Shit.
“Sikras.” With a grave tone, Benjamin faced him. “We have to do this now.”
“Now?” Sikras’s voice cracked, and he stepped backward. “I—I thought I’d have more time—”
“The folly of man. We always think there’s more time. We have maybe five minutes before they’re within swinging distance,” Ben said. “That’ll have to be enough.”
This. This, right here.Thiswas one of many reasons why he loathed the gods. Vile, omnipotent bastards with all the power in the world at their fingertips and they choose to cower in their individual planes, feeding off mankind’s prayers, while the very mortals who venerate them suffer. Sikras’s vision clouded over, his gaze unfocused, his mind detaching out of habit and self-preservation. It wasn’t until Benjamin gripped his shoulders when he returned to reality.
“Listen to me.” Benjamin’s bony fingers dug in deep. “No matter what happens, whether we succeed or we fail spectacularly in the blaze of glory, I am a lucky, lucky man to have called you my friend and a brother.”
The steadiness of Benjamin’s grip only made Sikras’s trembling shoulders more apparent. He struggled to find the sockets where Benjamin’s eyes used to be. “I’m afraid,” he whispered.
“Worst case scenario is death. That’s not so bad, is it? Not like you haven’t done it before.”
Sikras swallowed to wet his dry throat. “It would be particularly devastating to die the moment I decided to start living again.”
“My advice, then?” Benjamin gave him a reassuring pat. “Don’t die.”
A raspy inhale filled Sikras’s lungs, and he exhaled in a slow, steady stream. “If Dionus gets your soul before I do, tell him he’s a prick for me, would you?”
A grim chuckle echoed in Benjamin’s skull. “I’m not going to tell my god he’s a prick, but I’ll think it really loudly for you. Deal?”
“Deal.” The single word came out strained, tight, and as Benjamin shed his cuirass, cloak, and scarf, Sikras glimpsed the glowing thread between his ribs. Pinching the ethereal blue string between his fingers, he said, “Ready?”
“I’ve been ready,” Ben said. “Trust Helspira. Trust yourself. Good luck, pal.”
Choking back words he didn’t trust himself to say, Sikras winced, tugging the thread from the stone. It unraveled all too easily. The stone, Benjamin’s bones, and what little remained of Sikras’s sanity hit the ground with a rattle and clack.
With the spell severed, the full power of the Cat’s Eye returned to him. Warmth spread from his chest to his arms. The muscle aches, the weakness, the chronic fatigue vanished. He stared at his fingers, no longer stiff, arthritic things, and flexed them. Gone was the hinderance of poor blood circulation, his hands regained their color. All that remained was to soil them with Vessik’s blood.
Sparing himself the sight of Benjamin’s body, Sikras forced his eyes shut and turned away. As Rowan had so aptly put it, it was finally time to deal with the consequences of his inaction.
The warmth of Helspira’s hand on the side of his face quieted the surfacing doubts. Sikras placed his atop hers.
“I have him,” she whispered. “I have him, and I promise thatnothingwill touch him.”
His fingers curled around hers, and he pulled her hand to his lips to kiss her knuckles. “Thank you.”
She blew out a nervous breath. “Are ... Are you afraid to die?”
“Terrified. I know death shouldn’t be feared given that it typically comes with the promise of eternal peace and everything.” He regarded her with a flippant smirk. “But I’d hate to die after having finally fallen in love with dancing again.”
She favored him with a smile, but it failed to reach her eyes. “Eight hours isn’t long. Be swift.”
“I’ll have it done in less than two. But before I go”—he reached into his pocket and placed a note in her palm—“take this. You won’t need it, but just in case, would you give it to our queen?”
The note crinkled under the pressure of her grasp, and she nodded. “Be careful.”
“It’ll take more than an undead army of highly trained soldiers and not-so-trained townsfolk to keep me from returning to you.”
The warmth of her breath on his face ignited something inside him. He soaked in the sight of her eyes—the glassy, emotionless prosthetic and the shimmering red orb nestled in a black sclera. How selfish, how cruel it would’ve been to seize the moment, to brush his lips against hers, to lose himself in her body when they had so little time and no knowledge of whether he would make it back. And he had grown awfully tired of being selfish.
Instead, he placed a soft kiss on the inside of her wrist and dashed to meet Vessik’s undead head on. He would need an army of his own if he intended to put up a fight, and while he had no doubts Helspira could handle herself, comfort came in knowing she had aid. The tingle of corpses below ground tickled his senses, and he clenched his hands into fists. “An’stisei tus necrouz.”
The ground rumbled like an earthquake. Bodies of woodland beasts that had died years, decades, centuries, millenia prior crawled from the hard soil and crested from the snow-covered terrain. Mostly animal but a few human skeletons, both ancient and modern, formed a bizarre, historical army. With the power of the Cat’s Eye, the recoil from a spell that would’ve surely killed him in his previous state snapped in his veins like nothing more than a bug bite. Half of the resurrected followed after Sikras. The other half lingered by Helspira on orders from their puppet master. They were no bouquet of roses, but it was the closest thing to a romantic gesture he could manage given the circumstances.
Arrows pierced the ground as Sikras ran headlong toward his opponent. Why Vessik had abandoned the sanctuary of Stow’s Peak, with all its arcane protection, was anyone’s guess. Maybe Sikras would find out why before he killed him.
