scared. You should be.’ I can hear him swallow.
He’s scared too, and that … that terrifies me.
He faced the jötunn without blinking, the kraken without breaking a sweat … ‘Kyor, you’re not serious? A Myrkr? Really?’ ‘Deadly serious. Elska hasn’t sensed it since we’ve entered the forest though. Maybe it’s gone in another direction.’ I lick my now parched lips. ‘Stay with me,’ he entreats. ‘Stay with me on Els. Then I know you’re safe. Then I can focus properly. And we need me focused.’ I hesitate, but nod. Right now, despite everything, there’s nowhere else I want to be than in his arms – even if he did throw me away at his father’s command. Because if there really is a Myrkr on our tails, there’s no one I would rather fight beside than Kyor. That, at least, hasn’t changed.
Over the next couple of hours, every slight whistle through the trees or crack of a branch causes me to start. The slow pace and constant creaks and sighs of the forest, combined with the anxiety that ebbs from us all, coil the tension so tightly that every breath grates. The horses can sense it too, their movements rigid and their eyes wide.
When we finally stop, I drop down from Elska to find Benny staring at me, his skin pallid as he worries at the back of his neck. His look is asking a single question: Have you told Kyor?
As I offer one single shake of my head, the tension drains from him.
Though it probably shouldn’t. Not if what Kyor’s told me is true. ‘I’m going to scout around,’ Kyor grunts. He takes off on Elska – back- tracking, I realise. Making sure there’s no sign of the Myrkr following us.
Fuck, I can’t even believe I thought that seriously. A Myrkr. It’s madness. ‘All right,’ Caz finally explodes. ‘I’m the only one in the dark. What the fuck is going on?’ Silence pulls at the group, and then Ruben tries to evade the question. ‘It’s nothing. Just Benny being a flirt,’ he says, but we can all see Caz doesn’t buy it.
With a low sigh, Benny shakes his head. ‘Rose found out I’ve been
funding the rebels,’ he confesses.
Caz purses her lips. There’s no shock in her eyes. No gasp of disbelief or angry accusations fired at him.
She knew all along about Benny’s extracurricular activities. And that stings, more than a little. Did everyone know but me? ‘Did Llinos know?’ I ask.
Benny nods slowly. ‘It was why we were arguing. She didn’t want me to do anything while we were in the Retterheld.’ ‘Why the fuck did you?’ I press, keeping a hold of my fraying temper with real effort. ‘Things were going badly for us,’ he explains. ‘We’d lost Suan, Jai, Coulter …’ He shrugs. ‘I still don’t regret it. If someone had brought Korvane down …’ ‘They didn’t even get near him,’ I spit. And if they had, it wasn’t like Korvane would have even bothered to fight. He was so well protected that there was no need. Not when others were there to willingly lose their lives for
him. ‘No,’ Benny agrees. ‘Make me understand,’ I say, rubbing at my temples. ‘Make me understand why you hate Korvane so much. I know he’s not the best king —’ ‘Not the best king!’ Benny’s laugh is bitter, and it quickly turns into a scoff. ‘Where do you want me to start?’ he asks. ‘He is the worst of the worst, Rose. He doesn’t care about anything but his own power. He’s been stripping the Isles of everything that makes them what they are. The people, the land … he’s destroying it all.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I reply. I’ve only been to the Isles once, and even then it was only to the palace in Brandish, but nothing I saw looked as if it was stripped or destroyed. It was beautiful. ‘There’s the mining, to start with,’ Benny explains. ‘There used to be gold on the islands, but his father ripped all of it out years ago. Yet Korvane refuses to give up. He’s ruined over half of the smaller islands digging for a treasure that doesn’t exist, and each time he finds nothing, he moves on to the next one, not giving a shit about the people whose homes he’s just destroyed or the land he’s left uninhabitable. And it’s not like he makes room for them on the mainland. You’ve seen how he treats people in his own city. We’re second-class scum to him at best.’
Hard to argue with that. ‘I’m sorry, Benny. Really, I am.’ ‘That’s only half of it,’ Benny continues, agitated. ‘A huge portion of the guards sent to the front line come from the Eastern Isles, despite the fact that we only make up twenty percent of the population. That’s not a coincidence.
