Sky Stitcher, page 13
But it drained me. Too quickly.
The creatures flailed their spindly limbs, ripping and shredding the tethers away as my light faded. Or…darkened. My ribs jumped with short, harried breaths, unable to catch enough air. The golden tether entwined with my heart—the one binding me to Rue—flared with renewed strength. I gasped when his end of the tether snapped tight, pulling so forcefully it nearly ripped my still-beating heart from my body. But my hazy vision followed the line to the menacing cloud of shadow, the tenebrous form of a nightmare’s approach. A night mare. And a winged terror astride it.
Rue.
The mare galloped and skidded to a halt, spraying sand into the air as the last remnants of the tethers restraining Prisha’s monsters flickered into shadow. The world paused and amethyst eyes met mine. Intense, and now blazing with inhumanity. With ruthlessness.
I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze. Is this what you wanted? To just sit back and watch me die? Are you happy?
The black swarm of creatures recovered, no longer restrained by my magic. They raced toward me, cries echoing with triumph. Still, Rue showed no sign of intervention. He glared down from his seat atop the horse, unflinching and steadfast among the storm surrounding us. He really meant to watch me die.
Rue. Please. I mouthed the words, but no sound came out.
His expression flinched.
He stared down at me from his lofty perch, reins gripped in his clenched fist, and his chin lowered with a dangerous air, but he didn’t move. His expression turned steely…unreadable.
Please don’t do this.
He brought his hands together.
Shadows engulfed him, spraying outward and spinning into a vortex of jet black ribbons. From the tempest, a monstrous figure emerged. Its back curved with long, jagged ridges, and an array of thorny spikes crowned its head. Its eyes narrowed on me, head tilting in a snakelike bob of curiosity, then it snapped its wings wide, hiding the star-dusted sky behind its reach. It raised its head to the stars and bellowed a powerful roar that made the sand tremble. Shadows spilled from its maw instead of flame—darkness imbued with ire.
Behind it, Rue sat astride his mare, amethyst eyes trained on mine, slashing his arms through the air to control his monstrosity. A puppet and its master.
The dragon responded with another thunderous bellow, spewing a stream of shadows around the ring of monsters. Chaotic screams and unnerving screeches blended with the slashing sound of blades through flesh. The heavy shadows lingered, dancing and flickering like twisting flames, covering the details of the gruesome attack. But even the opaque blanket of shadows could not smother the shrieking sounds of death.
Finally, slowly, the world shifted to silence.
“Zara.” Rough hands shook my shoulders. It hurt. Everything hurt. “Zara, please.” His voice cracked.
My eyes snapped open. Sand and blood crusted my face, leaving my skin rough and sticky. Rue’s gaze swept across my body, and he swallowed visibly as his eyes cataloged my injuries with increasing concern. “I’m so sorry, Zara.”
I pushed myself up to my elbows, clenching my teeth to brace against the fiery assault of sand biting the raw gashes along my forearms. “What in Prisha’s hell was that?” I snapped, heart still pounding. The dunes wobbled before my eyes.
Sadness stained his attempted smirk. All the same, he seamlessly slipped into his typical Rue-like composure. His mouth pulled into a lopsided grin, and he raised a moderately amused brow. “Excuse me? I believe that was called ‘saving your ass.’”
I almost liked him when he made that expression. That charming, playful, and eternally intrigued look I’d grown to expect from him. I might have told him so if my throat didn’t burn with fiery pain and if every part of my body didn’t scream with bloodied gashes.
I sat fully upright, groaning with effort. Blood coagulated in odd places across my skin, and many of the gashes in my arms still trickled with crimson streaks. Most of them weren’t deep, but they burned relentlessly.
I leaned toward him, brushing the pain aside. Pretending this was the most ordinary moment between us. Just another game. I placed a hand over his forearm, surprised by the corded muscles and strength in his arm. His spine straightened in response, his breath stilling. I forced a smile to my face when he met my eyes. Trust began as a timid thing inside me, a quiet whisper of moonlight coaxing the moonpetal flowers open at night. Slowly, uncertainly. Against everything I knew to be sound judgment. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were losing your conviction to kill me.”
