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“I know, my body is weak. But my heart is breaking.”
“What happened?”
“Ruslan asked Rares to find a way to prevent me from wanting to be with Kazimir again.”
Zuriel swore in the language of the Angels.
“Speak with him in the morning, Izidora. You are brave, and you can talk sense into him. He is afraid of losing you, as you very well know. But you need rest. You are already vulnerable and these intense emotions will burn you out if you are not careful. I will sing to you until you fall asleep again.”
“How long until I will be fully recovered?”
“Perhaps tomorrow or the next day. I promise to check on you at first light.”
“I promised I would get you home, and Ruslan will release you soon. I will miss you when you go.”
“I’m not going anywhere, sweet cousin. Now, rest and listen to my voice.”
Zuriel began a hauntingly beautiful tune in a language I could not understand, but the melody ensnared my frayed emotions and carried them along the journey. The sorrow in the song transformed into light, and I lost myself in the notes of his deep, melodic voice. Muscle by muscle, my body relaxed into the bed until I was floating in the words alone. The tears that streamed down my cheeks had long since dried, and as the song began again, my mind finally let go, and sleep carried me away from the world I had longed to see while I was chained in the cave.
V
***
The tunnels were filled with the screaming of twelve small children training to be warriors. Eleven mothers watched over them, hawk-like eyes on their own. Only one boy with hair as dark as night had no one watching him, and his aggression toward his half-brother had the boy’s mother gripping the edge of her seat. Even at the age of twelve, the dark haired one’s strength was unmatched by that of his siblings, and with no mother to watch over him, he had raised himself to be cold and calculating.
The Mage that supervised their instruction took to him in a sinister way, often pulling him aside after training for additional one-on-one time, where he pushed him harder and forced him to increase his well of inner strength until it was nearly endless. He subjected the child to all types of pain – physical, mental, but never emotional, for the boy needed no further torture than that of being utterly alone and abandoned by those around him.
The Mage knew that the boy’s deep need for affection and attention would keep him in line in the future, and as he watched the day’s practice unfold, he rubbed hisgnarled hands together with a wicked gleam in his eye. His experiments were paying dividends, and after decades of work, the results spoke for themselves. Out of the twelve children his master had sired, four were his greatest achievements, the crown jewels of his collection.
The dark haired child’s eyes drifted to the Mage again and again, especially after he landed a blow that knocked his brother on his back. But the Mage was displeased with his distraction and stomped toward him, shoving him between his shoulder blades until he sprawled on the ground beside his brother. “Once you get your opponent to the ground, do not stop until you finish them, Ruslan,” the Mage instructed. “Get back to work.”
The children dusted themselves off and squared up again, and that time, when the dark haired one threw his brother to the ground, he followed him there, pounding his face until the boy’s mother jumped to her feet and pulled them apart, shooting the Mage a hateful look and cradling her son to her chest. “That is enough! They are just children,” she snapped.
“If you cannot handle watching them train, then I shall have to ban you from entering during these hours,” the Mage replied coolly, surveying her and the other females in attendance. “In fact, these younglings are old enough now that they do not need your constant surveillance. Get out.”
A few mothers opened their mouths to protest, but their teeth snapped shut when the Mage began chanting. They knew what he would do to them if they disobeyed. With lingering looks on all the children, save for one, they exited the training arena.
Most children watched their mothers go with a hint of nervousness, but the motherless one only glared at his half-siblings with sickly green envy emanating from his pores. He cracked his neck when they refocused their attention on theMage, icing over the hurt in his heart and channeling his rage into the fight before him.He needed no one,he told himself, but deep down, he knew just how false that statement was. All he wanted was to be loved like the others, and even at his young age, he knew that would never happen for him.
28
Béke Day One
“Fucking Fates, it’s cold,” Vadim swore next to me. “I don’t understand how it's possible to be sweating my balls off one moment, then freezing my balls off the second we pass into the Iron Realm.”
“Don’t be such a pussy, Vadim,” Liliana teased. “It’s not that cold.”
“Says you, who gets to ride in the carriage with the queens!”
“I’m out here now, aren’t I?” She quirked a brow at her brother, daring him to argue again.
“She has a point,” I snickered, and Vadim cursed us under his breath, followed by curses to the weather. We stood on the precipice of two realms, staring at the wide path that led straight into the Agrenak Mountains, disappearing around a bend in the distance. The Iron Realm had maintained its secrecy and security for millenia because of the harsh landscape that surrounded it. Only two passable routes existed, the Zherza Pass between the Night and Iron Realms, where one wrong step would send you plummeting to your death unless you could fly, and the FerzhoPass between the Day and Iron Realms, which lie before us. At least the Ferzho Pass was even, albeit steep. The road was carved between two mountains, and it was as likely to be a trap as an entrance. We needed to keep our eyes trained above at all times, searching for hidden archers with iron-tipped arrows prepared to knock us from our mounts.
The low-hanging clouds, obscuring the peaks from view, were not a good omen. “I think it’s snowing.” I squinted my eyes, trying to see if the white flakes dancing in the distance were real or my imagination.
“It’s definitely snowing,” Viktor confirmed.
“Son of a bitch,” Vadim swore again.
