Sky Stitcher, page 12
He cupped my chin in his hand, and for the fleetest moment, I stiffened, afraid that he intended to kiss me. Oddly entranced by the notion that he might try. Confident that I would deepen that gash at his throat if he did. But he merely smirked at my reaction and brushed a gentle thumb across my cheek. Then, with a slight nudge, he lifted my chin to turn my sight to the sky.
“The stars favor you, Zara. You see?”
My mouth parted instinctually, gasping at the ethereal heavens, the glittering gemstones of the lives that came before us and the haunted traces of Prisha’s destruction. Great gashes ripping the sky from end to end. And the stars that never relented. The inconceivable eternity of it made me dizzy. I shifted to distance myself from him, casting a reproachful glance in his direction.
“Then I hope they swallow you whole.” Since clearly I’m incapable of killing you.
He barked with laughter, though his countenance darkened.
Exhausted, I released...everything. I fell back onto the sand, and the shadowed starlight returned itself, burrowing into my heart, its presence warming me with the confirmation of its allegiance. It hummed, glowing once more, then faded into nothing. The stars above glittered in applause, and the dune cradled my head like a pillow. The last dregs of my energy drained away.
Leather wings skimmed against my upper arm as Prisha’s creature adjusted his position. He lay next to me, tracing the path of my eyes to the sky above. His chest rose and fell slowly in my peripheral vision, but he did not speak. Not for a long while.
Finally, when I felt most in danger of allowing my exhaustion to pull me into an uneasy sleep at his side, I forced myself to sit up and break the silence. “I believe you owe me something, now, monster.”
He responded with a heavy sigh, then a silence. I huffed with irritation, realizing he’d never intended to tell me. But then—
“Rueper,” he confided, his voice deep and granular. He paused for a moment, then added, “But you may call me Rue.”
“Roo?” I gasped. The great, terrifying Guardian of the In Between is named Roo? “Like R-o-o?” He didn’t seem so frightening after all. I suppressed a giggle.
He noticed.
“Rue, as in you will rue the day you ever presume to laugh at me again.” Shadows materialized, enveloping us in a darkness more precarious than a starless night. He drowned us in the dark, the presence of his winding shadows so consuming that it both diminished and heightened my senses, drawing all of my attention to the form of the Guardian. His proximity prickled at the edge of my consciousness, though I could not see him in the darkness and no part of our bodies touched.
“Okay,” I whispered, my heart racing with fear or something less definable. “Rue for short.” Venom and hell. He’s touchy.
I didn’t know what to say afterward, so I stared up at the scars in the sky and traced them with my eyes until my lids grew heavy and exhausted by my search for words to articulate my jumbled thoughts.
“We should go,” I said abruptly, climbing to my feet. The weight of fatigue pressed down on my shoulders, and I stumbled. My head rushed, making the sand swirl deceptively below me, but a firm hand gripped my elbow and steadied me.
Rue turned his head toward me, a lock of hair sweeping across his brow. It rumpled with concern when he studied me. “You need rest. I pushed you too hard.”
I did need rest, but rest was not a luxury we had the time for. “We can’t. The Stitcher—”
“The Stitcher will be there when we arrive,” he interjected calmly. “There is nothing you can do for her that you haven’t already done. A star cannot shine when it burns out, Starlight. Rest, then conquer. I’ll take first watch.”
Conquer? Who said anything about conquering? I just wanted to find the Stitcher. “But—”
“We’ll leave at dawn. You have my word.”
Your word? I bristled at the notion that his word should mean anything to me. He was my enemy…he probably longed for the opportunity to smother me in my sleep. An argument wedged its way into the forefront of my mind, but when I opened my mouth to protest, Rue shook his head. “The stars will protect you.” And so will I, the intensity of his gaze seemed to say, though why, I couldn’t begin to fathom. “You’ll be safe.”
“I don’t trust you,” I protested, but my vision blurred with fatigue. I had overextended myself. “How do I know you won’t just kill me in my sleep?”
