Max raises an eyebrow. “You’re awfully confident in the honor of someone who kills people for money,” her gaze slides to Anrai. “What do you want to do?”
I don’t wait for him to answer. “We have to go in.”
Anrai’s eyes flash as they finally settle on me, his face simmering with potent anger. But I know him well enough now to understand it isn’t directed at me. It’s fed by fear and his compulsive need to keep those he cares about from being hurt. He blames himself for not sniffing out the trap sooner and keeping us all far away from this place.
I understand him, but it changes nothing. “Even if this is a trap, it’s our only lead to Denver. And my brother doesn’t have any more time. I have to find him.”
Anrai stares at me and I stare back, unwavering. After a moment, he softens, but he doesn’t relent. His body remains tense and coiled. He glances at Calloway. “She’s right. It is our only lead.”
Cal nods once and begins checking over his weapons as if the decision has been made. But Anrai hasn’t finished, “but I go in alone.”
“Like hell you do!” I shout at the same time Max bursts forward in outrage. She gives me an approving nod.
“Cal,” Anrai says, his voice full of a warning that I don’t understand. And something else. Pleading.
“Anrai, it makes no strategic sense,” the words tumble out of me, imploring and fast. We’re wasting time by arguing and the only lead to my father could be slipping farther away with every minute. Being clever and efficient is what Anrai prides himself on, more so than any physical acumen, so it’s this I appeal to. “We don’t know what we’re walking into or what we’re up against. Wedoknow that there’s the Timdis and there’s me. My power could be the only thing that protects us from whatever is in there. What if there’s an entire army waiting?”
“She’s right,” Max agrees, glancing at the fortress uneasily. Max, who is so familiar with the horrors the Dark World can bestow, knows well the sort of things that could await us on the other side. “We go together, or no one goes. We’ll be quick and smart, but we stick together,” she raises a brow at Anrai, her face full of unspoken challenge and I wonder how I ever mistook him for the one in charge. The three of them have always been equals, never one above another. “And if you don’t like that, I have no problem knocking your ass out and dragging your body back to Nadjaa.”
Anrai straightens as if to argue, but instead, his eyes seek mine. I brace myself, waiting for him to command me to stay. To tell me I’m too weak, that all of this is impossible and wishing it wasn’t won’t change it. But his body visibly relaxes as he finds something in my eyes. “Okay,” he agrees.
And it’s settled.
He turns to inspect his weapons and I keep myself from throwing my arms around him. This was never about me. I’ve never needed to convince Anrai of my worth, my fortitude, because he knew it long before I ever did. This was about him needing to ground himself enough to overcome his own fears. And once again, with a selflessness that breaks my heart, he has put himself aside to champion my strength.
Weapons settled and accounted for, his face is resolute as he turns back toward Yen Girene. “I don’t like walking into a trap through the front door, but I suppose it’s our only choice. We may have to fight our way inside. Once in, head straight to the palace. Keep your eyes open and your guard up. Always.”
Cal grips his bow, an arrow ready. Max palms one of her swords. My dagger sits at my hip, but it isn’t the weapon I feel for. I turn inward, allowing the waves to crash over me, absorbing the strength of the sea and the calm of a cool brook. Myothersings under my skin, awakened and ready.
To save Easton. To see my father again.
We descend on silent feet into the city.
Immediately, we are accosted by a rotting stench so powerful it’s a wonder we didn’t smell it clear back at the tree line. It can only be a favorable direction of wind that’s kept it from us because the reek is so powerful, my eyes begin to water as we climb down the narrow path. The gate yawns like an open maw in the black expanse of wall.
It doesn’t take long for the source of the smell to be revealed.
All of Yen Girene’s guards lie splayed and motionless across the only road in, their bodies in various states of decomposition. Swords and arrows stick out of their chests and their stomachs have been viciously torn open, whether by enemy or scavenger, it’s impossible to tell. Their innards lie in congealed pools, staining the stone road in a watercolor of deep browns and ugly shades of red. Nausea clenches my stomach and I struggle to swallow it down, following Anrai as he strides purposefully past them, already looking forward for unseen threats.
He barely spares the bodies a glance, a stark reminder that he has seen this sort of horror before. Choking on the stench, I hurry past the bloated corpses and into Yen Girene. Max and Cal come up behind me, the latter looking as green as I feel.
As I get my first glimpse of the city, I realize that Yen Girene isn’t empty. It is densely populated, and people are all over the streets. But none of them are alive.
ChapterThirty-Seven
Mirren
In the Education Center, we are shown videos and photographs of the most horrific events in Dark World history. My stomach always rebelled as I sat in the dark cocoon of the classroom, accosted with images of war; of famine; of poverty and disease. In the name of our education, they held nothing back, claiming it was paramount that we know the realities of the world beyond our Boundary.
Those lessons, still as fresh in my head as the first time I saw them, are nothing compared to the carnage that lies in Yen Girene’s streets. Bodies are sprawled everywhere, bloated, and rooted to the ground by their own blood. The Girenis have not only been murdered—they’ve been completelydecimated. Bile rises in my throat as we pass a pair of crows pecking at the eyes of a head that sits a few feet away from the body it was once attached to.
Anrai picks his way through the destruction on careful feet, the three of us following silently behind. There are no words for what happened here, no sounds except for the cawing of the scavengers. In the distance, I swear I hear the shriek of a yamardu, drawn to the feast.
We come to a market that’s been laid to tatters. Wares rot on their purveyor’s tables, as if the massacre happened midday.
“There are no children,” Max whispers from beside me, her eyes roving over the body of a merchant that’s been sliced through, neck to navel. I shudder, wondering at the kind of twisted strength needed to accomplish such a feat. “And the women…there are hardly any women.”
I swallow roughly, her meaning clear. Anrai nods, his jaw tight as something of their shared history passes between them. “I know.” His voice is devoid of emotion, but when he looks at me, anguish washes over his face. As if he can’t quite accept what he sees; or that I am now seeing it, too.
