A Veil of Secrets (2 page)

The harbinger bared her jagged teeth at me. “Idra wants him, so Idra will have him.”

“Idra will never have him.” My back spasmed. “I would kill him first.”

“You lie.” She jutted out her chin. “You would never harm this one.”

To spare him greater pain, I would. Then I would kill her for driving me to it.

Fear galvanized me. I tossed the blankets from my lap into the snow. The jacket I used to shield myself from prying eyes came next. I flung it onto the road while kicking my mount’s sides until she roared her anger at me, startling the harbinger, who relented her attack on Edan to glance back at me.

While I had the chance, I grasped the dagger and threw it with all my strength.

It lodged under her collarbone, but she was quick to yank it free.

Yellow blood poured from the wound and stained the grungy fabric wrapping across her breasts and over her hips to a short, flared skirt. She kicked her sandaled feet in the air, almost clobbering my brother during her tantrum. Once she’d composed herself, she dropped onto the saddle behind Edan.

On the wind, I scented his blood as mine heated to a furious boil.

I had warned her.

I tore the confining shirt from my back, leaving me in a sleeveless silk chemise and pants.

Cold air shocked my skin, sending chills shivering through my body to quiver in my wing joints. With a short prayer our guards wouldn’t shoot me down, I flexed my cramped wings and leapt from the back of my ursus into the air. The other harbinger’s eyes widened to see me zooming toward her.

Using Edan’s shoulders for a brace, she shoved up until she stood on the sow’s back and leaned against him for support. He was shrugging to dislodge her, but his ursus began roaring and thrashing its head. Harbingers smelled of unnatural death, and the ursus wanted no part of her rancid stench.

Taking my other dagger in hand, I slashed at the harbinger’s back as she turned to launch herself into the sky. I cut through one of her bottom wings, and she shrieked in fury as the membrane tore.

“Kill her,”
the same voice coaxed.
“She is unworthy to complete the kills I have set before you.”

“If I kill her, it is to save myself or those under my protection. It’s not a glory I do for you.”

“Your existence glorifies me.”
Idra’s laughter made my head ache.
“Finish her. Then find me.”

“Find you? That implies desire to see you again.”
I scoffed.
“Of which I have none. Goodbye.”

I sailed over the other harbinger and slid my blade through another wing, and then another.

The harder she flew, the greater her damage became until she was barely hovering over the road.

“We are sisters.” Her golden eyes pleaded with me. “Do not do this.”

The flash of weakness, the knowledge she was injured beyond repair, was an aphrodisiac to me.

My voice was husky when I said, “I have no sisters.”

“Don’t.” Edan waved his arms in my periphery. “Marne, no. This is not who you are.”

“I have a brother.” I raised my dagger. “And you tried to take him from me.”

“No.” The harbinger brought her hands up to shield her face. “I had to. Idra—”

I sank the blade in her stomach and used her waning altitude to cut her from gut to breast. I rode her corpse to the ground, watching as the light died in her eyes and the spark of her life extinguished.

While her entrails warmed the snow, I fought the urge to sink my hands inside her and bring that hot, fresh meat to my lips. My mouth watered for a taste. The scent overpowered me, so rich, and I…

Metal pressed into the side of my throat. Edan stood beside me with his sword drawn while I crouched over the harbinger’s carcass, ready to claw out his eyes for standing so near my kill. Cramps shuddered through me. Everything hurt. Everything burned. I was so
hungry
.

“Don’t make me kill you.” He stroked my hair. “I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”

Instead of sinking my claws into the corpse, I sank them into the snow, threw back my head and screamed until my voice broke and the worst of the pain had passed. Exhaustion toppled me onto my side. My wings curled protectively around me, and I rocked on the ice until Edan lowered his sword, assured I was in possession of my faculties again. He scooped me up in his arms and cradled me like he still loved me, like he still believed his little sister wasn’t a monster, though I wasn’t quite as sure.

