The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(72)

“This is the rasa!” The blonde pointed at Hadrian and stared at Mercator with big eyes.

Mercator continued to appear puzzled. “The rasa?” Her eyes widened. She studied Hadrian closely. “Are you sure? How can you be . . . how could he be . . .”

“I’m positive,” Seton said. “I could never forget his face, his three swords, those eyes.”

Hadrian, on the other hand, had clearly forgotten hers. She was vaguely familiar but only because he thought she looked a bit like Arbor, the shoemaker’s daughter from Hintindar whom he’d been in love with at the age of fifteen. But this girl was a mir, and Arbor must still be living in Hintindar, married and with children by now. Hadrian had no idea why this young woman was defending him, or why she called him a rasa. Given his position, he wasn’t about to deny anything she said.

Villar pivoted. “What’s this all about?”

“This is Hadrian Blackwater,” Seton said. “Seven years ago, he saved my life.”





Chapter Eighteen

The Rasa





She didn’t say any more. The beautiful blonde mir—who literally and figuratively stood between Hadrian and Royce and death, looked uncomfortable as she faced Mercator with pleading eyes. Villar shifted impatiently. He likely wanted them dead, their bodies jammed down a sewer shaft, and while Hadrian obviously preferred to avoid that future, he was also curious to understand why this girl was so adamant about saving his life.

“Seton,” Mercator said gently. “You have to tell the story.” The blue-stained mir looked out across the crowd. “I know this isn’t the—I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to explain.”

Seton nodded but still struggled to find her voice, and when it came, her words started faint and so low that Hadrian strained to hear. “I was living in the village of Aleswerth a few miles north. That’s where I was born. Lord Aleswerth had defied King Reinhold. I don’t even know about what or why, but one day the king’s soldiers arrived.”

“Louder!” someone in the back shouted.

“We can’t hear you,” someone else said.

Seton’s embarrassment showed, but when she resumed her story, her voice was louder, and as she spoke it grew even more so. “Everyone was called into the castle. We were told that anyone left outside the walls would be slaughtered. I didn’t think they would let me in, but I guess with my hair covering my ears they didn’t notice I was a mir, and I slipped in with everyone else.” She paused and swallowed hard.

“The battle went on all day and on past sunset. I hid behind the woodpile. Then in the middle of the night, the gate burst open. They set fires everywhere, and men in chainmail carrying swords ran through the courtyard, killing everyone. They didn’t . . .” She stopped, her eyes searching the dark for the words. “They didn’t look human. They looked like monsters, cruel and horrible. One was worse than all the rest. He was tall, powerful, and covered in blood. Among my people there are legends of vicious creatures called rasas: terrible fiends, part elven, part beast, wholly possessed of evil. That’s what he looked like to me.”

She paused, regained her composure, and then continued. “He charged in swinging this incredibly long sword. Lord Aleswerth’s men attacked him from all sides, strong men, good men. I was certain they would kill this savage invader. Instead, they all died, their blood adding to his gore. He cut them down, cleaving off arms and legs, beheading, and in one case, he cut a poor man nearly in half, slicing him from the shoulder to hip.” As she spoke, her eyes focused on Hadrian, squinting as if she peered into a painful light. “He killed the horses, too, the ones the lord’s knights rode when they came at him. This man—this rasa—took down mounted knights with no more difficulty than a butcher slaughters a lamb. Before long, they were stacked around him, bodies in a pond of blood.”

The crowd was quiet as she spoke. Only the faint crackle of the campfire broke the stillness, the sound and the flickering light adding to the imagery she conjured.

“When all the soldiers were dead, the invaders came for the women. I was discovered. They liked my hair and how young I appeared. In the dark, they thought I was human.”

She paused, her face tense, her sight dropping to her own feet. She took another breath. “I could smell the beer on their breath. The battle was over, the celebration begun. Everyone was drinking. I held onto the hope that I might survive, that if they continued to think I was human, they would let me live. I feared they would . . . would . . . but they didn’t want me for themselves. Instead, I was dragged to the rasa. The blood-soaked man was in the middle of the courtyard beside a barrel of beer, his giant sword still in one hand, a cup in the other. He was drunk.

“The soldiers threw me and three other girls down at his feet. ‘To Hadrian Blackwater, the hero of the battle, go the spoils,’ they yelled. ‘Pick your favorite, Blackwater.’ He picked me.”

Seton paused there and began to cry. “I was terrified. After seeing what he’d done to the knights of Lord Aleswerth, I was certain this man was capable of unspeakable horrors. I knelt in the dirt, made muddy by the blood of so many, and I waited. All around me was fire, smoke, and screaming. My stomach was so bound in knots that I vomited. I didn’t care if he killed me. I just wanted it to be over. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”