Voices, loud, hectic, and happy, resounded from the other end of the portal.
“I have to go, sorry. Wedding preparations.” Evie’s eyes lit up, even as she tried to seem aloof. “I’m getting married. Me.”
That was not the coldness of a political arranged marriage between enemy Clans. It was the joy of someone in love–which only made it riskier.
“Does it count as her second wedding if she didn’t even get to exchange vows before her former groom was killed by the current one?” Dax mused as soon as we closed the palaver.
“What matters is that someone wanted to stop the wedding,” I seethed.
“Maybesomeonerealized the same thing as us. That Evie as Blood Brotherhood queen means an Evie with a powerful army.”
“Maybe.” But that didn’t sit right. Something nagged at me. Something obvious that lay there beyond my understanding, waiting to be discovered. “What do you know about replicas?”
“Enough to be sure I never wanted to risk the whole process, though it could have seriously helped me to wear someone else’s face,” he said.
My brows rose. The process must have been truly heinous if not even Dax wanted to experiment with it. He’d strapped a pair of untested wings to his back, for gods’ sakes.
“Then who would risk it?” I asked.
“Desperate people. Gold twists the mind.”
I crossed my arms, tapping my fingers in a quick pattern. “You don’t knowingly carry poison on you and ingest it for gold.”
Most people were greedy, but the selfishness of survival was always more potent.
“Maybe she had a curse on her like Orion,” Dax said. “He hadn’t wanted to kill himself. Whatever had tainted his power controlled him.”
I rose, feet aching to pace.
“You agree to taint your power for gold. Or more power. Or revenge.” The gods had surely not received Orion with openarms after what he’d done, but I hoped they’d had mercy on his widow and children and helped them escape Silas’ wrath. “But you don’t know it comes with the price of your life if you fail.”
Dax leaned back in his seat, watching me. “I don’t know any curse that can do that.”
Neither did I. No such curse should have existed. It marred the very essence of Clan magic.
“The attackers…some of them didn’t seem controlled.” The last three had turned themselves into ash in a heinous, split-second ritual. “What if some of them know what they’re getting into?”
“That sounds fanatical.” He grimaced. “You’d need either a very good or a very heinous cause to convince people like that.”
I raised a brow. “The Cold Blooded War started because a eunuch priest claimed to have a vision of a snake god swallowing the continent.”
“People haven’t raised their weapons because of a vision in a long time. No gods demand bloodshed anymore.”
“Not all.” I remembered bleeding and howling at the moon with Solkar’s Reach warriors. “They used to sacrifice people for gods that didn’t even have a name.”
“Nonewgods, then.” Dax licked his teeth. “But who’d have such a faith? Even Xamor has strict rules for war.”
“This isn’t faith. It’s a perversion drenched in blood.”
I inhaled sharply.
Drenched in blood.
“You remember what Dara told us about that weird Clan the Blood Brotherhood conquered, who drowned their lands with sacrifices? Quirinths? Quoronths?”
“Quoriliths,” Dax said. “They’re long dead.”
I stopped pacing and turned to him. “Then why have their practices endured?”
