Page 142 of Lady of the Drowned Empire
Blinking slowly, I began to understand, to remember. Korteria was too far west, too far from the water, from the Lumerian Ocean—the source of our magic. This was why Ka Kormac produced so many soturi and so few mages. This far from the Lumerian shore, with so little access to the Lumerian Ocean’s waters, even their ashvan were grounded.
I couldn’t move, and between the nahashim’s venom and the aftereffects of my kashonim, I could barely speak. I was fighting to keep my eyes open.
From the corner of my gaze, I could see the blue light of the vadati still in effect. A small glow came from behind my golden armor. With what I had left, I tucked it down into my tunic struggling to slide it safely between my breasts.
The ashvan approached with their riders. There were four of them, I thought. One carried a flag with the sigil of Ka Kormac—a snarling silver wolf.
“What have we here?” asked the leader, slowing his ashvan to a halt.
I knew his voice, but my brain was barely functioning, no longer making connections, no longer energized enough to bring me his name. I was on the verge of passing out, of losing all consciousness.
There was only one thing I could do.
He laughed, jumping from his horse, watching me with cruel black, beady eyes.
“Rhyan,” I said, my voice raspy, exhausted. The muscles in my face were tightening. The venom was overpowering me. I knew I had one word left. And it had to count. “Wolf.”
Black leather boots approached, kicking a rock out of their way. Valalumir stars at the bottom of a soturion belt shined beneath the sun.
My eyes closed as rough hands lifted me up, fingers pressing into me, an unfamiliar, unwelcome grip.
Cruel, wolfish laughter, punctuated by a howl---the howl I’d heard before. It was the last thing I heard now, before I finally paid the full price of using kashonim and lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I stood on a mountaintop dressed in my soturion uniform. My belt was buckled, and the Valalumir stars on the straps were shined. I reached down and tried to pull off one of the seven-pointed stars. I needed it. There was an enemy. I needed to kill. Protect.
But the star cut me. I hissed, blood gushing from my finger. I sucked it into my mouth, feeling cold. Snow was falling from the sky.
As each snowflake hit the ground, it burst into flames. Fires were surrounding me on the mountaintop.
An akadim growled, its teeth gnashing, and I spun, trying to find it.
“Asherah,” Haleika growled, walking through the flames.
I threw my star, watching in horror as she jumped to the side. The star hummed, spinning past her. Meera and Morgana were there, bound and tied up.
“You can’t hurt them,” I said. “I’m Asherah.”
She laughed. “You were.” Her claws wrapped around my throat. I stared down; my armor was gone. “But you’re human now.”
“I won’t be for long.”
“You followed the wrong path. Your enemy is closer than you think.” She squeezed my neck until I coughed. Her arm elongated, wrapping around me, her pale skin filling with black, shiny scales. There was a scent in the air. A scent of death.
The nahashim hissed, its fangs bared and dripping venom, as its body squeezed mine, cutting off my circulation.
“Please!” I gasped, barely able to breathe. “Don’t.”
“You better be ready,” the snake hissed, the sound growing into a wolf’s howl.
The wolf howled in the night, the sound startling me awake.
My head was pounding. Soreness spread across the back of my neck, winding deep into the muscles behind my shoulders. With a groan, I opened my eyes, finding myself in a room darkened by night. There was a fire burning, but my vision was too blurry to see. Everything looked shadowy, hazy. I blinked, realizing I needed to wipe dirt from my eyes, push hair from my face. But my hands…I gritted my teeth. My hands were bound, tied up above my head. Rough ropes had been tightened around my wrists. And I was standing. My feet suddenly stumbling as I fully woke, trying to find my balance. I slipped, and the ropes only held me tighter as I struggled to find purchase on the floor. Tears burned behind my eyes.
I’d been asleep like this. For hours. My legs felt foreign and heavy, every muscle stiff.
A sharp pain pounded in my temples as I lifted my head up, finding through the fog of sleep that my wrists had not only been bound by rope but strung to a pole. A black pole that looked exactly like the one in the Katurium where I’d been tied and whipped by order of the Imperator.
