Page 12 of Returned to the Vissigroth
Gods help me.
I sank down on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, heart pounding hard enough to break stone. My eyes searched her face, her lashes, the small crease between her brows. She looked peaceful. Fragile.
But who was she?
My fingers trembled as I pushed a lock of red hair back from her cheek.
“Who are you now?” I whispered. “Why don’t you remember?”
The words tasted like grief.
“I feel it’s you. Every time you look at me. Every time you speak. It’syouin there. Iknowit is.” I swallowed hard. “But if I’m wrong…” I closed my eyes. “If the gods have given me a shell with her face… if this is some trick to unravel me—” I didn’t finish the thought. I couldn’t.
My hand hovered just above her. I wanted to trace every line of her face, kiss her shoulder, bury myself in her until she remembered who we were, what we were. But I didn’t. I couldn’t touch her like that. Not until she remembered me. Not until she wanted it again.
Her chest rose slowly. She sighed in her sleep. A soft, almost wistful sound. It went through me like a blade she didn’t even know she was wielding against me.
What was she dreaming?
Did it hurt?
Was she running toward something? Or away?
I leaned in, so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my jaw. I didn’t kiss her. But gods, I wanted to. I wanted to press my lips to her temple and whisper her name. Instead, I whispered the only words that mattered now.
“Come back to me.”
I stayed there, breathing in sync with her, as the stars turned beyond the ship and the past refused to let go. Even if she didn’t remember me, even if she looked at me every day like a stranger, I would find a way back to her. I’d done it once. I’d made her fall in love with me in a world built on blood and duty and battle. I could do it again.
Iwoulddo it again. Because if I didn’t believe that, if I didn’t hold to that thread like it was the last unbroken part of me, I’d go insane before we ever reached Leander.
She was my Daphne.
And I was going to make her mine again.
Even if it killed me.
Thick smoke tickled my nose. A stench of death hung in the air that choked me, cloyed my nostrils. The smoke was black and oily. It poured from the city walls like blood from a wound too wide to close. Screaming echoed down the cobbled streets, humans and Leanders both. The ground shook with each impact. Like thunder. Like war drums.
Somewhere far away, I was aware that I was dreaming. But it was so vivid, so intense, I felt the galloping beat of my heart, smelled the smoke, and heard the cries of warriors as they were dying.
Hide. That word pierced everything. Like a blade driven into the silence.
Hide now, Daphne. Don’t make a sound. Not a single breath, you hear me? It was my mother's voice. I ducked into the crawlspace under the butcher’s stall. The scent of iron and rot and yesterday’s meat curled around me. I pressed my handsover my mouth as the doors to the inner wall shattered like brittle glass. The gates of our city had fallen.
Vissigroth Kennenryn's Dragoons filed through the city like smoke given flesh. They wore black armor and shields identifying their planets. They moved like predators. Precision and thunder.
Death had arrived at our doors a few cycles ago when the dragoons laid siege to our city. We were all hungry by now, starving, really. And I was sure the dragoons wouldn't be pacified with victory alone, now that they had entered the city. Rumors of what happened to towns holding out against Kennenryn's troops and those of his supporters had spread throughout the Fourteen Planets. There was talk of rape and murder. Plunder and devastation.
Sometimes they wouldn’t leave behind buildings or bones. Only ash and silence. I wasn't sure what I was more afraid of: something happening to my mother, death, or the violence? At eighteen rotations old, I had always thought myself invincible. Not so much that night.
Not when I heard the sound of boots crunching over the shards of blown-out windows. Not when a seffy wailed three doors down. Not even when I saw the merchant across the square gutted by a blade that glowed silver-black in the firelight.
Not even when I sawhim.
Mallack. I knew who he was, even if I had never seen him in person before. Images of all fourteen vissigroth were everywhere. If memory served, he was the Vissigroth of Hoerst, a planet I had never been to.
He rode a massive nicta, a rare, white-furred, silver-horned beast. Its muscles bunched beneath ceremonial warstraps. The part of me that was conscious of my dream state recognized that its rider was younger than the male I had met today, but knew it was him. His jaw was tight, his expression unreadable, and his eyes were blazing with darkness. Even from where I hid, I felt them. Like they could see through stone. Through me.
