In the Veins of the Drowning(74)
“Im, get back.” Theodore’s grip was protective and strong on my arm. He tried to jerk me away, but I resisted him.
The man’s jaw fell open as he tried in vain to suck in a breath. My panicked gaze tripped down his body, over his black, worn clothes, to the bandolier slung over his chest, then to the red band that was wrapped around his biceps.
A twisting eel, fangs bared, wove around the edge of the band. “You’re a mercenary?” I asked. “King Nemea hired you?”
He was shaking, his face reddening with strain. I eased my lure, allowing him one quick breath.
“Answer me.” I pulled a dagger from his bandolier and held it to his throat. Metal clanged around us, shouts rang out, and fists landed blows on flesh behind him. Theodore set his sword arching toward a mercenary to his right with a grunt. I tightened my lure on the man before me once more. His eyes bulged. He gave no answer.
But the band on his arm was answer enough.
My rage rose in a wave, and I slashed the dagger across his throat. Blood spewed from the cut in a curtain of red, spraying over the front of my shirt. Theodore winced at my side. I released my lure the moment the man fell to his knees.
Seeing that eel, knowing how close Nemea had come to me—I’d not known this sort of consuming terror. Spurred by it, the power in my middle became hotter, thicker, prompting a slew of lures to fly from me. They sank deep into the mercenary men scattered through the road, making them spasm and collapse to the mud.
Theodore’s soldiers stepped back, watching in astonishment as the men they’d just been in combat with writhed on the ground, choking and grabbing at their throats. My vision had blurred with fury. I tightened my hold on the lures, eyes stinging, breath fast, when Theodore’s fingers gripped hard into my arm once more.
“Imogen, stop.” He shook me, urgent. “Damn it. Stop.” He ran through the handful of convulsing men. He lifted one of them into his arms, screamed my name again.
It wasn’t until Theodore heaved the man further into his embrace that my vision seemed to clear. It was Lachlan.
Horror struck me in a searing bolt. I pulled in a hiccuping gasp and cut every lure I’d sent out. Sucking sounds scraped at my ears as the mercenaries all took in a frantic breath at once. Theodore’s soldiers moved toward them so quickly that I stumbled back a step. The tips of their swords pierced through skin and rib, conjuring a gruesome chorus of death cries. Dark, thick blood spread over the mud, seeping through the puddles like the earth itself was bleeding out.
Slowly, Theodore helped a shaken Lachlan to stand. He looped his arm over his shoulder and together they moved over the bodies of the dead and dying. “On your horses,” Theodore ordered in a weary voice. “Onward.”
The soldiers’ distrustful gazes clawed at me. Some of them scooped up the limp body of the soldier who’d been shot from his horse. A snapped arrow protruded from the side of his neck. They removed his breastplate and threw him over his horse’s back, belly down.
“Lachlan. I’m sorry,” I said as they passed me for the carriage.
Lachlan shook his head. “We’re even.” He tried for a crooked smirk. Theodore’s gaze was downcast. “I should know better than to make you mad.”
His voice was hoarse from how I’d strangled him. It made my stomach roll with sick. Lachlan climbed into the carriage, but Theodore lingered for a breath. I waited for him to look at me, to see how I was rattled, to give me his ever-steady comfort and pull me up from the darkness I’d too easily slipped into.
Instead, he rolled a tight shoulder, then entered the carriage. In his absence, the world grew overloud. The ring of swords forced back into their scabbards, the horses’ nickering, the soldiers’ voices. The incessant echo of the waves in the distance; the unending rattle of the grape leaves. My mind played cruel tricks too, showing me Lachlan’s face contorted, and Theodore’s etched with brutal worry. The meaty smell of blood from my shirt sat heavy in my nose. It had grown sticky and cold. I stepped through the mud, head hung, toward the carriage door. I decided then that the moment after our severing ritual was complete would be the last I would see Theodore. For I was as undiscerning as a storm, as ruinous as a tidal wave crashing, and I could never live with myself if he was caught in my devastation.
Theodore’s hand found my leg, gave it a shake. “We’re here.”
Two days had passed. The carriage wheels crunched over gravel. I peeked through the window and yawned. Genevreer Palace seemed like a skeleton lit aflame in the night. Its stone walls were pale as bone, its windows glowing bright against the black sky.
The carriage rolled to a stop and a short line of servants greeted us. Theodore exited the carriage first, but he did not reach back to help me down himself. A servant came swiftly on his heels, his glove soft against my hand as he helped me down the narrow steps.
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
His brown eyes raked over the filthy shirt I still wore. It was creased and stiff with dried blood. In the melee, the saddlebag that had held my spare clothes had fallen from its restraints, left behind among the bodies and blood. The dress Antonia had gifted me had been in that bag. It brought a strange sadness over me to think of it lost—one more thing I’d ruined.
I looked down the front of my body. I wore Theodore’s ill-fitting trousers, tied with a frayed rope. Mud caked my boots. My hair was stiff in places with mats. At least Theodore had taken a moment to bathe in the shallow stream beyond the city boundaries that afternoon. I watched him cross the gravel drive. Even with his threadbare shirt rolled to the elbows like a worker’s, even exhausted, there was no mistaking precisely who and what he was. He stood at the base of the marble palace stoop, chin tipped back regally, shoulders square and strong.