Page 24

As Aelthys and Ygritte’s only child, Caryx was the closest thing she had to a real brother. He’d come along a few years after the Bore blessed Okthana and bestowed her with the umbra, and was raised alongside her. Their strange little family of four had been happy. Or, as happy as anyone could be while banished to such a wretched place.

And then his parents—her parents, for all intents and purposes—caught the Waste.

The sickness that ravaged the Forgotten Lands was a scourge, a bane on their existence, and now it was threatening to take Caryx from her as well.

She wouldn’t fucking allow it.

Okthana’s heart dared a painful skip, her eyes burning. “I won’t be able to sleep if this is left unfinished,” she deflected, blinking the treacherous tears away. “The knowledge that they’re still awaiting their send-off will incessantly nag me in my slumber, and then what? I had enough of their badgering while they were still alive. I don’t need it in their death.”

It would be her first slumber without them. Her first time waking up that they wouldn’t be there to coddle and fuss and generally irritate the shite out of her. She barely stomached the thought of it.

Granted, the last few years had been different.

Ygritte and Aelthys were her first creation, the Bore whispering instructions through the grief as Okthana did all she could to save them from their fate. It had promised that maintaining them in such a state was the key to healing them later.

There was no healing them, now.

Brand and the others had slaughtered Ygritte and Aelthys in Glynmor without an ounce of pity, no idea what they’d ripped away from her with that single act. Okthana still didn’t know why her guardians were even there in the first place.

A smug, ever-changing face flashed in her mind and her lip peeled back on a silent snarl.

No, she wasn’t absolutely certain of how Ygritte and Aelthys ended up in Thodelebor that day, but she had an inkling of who made it happen.

And now, all of Bordoroth was calling her beloveds dreadbeasts and dreadwyrms, like the mythical monsters from her childhood storybooks, with such derision in their tones.

“E-Eira?”

The sound of her true name snapped Okthana from her murderous thoughts. She caught sight of Caryx’s pinched brow and glanced down to where she was accidentally crushing his hand in her rage.

Okthana dropped him like he’d burned her, swallowing a useless apology. “Come. The clouds are nearly gone.”

She turned from the window and shuffled down a soaring corridor, the home she’d built rising up in sharp obsidian spires and bone slabs—an effigy to her suffering. The Bore had helped her build it, the umbra bending and breaking the land at her command, her emotions shaping the walls and rooms until a fortress stood where bleak nothing had been before.

A place where she’d been able to give Ygritte and Aelthys warmth. Where they’d felt safe enough to start their family, raise their child. And though her pain molded its appearance, her gratitude filled the empty spaces between. Every piece of furniture and solid door and woven blanket was thanks for the sacrifices they made in their loyalty and love for her.

Now, she was seeing them to the Veil, and Okthana wanted to burn the whole place down with them. If not for Caryx, she would have.

Okthana stumbled just before their final turn, a skittering numbness taking over her extremities. Her hand shot out to grip the wall but she was so damned weak that her elbow buckled, and she ended up slamming the upper half of her body against it instead.

Her stint in the Horned City and weeks of trying to coax Brand back to her had taken its toll and more.

From the first moment of her transformation, Bordoroth became a poison in Okthana’s veins. Something about it and her power were at such odds. Such enmity. The need for rest between visits, for communing with the Bore to replenish, was increasing—a fact she detested. And of course, the second she’d dared a short visit home to rest, Brand was stolen from her all over again.

Caryx rushed in to steady her as pain spread like needles up and down her spine. Utterly ridiculous, the two of them. He was barely standing himself.

“Will you bite my head off if I suggest postponing this one last time?” he teased, jostling her with the arm he wrapped around her waist.

“Most likely.”

Caryx huffed. “Predictable. If you truly wanted to terrify me, you’d be nice out loud.”

“Never.” Okthana blew a slow breath through pursed lips, willing her legs to work for just a little longer. “Let’s get this the fuck over with. And don’t you dare try to support me in front of them.”

She detached herself from Caryx and slowly rounded the corner into a sprawling courtyard, the Bore a seething mass of black and boiling embers at its center. To one side, a small crowd waited. Filthy. Hunched. Shivering. Half of them with one foot in the Veil themselves, no matter their age.

Just beyond them, though, was a sight she never wanted to see—two of the very few people she loved in the world laid out on an ivory pyre, the logs torn from the Ghostwood with her own bare hands, their lifeless stares aimed at the open sky.

Her umbra had preserved them for all this time. Filled the holes with pitch. Replaced missing limbs with tar.