“I didn’t last time.” He shrugged as though his argument decided the matter and lifted his brows when I opened my mouth to protest. “You’re clearly exhausted. The least I can do is offer you a good night’s sleep before I decide whether or not to kill you.” He smirked.
I wasn’t entirely sure if he was teasing or serious, but I was certain I needed rest. He hadn’t killed me yet—actually…he’d saved me today. Perhaps he didn’t intend to kill me at all.
Or maybe the bond between us protected me, too. From the corner of my eye, I watched him, wondering how eagerly he’d destroy me if the bond between us didn’t exist.
Rue sank to the ground, patting the soft dunes next to him. “Here?” I asked, gesturing to all the openness.
“Here is fine. Unless you’ve changed your mind about flying?”
I muttered incoherently and stomped a few paces away, pausing to debate. My fingers wrapped instinctually around the hilt of my dagger, and I felt safer, even though I knew the weapon to be lacking. Perhaps a few hours of rest would be okay. I curled up in a ball, facing away from Rue so I did not have to meet the gaze I felt so intensely against my back. But that was childish. Foolish, really. I shifted, turning ever so slightly so I could keep him in my line of sight. Just in case.
Shadows emanated from him, drifting peacefully over us like a gurya of darkness, enveloping us in the solace of complete obscurity. I watched Rue discreetly for a while, noting the way his wings twitched with tension whenever he turned his gaze to the sky, but finally, I fell asleep with the steel blade pressed beneath my cheek, the reassuring coolness of its handle in my grasp.
Chapter 14
Kill Them All
I stood on the edge of nothing.
Not exactly nothing…because something was undeniably there. But what it was did not exist in the planes of my understanding. Silken shadows shifted, constantly adjusting their angles to fall into new prismatic shapes. And an indescribable cold melded with my very bones.
What is this place? The pounding of my heart chided in warning, crushed by the vacuum of emptiness surrounding me. It ruthlessly stripped away my senses, leaving me disoriented and on edge. Did Rue bring me here? No…I’m sleeping. Wake up, Zara. Wake up. But I could not move.
Two figures materialized. Or perhaps had always been there and my eyes simply adapted to see them. Or sense them? I couldn’t quite perceive my surroundings to discern anything reliably but the hammering of my own heart.
They ambled slowly through the void. Two shadows.
“You have the Stitcher?” one shadow asked. A female. Familiar and close—as if it were my own voice.
“I do,” the other replied. Male. Tall and broad-shouldered. Built like Rue. What is he doing here? The channel widened as they slipped through, prisms bending and shifting around their forms to accommodate their presence. Somehow sharp and angular but fluid and soft in their movements all at once.
“And you haven’t killed her?”
“The Stitcher will not interfere with your plans. I assure you.”
The weighted pause preceded a fresh current of anger. The air itself became venomous with the charged emotion, its touch burning like acid against my skin.
The less formidable shadow held its breath, waiting for the moment to pass. It didn’t.
“She still lives?” the first voice seethed. Her teeth made a hissing sound as the words slipped through them. “Kill her!” she shouted, words reverberating solidly in the void. “I cannot reach your realm unless you kill her. Kill her, kill her, kill her!” Her chant eroded into a maniacal repetition.
“I have just acquired her. It is complicated,” the second one replied.
“No,” the angry one spat. “My patience is complicated. My tolerance of your incompetence is complicated. My desire to continue this alliance is complicated. Do you want my army or my wrath?” The fearful one diminished beneath every cutting word, as though the shards of anger in her voice sliced away bits of him until he became nothing at all.
A violent twist in my stomach warned me of something, but the vacuous landscape dulled my ability to react…it dulled my ability to even comprehend the growing pit of dread in my stomach. I floated, held in place by all the void. I simply…existed, forced to tolerate the feeling of writhing snakes in my stomach, the white hot venom flooding my veins, and the hysterical leaping of my heart that compelled me to act.
