The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1)(108)

I glanced up at Kaden riding beside me.

Maybe now it was I who would become the assassin.





CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE


RAFE



“What the hell…?”

It was Jeb’s watch. His remark was so slow and quiet I thought he’d seen another curiosity like the herd of golden-striped horses we encountered yesterday.

Orrin walked over to see what he was gawking at. “Well … hang me.”

They had our attention now, and Sven, Tavish, and I rushed to the rocky lookout. I went cold.

“What is it?” Tavish asked, even though we all knew what it was.

It wasn’t a ragtag patrol of barbarians. Or even a large organized platoon of them. It was a regiment riding ten wide and at least sixty deep.

Except for one.

She walked alone.

“That’s her?” Tavish asked.

I nodded, not trusting my voice. She was surrounded by an army. We weren’t just facing five barbarians. One after another, I heard them slowly exhale. These weren’t the barbarians we knew. Not the ones who had always been easily pushed back behind the Great River. There was no way we could take on that many men in a direct confrontation without all of us being killed and Lia too. I stared, watching each step she took. What was she carrying? A saddlebag? Was she limping? How long had she been walking? Sven put his hand on my shoulder, a gesture of comfort and defeat.

I whipped around. “No! It’s not over.”

“There’s nothing we can do. You have eyes. We can’t—”

“No!” I repeated. “I will not let her cross that bridge without me.” I paced over to the horses and back again, my fist grinding in my palm, searching for an answer. I shook my head. She wasn’t crossing without me. I looked at their grim faces. “We’re doing it,” I said. “Listen.” I laid out a rushed plan, because there wasn’t time to devise another one.

“It’s insanity,” Sven balked. “It will never work!”

“It has to,” I argued.

“Your father will have my neck!”

Orrin laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about the king. Rafe’s plan’s going to kill us all first.”

“We’ve done it before,” Tavish said to me with a knowing nod. “We can do it again.”

Jeb had already retrieved my horse and handed me the reins. “What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Go!”

“It’s half-assed!” Sven shouted as I slid my foot into the stirrup.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m counting on you to figure out the other half.”





The Dragon will conspire,

Wearing his many faces,

Deceiving the oppressed, gathering the wicked,

Wielding might like a god, unstoppable,

Unforgiving in his judgment,

Unyielding in his rule,

A stealer of dreams,

A slayer of hope.

Until one comes who is mightier.


—Song of Venda





CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO



Fear was a curious thing.

I thought there was none left in me. What did I have left to fear? But as Venda came into view, I felt fear’s barbed chill at my neck. Framed between the jutting rocky hills that we passed through, a thing rose on the horizon in a hazy gray mist. I couldn’t quite call it a city. It breathed.

As we drew near, it grew and spread like an eyeless black monster rising from smoking ashes. Its haphazard turrets, scaled reptilian stone, and layers of convoluted walls spoke of something labyrinthine and twisted lurking behind them. This wasn’t just any faraway city. I felt the tremor of its pulse, the keen of its dark song. I saw Venda herself sitting high on the gray walls before me, a broken apparition singing a warning to those who listened from below.

I sensed myself slipping away already, forgetting what used to matter to me. It was a lifetime ago I left Civica with what I had thought was a simple dream, for someone to love me for who I really was. During those few short days with Rafe, I na?vely thought I had the dream in my grasp. I wasn’t that girl with a dream anymore. Now, like Walther, I only had a mounting cold desire for justice.

I looked ahead at the growing monster. Like the day I had prepared for my wedding, I knew I faced the last of the steps that would keep here from there. There would be no going back. Once I crossed into Venda, I would never see home again. I want to pull you close and never let you go. I was beyond the farthest corner now. Beyond ever seeing Rafe again. Soon I’d be dead to everyone except the mysterious Komizar who was able to exact obedience from a brutal army. Like Walther’s sword and boots, I was his prize of war now, unless he decided to finish the job that Kaden had shirked. But maybe before that happened, he’d discover I wasn’t quite the prize anyone expected me to be.

The caravan stopped at the river. It was more than a great river. It was a roiling abyss, roaring and sending up the mist I saw from afar. Dampness slicked soil and stone. How we would ever navigate across it, I didn’t know, but then the mass of bodies on the other side hailed our approach. They squirmed past black-streaked walls and began pulling on ropes attached to iron wheels of colossal proportions. Even over the roar of the river, I heard the shouts of a taskmaster synchronizing their pulls. Countless bodies moved together and chanted in a low rumble, and slowly, with each heave, a bridge rose up from the mist, dripping with an unholy welcome. Their last effort hurled the bridge into place with an ominous clanging boom.