Page 90 of Sanctuary of the Shadow
Will you stop saying that!Harrow inwardly screamed at her. “I refuse to believe that.”
“Dark Half has spread his wings and flown from my sight. But not yours.”
Harrow stared hard at her beautiful, strange face, desperate to understand. “How? How do I find him?”
“I’m not a Seer. No chance of that yesterday or tomorrow, or even one month ago. But you are.”
Harrow became aware that the arguing in the background had ceased. Looking behind her, she found Ouro, Malaikah, Salizar, and everyone else watching. With some difficulty, she forced herself to ignore them, turning back to Nashira. “I don’t even know where to begin searching for him.”
“Where does one go when one has nothing left to live for?”
No!she wanted to shout. Raith had so much to live for. Goddess, this was all her fault. Hers and the infernal Queens’. Darya had played the wounded victim, trying to justify the awful things she’d done, and Harrow had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
Well, no more. From now on, she would listen to no one but herself and her own Goddess-given instincts.
Shaking her head to clear the anger, she swore she would make this right. She would start by finding Raith.
“He went after Furie,” Malaikah said.
They all looked at her. “How do you know?”
“Think about it. He loves Harrow. Then he finds out he’s the one who killed her family and she’s left him. If he’s like Nashira described, he’s going to feel awful. He’ll want to avenge Harrow, but he’s also not the type to lie down and surrender. He’ll want to go out with a bang. I bet he figures if he can take Furie with him, then it’s a job well done.”
“Yesterday you were wrong!” Nashira exclaimed. “Today, you make sense. Tomorrow remains to be seen.”
“She’ll kill him,” Harrow whispered in horror.
“Yes,” Nashira agreed, though it hadn’t been a statement of which she particularly wanted confirmation. “Today, tomorrow, or a hundred years ago, Furie will defeat him if he confronts her. It’s definitely too late now.”
Chapter Nineteen
Raith had finally figured out what the enchantment was on the blade he’d stolen from Salizar. The wound in his side still hadn’t stopped bleeding, though the rest of his injuries had faded in the long hours he’d been flying. The loss of blood was slowly sapping his strength, but it didn’t matter.
He just had to make it long enough to fulfill his four-part checklist, and then it was inconsequential what happened to him.
He flew the rest of the night and half the following day before he finally found Castle Fera—Queen Furie’s domain. The South was a desolate land. Mostly flat, covered with red sand dunes and the odd towering cliff face, there was little vegetation to be found and almost no water. Here and there, oases sprang up to nourish thirsty travelers, but beyond that, there was nothing but cracked, dry earth. Raith remembered waking up on that very earth with no idea who he was.
Now, he knew all too well.
When he looked at his hands, all he saw was the blood that stained them. Corporeal or incorporeal, it didn’t matter. What he had done… There was no coming back from it, no way to right his many wrongs, especially knowing what he’d done to the one person he valued above all others.
Before tonight, he would have said the one person he loved. Now, he didn’t believe a being like him was capable of love. Those blissful days in the tavern with Harrow were a blessing he didn’t deserve, and he would greedily cherish the memories until the moment he drew his last breath.
Which likely wouldn’t be too long from now.
The wound in his side continued to bleed steadily, and he wasn’t deluding himself into thinking he had a great chance of success in killing Furie. Yes, beheading would end her, but she knew this and would have protections in place. In the end, it didn’t really matter.
Part of avenging Harrow meant meeting his own end. Possibly taking out Furie was just a bonus.
Within sight of Castle Fera, Raith found a small patch of dying shrubs at the top of a hill to hide behind and rest while he waited for nightfall. He wasn’t a full wraith anymore—he was something else entirely, some new abomination that warranted no title—but he was still much stronger in the darkness and could cloak himself in shadows for camouflage.
He studied the castle from his vantage point. He remembered it all clearly now. Too clearly. The hill he was atop sloped steeply down to a moat that surrounded the outer curtain wall around the fortress. The moat had never held water, so perhaps it was best labeled as a pit. The bridge was down. It was never lifted. None would dare attack here.
Fire burned in countless torches atop the stone walls. At the center, the keep rose ominously, its turrets stained pink in the fading sunlight. A row of tiny windows glowed with firelight from the tallest tower—Furie’s chambers. At the base of the keep were the dungeons Raith had spent months in, and halfway to the top was the Room of Jars—the place where the wraiths were kept.
Furie had created a hundred of them. One by one, she’d formed them from her magic and bound them with her hatred. It had taken centuries before she’d been ready to strike against Darya.
Years were spent perfecting the process of wording her orders, exacting precise vows, and experimenting to find the limits of a wraith’s power. By the time Raith was made, she had finally struck the balance, and he’d been forced into playing Furie’s pet assassin for decades until he’d finally been sent to kill Harrow’s clan and everything had changed.