“I want them dead. I want them all dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Kill her, stupid useless servant.” When the shadow walked forward, her storm of words swarmed like drone bees around their queen. She chanted with increasing agitation—spewing words whose meanings I could not distinguish aside from a general impression of her rage.
The cloud of anger expanded and roiled, solidifying into dark, inky tendrils that spidered outward. A shattering boom blasted through the void, and a gash of light opened at her feet, wrenched apart by the serpentine strands of darkness she projected. Light flickered from the gash in a way that scattered the emptiness, illuminating the vastness of the terrain. A terrain interrupted only by the network of scars and gashes amid the infinite structures towering around her. A palace? Buildings? Turrets? Whatever it was, it had her malice written into every fiber of its structure.
She reached out a hand, grabbing the prisms of darkness that pervaded the land in her fist, crushing them into the shape of her will. Into the shape of her monsters. “They deserve to die.” She hurled the spider-like shadow of a crawler through the gash, then created another. And another. And another. “They—all—deserve—to—die. Do you hear me?”
“As you wish, Prisha.”
“As I wish,” she mumbled to herself, turning the words over in her mouth like a delicacy. She stood taller. “Yes. As I wish. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her! Kill her!”
The second shadow dipped its chin and backed away, disappearing into the void. My limbs trembled with dread, wondering if Rue would make good on his promise to Prisha. Begging myself to wake from this nightmare to stop him. But the void held me.
Prisha inhaled deeply, alone in the transient landscape of darkness.
“Dresgar?”
The prisms shifted, and another shadow took shape at her side, shorter and stockier than the first. His wings draped carefully behind his back, but he held them at a different angle than Rue. I could not discern his features, but his entire posture felt like a frown. His reluctance imprudently lingered about him in a shroud. “Prisha,” he responded simply, his tone politely inquiring despite his hesitations.
“Do you know what I hate, Dresgar?”
“Humans?”
She laughed sharply. Then, her entire composure darkened. “Traitors. Betrayers. And it appears I have a rogue…” Her words trailed off as though she were taking the time to savor their bitterness. “He was from your squadron, was he not?”
Dresgar flinched. Shadows billowed about him, solidifying into thick cords that enshrouded his figure, urged into place by Prisha’s hand.
“Do you know what happens to those who fail me, Dresgar? Do you know what will become of you if I find out you were part of this?” Prisha stepped toward him, tracing an elongated finger over the writhing, snakelike bindings she materialized from the void.
The eye of Prisha’s swirling storm choked with a sob. “Please. Don’t.”
Prisha paused, tilting her head in consideration, or perhaps merely savoring the creature’s fear. Finally, she jerked her hand upward, whisking away the tempest . The creature trembled, freed from the darkness but still under the presence of her predatory shadow. “Then I want it dealt with. I want him dealt with. Or I will deal with you.”
“Yes, Prisha.” His tone was brittle, lacking substance.
“And once the Stitcher dies and I’m free of her restraints, I want that little Star Thief and her heart of stars.” She paused, twisting the shapeless prisms in her hands as she stared through the gash at her feet. “Then I want them all dead. Do you understand me?
“Y-Yes. I believe so?” Dresgar stammered.
Her voice leached all the warmth remaining in that land. “Then let me speak more plainly. Kill them all.”
Chapter 15
Tinoya
Kill them all. Kill them all. The voice echoed inside my head, throbbing and consuming. It screamed louder and louder, pushing aside my own thoughts until all I knew was vitriolic anger with the most burning conviction. It felt like it belonged to me, but also distinctly foreign.
Stop. This is not you, a smaller voice shouted, lost beneath the fiery, murderous rage that overpowered my senses.
I clenched my fists, scooping a handful of sand into my palms and squeezing until the pressure of my nails bit against my skin. It grounded me. The intrusive voice—the compulsion to kill and destroy—slipped away as quickly as the sand between my fingers. I could breathe again. Where am I?
I quickly inventoried, feeling the rough grains beneath my palms and the soft caress of moonlight on my face. The cooler air of a star-cloaked desert. Sand. Dune. Stars. Zara.
