The Half King

15

They made camp with hours to spare before sunset, but the distant screeching of harpy vultures reminded them that daylight was no guarantee of safety on the blighted mountain. No sooner had they tethered their horses and pitched the first tent than a shadow passed over the sun. They glanced up at a pair of dark, leathery wings spanning at least ten men in width, each tipped by a razor-sharp talon. It was lucky that Father Padron had recovered enough strength to cast a protective enchantment over the camp.

After that, tensions unwound and postures relaxed. Even General Petros seemed lighter, letting loose an occasional smile as he helped Nero clean the ram they had killed earlier in the day. When the mutton was done roasting, the general carved the beast and offered the first serving to Father Padron.

“With your permission, Your Majesty,” General Petros added.

“By all means,” Kian said, sweeping a hand. “Our high priest has earned it.”

Father Padron accepted the honor, but he elected to eat inside his tent, where he could spend the rest of the afternoon in meditation. As soon as he excused himself, Nero released a breath and unclenched his shoulders. Clearly, not everyone felt safer under the Order’s protection.

The group gathered around the roasting pit and swapped stories while they ate. General Petros had the most to say, recounting his favorite hunting tales as he paced a circuit to burn off his perpetual anger. Cerise sat in between Daerick and Nero. On the other side of the fire, Kian reclined against a tree stump with his long legs crossed at the ankles.

Every time Cerise glanced at Kian, she found him watching her. It wasn’t an absent stare or the blank look of someone deep in thought. He wasn’t peering through her or even at her. More like inside her. And he didn’t bother trying to avert his gaze when she caught him. If anything, his focus deepened. He held her with his eyes and made every soft part of her dance. The contact was so intense that she only lasted a moment before she had to glance down and feed Blue another slice of meat from her plate.

“You don’t like my mutton?” Nero pointed at her untouched food. “Is there no pleasing you?”

“I’m not hungry,” she told him, which was true. Maybe the heat was to blame, or the stress from the journey. Less than a day ago, she had bloodied her blade for the first time. That would crimp anyone’s appetite.

“Eat,” General Petros muttered while chewing. His gaze darted to her full plate, and for a moment, his eyes went wild. But he clenched them shut and breathed deeply through his nose. His eyes were still closed when he growled, “You do us no favors by starving yourself in penance for whatever sins you think you’ve committed.”

“Penance?” Cerise repeated. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

The general fixed his gaze on the fire. “Lanna, my woman at the temple, does it, too. She punishes herself for loving me. It began with fasting, and when that wasn’t enough, she moved on to cutting her flesh. There’s a new scar every time I see her. She used to hide them from me, but now she’s run out of places—” He cut off, clenching his teeth and his fists in a struggle for control. “I hate what they taught her, what they taught all of you. For twisting her mind and making her feel ashamed—” He shut down again. The skin on his head was so flushed it nearly blended with his tattooed flames.

Cerise didn’t know what to say to him. He loved an oracle who was slowly killing herself with the guilt of loving him back. There were no words to fix that. She wondered for the hundredth time if the Order had lied to her about sins of the flesh dimming the Sight. The general’s mistress had incredible power; meanwhile, a chaste second-born like Cerise had no gift. Could it be that the act of love made the Sight stronger, not weaker? But if that was the case, then why would the Order try to weaken a woman’s ability to serve the goddess? That would benefit no one. Perhaps the Order was right and the general’s mistress would’ve been even more powerful if she had refused physical love.

Cerise hated that she had no way of knowing. And she would have to swallow her feelings for Kian until she did.

“I promise I’m not starving myself,” was all she could think to say.

The general drove one fist into his opposite hand. He muttered an apology to the king and then charged out of sight.

“Should we go after him?” Cerise asked. “He’s outside the line of protection.”

Kian shook his head. “Any beast that crosses his path will find itself relieved of its limbs. Let him be.” He nodded at her plate. “And please do eat.”