His jaw twitched with a hint of tension, but his eyes glittered. He leaned closer, so close that I could feel the hum of his energy entwined with mine and the brush of his breath against my cheeks. “Maybe tomorrow.” He shrugged.
My facade of composure crumbled with a laugh. Right, well, at least I have until tomorrow before we do this again. The short burst of laughter made my wounds flare with sharp, biting pain. “Fucking hell.” I winced.
Rue brushed a hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear with the return of his pained expression. “I should have been there. I shouldn’t have left you.” His eyes darted between each gash across my body, studying them with a twist of some unspoken emotion tightening his jaw. “You need healing. I’ll make a poultice and stitch the worst ones.”
Anger washed away any hint of amusement I’d felt moments before. “No. Wait.” Why had he abandoned me? I needed to know if he’d sent the monsters after me, even if he’d had a change of heart at the last moment. Had he intended to kill me? I leveled my gaze at him, letting my expression turn cold. Had the meeting between him and Prisha happened outside the realm of my dreams? “Where were you? Why did you leave?” The accusation in my tone carried the faintest undertone of betrayal, wilting the blooming moonpetal flowers of trust.
A sheepish grin emerged behind his pained grimace, contorting his expression into a rather unfortunate appearance. He looked like he had a toothache. His shoulders shrugged. “Your stomach was growling loud enough to wake the sand wings from their hundred years of slumber, so I went to find food. Seeing as I ate all your halfmoon bread.” He fished for something in the pocket at his hip, then winced. “Cursed little things,” he muttered, pressing his thumb against his mouth for a moment, then reached back in.
This time, he moved more gingerly, withdrawing a small, teardrop-shaped fruit with skin that resembled scales. Tinoya—the dragonberry fruit. My mouth rushed with saliva, and my stomach rumbled. The fruit had a subtle sweet flavor and a texture that melted on your tongue—but the sight of it made my heart ache for home. For my Sisters.
Kill them all, Prisha’s unhinged voice commanded, bursting into my mind the second I thought of my Sisters. I stiffened, nearly jumping an inch from the ground at the grating sound of the goddess’s voice in my head. Shut up, Prisha, I hollered back at her.
Rue noticed, raising a concerned brow as he ran his knife across the sharp scales of the dragon berry’s skin, but he said nothing. Did he know that Prisha spoke to me? Did he hear it, too? He pried back the purple shell to reveal white flesh dotted with red seeds, turning his attention to the work of his hands. “Here…eat.” He passed the fruit to me, and I grabbed it eagerly. “I shouldn’t have left you. I came as fast as I could.”
Looking up beneath my lashes, I observed his expression as I slurped the soft fruit from its casing, watching the way his jaw tensed and the space between his brow creased.
“Oh. And water, too. I brought you some water from that well east of the guryas.” He reached behind his back and swung the leather canteen around to his front, ducking his chin forward as he lifted the strap over his head.
I gulped greedily while he watched me in silence, then I passed the canteen back to him.
The regret written on his face made my heart twist with suspicion. “Rue. I dreamed of your visit with Prisha. Did you send them to kill me? The monsters?” Who’s side are you really on?
“You dreamed of Prisha?” He shook his head, his eyes darkening. “I didn’t visit with Prisha. Zara, those monsters were sent to kill me.”
My brows scrunched together. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think Prisha lets her creatures wander off and do as they please? She’s noticed my disappearance, and now…she’s hunting me. She doesn’t tolerate desertion.”
Did that mean the shadow from my dreams wasn’t what I’d feared? Had Rue truly abandoned and angered his goddess? The dream felt so real…but perhaps it had only been a nightmare. Perhaps he spoke the truth. And if so…
“You should go back.” If his disappearance upset Prisha, he needed to go back. I didn’t need any more attention from a deranged goddess, and he didn’t need to risk his life because I’d forced him to follow me. Granted, ‘forced’ wasn’t a fair description, considering I’d tied myself to him by accident, but still. All the more reason to break the tether between us. “You should go back. It’s okay. I understand.” My voice squeaked into a tight, airless tone, though I couldn’t identify the source of the underlying emotion.