But something was out of place. A haunting screech ripped through the night, and my eyes snapped open. Rolling to my side and pushing myself up to standing, I scanned the horizon. My heart stopped.
Oh, hell.
The dunes rolled out into the distance all around me, golden sand turned silver beneath the glow of moonlight. Above, the great golden rifts splintered chaotically through the stars, dripping with black tar. Across the dunes, just where the navy curtain of sky met the silver mounds of sand, a black cloud rolled toward me, rippling like a swarm of insects, but bigger. Angrier. The ground trembled beneath its advance.
I stared for too long—paralyzed by the inability to make sense of the shrieking storm. Crawlers? Bulgroiches? Whatever they were, it became impossible to differentiate one creature from the next. They’d amassed into one dreadful shadow—one roiling, deadly maelstrom of darkness. My muscles liquefied into some functionless blob of honey. My heart rate quickened, pounding harder and harder all the way up into my eardrums, a fist hammering at the door of my brain, begging it to jolt back to action.
Rue. Where is Rue? Turning on crouched knees, I spun around, searching frantically for any sign of his midnight wings, but he’d left me completely alone. He was gone.
Hot, acidic rage coursed through my veins again, but this time, it was entirely my own. Where did he go? A fiery poker twisted through my heart, and my stomach sank with the recognition of his betrayal. Had my dream been real? Had he really just met with Prisha in the In Between? That shadow discussing my demise with Prisha…had it been him? Had he summoned these monsters to destroy me at her command and left me behind, asleep and defenseless? Did he lead the charge racing toward me now? That was how he planned to end me?
He had promised to kill me.
But I’d thought that maybe—
The cacophony of screeches and wails grated sharply against the silence of nighttime, each one piercing my eardrums and fraying my nerves. I grimaced, holding my dagger uselessly before me as if the small blade could do anything against a mob of monsters hellbent on destroying me. I braced myself for the moment of impact, too overwhelmed with dread to fully consider the certainty of my death. There were hundreds of them—they would shred me in seconds.
The world spun on its axis, and my brain crashed against my skull, knocked backward as the crawlers swarmed up my frame and forced me to the ground. I screamed, writhing beneath their claws. Thick, black blood flecked across my face when I thrashed my dagger about wildly, slicing whatever I met without reserve. A crawler’s screech turned into a rancid gurgle, choking on its own blood rushing from the hole I’d left in its neck.
I slashed at a bulgroich’s shoulder, sending a new shower of blood into the fray, then sliced straight through a crawler’s grabbling hand, separating its fingers from its knuckles. My own skin blazed with fiery pain, scratched and bleeding with each slice of the claws that parted my skin.
The edges of my vision smudged. The world tinted gray, and the fire inside of me began to extinguish. The stars called for me.
The stars.
Something tugged at my heart, and the golden threads binding me to Rue flared to life, illuminated by the radiant glow beneath my breastbone. The heart of stars. I shouldn’t use it…I shouldn’t draw attention to it…not when Prisha seemed drawn to its presence and I didn’t understand why its light had begun to warp into shadow.
But you’ll die if you do nothing, I scolded myself. Rather than shoving it away or burying its power beneath my fear and inadequacy, I reached for it.
Star Thief…shred the skies. Shred them! Prisha’s shrill voice filled my mind, pulsing with powerful insistence, but I rammed her back. I focused all my attention on the tether connecting me to Rue and the burst of power in my heart. Our tether surged with a vibrant glimmer. So he’s here, I registered with a sinking feeling in my gut. And he’s left me to die.
Bitterness washed over me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of winning. I had to survive this…even if only out of sheer spite.
With my rage, I harvested each strand of energy from the heart of stars and threw them outward, blasting a ring of light in a wide halo around myself. The shrieks of Prisha’s creations reached horrific decibels. The stars above flickered in response, then her creatures’ dark figures writhed, thrashing beneath the binding tethers of light I wrapped around them. Energy flowed through me, wild and burning, unmeasured and unrestrained.
