She was fading. Neave was fading. The gold in her eyes dimmed; her voice wavered.
“Ill intent means that someone wants to hurt us,” I said.
She nodded, her gaze distant. “And he does. He wants to very much.”
My blood turned to ice, then fire. “Who does?”
“Him.”
I was loath to say his name. “I need more than that.”
“He Who Is All,” she replied. Her unseeing gaze lifted to mine. “Kilraith. He seeks with many arms, and many eyes, and all of them are cruel.”
“What do you see? Is he coming after us?”
“He comes,” she said, her voice lowering, “with ill intent.”
“How far away is he?”
“Faraway. That is my name, not his.”
I nearly slapped her. The clouded look in her eyes was terrible. “How close is he?”
But as soon as I asked the question, I felt the answer myself. The ground began to shake, a faint tremor that neither of my sisters would have noticed. A sour charge filled the air, like the scent of lightning. And then, from perhaps a few miles behind us, came sounds I knew well: a glottal roar, an avian shriek, and the hard, swift gallop of paws and hooves.
Chimaera. Ten of them. I cocked my head, listening. Three avian, two ursine, four lupine, one feline. And they weren’t alone. From somewhere behind them came a deep, slow rumble like a rolling wave, and suddenly Kilraith’s voice slithered out of my memories.
You are certainly interesting, he’d told me. On that night in Mhorghast, when my sisters and I had retrieved the egg anchor, when Ankaret had come at Farrin’s call and destroyed it—and herself—we’d first had to play Kilraith’s cruel games of illusion. Farrin had navigated a replica of Ivyhill; Gemma and Talan had once again fought through the dark hallways of Talan’s childhood home, Brimgard.
And I, with Nesset at my side, had faced the trials of my childhood. On the shores of a false Lake Voroth, I’d endured dozens of trials, stabbed Kilraith’s illusion of Petra dozens of times. Everything I’d done to try and change her fate had failed. And when I’d stood over her dead body for the final time, stone paving my insides cold, Petra’s eyes had opened, and a smile that was not the one I remembered had spread across her face.
“You are certainly interesting,” she’d said in Kilraith’s smooth voice. “I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a creature who despises herself so completely.”
Then her smile had widened. “Except perhaps myself. Kindred spirits, you and I.”
I’d lunged at him then and plunged my dagger into Petra’s ruined chest, but all that had done was make Kilraith laugh. I’d watched Petra’s body disintegrate into ashes at the touch of my blade, and as Kilraith’s laughter filled the air, the illusion of Lake Voroth had disappeared. In its place had been the god Jaetris trapped in an old man’s human body—and my sisters, and our father, and Ryder, and Gareth, all of them bound in Kilraith’s shadows.
The memories teemed in my mind, frightened, furious. And asif my thoughts had uprooted something terrible, the ground heaved under my feet, and a whooping howl split the cold night air.
I scooped Neave into my arms and ran.
***
I never once looked back, but I could hear the chimaera crashing through the trees behind us, and soon they weren’t even two miles away. The sounds painted an awful picture: ten darting dark shapes forming a hungry V behind me. Surrounding me. Preparing for the kill.
Even though I’d never fought ten chimaera on my own before, my instinct was to stop and try anyway—but I didn’t dare. If I lost Neave in battle, all of this would be for nothing.
I leapt across a frozen ravine, hit the ground on the other side, kept running. I hoped there wouldn’t be too many more of those. Every jump cost me. My lungs were burning, and it was still fifty miles to the port of Rithia. Veering sharply to the right, I charged into a woodland I’d seen a few miles ago from higher ground. It wasn’t ideal—I ran much faster in open country—but we needed the cover.
Suddenly the ground in front of us erupted. Thick black roots burst into the air, then whipped across our path and flattened dozens of trees in an instant.
Kilraith.
He was a child of all five gods, unwittingly created at the moment of their deaths. He carried pieces of all their powers inside him. And clearly he was strong enough to use elemental magic from wherever he was and turn this forest against me.
I couldn’t decide which would be worse: his power being this effective even while he was far way, halfway across the world in Aidurra or gathering followers in the Old Country, or him being here in the flesh, tearing across the country toward me and drawing ever closer.
My blood turned to ice at the thought of facing him all alone, butthen my father’s voice echoed through my mind:You can feel fear, but you cannot be afraid.