She tore off a bite and chewed mechanically. The mutton felt as greasy and dense as the jackrabbit had the night before. When she swallowed it, her stomach churned. She forced down one more bite and had to spit the next mouthful into the fire.

“I can’t,” she said over the saliva flooding her mouth. She pushed her plate to Blue and let him have the rest. “I think the jackrabbit made me sick. I haven’t felt right since.”

Nero cast her a disbelieving glance. “You didn’t eat enough jackrabbit to make a bird sick.”

“Maybe these will help.” Kian drew his tin of stomach soothers from his pocket. He started to toss it to her, but he changed his mind and walked around the fire. He crouched down by her side and placed the tin in her palm, curling both hands around hers. It was such a tender gesture that for one moment, she forgot that she even had a stomach. “The sun will set soon,” he murmured to her. “Will you allow me to escort you to your tent?”

A smile lit her heart. “I would love that.”

He extended a palm to help her stand, and then he kept her hand and settled it on his rounded bicep. He guided her the short distance to the outskirts of camp while Blue trotted along behind them. When they reached her tent, Kian held open one of the canvas flaps for her and ushered her inside. Cerise ducked low and inched her way to the blanket pallet she had made on the floor. She didn’t expect Kian to follow her, but she was glad when he did.

“Lie down,” he whispered, closing the tent flaps behind him.

She couldn’t help but grin. “Are you going to tuck me in?”

“Would you like that?” he countered in a low, wicked voice that caused her pulse to hitch. “Would you like me to put you to bed, my lady of the temple? Or would you prefer that I take you to bed?”

Her pulse quickened. The king had never spoken so brazenly to her before. The mere suggestion of Kian in her bed stirred her blood and sent it rushing to the juncture of her thighs. She didn’t know how to answer him. She was no good at this game of teasing and wordplay.

“Lie down,” he repeated with that smile of his.

So she did as he asked, settling face up on top of her blankets, as the lingering heat was still too thick to allow for a cover. She felt Blue curl up against her, but she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Kian, who now knelt down on the canvas floor and leaned over her, propping himself on one hand while using his other hand to brush the hair back from her face. The lapels of his shirt hung open just wide enough to give her a glimpse of the glossy, black curls that led from his chest to his abdomen. She recalled from memory the way those curls encircled his navel and created a trail to the thicket between his thighs. She could still picture him naked, and the mental image forced her to release a trembling sigh.

Kian clearly noticed her reaction because he had been watching her mouth. His eyes remained fixed there as he slowly trailed an index finger down the slope of her nose and continued all the way to her bottom lip, where he skimmed her flesh with his fingertip and peered down at her with more longing than a blossom for the sun.

Her breath caught. No one had ever given her that look before. She wanted to feel him, to taste his mouth, to gently sink her teeth into the side of his neck. But when she reached up to lace her fingers through his hair and pull him closer to her, he began to dissolve at the edges, and one blink later, the only trace that remained of him was a pile of clothing.

Sleep didn’t come easily that night. Cerise was plagued by unmet desire and bad dreams, along with a persistent ache in her stomach. When she awoke the next morning, her tent was empty except for Blue. She had hoped to see Kian at sunrise, but she had been so exhausted from a night of tossing and turning that she had slept through breakfast.

Not that she could have eaten. The sight of sand melon, oatcakes, and mutton jerky made her insides harden like a stone. She could barely tolerate feeding Blue. After giving him a few slices of jerky, she had to ask Daerick to finish the job. As for Kian, he was nowhere to be found. She learned that he had gone hunting with General Petros and Nero.

She barely saw Kian during the day’s ride. Instead of leading the caravan, he elected to ride behind the wagon, saying so little to the group that no one noticed when the curse had taken him until his horse wandered off the trail. It was hours later when he reappeared. He said nothing to her then, either, and she didn’t know why. That night, she couldn’t manage a single bite of dinner. Kian continued watching her from the other side of the fire, though with more concern now than longing. There was a distance between them that she didn’t know how to close.

