Gaius forced his cousin to watch while his soldiers were slaughtered. It wasn’t a short fight—Egnatius’s soldiers were good—but it was still a battle they would not win.
As his soldiers finished off the last few, Gaius pushed the blade still rammed into Egnatius’s back deeper, and said against his cousin’s ear, “If you want me to end this quick, cousin, you’ll have to tell me what I want to know.”
“Know?”
“Where’s Vateria? I want Vateria. Your sister will never escape paying for what she did to Agrippina.”
“I’ll tell you nothing,” Egnatius shot back.
Gaius wasn’t shocked by this. Egnatius was one of the stronger of Thracius’s offspring. He would not go down easy.
Something he quickly proved when he rammed his elbow into Gaius’s face, forcing him back. Briefly free, Egnatius dropped to the ground, but quickly shifted from human to dragon. His legs might be dead, but not his wings.
He lifted himself up, hovering off the ground, and yanking his sword from its sheath.
“Come, cousin!” he ordered Gaius. “Let us see the good king fight.”
Gaius nodded. “As you wish.”
Kachka found the one to be forced upon her in one of the only wooden huts in tribal territory.
Wooden huts were not usually built because they took additional time to breakdown when the tribes went on the move. More important, they weren’t nearly as warm as the yurts.
But, every once in a while, there was a call for a wood hut. For it was to these dwellings that those who had wronged their own were sent. The Southlanders would call it a prison. The Riders called it, “The place for those who cannot be killed.”
This hut wasn’t filled with criminals the way the Southlanders’ prisons were. Instead, there was only one inhabitant. A woman. On her knees, her arms bound in chains. The chains were secured to the ceiling so that her arms were raised above her head and stretched wide apart. This was to keep her from using her hands for anything.
More chains were wrapped around her ankles, and the chains stretched across the floor and were staked to the ground by thick metal spikes.
There was no light in the hut. No fire to warm. Just the prisoner.
Nina Chechneva, the Unclaimed.
Unclaimed because no tribe would have her. The tribe she’d been born to had disowned her nearly two hundred years before. And no other would take her in. So she was nothing more than Nina Chechneva.
As soon as Kachka walked into the hut, she knew that Nina sensed her.
Without lifting her bowed head, she said, “Kachka Shestakova. I knew you were coming.”
“Did your dark gods tell you that, Nina Chechneva?” Kachka asked as she carefully moved closer.
“No. Just the damned souls who roam these lands. Lost and desperate and so ripe for my use.”
She said that last bit on a hissing little whisper. Over her three hundred and thirty-six years, Nina had terrified many with that hissing whisper. She’d been using it to her advantage since before she could walk, terrifying even her birth mother, who had given her up to the shamans of the tribe not long afterward. But after a time, even their shamans had wanted nothing to do with Nina Chechneva. No one had.
So they’d tried to kill her. Many times. Her own mother had attempted to bury the first blade in Nina’s chest. But, instead, she’d buried it into a mighty oak that had abruptly appeared where the child had been standing, the blade breaking on impact. Then, suddenly, Nina Chechneva had been standing behind her mother, and the five-year-old had slammed her mother head-first into that tree.
Was all that true? Kachka didn’t know. Every Rider child was fed stories like these from birth. But true or not, Nina Chechneva was feared by all. Not because she’d embraced the magicks of these lands. Riders appreciated magicks as much as anyone and those who were gifted by the gods were looked upon with slight envy and great respect.
But Nina Chechneva hadn’t been blessed by the gods. Her dark soul had been tainted by something else. And the longer she’d managed to live, the more she’d been hated.
So now, the Anne Atli was using Kachka to get rid of that which she could not get rid of herself.
Steadying her nerves, Kachka went down on one knee in front of Nina. She placed two fingers under the woman’s chin and lifted until their eyes met. Those dark, soulless eyes, filled with hate. Not the casual hate of someone hated by her own people. But the hate of everyone she encountered. Nina, it was said, absorbed that hate to use when she cast spells. Now that hatred swirled through her body like blood.
“You have so few choices, Nina Chechneva. You can stay here, an outsider among your own—”
“Just like your sister. Does she miss her eye terribly? Does she cry for it at night, tears only dripping from her one remaining eye?”
Unwilling to ask how she’d known about that—no one talked to Nina Chechneva if they could help it, not even to gossip—Kachka went on as if she hadn’t heard her. “—or you can join me.”
“What makes you think you can trust me any more than anyone else, Kachka Shestakova, no longer of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of Despair in the Far Reaches of the Steppes of the Outerplains?”
“The Tribes are giving you a chance to live. Outside of this hut that they’ve built specifically for you. To allow you to breathe fresh air. To be free of these chains. But they offer you nothing more. The Cult of Chramnesind, however? They won’t even give you that. When they take over, even your dark gods will not protect you. But join us and you’ll have a chance to stop them. Then, when this is all done, you can go to your dark gods. You can become one with them and do whatever you and your dark gods do. Free from tyranny.”
Kachka gripped Nina’s chin tight until the woman couldn’t help but wince from the pain. “I promise you, Nina Chechneva, the Unclaimed. You will get no better offer than this. From anyone.”
“But?”
“But you will swear to your dark gods at the risk of your unholy soul that your loyalty will be to me and to our team. No one else.”
“And what of your mad Southland queen? She thinks her tormented soul is too good for the likes of me. She won’t be happy.”
“My loyalty is to the Mad Queen of Garbhán Isle. Your loyalty will be to us. But you must swear it, Daughter of Darkness. You must swear it.”
Nina’s eyes cut across the room. She took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. When she was done, “Fine.”
“Swear it.”
Her eyes ripped back to Kachka’s face. Kachka saw all that hate there. More than usual, actually. But it didn’t surprise her. She’d never seen Nina Chechneva look any other way.
“I swear it. On my soul and to the dark gods of pain and suffering and despair.”
Kachka studied Nina Chechneva’s face a little longer. She saw resignation in those hate-filled eyes, so she released her grip.
“Zoya Kolesova. Unleash her.”
The massive woman gawked at Kachka from the safety of the hut door. She’d come in just far enough that she could watch the proceedings but was still able to flee if necessary.
“Have you lost your wits, Kachka Shestakova?”
“Do as I tell you. Release her. She is one of us now.”