CHAPTER 28
SEEING HIM HERE shatters me. He’s back too soon. Too fast, not yet, I need more time—
Herod stomps toward me, his eyes bloodshot, his hair sticking out around the face of someone scared, frantic. I press against the back corner of the cage. He’s mad, Angra’s evil driving his need to kill.
And Nessa, Conall, and Garrigan aren’t with him.
“Where are they?” I shout. “What did you do to them?”
Herod laughs and stops just above the cage, towering over me. “You just keep fighting,” he coos. “Keep pretending you can win. You don’t know what my master is. You don’t know how futile it is to contest him.”
“Don’t touch her!” Theron’s voice booms out from the wall and he runs to the end of his chains, a tantalizing distance from where Herod stands, bending slowly to the cage’s lock.
“Your prince brought an army with him, did he tell you that?” Herod puts the key in the lock but doesn’t turn it, waiting for my reaction. “He brought the armies of the world to save you. Bittersweet, don’t you think? All that, and he’ll still watch you die.”
An army? Is that what Theron has been saying?
Noam. He forced Noam to attack Spring. And if Cordell is attacking Spring . . . Autumn will attack with it.
Herod unlocks the door. Theron yanks against the chains, stretches out to Herod, yanks again. I press as far back in the cage as I can, willing myself to be as small and inconsequential as possible. I’m Winter’s conduit. I should be able to get out of this, kill him, do something to survive. Winter needs me to survive.
Herod swings the door open and reaches for me in one swift motion. His fingers grab my collar and drag me out, the bars of the cage flying past before I can find purchase and stop myself. Then I’m above the cage, soaring through the air until I smack into something soft, something covered in a quilt of silk squares on a mattress of stale feathers.
Herod’s bed.
I scramble back and press into the wall, trying to shove myself to my feet. Herod strides toward me, his face wild, a savage dog cornering his long-hunted prey. His eyes flash with power forced into him from someone else. Angra is here, doing this even more than Herod. Does Herod even exist beyond the things Angra makes him want?
“Do you remember when I first saw you?” Herod whispers. He stops at the edge of the bed, his fingers twirling down the post that holds the canopy above my head. “Years ago. You were a child still, small and fierce.”
I stand, grab the opposite post, and start to swing around, propel myself off the bed, but Herod dives, his hands grabbing my thighs and landing me flat out on the silk quilt. As horror shoots through me, Theron shouts from the wall, still pulling uselessly at the chains. Blood drips from his wrists now, jagged tendrils of red falling onto the floor as he pulls and looks at me with such helplessness my heart cracks.
I jerk to Herod, scrambling for any last bits of strength. “You didn’t have time to get them, did you? Theron’s army interrupted your master’s fun?”
“My master has nothing to do with this. He merely makes me”—he pauses and smirks—“unstoppable.”
Herod whirls me around so I land on my back with him on top of me, his bulk pressing me into the mattress. I want to believe it’s a lie. I want to believe he’s still human in there, somewhere, a small flicker of someone who doesn’t want to have done the things he’s done. But when I look into his eyes, there’s nothing. A vast and horrible nothing lined by need and obedience and strength.
He doesn’t exist outside of Angra’s commands. Maybe he never did.
“I regret that this will be faster than I always imagined,” Herod whispers, his warm breath cutting my skin like a knife. “But your prince has forced my hand.”
I wiggle against him, hands slipping on the quilt. Herod rolls against my movements, pinning me more and more until he grabs one of my wrists and traps my arm above my head. My other arm twists under my back, useless without a plan.
Herod pauses, eyes darting over my face. He wants me to fight him. He wants me to struggle. And everything in me, every part of who I am, wants to fight him too.
This is where my most unbearable nightmare will play out. Moments before the Cordell-Autumn army can save me, Theron so close yet worlds away. A knot of terror locks my throat tight, making me wheeze as I fight down desperate sobs.
