The Destroyer Book 2 (58 page)

But I did.

She tried again, swinging her feet and flapping her wings in a joint effort, like a child trying to kick a leather ball by moving her arms back while her leg kicked. My grip slid down an inch and I felt the sharp edge of her talon cut into the palm of my bare hand.

"Die Kaiyer!" she screamed into my head again as she dove. My stomach flew up into my throat, and I wondered if those tiny, glittering objects beneath us were fireballs from my army.

Fucking shit on a dragon's ass we were high, I meant to say, but I only gasped when my hands slipped away from the talon. For a precious second I felt weightless and then I tumbled. Recatolusti’catri screamed in victory and climbed higher as I drifted toward the earth. I spun around a few times in free fall while my stomach caught up to me. The ground was fast approaching and I knew there was no way out of this predicament.

I hoped the dragon considered her participation in this war finished. The O'Baarni would be victorious tonight. My death would be worth the sacrifice.

I thought of my generals' speeches in my tent before we had left for the battle. Their words moved me to tears knowing I would not see them tomorrow.

Especially Shlara's words.

Maybe I had always known this would happen?

Maybe I knew that I would die before this war ended. Perhaps that was why I resisted her. Why I put off being her lover for so long. Why I hadn't wanted to talk to my generals about what life would be like after we destroyed the Elvens.

It did not matter. I died the day Iolarathe killed my father and brother. Every step since then had been about revenge. It had been a quest to right a wrong that could never be fixed. Iolarathe knew she would die this day. That was why she had tried to negotiate with me.

My last thoughts were of her when I hit the ground. After all, dreaming was as close as we came to death before we actually died.

When I dreamed it was always of Iolarathe.

I sat up with a choked-off gasp. In my dream I felt the last part of the impact with the ground and the pain had been horrific. My body seized uncontrollably as it remembered the collision. I tried to roll back my tongue into my throat but I ended up biting it anyway and the taste of my own coppery blood filled my mouth like a cup of foul water.

I forced myself to focus on something else, anything else that would bring my muscles under my control. The ceiling of my room in Castle Nia twisted and turned, as if I looked at it from the bottom of a lake. My head hurt again, like it had when I was at the fire with Vernine and Isslata. Blackness attacked the edges of my sight.

“Fuck!” I said out loud. It was about four hours after lunch and Isslata would be here at any moment. If I passed out on the cold stone floor, or fainted, or did whatever I did when these black outs happened, she would ask me uncomfortable questions.

“You are still alive.” I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. But I recognized the voice.

“Iolarathe?” I sprayed blood on the inside of my visor when I tried to say her name.

My helmet? I smelled the leather and the metal of it, but how was I wearing my armor in my room in Nia?

“Can you move?” I felt pressure on my chest plate. It was a soft shaking that turned my head to the left. I saw her ornate, armored leggings and boots. They were engraved with thousands of small tree branches and leaves. Each leaf looked like it was another type of metal that had been attached to the gold plates with loving perfection. The ends of her sword sheaths rubbed into the grass next to a wicked-looking pole arm that the woman tossed on the ground beside me.

“I’m going to take your helmet off, Kaiyer. Do not move,” she commanded, but I heard concern in her voice. I felt my helmet twist and then it lifted free of my head with a rush of cool air. It was morning somehow. I was still lying on the floor of my room, but I could see the sunlight of late dawn before it turned into early morning. Her hair hung down into my face as she leaned over me from her crouched position.

She removed the armored mask and her beautiful face was only inches from mine. It had dried blood on it, as if she had caught the spray of someone else’s artery. The dangling strands of her hair tickled all of my senses and reminded me of the countless hours we had spent in the hay of the stables lifetimes ago. I tried to move my arms, I needed to touch her, to know that this was real and not a memory.

Wasn’t this a memory? Isslata would be here soon. I was in Nia. I had to find Nadea.

“You fell like a star. Like a burning black star. My troops are holding a retreat, but we won’t last. Your armies have broken us.” Her face looked like it had when I declined her proposal yesterday. Not yesterday. Thousands of years ago.

“How did you get here?” I coughed out. It was dry, so my body must have healed the bite I inflicted upon my tongue. I didn’t understand how she stood in this castle. Wasn’t she dead?

Wasn’t I dead?

“I rode for an hour north to where I thought you fell.” She smiled now and her gloved hands brushed my cheek. Her fingers slipped across my skin and I figured I was covered in my own blood. “It is the end. My people are no more. I wanted to celebrate my failure at the scene of your death.” Her hands moved back and stroked my hair. This also felt sticky and wet. I had probably hemorrhaged in my armor when I landed and somehow healed through the damage.

“But you are not dead. This leaves me with a difficult decision.” She smiled and I was reminded of when she had told me to clean her feet. Her lips were deep red and contrasted with her white skin in a way that made my own mouth water.

“Did you kill the dragon?” She raised a coppery eyebrow and licked her lips. All of her kind constantly licked their lips, but when she did it my heart fluttered instead of beating with rage.

“Recatolusti’catri?” I felt my arms and hips again. The fingers on my left hand grabbed the stone tile of my room’s floor.

“You know her name?” Iolarathe kneeled down and pushed my head on top of her legs. I saw her face easier now and she didn’t have to crouch.

“Did she return to the battle?” I asked instead of answering. My voice was getting stronger.

“No. She carried you away. Then you fell. I thought you killed her.”

“I don’t remember. She shook me loose I think.” My brain was muddy and the feeling of her armored legs and her gloved hands on my skull distracted me.

“That makes the decision easier.” She smiled in sadness.