He didn’t offer to escort her to her tent after dinner. By the following day, she began to worry there was something wrong with her. She had never felt like this before, like her stomach belonged in a different body. At times it seemed there was a fish thrashing inside her trying to get out.

“Maybe you have a parasite,” Daerick mused that morning, after she had discreetly called him into her tent to ask for advice. She had considered asking Father Padron for help, but her inner voice warned that if she truly did have fire in her blood, he might be able to detect it. “You’re new to Mortara,” Daerick went on. “So you wouldn’t have developed the same resistance that the rest of us have.” He frowned. “But you’re missing the main symptoms.”

“How do we know for sure?” she asked.

Nero poked his head through the tent flaps. Obviously, he’d been eavesdropping. He handed her a tin cup and said, “Make water in here. I’ll be able to tell.”

She raised a brow. “You want me to urinate…in your drinking cup?”

“I’ll wash it,” he said, shrugging.

Eventually, she gave him a sample, and he took it off to a secret place to do some manner of testing on it. He returned with an empty cup and a wrinkled forehead. He said he couldn’t find anything wrong with her.

She could barely stay in the saddle as they traveled through the day, and when they stopped to make camp, she wanted to do nothing but curl up with Blue inside her tent. The thought of food repulsed her. Even water tasted sour. She refused to drink anything until Father Padron threatened to compel her to do it. Then she held her flagon to her lips and tried to force herself to swallow. The liquid sputtered out of her mouth. She couldn’t get it down.

“I’m sorry, Cerise,” Father Padron said. “I hate to do this.”

But he did it anyway.

His energy filled the air, and then, like a puppet with its strings pulled, her body moved according to his will. She swallowed one rancid mouthful after another, unable to breathe except when he allowed it. She had never been compelled before, and she couldn’t think of a worse violation of her body. When it was over, she made drinking her only goal so he didn’t feel the need to do it again.

By the third day, she gave up any pretense of wellness and asked to travel in the wagon. She had just settled in among the folded tents and the sacks of oats when Kian strode toward her, flanked by Daerick and General Petros. The king moved with the sort of purpose that told her he had made a decision—one she wouldn’t like.

“We’re turning back,” he said. “I’m taking you home to see my physician.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he cut her off with a lifted palm. “The Petros Blade has waited for a thousand years. It’s not going anywhere. There are other faithful servants of the goddess who can get the sunset runes for us. We just need to find one.”

“We’ll try again,” the general added. “While you heal.”

Cerise shook her head. Kian had mere moons to live unless she broke the curse. There was no time to hunt for another person who may or may not have the purity of faith to earn the sunset runes, and in her heart, she doubted that Father Padron could do it. To turn back now would mean failure. They had to keep going. Cerise scrambled for a lie to explain her symptoms, an excuse that no man would question.

The answer presented itself.

“I was hoping to keep this private,” she said. She avoided their eyes, doing her best to look embarrassed as she pressed a hand to her lower abdomen. “This is what happens during my courses. Some women have a hard time of it, you know.”

She glanced up to find their expressions blank.

“I promise I’ll be fine in a few days.” She made a pained face. “The cramps are the worst part. They start in my back and move around to the front. Sometimes the pain is so severe that I get sick to my stomach.”

That was all it took to set the caravan in motion again.

And so passed another day.

Cerise was almost certain that she didn’t have a parasite, because her symptoms had changed. Instead of the sensation of a thrashing fish in her stomach, she felt pressure rising behind her ribs. She kept patting her chest to release a bubble that didn’t exist.

To add to her troubles, Blue had grown so large that his sling wouldn’t hold him. His head came up past her knees. Now that he was the size of a hound, he could jump in and out of the wagon. Cerise couldn’t stop him from running away from the caravan, which he did several times a day. Often, he stayed gone for hours before returning with a dirty root or a sprig of leaves. She finally realized what he was doing when he nudged her hand toward the plants. It was the Mortara brush hound in him. He had sensed that she was sick, and he had brought remedies to make her feel better.

“My brilliant boy.” She hugged him close while turning the roots over in her hand to study them. “I don’t suppose you can tell me what to do with these.”

