“I’m Lira of Stone,” I told them. “In the name of the Fallen Ones and blessed Aillira, I’ve come to free you.”
When every Daughter of Aillira bore a shield-scar, and their minds were their own again, they introduced themselves. Along with Mabyn, the brunette blood-healer who could treat wounds that couldn’t be seen, and Keeva, the redheaded bone-healer who mended fractures, there was also a well-washer who could take toxic water and make it drinkable, a tract-seeker who could lead people to any destination she sought, a harvest-reaper who could make crops grow faster and fuller. There were tide-tellers, a sea-farer, a star-mapper. Some of them I knew from memories the temple ruins showed me.
They listened as I explained what I wanted to do. “You’re linked now. That’s an advantage, but it won’t be enough to fight the Dragon. I can offer you more. Traces of the Fallen Ones’ power, to make you stronger.” The mystic had transferred the fallen gods’ power to me through her blood. I could do the same, but I would grant these Daughters of Aillira the choice I was denied.
Mabyn cocked her head. “You want to give us your blood because there are gods inside it?”
I touched her hand and she jerked away like I’d burned her, staring at her fingers.
“Sweet Silarch! I felt them through your skin,” she said. “The Fallen Ones. They really are inside you.”
The women gazed at me, fascinated and fearful. Mabyn held her wrist out to me. “The Dragon sacked our temple, killed our teachers. This is war. We need every advantage we can get.”
I sliced my palm, wrapping it around the healer’s skoldar. Something tugged free inside me, like a single leaf plucked from a tree by the wind—a trickle of the Fallen Ones’ power, leaving me, flowing into Mabyn. She felt it, too, staring down at her wrist, curling her hand into a fist.
Every Daughter of Aillira accepted my blood.
Power thrummed from them, a shadow of what lived within my veins, but strong enough that the whole room seemed to vibrate. “Your gifts might overwhelm you at first,” I warned them. “You need to practice using them to get used to it.”
Keeva folded her arms. “I can’t practice mine, unless someone wants to volunteer to break an arm.”
Alane, the tract-seeker, closed her eyes. “I can see outside! The village, the bay. The Dragonmen.” She rubbed at her temples. “Gods, this is making me dizzy.”
“Can you check on the other girls?” Mabyn asked.
“There are other Daughters of Aillira here?” I said. “Where?”
“Ten more, brought from Aillira’s Temple,” Bronagh, the sea-farer answered. “The ones the warlord deemed the most dangerous.”
“They’re all right.” Alane’s brow furrowed. “They’re locked in the manor, with two guards outside the door, two more stationed outside the building. There’s no way to get to them.”
I ran my fingers across the crystal bracelet. At my touch, it turned liquid, molding back into a dagger and solidifying once more. “There is, if you help me.”
The guard came a few hours later with a basket of food. Alane signaled us just before the Dragonman entered, and I ducked behind the door as it opened.
Keeva lay silent on the floor, eyes closed. The others stood around her, staring at nothing. A good impression of how they’d looked when I first found them.
“What’s this?” The guard set the basket down and edged closer, bending over to peer at the girl feigning illness. I pushed the door shut and snuck quietly toward the Dragonman, stabbing the dagger into the back of his neck.
As he staggered and fell, there was a sound like a belching drain, and a moment later, crimson clouds danced inside the dagger’s clear blade from tip to hilt, trapped within the crystal, redder than blood, redder than fire.
The Dragonman’s soul.
I felt the brush of his soul through the shell of crystal, crying out as it was sucked from his body and transported to that hollow prison-realm where the Fallen Ones had been sent. I had been to the prison-realm, when I dove into the loch in the Grove of the Fallen Ones, and it was like being torn to pieces and suffocating and disintegrating, all at once. Not even a Dragonman’s soul deserved an eternity in that dark oblivion.
I tapped the dagger against my forearm and it transformed back into a bracelet, tightening around my wrist. I vowed not to use it on another mortal unless I had no choice.
I helped the other Daughters of Aillira drag the Dragonman’s body beneath a table. Mabyn hid the key he’d dropped while the rest of us concealed our crime, sopping up blood, placing sheets and plants around the table so nothing would seem amiss.
Mabyn hugged the other girls, whispering goodbyes and good lucks, then she followed me out of the infirmary into the night. Stalwart Bay was quiet, its paths empty, its cottages and shops dark. We walked slowly toward the manor on the opposite side of the village, but still I heard Mabyn’s pulse racing, beating in time with my own.
“It will be all right,” I said. “Follow the plan, and we’ll all be free soon.”
Footsteps marched toward us. I squeezed Mabyn’s shoulder and ducked behind the nearest building, watching. The patrolling Dragonman stopped her. Mabyn said nothing, keeping her expression blank, her eyes unfocused.
“The warlord will flay me if he finds out one of his magiskas wandered off,” the Dragonman said. There was a risk he would take her back to the infirmary, but it was far enough away that I thought it unlikely. Sure enough, the guard gripped Mabyn’s arm and pulled her into the manor.
The healer had her scalpel and a vial of my blood hidden beneath her clothes. She would help the rest of the Daughters of Aillira mark one another, as I’d done, guiding their cuts into skoldars. Returning their minds to them, so they could tear themselves free from Draki’s compulsion and meet us on the battlefield when the time came.
I crept through Stalwart Bay, noting the guards and what areas they patrolled. If Garreth and his army had left shortly after Quinlan, and they pushed the horses and marched all night, they could be in Stalwart Bay as early as dawn tomorrow. I had to ensure the drawbridge was open and take out as many Dragonmen as I could, to better their odds.
But when I found the cellblock, I stopped, remembering Draki’s words from my dream. I have a gift for you—someone you thought lost. Someone you might like returned.
For a mad moment, my heart screamed for Reyker.
I eased closer on quiet feet, closing my eyes, letting my senses reach out like extensions of myself—probing the sounds and smells and essence of who was in the cell, brushing against something dark and dangerous, but familiar, and I grappled to put the pieces together. I knew whoever was down there. I’d touched his soul before.