Chapter Two

After the morning’s excitement, we relaxed our hectic pace and allowed our ursus to recover. Despite the fact I reeked of harbinger blood, which kept my sow’s skin shuddering, I refused Edan’s offer to ride with him.

I wanted time alone. I needed to make peace with what I had done, not be coddled by him.

My journal lay open on my lap while I debated how to put my actions into perspective. Nothing came to me. No flowery words or turns of phrase to change the stark truth that I had killed someone.

Worse, I had enjoyed every minute. Regret had come later, much later, at the point of a sword.

Edan ranged ahead, his head tilted back to keep an eye on the skies.

I thought perhaps he wanted distance and quiet to sort through his feelings as well.

“Writing again.”

My sow grunted as Asher’s brown boar pulled alongside us.

After closing the journal, I tucked it away. “It’s a nasty habit I seemed to have picked up in Erania.”

He made a grumbling sound that could have meant anything.

I frowned at him. “What was that?”

Asher thrust out his arm. “I thought you might need this.”

He tossed my coat to me. It was damp from being trampled into the slush on the road, but he had dusted it clean. Once I shrugged into the garment, he offered me one of the blankets I had discarded. My fingers brushed his by accident. Instead of yanking his hand back, his grip tightened under mine.

He seemed determined not to be the one to break away first, even if his skin was crawling.

I saved him the trouble. I jerked it out of his hands and bundled myself. “Thank you.”

“Your shirt was ruined.” His gaze lingered on the slice of chemise visible under my coat.

“The journey is almost over.” I struggled not to squirm under his regard. “The coat is enough.”

As he stared, my skin tightened. My nipples stung as though the cold had not numbed them.

Asher’s disapproving scowl twisted something in my chest. “What are you?”

I let the fur slide through my fingers and lowered my head. “That’s a rude question.”

“You disemboweled someone in midair.” Anger thrummed in his voice. “I deserve answers.”

“What did Henri tell you when you accepted this position?” I was genuinely curious.

“That my experience with Lailah made me uniquely qualified to protect you.”

Lailah, a true harbinger, had sung for Asher and enslaved him with her voice. Under her control, he had commanded her riser legion in the battle to overthrow Erania, a city his clan, the Mimetidae, had sworn to protect. By obeying her, even against his will, he’d turned on those dependent upon him.

I knew how he felt. Raw. Frightened. Hollowed. There was no cure for what he had suffered.

I understood why his gaze cut through me and why his voice retained that edge of steel.

He wanted answers, but he wouldn’t like the ones I had to offer.

“What did he mean by that?” Asher prompted me.

Just to be contrary, I twisted the question into one of my own. “What do you think he meant?”

“That is not an answer.” Asher huffed. “I took it to mean you’re somehow affiliated with them.”

“Affiliated with the Necrita?” I scoffed. “I am their castoff, not an agent of theirs, if that worries you. As you could tell from our encounter with the harbinger today, her kind bear me and mine no goodwill.” I risked a glance at him. “She came for my—for Edan. I would not let her have him.”

“Her kind.” His gaze slid over my spine, leaving chills in its wake. “Are you not the same?”

In appearance, yes, we were. Who delved beyond that these days? “Do you think we are?”

His pause gave as clear an answer as any he had offered me thus far.

“You revealed yourself to three males who saw combat in Erania. They fought the risers, and if they did not see Lailah herself, they were well informed of who and what she was. They’re good males, each of them, but they don’t understand what it means to be enthralled by the harbinger song.” He cut his eyes to mine. “They don’t understand that there are areas of gray, people who have done horrible things while not in possession of themselves. I fear they won’t listen to me, to reason.”

I picked at the fur spread across my lap. “You think they’ll harm me now that they know.”

“There’s a good chance they will try now that they’ve got the notion in their heads.”

“Thank you for warning me.” I kept to myself how shocked I was that he had bothered.

“I warn you to protect them.” He tugged on his mount’s reins. “I don’t want to see them dead.”

Lips pressed together, I trapped my defense behind my teeth and nodded.

“Keep an eye out,” he called. “The risers are still out there.”