“Why did you kill them?” I asked. I was the boy again who had collapsed at her feet along with their bodies in front of the smithy. Her wicked smile came to my memory and I heard her tell them to take me away.

“It would be impossible to explain in our last few moments together. Will you believe me if I say I didn’t desire their deaths?” She tried to plead with me yesterday, but now she looked deflated.

“It didn’t seem that way at the time. It seemed that you took joy in strangling Leotol.” I felt anger returning. I clutched my hand against the soft dirt I had smashed. Yes. I was getting stronger.

“I never knew his name.” She frowned and the sadness looked sincere. “All these years and I didn’t know the name of your brother or father.” She brushed her hair back so that it didn’t dangle in my face anymore. I felt the need to kill her again, yet I did not mind the long tresses filling my senses.

“Kai was my father’s name,” I spat out.

“Our kind enjoys killing, as does yours, Kaiyer.” Her right hand caressed the hair above my brow and her left pointed to the skulls emblazoned on the chest piece of my massive armor. “I made the wrong decision back then. At the time, I felt like it was the correct one, but I have come to regret my choice. I’ve regretted it every day since then.” She looked down at me and her silver eyes hid behind the thick veil of her long reddish lashes.

“It has been more than a fair exchange hasn’t it? The lives of your brother and father for my whole race?” She sneered suddenly but her hands continued to gently brush across my face.

“What about the others? We’ve been your slaves for our entire existence.” I felt my body ready for battle.

“That is not true. You don’t know the truth of the past. We were your servants back before your history was written. Before that, we both heeded the Gods.” She frowned.

“I don’t know what you speak of.”

“No. Why would you?” She slowly lowered my head and pushed herself away from me. I sat up by using my arms to press into the grass, but my legs didn’t want to work in my armor. I looked to my left and saw the door to my room and the stone walls of the castle, but the scene was like a faded picture reflected in a glass window.

“It would not suit your agenda.” She turned and walked toward her horse. The beast was a stark contrast to my own mount. It was white, sleek, and decorated with thin gold armor, colorful silk braiding, and golden bells that gave a slight ring when the animal stepped. Her foot moved past her discarded pole arm and the weapon seemed to spring off the ground and into her hands. The spear had a three-foot-long curved, pointed blade on one end that was guarded by rows of sharp spikes. The butt of the shaft ended in a point.

“My agenda?” I questioned her as she patted down the animal with one hand and attached the long weapon onto her saddle. I suddenly feared her leaving. This would be my last chance and my fucking legs still didn’t work.

“Revenge!” she turned and screamed at me. Her face looked terrible and beautiful. The screech seemed to echo off the trees that had luckily not impaled me when I fell. “It was always about you! It was about your pain! Why didn’t you just find me and kill me? You’ve known where I’ve been. You knew which tribe! Why didn't you murder me a few months after you escaped? You could have ended me.” My mind spun with her words. “You didn’t need an army; you didn’t need to kill millions of my people,” tears streamed down her cheeks and she sobbed, “for my mistake,” she finished with a gasp.

“This is not about you and me. This is about the enslavement of my people. It is about a life of terror, pain, and suffering. You set nothing into motion that would not have happened eventually.” I did not know if I was consoling her or myself.

“And now you have what you wanted, Kaiyer. Your family is avenged and mine is dust. Your people will live and breathe forever and mine will be forgotten. You will--” she stopped suddenly, interrupting herself before she spoke about what would happen for me. Her horse skittered to the side a bit, annoyed at her mistress’s tension.

“You will love now, and I never will.” She turned away from me and finished tying down her pole arm.

“Wait.” I got to my feet hesitantly. My legs worked but were still wobbly.

“I’m not leaving.” She faced me and wiped under her eyes with her gloved hand. It was coated in my blood, the crimson smeared across her face like war paint. I must have looked confused, because she smiled slowly. “Our people came from the World. We bond with the trees and other plants which come from the Gods. There is nothing left for me Kaiyer. I tried to fight you and failed. You think that we are monsters that should be exterminated. But we love in our own way, create art, and serve our Dead Gods as they instructed us. We do everything your kind values. Our only sin is the need for servants; just as you use cattle and horses, we used the humans. Do the cattle have the right to annihilate your species?” She drew her sword slowly from its leaf-encrusted scabbard. I reached down to clutch my mace and took a step away from her. I did not feel like I was in any condition to fight.

“We don’t rape cattle. Or torture cattle. We don’t abuse cattle. And we are not cattle.” My voice came out in a growl.

She drove the point of her slightly curved sword into the dirt so that it stood up like a tower. Then she moved her shoulders around in a stretching motion. “I’ve never seen much of a difference, except that I love you.” She looked at me again and her eyes burned like they had when we made love. “You were all I ever cared about. The rest of your species held no meaning for me. Perhaps it is my nature. I won’t apologize for the way humans have been treated. I will apologize for the mistake that ended your family’s existence and forced you into this role.” I didn’t understand where she was going with this. It would only make me angry. Maybe she wanted me to fight her.

Maybe she wanted me to kill her.

“What now?” I stepped away. I knew the answer before she spoke.

“Now we dance. One of us will survive, and the other shall return to the soil.” She pulled her sword out of the ground in a fluid motion. “Are you ready, my love?”

“Stop calling me that.” I flipped open the tie of my mace with my left hand and grabbed the handle as it fell. I had repaired my shield but lost it before I jumped onto the dragon’s talon. Iolarathe’s mouth twisted into the smile that had haunted my dreams for most of my life.

“Hate the truth?" She stepped forward with a thrust that wasn't fully committed, and my mace smashed it aside easily. Her blade was long, curved and thin, capable of quick strikes that could rip through most armor. It’s shape actually reminded me of the sword Nadea used.