At her words, my knees go weak, but Rhonin pulls me upright. Still, I sway on my feet, a hollowness yawning inside me, swallowing my heart, as if those words have haunted my spirit for all my life and hearing them has the power to end me.
Helena must be lying. Shemustbe.
Vexx meets her toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose. With a light hand, he brushes Helena’s jet-black hair from her face, tucking it back at her temple where he runs a thumb over her angled brow. She flinches at his touch.
“Odd. Last time I saw you, you still bore the bloody mark of my fist.” He peers back at me, and for the first time, Helena glances my way. “Funny how injuries keep vanishing,” he adds. “I’ll have to do a better job next time.” Vexx faces Helena. “If you’re lying, girl, I will drag you from here to Winterhold behind my horse, and I will enjoy every second. You’ve cost me enough as it is.” With that, he steps back and sweeps his arm in a gesture. “Now, lead the way, my lady.”
Broad shoulders drawn back, Helena turns toward the caves. Vexxpositions two warriors at her sides, and he falls just behind. Whatever happened between these two before Helena found Raina and me made enemies out of them.
A smothered half-groan, half-sigh rumbles in the back of Rhonin’s throat. I look at him as I limp along, glancing to where the key hides, but there are men all around—in front of us, behind us, beside us—and he only stares straight ahead, focused on the rugged, snowy landscape.
And Helena.
In the reach of firelight, she climbs the rough and bouldered incline that leads to the very cave where I left Raina.
Vexx tosses a wicked smile over his shoulder. “Be sure to bring Un Drallag. I want him to see this.”
Pulse thrumming against the cuffs at my wrists, Rhonin nudges me forward. Already, I feel a hum in the air, the way the atmosphere thins around a coming crisis. I just don’t know what that crisis is. I’ve either shackled my soul to the Nether Reaches even more surely by damning Raina to an early death, or something else lies ahead that might see me taking even more lives. Not that it matters anymore. Whether I like it or not, my soul is already irredeemable.
With lumbered steps, we climb until Helena says, “The cave is just ahead. Follow me.”
The second those words leave her mouth, Vexx halts us, his warriors coming to a standstill, each one scattered a few feet from another across the hillside. The two warriors following Helena seize her, and again, she glances at the cave and then at me, this time with wide and worried eyes.
Vexx props a foot on a rock and rests his hands on his hips. He nods to the two warriors flanking her, one of whom holds a torch. “You two. Onward.” He looks pointedly at a man and woman to his right. “And you two. Hold her. She stays within sight.”
They grab Helena, twisting her arms behind her back, while the others vanish into the cave’s darkness, their light a glowing orb that soon snuffs out. There is no sound that we can hear. No movement. Just a black abyss in the side of a cliff.
Vexx waits a few minutes, but when the warriors don’t return, he motions to someone else. “Go.”
Hatchet ready and torch raised, an Eastlander creeps into thedarkness with a hint of caution in every step. The torchlight soon extinguishes, and again, nothing.
Raina. I know it’s her.
Vexx looks toward the red sky and roars. He stomps toward the cave and screams into it. “I’m tired of these games! You either come out here and drop your weapons, or this girl’s bloodandyours will flow through this ravine like a river. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve already acquired the most important part of this mission.”
Brandishing the God Knife, he heads toward Helena, staring into her eyes. When he speaks, his voice is loud enough that if Rainaisstill inside that cave, she will hear him.
“Your witch friend has a chance to live,” he says. “She can bow before the Prince of the East and beg his mercy for what she did to him. I can’t say that he’ll oblige, but if the two of you keep toying withme, all hope is lost. And as for that bastard,” he jerks his head toward me and waggles the God Knife, “his destiny has arrived. Very soon, Un Drallag and Neri will be no more. They’ll both return to the Shadow World, and any chance of one of Thamaos’s greatest enemies being set free and allowed to interfere in the prince’s plan will have been removed.”
Ah. Vexx means to kill me. Not that I didn’t already know this, but he plans to do it with the God Knife, the only weapon that can kill a god, so that Neri’s soul will return to the Shadow World, along with mine. But perhaps the wraith and prince don’t know as much about me and the God Knife as they think.
Vexx tilts Helena’s chin with one hand, then fists her hair at the crown and yanks her around, her back to his front, facing the cave. Dangerously, he presses the God Knife against her throat.
Aiming his voice toward the cave, he says, “Your call, witch. Does your friend live? Or die?”
For a moment, there is nothing but the snow falling around us, and another silent crack of icy lightning dances across the sky.
Then, from the shadows, a cloaked figure emerges from the cave.
My virago.
Istep into the construct’s dimming crimson light and drop my bloody knife and the Eastlander hatchet. Next, I strip off Alexus’s baldric and sword and toss them aside. Lastly, I shed my cloak, so the enemy can see that I’m unarmed. No more innocents will die because of me.
Especially Hel.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. We spotted the Eastlanders and their torches—and Alexus—a half-hour ago, but attacking thirteen warriors when we had no upper hand was unwise. We changed course, planning for Hel to lure them into the cave where I’d doused the fire. I would tear into them, one by one, as they entered the passageway.
Alas, the general had other plans.
