“You tore out my heart.”The words shivering, strained, breathless.
“You tore out mine,” Kiaro murmured.
“What?”Lyrian hissed.“How is this possible?”Ethyr looked up at him watching with wild, furious eyes.He brought both hands to grip his sword, stepping forward.
The vessel for Ethyr’s anger was finally large enough to encompass it.Roots sprouted and curled around Lyrian’s ankles, stopping him from advancing closer.The man startled, looking down and jerking at the restraints.More roots climbed up his legs and over his torso.
“What the—?”He struggled harder.When that only made the bindings tighten around him, dragging him to the ground, he started to panic.He thrashed and screamed, but couldn’t fight off the ropes of wood strapping him down, covering his face, his body.
The screams of agony were crunched silent.
Ethyr stood and Kiaro let him go, arms sinking to his lap.The civilized gods were there, standing in the road, watching him with a mix of trepidation and hope and concern.He turned his back on them and walked to Poyut collapsed on the ground.She’d gotten her fingers around her hilt, gripping it as though she could still summon the strength to stand and fight, but instead she lay in a growing puddle of her own blood, eyes closed, struggling for breath.
Ethyr knelt in it, its sticky warmth immediately seeping through his pants, and placed his palm on the gouge in her side.He did not usually work with such precision, but it was not difficult to sew the wound closed with threads of sprigs.
“Poyut.”He gripped her face, smearing blood across her cheeks.“Look at me.Poyut.”
Gnaeus sank beside him, gentle, unassuming.“Ethyr,” she said quietly.“Let me.”He moved aside.She rested her hands over Poyut’s stomach and bowed her head.For a long minute he watched them, desperately, until Poyut’s eyebrows flinched together and with a pained exhale, she opened her eyes.They found Ethyr first.
“Ethyr,” she breathed with relief.Then she looked down at Gnaeus by her side.“Who are you?”
Gnaeus smiled with sweet benevolence.“Do not worry over it, little mouse.”Poyut’s eyebrows drew together, in confusion rather than pain, a deep comfort to see.Ethyr gripped her hand, drawing her attention back.
“How do you feel?”
Her hand went to her side, followed by her gaze.She stared in new confusion at the mostly-healed laceration, stitched shut with woody tendrils.“What happened?Lyrian hit me and I… I—”
“It’s okay.Everything is okay now.”Ethyr stood and held out his hand.“I’ll explain later.”Poyut let him help her up, dragging her sword with her and leaning on it.
“What is going on here?”Klara pushed through the priests who had gathered at the front of the temple at Lyrian’s screaming.She stopped short at the sight before her, the pool of blood Gnaeus knelt in, the mound of tangled roots in the road, the line of gods standing beyond it.
“Gnaeus?”
Gnaeus stood slowly.“High Priest.”
Klara looked between them all, lost for words.Ethyr tilted his head back, looking over the temple, its age-worn but clean stone walls, the ivy climbing its sides, stretching up to the carved statues of the eight gods above its entrance.The realization struck him with brutal force, a connection of knowledge from two lives.
He turned to the gods, striding forward, but stopped himself short.“You…” He choked on the anger and grief that knotted in his throat as a held-back sob.
Varuut stepped forward from the others.“Ethyr…”
“No!”he roared, and the word shook the mountain.“As long as they believe in you, you exist.A king…” He couldn’t breathe.“Their faith… for my family’s lives.”
“Ainder and I had nothing to do with that!”Varuut burst out.“Gallus didn’t even exist!”Gallus watched anxiously from the side, looking uncertainly between them.
“You did nothing to stop it!Nothing to stop this!”Ethyr screamed, gesturing to himself.
“We were going to tell you!”
“When!?”
Her mouth opened.Closed.The sadness twisting her face smoothed to guilt, and the confession of it soured deep in Ethyr’s stomach like curdled milk.He felt violated.He could barely speak the words.
He forced them out, strangled.“When I loved you?”
Varuut didn’t respond.None of them did, though a few at least had the dignity to look guilty.He turned to Kiaro still kneeling on the ground, hands on his knees, eyes down.But he raised them to meet Ethyr’s.
“Is this what you wanted?”he asked, words cutting, as though with them alone he could lacerate Kiaro deep enough to scar his soul.
