“Come to gloat, Gilliad?” He forced the words out, forsaking much needed breath to say them. It mattered somehow.
Gilliad laughed, an emaciated sound. “So you do remember me, Shan. I was beginning to wonder. If you had known Jeren’s identity you could have had a fine revenge. But perhaps you did anyway.”
Shan’s upper lip curled in distaste. The implications in Gilliad’s voice spoke not of love or protection, but jealousy. He said nothing. It didn’t deserve an answer.
“Did you, Shan?” Gilliad stopped right in front of him, looking up into his face. “Did you have my sister? Because you can rest assured, before I put her down, I had yours.”
Shan exploded, trying to tear himself apart to reach the arrogant bastard. He didn’t care, not anymore. The chains holding him snapped taut, strained, but held firm, the manacles digging into his flesh, his body drawn almost to its breaking point.
From far off, Jeren’s voice came back to him, exhausted but still defiant, ringing out across the snow plains.
You’ve never faced it, have you? Powerlessness, hopelessness. How could I have dreamed you’d understand?
He understood now, understood too well. His curses reverberated like tortured music off the stone walls. His voice alone was free.
That was how the Lord of River Holt wanted it.
As fearless as his prisoner was helpless, Gilliad caught Shan’s throat in an unnaturally strong grip, pulling him closer. Shan’s arms nearly wrenched from the sockets. The pain sent his head into a whorl of darkness intercut with spots of blinding light until his sight returned. Gilliad’s black eyes gleamed malevolently, the gaze consuming. Like a film of oil, the surface of his eyes glistened with the residue of magic. With magic came insanity, all the Fey’na knew that. You only had to look at their distant cousins, the Fell.
Shan had loathed Gilliad from the first, when the boy arrived in Sheninglas, so arrogant towards the “savages” who thought they could help him. No, Shan had made no secret of his feelings. But Falinar had told him Gilliad was just desperately afraid, that his head had been filled his horror stories. They just needed to show him that none of it was true. Shan’s sister had always had an open, giving heart. Falinar took pity on the Holter, befriended him.
Better to befriend a rabid dog.
What had caused Ariah to send the Scion of Jern home? Shan no longer remembered. Too many transgressions jumbled together—disrespect, trespass on sacred land, brawling, a vicious attack on a fellow student…every act bleeding out from the wound of blind conceit inside him, the belief that he was alone among a people far beneath him. Hard to believe that this was Felan’s descendent. Shan thought it enough to ignore him, and to pray his sister would come to her senses soon.
But he couldn’t remember the actual event that made Ariah exile the True Blood heir. Logical thoughts disintegrated, just as they had then, lost in the black rage that followed finding Falinar’s mutilated corpse.
“Fa cared for you,” Shan said at last, a faint protest when faced with what he knew, what he could see.
Gilliad’s eyes gleamed in what looked like delight. “She screamed, but we were too far away for anyone to hear. She begged, but I told her it was no good. I had no choice but to kill her afterwards. I had to shut her up. They cast me out anyway. Ariah called me a monster…it was only right that I be true to the totem she gave me.”
A monster indeed. Ariah always spoke true.
“You’re insane.”
“Insane?” Gilliad smiled his thinnest smile. “My sister called me mad too. Maldrine told me that she would betray me, and he was right. It’s the nature of the True Blood, to betray. It’s a shame no one warned you.” Sighing, he reached for the black-handled knife still strapped to Shan’s side. It had amused him to leave Shan all his weapons knowing that he couldn’t reach them. Gilliad ran his fingertips along the blade.
“Your sect knife, one of the things that mark you as Shistra-Phail.” Gilliad grabbed a fistful of his braids and jerked his head forwards. “And these of course. This is what we’re going to do, Shan. I’m going to come here every few hours and do this.” The blade flashed silver in the near dark and Gilliad pulled back his hand. A severed braid hung from his fist like a wilted vine.
Shan’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t dreamed that a man who had once been his sect brother could ever do this. But he hadn’t accounted for Gilliad’s hatred, or his obsession with his own sister.
To be captured by an enemy was dishonour, but one that could be reversed by the enemy’s death. To be captured and have the braids taken…
Had they done this to Haledren? Had they taken his honour before they took his life?
“Is it the physical act or the symbolism, do you think, that’ll drive you mad?” Gilliad wrapped the severed braid around the knife, pulling it tightly and watching the hair part against the blade. “We were too quick with Haledren, too eager.” He reached for another, pulled it taut and cut again. “Shorn of all his braids at once, he clawed out his eyes. He ranted and railed and begged for the sect leaders to kill him. Screamed for people who weren’t even here. Why, Shan? Why does it affect your kind so?”
He stopped, his head tilted to one side, as if listening to something. Shan could almost imagine he too could hear Haledren’s pitiful pleas as they echoed off these very walls.
G’lara me, G’lara me, m’Rashine.
Tears stung Shan’s eyes and he found the same words rearing up in the back of his tight throat.
Kill me, kill me, sect mother.
But there was no one here, no member of his sect to offer him that release. No help in this dank place of the True Blood traitors. He was already one of the lost, doomed in the dank shadows of this Holt. Anala was gone. He would never see Jeren again. He was lost.
“I will not make the same mistake with you.” Gilliad uncurled his fist and let the braids fall to the damp floor. “I’ll be back soon to harvest another,” he said. “And with each harvest we’ll see if the great Shanith Al-Fallion doesn’t begin to lose his mind, one perfect silver braid at a time.”
He slid the blade back into the scabbard and patted it against Shan’s leg. It felt like a shard of ice.
Gilliad bared his teeth in a vile grin. “You wait, Shan. Haledren nearly frightened Jeren out of her wits. At first I thought that’s why she ran. You’ll give the word mad a new definition when I’m finished with you. And then, and only then, I’ll give you back to my beloved sister and see what she makes of you.”
He walked away, his boots crushing Shan’s severed hair into the wet filth of the cell.
Shan hung his head, felt the stinging in the back of his eyes and the bridge of his nose, the harsh constriction in his throat. Desperately, he tried to put thoughts of Jeren from his mind.
Jeren stayed quiet and obedient as the maids fussed over her. Her hair shone like the coat of Gilliad’s prized hound, and the sapphire necklace around her throat felt like a collar. They placed the fur cloak on her shoulders, secured with heavy gold brooches. It dragged at her, weighing her down, draining her strength away. She sat by the window, gazing at the darkening sky without seeing a thing.
With Shan held prisoner in River Holt, what choice did she have? If she rebelled against Gilliad’s whims, she doomed him.