He’s doing everything he can to weaken us so that we don’t have the power to fight back. And the children …’ ‘The children?’ My stomach squirms. How much worse is this going to
get?
Benny’s eyes meet mine. ‘We thought it was just the Isles, the way that the children were being born with less and less power – that it was a blip, something that would rectify itself – but it’s happening in other places, too.’ ‘Korvane can’t have anything to do with that,’ I reason. ‘Power is given out by the Gods. By Mortidem. Not him.’ ‘I know that – I do – it’s just … I wonder if this is the Gods’ way of punishing him, making his subjects born weaker.’ He huffs an acrid chuckle before shaking his head, as if freeing himself from the last thought. ‘Even without whatever’s happening to the magic, we’re not the only people he’s screwing over. And others are starting to see the truth. I just hope it’s not too late.’ When he looks at me, there’s a pleading desperation in his eyes. ‘We didn’t want bloodshed,’ he says. ‘I promise. But my mother has tried other ways of dealing with Korvane for years, and none of them have worked.’ ‘The gifting,’ I utter with a sinking feeling in my gut. From almost our first meeting, I knew that whatever they were fighting for, it wasn’t an individual desire. It was greater than that. ‘That was what you were going to ask for if one of you won the gifting. For Korvane to leave you alone.’ ‘A little more than that …’ he says cryptically. My mind slips back to when I visited Brandish and spoke to his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, and she made pointed comments about only answering to the Gods. ‘You wanted the Eastern Isles to be independent,’ I breathe. ‘No longer tethered to Morathka?’ He nods. ‘We wanted a bloodless, war-less separation that would last for a thousand generations. That’s what we were going to ask for.’ ‘A thousand generations?’ The number is almost incomprehensible and something stirs within me. A sense of shame so great I feel it rippling through my skin. ‘And I just wanted my powers back. For Kay not to die in poverty,’
I say, my selfishness laid bare. ‘You must hate me.’ ‘No. No, Rose, of course I don’t.’ He reaches forward, his anger retreating. ‘We didn’t win. If we’d been meant to, the Goddess would have made it so; I’m sure of that. I just wish I knew what the fuck we had to do to be worthy of a little help from the Gods though.’ His eyes lock on mine. ‘You won because you deserved to, Rose. I believe that. Truthfully.’ I try to nod, try to accept what he’s saying. I should. After all, the Goddess herself said that she chose the winner. It wasn’t a case of who got to her fastest. If that had been the overriding decision, then Zara would have won and become the gifted.
So why didn’t she choose any of the Eastern Islanders when their goal was so much worthier than mine? ‘I don’t know what made you special, Rose,’ Benny says, as if he can read my thoughts. ‘But part of me could sense from the beginning that we weren’t going to win it. After what happened at the Sunken Temple with Jai and Coulter, I was angry. I wanted a backup option. I felt like Etta wasn’t on our side.’ It’s easy to see why he would come to that conclusion. By the time we left the vow ceremony, the Eastern Isles had already lost half their Rettlings, and it wasn’t like Loch was a prime candidate to win any of the trials. ‘I felt like I had to do something,’ Benny continues. ‘That I had to have control of something. So I funded and ordered the rebels to attack the palace.’ He shakes his head and scoffs. ‘Do you know what’s ridiculous? Maybe if I hadn’t done that – maybe if I had just accepted those defeats as part of the trials and continued on – then maybe Etta would have seen me as worthy.
Maybe she would have granted us the gift. Maybe that bloodshed – people like Ruben’s friend, Peter, dying – maybe they’re the reason I wasn’t fit to win. So as angry as I am with the whole situation, I don’t blame Etta for her choice. And I sure as heck don’t blame you.’ A single tear trickles from Benny’s eye. He wipes it away with the back of his hand.
A lump is fixed in my throat. I look at Ruben. ‘And you? You weren’t there that night, so where were you?’ Ruben shifts uncomfortably. ‘I’m not all in, never was. I help out a little here and there, sometimes.’ He looks at me. ‘They’re the ones who gave me the fire bead for you. I thought about going with Peter that night, but Mum was sick. I didn’t want to leave her, so I didn’t go.’
