By the time Hedley reached Mysai’s inner city, the bells had long since gone silent, and the screams had thinned to nothing, stamped out by the Drakmori and Arathian soldiers patrolling every quarter. The streets now lay still. Quiet.
In a single day, Mysai had become a city for the dead and damned.
A city filled with ghosts.
The dying light bled crimson across the sky. Tendrils of smoke hung heavy in the air, providing cover for him as he crept atop the buildings overlooking the cathedralsquare.
Desperately hunting for any sign of survivors.
Bodies littered the streets—bodies of Elmorians, Drakmori, and Arathians. Hedley’s throat tightened as he watched the Arathian soldiers who still drew breath piling the dead into large heaps in front of Mysai’s cathedral.
Was Dane among them? He couldn’t tell.
A ripple of fresh movement down below drew Hedley’s attention just as two women glided into the square with effortless grace. One older, one younger. Both impossibly tall, undeniably beautiful, and draped in blood-red silk.
Witches.
Hedley dropped to his belly atop the roof as a familiar pain pierced his chest. An old pain. As if another witchblade had just been thrust into his heart.
It washer. She was here. His…“mistress.”
The witch who had stolen a piece of his soul.
Skatia.
“We must find it,” the younger of the two fretted, her words just barely audible to his ears. “The Lady demands it.”
“Patience, Sister Talia,” Skatia snapped, sending his pulse stuttering to a pause. He hardly dared to breathe as he peeked over the edge of the roof and watched her red-painted lips wrap around the words, “The Lady has not yet even revealed to us what She wishes us to find.”
A mad desire to fling himself down into the square seized him in that moment. His body ached to be near her. To close the distance between them. To submit himself to her will at last.
His mind recoiled at the thought.
My soul. That was all he wanted from her—that vile serpent posing as a woman. That was all he needed: to retrieve the lost sliver of his soul. To be whole again. To be able to bleed.
To be able to die.
While he watched, Skatia’s nostrils flared. Her golden-eyed attention snapped his way, as if she could see him hiding within the deep shadows of the roof just as well as he could see her.
He flattened himself again and prayed she could not.
“What is it, sister?” asked the other witch, the one named Talia.
“He’s here,” Skatia hissed. “He’s close. I feel him.”
A sudden bout of discordant laughter rang out in the near distance, sharp and bright. “Sisters! We have something you might like to see!”
Footsteps drew closer. Boots scraped against stone. A thud. A grunt.
Skatia gasped. “A survivor?” She sounded utterly delighted by the prospect.
Hedley’s pulse quickened. Someone had survived the massacre? Hope sparked to life in his heart—a desperate hope.
What if it was…Dane?
Cautiously, he raised his head again and chanced a peek. But his hope swiftly curdled into bitter disappointment when he spied the blood-spattered soldier being forced to his knees in the square by a witch’s glassy-eyed slaves. Though he was still fully armored, it was easy enough to see that the man wasn’t his brother. He bore a sword.
Only Elmorian knights and nobles could bear swords.