Asher fell behind, no doubt resuming his place at the rear of our procession before Edan noticed and rebuked him for dawdling. Or worse, Edan might punish him for speaking to me. Asher hated me quite enough as it was. He was, it seemed, a tenuous ally, and I would prefer to keep him as such.

Though the sun had dipped below the tree line, the bitter cold was slower to set in than usual.

Between the limbs, fading light cast welcome heat mirages through the branches. Breezes stirred the air, carrying the scent of drying grass. I inhaled until my lungs were full of the heady summer smells. Laughter clogged my throat, and Edan turned as though he’d heard the joy I had not voiced.

Wrinkles creased his eyes, and the weariness tightening his mouth relented to allow him a smile.

Once my cheeks grew flush, I folded the fur and tied it to the supply roll behind my saddle.

Cool slush splattered my pant legs as my sow galloped forward. I grinned while she splashed in a muddy groove cut by cart tracks, and wiped muck from my right eye. Forget the risers. Forget the trauma of the morning. This was living. This was why Edan fought so hard for me, so I might feel as free as a bird, as he and I had never been in our lives, as we would be once finally reaching Beltania.

The veil was so close its energy caused static to lift the hairs along my nape and arms.

Eager as I was, I would have braved the veil without slowing. Just charged through the ethereal shroud and burst into the glorious southland heat. But only fools neglected protocol. Even with risers on our tail, we had to slow and each prepare for the crossing. Whether it was truth or lore, I knew the cautionary tales of the veil well. All Araneae children learned of the dangers at their parents’ knees.

The veil separated the frigid northlands from the humid southlands. It was a mystical barrier that ran the length of the entire world. Thomisidae elders had told the story of how the two gods, Kokyangwuti and her husband, Tawa, had forged this world from clay and bone. They had created a world before this one, First World, and it had been consumed by fire and greed. This world was their second, and to balance the elements, they capped this world with a sheet of ice. In this way, when the sun rose in the east and followed the length of the veil to set in the western skies, its flames might leap onto the southland’s grasses and set fire to their harvests. But even if the southlands were consumed, even if the blaze crossed the veil, the heat would only melt the northland until its cooling waters extinguished the flame. Thus the Second World would be spared a grisly death from sun fire.

But the veil could not sustain itself. It required too much energy to guide the sun and protect the precious ice from melting, and so the two gods decided that since the veil was in place to protect our world, so must our world protect the veil. To sate its hunger, the veil may choose a sacrifice. Lives it takes fuel its magic and keep the rest of our people safe. Or so the legends say and we must believe.

Anyone who has crossed can’t deny it’s a powerful experience.

This was to be my second crossing, and I could not wait to say it was behind me.

As the heat thawed my limbs and made me regret the necessity of my coat, I stretched my arms over my head and grimaced at the pain in my back. We must walk through the veil, and my stiff legs were eager for the task. Beltania sat on the other side, perhaps a half-day’s walk, near a rich tributary that would allow me to bathe for the first time in days and make use of their famed dayflower soaps.

Flexing my fingers caused dried blood to crack and flake on my skin.

As I stared at my jagged fingernails and the brownish grit under them, hunger pangs rumbled.

I set my hands in my lap and studied the landscape ahead, trying to recapture my joy at leaving winter behind.

A copse of trees sat to one side of the road, and Edan dismounted there. He took the opportunity to stretch then jogged toward me. He gathered the reins from my hands and led my sow to where his was scratching her shoulder against a tree. The sisters snuffled each other while he lifted me from the saddle and set me on the ground. My bare feet sank into the slush. Numb as they were, I didn’t mind. I hated wearing shoes. His gaze skimmed over me as if assuring himself I was still me.

“Have you looked your fill?” I crossed my arms. “Or should I turn a circle for you?”

“Good idea.” He twirled his finger. “I want to check your back.”

I had injured one of my wings while rescuing Henri’s fiancée, Zuri, from a nasty fall off the sheer black walls that surrounded Erania. Edan clucked like a mother hen over my injury, but I was sound.

