Yet they walked through the N’skaran slums as if they owned them. They were not escorted by guards, as all outsiders were. They were free to laugh and jest openly.
Perhaps the most alarming part of this all was that they spoke a language she did not know.
Quinn was fluent in N’skaran, Norcastan, and even Ilvan. She was sufficient in Cisean, Jibrealic, and Bangrati.
There was only one language from her continent that she did not speak but had heard.
“Who are you?” she asked softly in her mother tongue. Out of all of them, she gave it decent odds they’d understand her if they were this familiar with Liph. It meant they’d been here a while.
“Soldiers,” one of them said in butchered N’skaran.
“Sailors,” the other supplied, his accent was better.
“Which is it?” she asked.
They looked at each other, and then the one that spoke more clearly said, “Both.”
Quinn smoothed her features and took a step forward. “What are you doing here?”
They were distracted again by her lack of clothing. The one that spoke poorly swallowed hard. The other had a wicked glint enter his eye. Quinn smiled. She recognized his kind. Men that thought women were their prey.
“We’re from the ships,” the better speaker said. “We were just heading back for the night. Would you like to join us? You look so cold . . .”
Yes, cold is what you meant, wasn’t it? She wanted to laugh at his poor attempt at manipulating her.
Boys. Children playing at men.
Quinn had lain with a king.
She’d kissed a god.
They were nothing.
But at the moment, they were useful.
“I am cold,” Quinn said. The better speaker took a step toward her. Their breath mingled. He reached for her, not seeing the wickedness that lived beneath the surface. “But not in the way you think.”
“What—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence.
Quinn lifted a hand to his face. She cupped his cheek, and he didn’t see the black wisps that wafted to it.
All it took was a single caress of those black strands for his eyes to roll back in his head. His arms began to twitch, and his legs shook. Quinn peered into his mind, harvesting his fear for her own reserves.
What she saw . . . it confirmed her worst suspicions.
The other soldier yelled. A flick of Quinn’s wrist and the one she’d touched toppled sideways into the alley. Catatonic.
“You-you’re the one . . . the-they whisper about. The white raksasa.”
Quinn found it interesting that her own people regarded her that way. It was fitting. They’d treated Risk as a raksasa, and she was more human than Quinn could ever be. It seemed they finally realized that. It was just too late.
The soldier looked between his fallen comrade and the woman standing unaffected.
Like all men before him, save one, he gave way from anger to panic to fear.
Delicious, tantalizing fear.
She did miss this. Mazzulah did not fear her, and that was appealing in its own way. But Quinn . . . she thrived on fear.
He turned to run, and Quinn tsked. Extending her hand outwardly, Neiss slithered forth.
“Snack?” the great serpent asked her.
“Snack,” Quinn confirmed. She sensed his approval as he grew in size over the span of seconds. Quinn didn’t look away as the soldier continued to run. Neiss barely had to try to catch him. He struck with a single snap of his jaws and swallowed half the man. The muscles in his body contracted as he threw his head back and swallowed a second time.
The soldier went down easily.
“You’re going to need to let that digest before you shrink again,” Quinn said, striding forward. She ran her hand over his scales.
“‘Twas worth it.”
She snorted.
“I’m sure it was,” she replied mentally.
Neiss slithered alongside her as they walked out of the lowborn part of town and into a more prominent section of Liph. Here the seashell and sand mortar was laid with precision and cleaned regularly. The houses, while plain for the most part, were also uniform in their quality. The joyous sounds that had bled through the thin walls in the poorer district were absent here, instead favoring the silence she remembered.
“Curious,” she muttered under her breath.
She was mildly surprised by the time they reached the temple that no one had entered the street and seen her or Neiss, nor were there shouts coming from where she’d left the pig soldier. While she’d cleaved the information she needed from his memory, thoughts of what he planned to do to her once he had her on the ship were also on the surface. Willing or not, he would have taken her and then let his brothers, as he called them, have their way with her.
Quinn reached the bottom of the steps.
Lined up in front of them were the gods of light, in contrast to those of the dark.
She peered up at each of them, recalling the stories Mazzulah had told her about each of them. When she was a child, the statues had intimidated her. When she was a grown woman, they still impressed her, even if they did not inspire anything.
But now . . . she found them lacking.
Quinn strolled past and then climbed the steps to the temple where the Council met. By the time she reached the top of the staircase, the evening light peeked out from the clouds. It reflected the white stone beneath her feet, casting the place in an eerie glow.
She looked up at the temple. There was a time she’d never thought she’d see this place again. For so long it had been the source of her inner torment, and then the fire that burned with hatred. After endless days that passed in the dark realm, Quinn was almost disappointed by the lack of emotion it invoked in her.
She walked into the temple. The door creaked as she opened it and a plume of dust billowed when it swung closed behind her without prompting.
Her brow furrowed at the absence of torches lit. While the darkness was home, this temple was never meant to be cast in shadow. The N’skari were adamant in their ways. They always had been.
Clearly something had changed.
When she stepped into the Council chambers, she was not surprised to see the pedestals empty. However, as Leviathan’s eye peered through the glass ceiling, she noticed another clue.
The floors that were always a pristine white were now covered in a layer of grime.
Wherever the N’skaran Council was, they weren’t here, and they hadn’t been here in a very long time.
Which begged the question, where were they?
And more importantly, why were Trienian soldiers in N’skara?
Chapter 6
The Burden of Guilt
“Never question if a situation could be worse. It could, and to anger Lady Luck is to feel her wrath.”
— Draeven Adelmar, rage thief, left-hand to the mad King of Norcasta
Draeven didn’t look away when the kuras began to devour the boy.
He wanted to. But guilt rendered him unable.
Draeven had advised that Amelia and her brothers be invited. He had pushed Lazarus for peace. He’d asked a man whose heart belonged to fear to show mercy.
And now he was paying the price.
A month ago, he thought that Lazarus had lost himself to the souls. He’d been right, and yet not. Lazarus hadn’t simply been lost to them, he embraced them. He became the worst of them.