Page 75 of Winds of Destiny

“Someone who would do that takes so much pleasure in asserting dominance over others that nothing will ever compare to the high, not even worshipping a loving god. They want tobethe god. And the fact that Embros is still alive tells me that his god is either ignorant or in on it.”

Neither option is good for us. I can’t let Kai get pulled into that. We have to save him.

“Should we try to go faster?” I ask. There’s less algae here now that we’re away from the edge of the city, and the stones are less smooth. There’s less of a smell of rotting seaweed, too, which is a blessing.

“Let’s.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Kai

“Keep moving!” An unstrung bow string whips at the backs of my legs, just sharp enough to really irritate me. I turn to look at the man wielding it, one of Embros’s remaining soldiers, and glare at him. Let’s see how he manages an incline like this with his hands tied behind his back and his legs hobbled, the little shit. Slow is better than falling on my ass.

Apparently my glare is fierce enough thathe’sthe one who stumbles on the slope to the temple ahead of us. Naturally, this infuriates him into hitting me twice as hard with the next strike.

“Don’t mark our new prince up too badly,” Embros admonishes the man holding my leash. He’s been very solicitous of me ever since he found me on the beach outside this stinking place. “We want him to be strong enough to summon his god without difficulty.”

“You are absolutely fucked if you think I’m going to summon Carnuatu to this place,” I say. I mean it, too. I would rather have every bone in my body broken than entice my god into this pit.

Coming to from the descent into Inarime to see not Turo but Embros’s leering face staring down at me was the rudest awakening I’ve ever had, no exceptions. I lashed out instantly, but all I accomplished was nearly wrenching my own shoulder out of the socket before I realized that he’d already bound my hands.

“Where’s Camrael?” I’d asked desperately.And where is Turo?

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Embros had replied with a laugh. “Not now that I’ve got you. Truly, we are destined to succeed in restoring the city of Inarime to greatness!”

It took a while before my head was clear enough that I remembered to focus on the pearl pressed to my bare chest beneath my shirt. The feelings I got from it were muddled, but I could at least tell Camrael was in no pain. More like a gradual awakening, similar to mine.

And Turo…

I didn’t want to think about what could have happened to him yet. I’d rolled over onto my knees, staring at the men—and woman—around me busily packing up everything of theirs that had washed ashore. There wasn’t much, and they were down half their people. I was lucky to have survived.

Something caught my eye. I looked a little closer at the ground in front of me, thick with algae, and saw smudges that seemed out of place. But why? My tracker’s instincts made me stare at it, trying to solve the puzzle before me, and after a moment, it hit me—the smudges, while indistinct, were spaced like tiny footprints would be. Or in this case, paw prints.

Turo’s god.

She made it over the edge—of course she did. And if she’d bothered to save me, then she’d saved Turo. It felt a little sacrilegious, but I offered up a prayer of thanks to her for her help—andfelt something that might have been the coy brush of a tail over my bound hands.

It was the only bright moment in my whole day. From then on, it was nothing but jeers, beatings, and being very thoroughly ignored by a bedraggled Queen Dian, who refused to look at any of us.

Embros’s laughter brings me back to the present. “Don’t bother expecting much from her,” he tells me. “She’s just sulking because things didn’t turn out the way she wanted.”

“What way was that?” I ask, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

“She and I began this adventure into the past together, you know.”

Dian does glance over now, her eyes filled with pain even though her expression is stoic.

“Our parents betrothed us in secret from a young age,” Embros goes on. “They thought it imperative that our cities unify to shore us up against the spreading influence of the independent towns that seemed to be springing up everywhere. For so long we exercised total control over every settlement within our spheres of influence, as was only right. But your city, and Zephyth even more so, stopped enforcing their domination.”

“Huridell has always been insular,” I point out.

“Yes, but you’ve also never allowed settlements within a hundred miles of your border before a few decades ago, and yet several have sprung up in recent years. A relic of your mother’s rule, I believe.” Embros’s mouth twists with distaste. “And Zephyth let go far sooner. The towns nearest to them had over a hundred years to grow, long enough for some of them to develop their own deities.”

Now clearly isn’t the time to tell him what Turo told me about a town in Embros’s own “sphere of influence” developing their lizard god. “What’s so bad about that?”

Embros sneers at me. “You have such a simple mind. There’s no deep learning in there at all, is there? There’s only so much power to be had in this world, Prince Eleas. The death of a mighty god created a magical wind that lasted for a millennium. As that wind died, I looked into the cause for it—it relates directly to the rise of new gods, leeching power from the rest of us.”

This is ridiculous. “Even if you’re right, that doesn’t mean our gods still aren’t mighty.”

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