That was one benefit of my harbinger lineage. I healed much faster than normal folk.

Slumping at the inevitability, I turned to let him examine me. He would not rest until he had.

He tugged my coat down to my elbows. “Have you taken your injection today?”

Ah yes. My injection. I wondered when he would ask. “Not yet.”

To prevent my conversion to a full harbinger, Henri had concocted an antivenin I injected daily. If I skipped a day, the toxins in my system would liquefy my organs and I would rot from the inside.

Small price to pay for survival, except the injections were shots of liquid fire in my veins.

The routine was its own sort of blistering torture, but I bore the pain for Edan’s sake.

“You are being reckless,” he scolded.

“I will take it after we cross,” I promised.

“Yes, you will.” His touch was gentle despite his tone. “Or I will dose you myself.”

I screwed up my face. “I said I would do it, and I will.”

“You were writing again.” He grunted. “How goes the journaling?”

“Fine.” I shrugged. “It’s odd writing down our story.”

Henri had requested a complete record of my life from the night Idra took me to present. Since I was in his debt, I saw no way of sidestepping his expectations. Besides, it might help others like me.

No doubt that was his purpose. Zuri suffered through the same excruciating regimen as I did.

Gentle as his soul was, he must agonize over her pain. If I could help alleviate it, I would.

“
Your
story.” He thumped my ear. “I want to be left out of it.”

“Oh, no. I must be thorough.” I chuckled. “Praises for the hero of my tale must be sung.”

“I am no hero.”

“You saved my life.” I mused, “That is, I believe, the very definition of heroism.”

While Edan prodded my back, I watched the wary guards approach. They stopped several yards away and dismounted. Their hands went to their sword hilts as if magnetized, but they did not draw.

Asher was the last to arrive. He wore Mimetidae black from head to foot, but even such somber garb failed to conceal the yellow blood streaking his neck and cheek. Red blood poured from a cut on his forehead, but since the others weren’t shunning him, I assumed a riser had thrown a rock or other object at him, that he hadn’t been injured by one directly. Their bodily fluids were contagious. If he had been injured by one, and if its blood or saliva entered the wound, he would contract the plague.

No doubt they would sterilize his wounds the instant his feet touched the ground.

Unless… I hadn’t considered that Henri might have started him on the plague preventative too.

He slid from his mount and joined the others, who kept a careful distance from me.

“Don’t pay them any mind.” Edan’s voice drifted over my shoulder. “They’ll be gone soon.”

It could not be soon enough. “What if they warn the Salticidae what it is they’re harboring?”

“If they choose to break their vows to their paladin, and if the Salticidae turn us out, then you and I will take the gold that Henri gifted us and set out for a new city. Or perhaps a smaller village since you prefer living in the open.” He tapped my wingtips. “Not that I blame you when you have these.”

I grinned at him over my shoulder. His was a marvelous skill to make me feel so at home in my skin while he pretended he envied even one small part of my transformation. Though I must admit, I loved to fly. I offered to take him with me once, but he worried my fragile-looking wings might tear.

I rather thought he was afraid of heights, not that he would ever admit such a fault to me.

As important as it was that he seem invincible to all, it seemed doubly important he appear that way to me. Edan had been my protector since we had been ripped from the arms of our parents to serve their master, a horrid male with paper skin and a halo of white curls he vainly brushed himself.

Thank the gods he had been too old to threaten my maidenhood, but he’d had a friend delighted to relieve me of the burden. He had lived to remind me that he owned me, that he owned other pretty baubles too, of which my brother was one. The very real fear that Edan and I might be turned on one another for our master’s amusement had no doubt been the instrument of his death. For if he had not taunted Edan so, then when Idra stole me while I was shopping for gowns at Fortunia’s night market, he might have simply escaped the old lecher and come for me rather than skinning the bastard alive.

But Edan chose instead to vent the rage accumulated during our years of servitude.

I cast no blame on him. He did no less to our master than he deserved.

I tensed at Asher’s approach, enough that Edan stopped his inspection and came to my side.