“I can’t.” His whole frame remained still—exuding a stubborn steadfastness that challenged anyone who tried to break it.
“Of course you can. The In Between is where you belong—”
“I belong with you.”
I gaped at him, failing miserably to mask any part of my surprise.
“The tether,” he corrected when he saw the flicker of befuddled horror in my eyes. “The tether has bound me to you…you know what happens if we stray too far. But if I don’t kill you to show my allegiance to Prisha as she incessantly demands, and if I don’t return to her—” He shook his head. “I’ve seen her unmake creatures for far lesser crimes.”
I paused, taken aback. What did he mean by unmake? “She—She’d kill you? Surely she wouldn’t—”
“I assure you, she would,” he said, shedding his usual unperturbed air for something darker, grimmer. “You cannot defy her. Any whiff of dissent, any hint of defection, any slight resistance to her command, and she will disintegrate you back into the void she made you from. But perhaps that is what you want for me.” His brow lifted and his jaw squared, as if daring me to voice my hatred of him. Challenging me to confirm that I did, in fact, want Prisha to erase him from existence.
Yet somehow, the words I should have wanted to say dissolved from my tongue. I flinched, conflicted by a rush of empathy for the insufferable creature. If he told the truth, if it wasn’t just some grand scheme to manipulate my perception of him, then I understood his fear. And the bravery he mastered to stand against her. “No,” I finally admitted, almost too quietly.
“Then you have to understand. I can’t go back there. She’ll know I’m bonded to you. She’ll know I killed her creatures. And she does not forgive. ”
“How could she possibly know that? You could blame me or—”
“Because I used her magic, Zara. I’m tied to her as equally as I am bound to you. She made me. Everything I can do is because she made me, because her magic flows through me. And if she’s realized that I betrayed her—that I helped you and that she no longer controls me as she expects to—she will stop at nothing to unmake me. She does not tolerate betrayals. You know that.”
“But if you—”
“Zara. No. She is not a fool. She knows what I’ve done, and I’m sure she means to punish me for it. My best chance at survival, my only hope of escaping her is helping you.”
He finished cutting open another tinoya and tried to pass it to me, but I shook my head. My stomach had soured and no longer welcomed the food. The sickening sweetness of the fruit now churned uncomfortably in my gut. Or perhaps those were simply my jumbled concerns, tripping over the realization that maybe Rue was not the monster I’d judged him to be. Or, if he was, it was merely a matter of survival, not by choice.
I understood what it meant to not have a choice.
“Well, thanks for saving me.” I tried to put a lighthearted spin on the words, but they fell flat. His gaze flickered toward mine, then darted back to the knife he twirled absentmindedly in one hand.
He nodded in quiet acceptance of my thanks, then heaved a deep breath. “You could have saved yourself, though, Starlight. You’re a force to be reckoned with.” He paused and looked up, and my skin flushed beneath his amethyst gaze. “I just couldn’t bear to watch them hurt you a moment longer.”
I sat in silence, trying to find the right words to say back. He was wrong, of course, but I couldn’t articulate as much to him without sounding like a petulant child fishing for compliments.
“You need to eat,” he said to break the silence, taking my hand and pressing the fruit into my palm. “We can’t stay here much longer.” He nodded toward the angry sky. “She’ll send more. I’d rather not die today.”
As if to validate his concerns, the golden rift above us crackled with menacing sparks.
I looked back at him, burning panic spreading from my chest and creeping up my neck to choke me.
His cool composure crumbled, and he turned back to me. “We really should get out of the desert. Get you to Rashii. Unless...” He hesitated, clearly debating if he should voice whatever he wanted to say.
I blinked and lifted my brows, daring him to continue.
“Well, you’re the new Stitcher, aren’t you?” He waved vaguely to the stars above. “Stitch the skies. Hold her back.”
My mouth gaped, snapped back shut, then opened again. “It’s not that easy. My stitching is broken.” I paused. “I think I am broken.”
“You can’t be broken,” he dismissed with a laugh.