“We’ll give them to Nero,” Kian said from the other side of the canopy, where he had been riding so quietly she hadn’t known he was there. “If anyone knows how to use them, it will be him.”

When the caravan stopped for water, Nero ground up the roots and steeped them with the leaves to make the foulest tea Cerise had ever tasted. The drink didn’t spark her appetite or shrink the bubble in her chest, but it sent her into a deep, tranquil sleep for the rest of the day, which was the next best thing.

For the first time since the trip had begun, she felt no pain or fear. Instead, she dreamed that someone had carried her out of the wagon and into her tent and placed her atop a bundle of blankets. She crouched at the foot of her own body and studied herself. Her cheekbones were too sharp, and her eyelids were slightly sunken. Blue was asleep with his head resting on her thigh. He heard the sound of footsteps and jerked awake, but he noticed it was only Kian, and he yawned before laying his head down again.

The king patted Blue and stood next to Cerise, unaware of her dreaming body standing right beside him. His gaze was fixed on her sleeping form. She could tell from the way he kept rubbing his face and forgetting to breathe that he was worried about her. She tried to comfort him with a touch, but her hand wasn’t solid, and it passed through him.

He knelt down and placed a kiss on her sleeping forehead. The kiss was no more than a brush of contact, but Cerise touched her own skin and wished that she could feel it, wished that he could kiss her when she was awake.

The king glanced outside the tent at the last glimmer of sunset, and his body began to curl into shadow. She had seen him vanish before, but this time was different. Now a portal appeared in the air behind him, round and wide and swirling with gray mist. As Kian disappeared and his clothes fell to the floor, the doorway flashed, and all of a sudden, he was on the other side of it, naked and fully formed and walking away.

Slowly, the portal began to close. Cerise crept closer to the mist, wondering if she should try to enter it. This might be her only chance to find out where the king went at night. She glanced at her sleeping body and knew Blue would keep her safe. So she gulped a breath, stepped through the shrinking doorway, and followed Kian into the darkness.

On the other side of the portal, she became instantly solid—she could tell from the press of stone beneath her shoes and the air caressing her skin. Unlike Kian, she had kept her clothes, though she didn’t know why. She stood still and let her eyes adjust to the cool, colorless world.

A feeble glow emanated from above, like the moon filtered through a veil of clouds. It was enough to show her that nothing grew there, not a single weed or shrub. There was no dirt for anything to grow in . All that existed was rock—tall, gray slabs forming passageways that sprawled in all directions. She couldn’t tell what the place was supposed to be. From her vantage point, it seemed like an enormous labyrinth. She looked down and noticed a glossy path on the ground, buffed smooth by countless feet. She hugged herself against a chill and stepped forward to see where it led.

The first passageway was deserted, so she continued around two more corners, where she reached an open courtyard strewn with crumbling marble benches arranged around a long-dry fountain. At the opposite end of the courtyard, four arched doorways led in different directions. She approached each one, finding them vacant. At the fourth doorway, she noticed a distant sound—a low drone like the buzzing of insects. Curious, she followed the noise for quite some time, turning corner after corner until her feet ached from rubbing against her sandals.

The louder the noise grew, the slower her steps became—not from the pain of walking but because she began to realize that insects weren’t making the sound.

It was human voices, hundreds of them, all groaning in a harmony of anguish.

At one point, she stopped.

Every instinct urged her to turn back. But she forced herself onward, thinking of Kian. If he could endure this every night, then she could experience it one time.

Before long, she happened upon two young men…if she could call them that, for each of them seemed to have lost whatever had made him a person. Their skin was waxy, their cheeks sunken. They looked at her as she passed, but there was no thought behind their eyes. The men swayed from side to side, wailing deliriously.

Around the next corner was a young woman on her hands and knees, sweeping aside imaginary objects as if searching for something. The woman froze, seeming to forget what she was looking for, and then she lowered her head and released a racking sob that was so heartrending—so completely devoid of hope—that Cerise had to blot the tears from her eyes.

