The breeze shifted, bringing with it the drumming he had heard before. It thudded loudly now. He looked around, but saw only the face of the night. He turned back, thinking it his imagination, until he heard Ba’Sel shout a wild cry of warning.
“No!” Zera said in an anguished voice.
Leitos flinched when she rushed forward. Throat closing tight, he danced back, but not nearly fast enough. She slammed against him, her empty hands pressed to his shoulders, squeezing. Her gaze widened in dismay. A pained, breathless gasp drifted past her parted lips.
“Zera?” he muttered. Then cried out, “Zera!”
The scent of leather was strong on her, and that of faded flowers. Her green eyes flared inches from his own, brighter and more innocent than he had ever seen them. One of his hands rested against her hip, the other was lodged between them. He felt the suppleness of her flesh, the warmth of it against his own. He felt something else, a sensation he did not immediately recognize in his distress.
Zera fought for breath that would not come. A tremor rippled her flesh. “I … I … love you. Please … believe me. Tell me … Leitos….”
With each breath, her heart fluttered against the edge of his fist. That once unrecognizable sensation, a terrible damp heat, washed over his hand.
“Zera?” he murmured. He abandoned all his fear and loathing for what she was and, the dark chasm finally crossed, he saw only the woman in his arms.
Her eyes dimmed, and another tremor convulsed her limbs. A slow line, black in the night, sketched its way from the corner of her mouth and over the delicate curve of her chin. It grew fat, heavy with a portent he refused to admit. He had envisioned that drop before, had feared it when dreaming in that forsaken city of the dead, even as he feared it now. The drop swelled, became a single tear that could not endure its impossible weight.
“I do love you,” Leitos sobbed, willing her to hear.
The bloody drop fell. Another drop formed, its course altered by Zera’s faint smile, but it fell unnoticed against the blood pouring from her pierced heart over his knuckled fist-the same fist that held the dagger given him by Adham, which he had tucked into his belt and forgotten.
The shouts of the approaching warriors grew louder. It was a sound so far away, buried under a roaring inside his skull akin to the flooded river that had nearly drowned him. That raging tumult grew until there was no other sound in the world. It filled him, then flooded out in a single, tortured cry.
His breath spent, Leitos dropped to his knees, cradling Zera to his chest. Her smile melted away and her eyes drifted shut, as if she were dropping off into a much needed slumber. Tears scorched his cheeks as he looked upon her. A memory that might have been someone else’s swam through his consciousness. He could not remember where they had been, or what they had been doing, only that Zera had smiled at him. He had feared then that smile would bring him to his death. And so it had.
Chapter 31
After the black of night, the rising sun set the sea afire. Turquoise waters lapped the sides of a handful of long, slender boats, each propelled by sweeping oars toward the hazy mass of the Singing Islands. Leitos huddled in the bow of one, alone with a shrouded Zera. Her face remained uncovered. Leitos traced her cool cheek with a finger still covered in her dried blood, a haunted light smoldering in his eyes.
The others had wanted to leave her, but he refused. Had it not been for Ba’Sel and Adham, the remaining Brothers of the Crimson Shield, with Ulmek the most vocal among them, would have left him and her to the desert and the hunting Alon’mahk’lar. Had they abandoned him, he would have died or been taken captive. Either end would have suited him. Yet he lived, where she had died by his hand. A void had opened within his soul, a void now filling with unspeakable darkness. Instead of shying from that invasive blight, he immersed himself in it, used it as armor and shield against the remorse he could not fully face.
“We must speak,” Adham said quietly, so that only Leitos heard. Swells rocking the small vessel had masked his grandfather’s movements to the bow. Holding to the side of the boat, Adham positioned himself between Leitos and the others, just at Zera’s feet.
Leitos turned, his features blank. Right now he did not want to talk with anyone. What could there possibly be to say?
He relented only because his grandfather looked worried. While an emptiness had taken hold of him, he wanted it to stay there, his secret from the world, even from Adham. “I suppose we must,” Leitos said, failing to hide the wooden quality of his voice.
“It pains me to see you grieve, but.…” Adham trailed off with a probing look.
“But she was a creature born of Alon’mahk’lar,” Leitos finished for him. “I know this, but all I see is her as she is now. I can still hear her laughter, see the light of her eyes. I smell the scent of flowers on her hair. That is how I will remember her,” he finished, knowing even then that he spoke a lie. He could no more separate Zera from what she was than he could wish a stone to become bread. And that was the crux of his dilemma: he had not fallen in love with a mere enemy, but a foe to all humankind, a murdering device in the employ of the Faceless One. Trying to reconcile those two sides of Zera, and his feelings for her, left him troubled, confused. Despite it all, he had loved her.
“You loved her … the woman you thought she was,” Adham said, speaking aloud Leitos’s thoughts.
Leitos nodded slowly. “She was human … some part of her, at least.”
Even now, hours after she had died in his arms, grief struck him anew, as if for the first time. Her presence in the world, her companionship, had given him a sense of quiet joy and the strength to overcome the entrenched mindset of a born slave.
“Any love is a blessing in a world filled with so much malice. I cannot, nor will I, condemn your love for the member of a race bent on our destruction,” Adham said. “But all love, no matter the face it wears, is bittersweet, as every present delight is tempered by the future agony of inescapable loss. Hold fast to your fond memory of her … it will keep the darkness at bay.”
Leitos almost mentioned that it was too late to avoid the darkness with which he had already become fast friends, but instead he kept his secret.
“Why does it matter if I am the last of the Valara line?” Leitos asked, wanting to turn the subject of their conversation.
Adham cast his gaze upon the nearing islands, his face contemplative. He has changed so much. Impossible though it seemed, every hour spent free of the slavemasters and the mines gave Adham back more of his youthful vigor. The day he had risen up against the Alon’mahk’lar, Adham had looked ancient, weak, his body and flesh utterly spent. Now twenty years seemed to have fallen from him.
In the continued silence, Leitos looked toward the islands and waited for his grandfather to speak. In the newborn sunlight, the islands’ naturally reddish hue was overstated, and the rocky protrusions jutted from the sea like skulls coated in blood. As the bobbing flotilla drew nearer, the islands’ namesake became obvious. Wind off the Sea of Sha’uul whipped through hollows and rocky outcrops to create a mournful wailing, a morose song to fit his mood. White birds wheeled over the scant greenery growing atop the islands’ rounded crowns. Gulls, Leitos thought. He supposed Adham must have told him of such birds.
Under the steady creak and splash of pulling oars, the boats drew nearer to the main island. It proved larger than he had first suspected. Staggered cliffs and sharp outcrops dominated the side facing the sun, while the other side had collapsed into a jumble of boulders that eventually sank beneath the frothy blue-green waters. The gulls’ cries carried well over the crashing waves. Other birds plunged into the sea like spears. They surfaced moments later, flapped vigorously, and soared aloft with tiny silver fish dangling from their beaks. Leitos had nearly forgotten what he asked before Adham finally responded.