Herod shifts, his body pressing more heavily on top of me. Something jabs into my hip, something sharp—
A medal on his jacket. Some military badge of honor that dangles lopsided off the fabric.
A rush of cool, sweet hope turns my sobs into gasps for breath, and I wiggle my arm almost free. Herod takes my motion as more fighting and laughs, pressing my trapped right arm more firmly into the bed. His other hand tangles in my hair, tilting my head and neck into a painful arch.
But the medal is free now, dangling over my hip.
“Looks like I was right,” I hiss. “I will kill you before this ends.”
Herod hesitates and I flip my arm up to rip the medal off his jacket. The fabric tears, giving me a sharp gold pin that glints in the afternoon light from the open windows. I shove it up, the medal folding into my palm as I jam the pin into Herod’s left eye.
He screams, lurching off me and cupping his hands over his eye as I fly out from under him and roll off the bed, using the bedpost to propel myself around.
“Meira!” Theron tugs back against his chains, his whole body angling toward the desk where my beautiful weapon sits.
Herod bellows and rips the pin out of his eye, blood running in a morbid tear down his face. He roils with pain and fury, his one good eye locking on me.
I can’t get to the desk without diving between Theron and Herod. There are no other weapons near me, no chairs I can break or vases I can throw.
Herod yanks a dagger out of his boot and lunges forward in a wave of rage. I shove off the bed, gain momentum, and drop to my knees, sliding between the wall and Theron, ducking just under his bloody chains. My tattered cotton pants glide across the wood floor until I whip my foot around, catch the edge of the desk, and pull to my feet.
A lump gathers in my throat. My chakram. The one Herod stole months ago, the great curving handle worn smooth from my palm. I grab it off the top of Herod’s desk and spin around, body coiled in the effortless motion of the breath before a throw. As I turn, the entire expanse of the world around us freezes, holds, caught between me with my chakram ready and Herod with his knife to Theron’s throat. The pause before a fight—
A close-range fight. I choke on a sob at the sudden memory of Mather sparring with me, of Sir refusing to let me go on missions until I got better at it, and now here I am—my life, and Theron’s, depends on me killing Herod at close range.
“Drop it,” Herod hisses. His left pupil lies sightlessly in a mess of purple and red, his right eye fierce and fuming.
Theron doesn’t flinch, just keeps his dark eyes fixed on me. His lip curls and his eyes shine with panic, mouth moving in four small words. Don’t listen to him.
I keep my chakram up, my body prepared for attack. The fingers of my other hand grope over Herod’s desktop. Something else, please, something else to distract him so I can get a clear shot—
At that exact, perfect moment, a siren echoes over Abril, a panicked screech calling all soldiers to their stations and all generals to their posts. Herod’s face spasms at the noise but he doesn’t move. The siren wails again and he growls, a low bubble telling me his focus isn’t entirely here. It’s on his king, who is probably using his dark magic to tell his highest-ranking general to get to his post, to leave his toy for later and obey his ruler.
My fingers close over something. An ink jar. Perfect.
I flick my arm out when Herod’s attention jerks to the door for one perfect, distracted second, the jar twirling through the air like a black shooting star. Ink trails around it, painting the air between us until it pops against Herod’s jaw. He jerks back enough that Theron is able to duck against the wall and rip the knife out of his hand. Herod claws at the air but Theron drops to the ground, darts out of the way, giving me a clear shot at Herod’s neck.
The chakram leaves my hand. As it flies I follow it, closing the space between Herod and me until it licks through his neck, the force of my throw making it rebound into my hands as I leap off the floor. The chakram hitting Herod shocks him backward and I’m already soaring toward him, weapon rising above my head. Herod’s one good eye blinks up at me, ink dripping down his cheek.
The two of us fall onto the floor, my knees slamming into his stomach. My chakram’s worn wooden handle cradles in my palms like it never left as I slide the blade into Herod’s skull, the vibration ringing up my arm. It rises, blood trailing the metal. And down again, bone rending.
You are weak, Herod. You don’t exist beyond the things you let Angra make you do.