None of the men or women looked older than twenty, and all of them had the dark skin and hair of the Mortara line. Legends had long claimed that firstborn Mortaras didn’t die, that they remained in the shadows forever. Now that Cerise had seen for herself that the rumors were true, she wished she could erase the knowledge from her mind. She didn’t want to know of such suffering. She didn’t want to see the evidence of how wrathful the goddess could be. It simply wasn’t fair.

Cerise backed away from the woman and retraced her steps to the vacant courtyard to try a different passage. She didn’t know how long she wandered. Hours must have gone by, because her eyelids were heavy, and twice she tripped over her own feet. She had nearly given up when she passed the entrance to a stone room, and there was Kian: his head down, sitting naked in the corner with both knees drawn to his chest.

He had never looked so small.

A piece of her heart fell away when she imagined all the nights he had spent like this. She crouched down in front of him and sighed. “No wonder you need stomach soothers.”

His head snapped up.

“Oh,” she said, waving a hand. “Can you see me?”

He stood up slowly and clung to the wall, inching away from her while shaking his head in horror. “No,” he breathed. “No, no, no.”

“Kian, it’s me.” She touched her chest. “It’s Cerise.”

He clapped a hand over his mouth. His gaze shimmered as if he might cry.

“It’s just me,” she added softly.

“I knew it,” he choked out. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you. Daerick told me you were lying about your courses. He has teenage sisters; he knows about these things.”

“Kian, it’s—”

“I waited too long.” Still pressed to the wall, he raked a trembling hand through his hair. He seemed to be talking to himself now. “I should’ve taken you home when I had the chance. I knew it in my gut, but I didn’t listen because I wanted the Petros Blade.”

She moved toward him cautiously. “It’s all right. I followed you here from my tent. I was dreaming. You couldn’t see me, but I could see you. I watched you kiss my forehead. Do you remember doing that?”

Something within him seemed to break. He closed the distance between them and took her face roughly in his hands, tilting their foreheads together until the only thing that separated their mouths was a mingled breath.

Her insides sprouted wings and took flight. Her head was dizzy with the scent of him. She lifted a hand to touch him, hesitating once, twice, before she rested her fingertips on his chest and skimmed the soft, dark curls there. Her breathing shuddered. So did his. Swallowing hard, she smoothed her hands over his shoulders and clasped them behind his neck. With one small step, she leaned into him until every part of her body was flush with his.

The closeness was too much and not nearly enough.

She raised her face and parted her lips without meaning to. She wanted him to kiss her more than she wanted her heart to beat, but then she remembered why she couldn’t.

A worshipper of pure faith .

To earn the sunset runes, she had to prove herself worthy. She couldn’t take the chance of damning Kian to this hell forever. She turned her face aside, peering at the stone walls because she couldn’t look him in the eyes. The moment sobered her enough to remind her of another reason not to kiss him: he’d been avoiding her.

“I don’t understand you,” she murmured. “Your spirit is still drawn to me, but you’ve been colder than ever. You haven’t said a kind word to me in days. It’s not fair to treat me like that—like you don’t even care for me anymore.”

He moved one hand to the curve of her neck while gripping her lower back and crushing their bodies together. “I do care,” he whispered in a pained voice. “I want you, Cerise, more than I’ve let myself want anything in a long time. Then I imagined spending eternity here, missing you, tortured by the memory of you. I thought it would be worse to have you and lose you than to never have you at all. But now look. I’ve lost you, and it hurts so badly I can’t stand it.”

She gazed up at him and found his eyelids pinched shut. “You haven’t lost me.”

He whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Kian, look at me.” She cupped his cheek and told him, “I’m not sorry.”

He exhaled into a sad smile. His hands tightened around her as if he meant to pull her inside him. “My sweet, brave lady of the temple. That’s because you only just arrived.” He stroked her skin with his thumbs and added in a choked whisper, “You don’t know where you are.” A tear slid down his cheek, hot and wet against her fingertips. “You don’t know that you’re dead.”