‘She saved your life,’ I mutter, mind reeling at the idea that I somehow also benefitted from the rebels. They gave me the fire bead. I would have died that first day if not for that expensive gift. ‘There’s something else you should know,’ Ruben says, his eyes evading mine in a way that implies I’m really not going to like it. ‘You know how you tried to send the food back to the slums? And asked me to help organise it? That was how they got in.’ ‘What?’ I frown in confusion. ‘I arranged for three carriages to go to the High Hold, designated to collect the food. They’d already got clearance, so nobody checked inside.
That’s how the rebels gained entrance so easily.’ A wave of nausea floods through me and I wrap my arms around my middle, trying to stave off the feeling. ‘How could you?’ Disappointment and hurt fill my voice. ‘They never sent any of the food to the slums after that. People probably died because of you, died of hunger we could have stopped.’ Ruben flinches. ‘I know,’ he whispers and looks away.
Silence starts to bloom, but Benny quickly breaks it. ‘Will you tell Kyor?’ His voice has the slightest hint of a quake to it. ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘He has enough on his plate.’ Ruben snorts. ‘Yeah, because swanning around in privilege is really hard.’ ‘Does he look like he’s swanning around in privilege right now?’ I snap. ‘He’s out there, keeping us safe.’ I hesitate, but anger loosens my tongue. ‘Elska says a Myrkr is following us.’ Ruben scoffs. ‘Seriously, that’s what he’s telling you? They’re just a scary folktale, something to scare the kids into behaving. Gods, he’ll do anything to keep you next to him, won’t he?’ A response burns on my tongue, but before I can spit it back at him, my attention shifts to Caz. She’s been quiet through the entirety of my argument with Benny, but there’s something different about her silence now. And the way she’s looking at Benny suggests a knowledge between them. What am I missing? ‘What?’ I say, shifting my gaze between the pair of them. ‘What is it?’ ‘You remember I told you I once read through the entire library in Brandish?’ Benny says eventually. ‘There were diaries there. My great- grandfather’s diaries. He wrote about Myrkrs in there, more than anything
else actually. Pages and pages of how he once saw one on the mainland.’ ‘Rohan mentioned them too,’ Caz joins in. ‘His encounter was one of the first things he made me scribe for him. Of course, it was Rohan, so I wanted to dismiss it, but I knew he believed every word he was telling me.’ ‘But they both survived?’ I say. I’ve seen Rohan myself and given the diaries Benny’s great-grandfather wrote, it feels like an obvious deduction. ‘That’s encouraging.’ ‘The others he was with didn’t,’ Benny admits. ‘My grandmother said it haunted him until the end of his days. That he was never the same.’ ‘Rohan’s stories are the same. Only thirty of his group survived,’ Caz
says.
‘Out of how many?’ I question. ‘An entire battalion.’ It feels as if my stomach has turned inside out. One of Korvane’s battalions can easily have five hundred soldiers. And only thirty survived.
What does that say for our tiny group?
A twig snaps and all four of us whirl around, blades high and ready … only for Kyor and Elska to step into the light. He nods with approval at our raised blades, then looks at me with the unspoken question in his eyes. ‘I told them,’ I say. ‘About the Myrkr. Better we’re all looking out for it.
For them.’ ‘Just the one, thankfully. And no sign of it for now,’ he reassures us. ‘I’ll grab some sleep while you all eat, and then Els and I will take the rest of the watch later.’ ‘We’ll take turns,’ Ruben counters. ‘You’ll be no good to Rose if you’re asleep on your feet tomorrow.’ Kyor opens his mouth, but then closes it. ‘Fine,’ he replies stiffly.
As the two men move off, Caz leans in next to me. ‘Look! They’re not killing each other! And all it took was the most terrifying creature in existence stalking us. Easy.’ She grins.
Neither Benny nor I can even fake a smile.
Thirty out of five hundred.
A part of me knew it before we left, but there’s no denying the truth any longer. There’s no way we’re all coming out of this alive.
