The Heirs of Death

25. Eziara

Leyath, who was standing to my immediate right, leaning her weight on the rails, seemed bored to the bones from the show that had been going on for hours. Her black eyes slid to mine, then snuck a glance at Sédil before drifting to that piece of land another good few hours to come.

She dreaded it.

We all did. But perhaps we had become accustomed to the bitter taste under our tongues, perhaps our body became used to the cold fear gnawing at our bones, licking at our blood and flesh after months of enduring it.

Nothing—nothing—of the horrors we'd seen underwater was enough to shake me. Nothing had been strong enough after the nightmares I'd read and glimpsed in the pages of the old tome. After I'd stared at eyes the color of blood and a mirror to death. Blake's eyes. It was the mere thought of going to his home, to stare for hours at that brutal coldness forged within a fiery passion to destroy locked inside those bleeding irises that had me awake for nights. That had me curling in an attempt to warm a coldness that was deeper than skin.

I'd wondered sometimes if Aedis dreamed of them, too, if he'd ever jolted awake in his bed in the Prelius Chateau looking for a pair of glowing, red eyes hidden in the darkness. I'd only known the answer last night, when I'd sought the cold air to ease my mind, and found him leaning against the same rail Leyath was pressed against, staring at the unending seas as though he could see him in his castle, could almost perceive those eyes. As though he saw them both, the man who had sired him and the king he served, at the far end and waiting for us. We held each others for hours, finding warmth despite the rain.

But I didn't tell Leyath this. Only said in our tongue, in its thick and ancient accent, "They should be the ones fearing our approach.''

A smirk lined those lips. The sister of the Shadow, and a Shadow herself.   

"We'll wreck them, shatter them from the inside.'' Not a question, I noted. I still nodded and watched as that smirk grew wider, darker. "Then let's make it count.''

I smirked back. And it was Sédil, vision drifting from the continent we neared, who had voiced a whim we all had fed within us for months now. "A drop of blood for every one they took from us."

We'd all heard it, but only the six of us understood the words spoken in a hiss. The word inside them. Revenge—nothing but a burning revenge. At the demons who had taken our loved ones, who had brought down cities and countries, who had left nothing, spared no one.

For a heartbeat, I remembered the day at Ramos's office back in the Norm, remembered his words about her brother and mother that now laid dead. Remembered that day mere weeks ago, on the balcony of her suite as she told me a story I already knew—as she bared a face that was raw and broken and unlike the Mayra she showed the world.

That face had turned into Sédil—into the huntress who would hunt down the very king and queen she would serve. A wrath finally unleashed.

"It is the very first visit from our kind to theirs," said Dier, coming to stand along us, the sparring and training done for the day, the crowd dissolving to attend to the boat and its captain's orders to prepare for the anchoring. "We'll make them remember it, even when they are nothing but broken souls and judged bounders."

We would. We'd all vowed as much.

There was a moment of silence between us, even the shouting of men and tossing of ropes distant in my ears. The rain stopped. And we all stared at the approaching first bit of Eziara. At the barely visible minarets and towers that must have been behemoth up close. At our first battlefield.

"I've seen—with my troupes—over the years what they've done in the frozen continent.'' Not Rimelia, not when the name did not change in this language, not when it would capture attentions like a magnet. "I've witnessed the terrors they forced on those living there,'' Luthian's eyes slid to me, "there is no telling what we'll see. What we'll have to do."