“And what could you possibly know about stitching? About my magic?” I blurted, my cheeks hot with annoyance at his easy dismissal. “Every time I try to connect to the goddess, every time I follow the ribbons of energy, I lose control and end up making things worse. I unstitched the rifts. I helped Prisha. What kind of a Stitcher can I claim to be if I only create chaos any time I think of using my magic to help? How can I face my Sisters and explain that to them? Halah shouldn’t have chosen me…I’m nothing like the other Daughters. I’m too…” I waved my hands, grasping at straws for the word my brain refused to supply. “Chaotic.”
Rue frowned, considering me for a long moment. I became uncomfortably aware of the heat in my cheeks and shifted, turning my eyes to the sand. “If it’s not fixed, then break it,” he finally mused.
What the heck is that supposed to mean? “That’s not how the saying goes,” I told him.
“Well, maybe that’s how it should go. Maybe broken is exactly the change this world needs. Maybe the way of things is meant to break. Maybe the perception of what you should be and what the world expects you to be…maybe that is broken. Because you are stronger…strong enough to do what others couldn’t do before you.” His hands gripped my shoulders, and he searched my eyes for whatever he hoped to find there. When he seemed to locate it, he lowered his voice into a tender rumble, speaking with every impression of earnestness. “But none of those things mean that you are broken, Zara. You are exactly as you should be. And I like your chaos, Starlight. It matches mine.”
“That doesn’t fix the fact that I can’t stitch.” My voice had become quite airy—it couldn’t compete with the deafening thrum of my heart. He’d moved so close to me our noses nearly touched, but my body refused to pull away.
“There’s got to be a way…” he said, his voice trailing.
Still, my lips pursed together in a frown. He huffed a short breath through his nose, laughing at my dubious expression. “I like the way your hair catches the moon and your skin shimmers, even when everything about your expression screams with annoyance. The stars favor you, Zara.”
I lost myself for a moment, stunned by the fluttering in my chest and the way my eyes darted rapidly back and forth to study his gaze, so foolishly close to mine. Pulling away, I composed myself with a shake of my head. “Then I hope they do me a favor and swallow you whole.” The words lacked any conviction this time, but I said them for consistency’s sake. Best not to let him get too close. You are promised to Rali, Zara, I reminded myself. And on your side or not, Rue is still a monster. I moved backward.
“I’ll work on a poultice to calm those wounds, and then we should go,” Rue murmured.
I nodded. “Use the dune rushes. The ones with—”
“Pale green leaves shaped like daggers? I know. This realm once belonged to Prisha, too, you know.”
It had never occurred to me that a beast from the In Between would be so well-versed in our herbal remedies, but he was right. Prisha had once walked among the mortals of Taara. When Rue returned wielding a handful of dune rushes, he crushed them between his thumb and index finger, bruising them in his palm until they wept with a syrupy liquid. He worked quietly, spreading the sticky salve into the worst of my gashes. The salve stung viciously at first, then dulled my pain to a soothing tingle. Once the skin grew numb, he unwrapped the string binding a leather kit he pulled from his pocket and set to stitching the worst of the wounds closed.
Tears burned at the bottom of my lashes, and I had to bite my lip to stop its embarrassing tremble. Not because of the pain, but because of all my uncertainties—what if my Sisters never came back? Or what if they had fled for safety but returned to the guryas, only to find it in shambles and their Stitchers missing? What if we never found our way back to one another? I needed them. I needed home. An unwelcome tear streaked down my cheek and dropped from my chin. There was no home. Not anymore. And there never would be a home for me again if I didn’t find a way to banish Prisha from this realm forever.
I needed to talk to the Eldress. I needed to find a way to fix all of this.
“Rue. Help me find the Eldress, and I’ll figure out how to stitch Prisha into the sky forever.”
“Deal.”
“That wasn’t a bargain.”
“Sounded like a bargain.” His eyes danced with mischief as he brushed the last of the salve from his palms. “I don’t want to be her monster…I don’t want to be hers to control or destroy. You stitch Prisha into the skies, and I’m yours.” Something in his expression darkened and my stomach fluttered. “You do know it will be fastest if we fly, don’t you?”
