She closed her eyes tight and inhaled a trembling breath. She listened as Astegur and her thralls moved whatever they could find within the temple to block the entryway and any room that had crumbling walls.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again to her mother, who had not stopped screaming since Astegur lowered his axe and walked away. “Please hold the barrier,” she begged, trying to soothe her, trying one last time to reach her. “Just long enough for me to take it from you. Please.” But each time she tried, just like every time before, for countless worldspins, her mother didn’t hear her words.
“Give up, hag, you cannot save what is already lost!” A horseman yelled from afar, making her look up. He had been yelling since the first rain of arrows pierced her land. Their attack on Prayer had stopped after Astegur pulled her back into the shadows, but with each hour that passed by, their threatening yells grew nearer and nearer.
Spittle hit her face, and she returned her attention back to her mother. Ghoulish wide eyes glared back at her, almost expectantly. She heard Astegur’s hoovefalls sound behind her.
“We’ve done what we could,” he said hollowly as Calavia faced him. His eyes were on her mother with unabashed disdain. “Now we wait.”
She nodded, rising to her feet. “I am ready now. Will you help me move her to the altar room?”
He huffed in answer, flexing his hands, but he moved past her and hauled her mother over his shoulder. They walked to her altar in silence. He placed her mother in the corner where the vines were at their thinnest.
Calavia’s hands shook as she moved to her altar, lighting the last candle that remained atop it. The stone was flat beneath her feet, relaying how little wax she had left, and unless she wanted darkness to blind them, she could not gather the few candles throughout the temple they had left in place to light their passage.
“I do not like this.”
She wiped out her bone bowls with the skirt of her dress and set them in front of her. “You do not have to like it,” she whispered.
He moved behind her and pressed into her back. “This kind of magic is not worth the cost. It is the same kind of magic that the mist is borne from.”
His body heat threatened to engulf her.
“What other choice do we have?” She lifted her palms to look at the raw, still-healing cuts upon them and the cove and wax covering the wounds. Astegur’s arms came around her to cup her hands and spread out her fingers. “Are you willing to entreat them?”
Her long hair fluttered as he breathed against the top of her head, snarling. “We have nothing to offer them.”
“But our lives.”
“And your blood, your body.” He released her hands and pressed his own against her chest, sliding them up to caress and elongate her neck. “They will not be nice to you, not after all that has happened.”
“As you have?” She closed her eyes and let him move her head from side to side, relishing the contact for what it was. Power.
He growled in answer, his hands tightening upon her skin, squeezing. Her breath hitched, and he released her, stepping away.
“I swore an oath to keep you alive,” he said. “But when they stab the life out of me with their spears, crush my bones under their hooves, and cut off my head, I won’t be able to control what comes after.”
Her hands trembled anew at his words, but she hid them in her skirts and pulled out the herbs that she’d collected earlier from her stores, placing them before her. She couldn’t think about him dying without losing more of her focus.
“It won’t come to that.” She said it as much for herself as for him. She could do what comes next, if she believed she could. Shehadto believe she could.
“I will try to kill you before it does.”
Calavia flinched, but nodded again. She needed to trust that Astegur knew her fate if she remained alive. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he walked to the doorway and prepared to guard it, one hand hovering over his axe and the other twitching at his side.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
His eyes snapped to hers. “I am always ready for battle.”
Her mother’s gargling noises filled the space between them.
She looked down at her supplies in front of her and picked up the willow growth with her fingers and dipped it into a bowl filled with water.
“Calavia,” Astegur drew her attention away again. “I will stop this if it goes sour.”
They shared a lingering look, and she steeled her nerves. She’d never cast a spell where her magic would be used for offence. Her abilities stemmed mostly from survival and defense. Now, she was anchoring her willpower to steal another’s.
Astegur had been right. She had known it all along. Had known, if she fled, if she had gone with him to the mountains to the west, her mother would never follow them. She didn’t want to follow them, to flee. Her mother had no wants left in her life, except in that moment, many many years ago, when she’d fully become a thrall, she had wanted to die a human.
