The War of Two Queens (Blood and Ash 4)

The back of my throat burned as a knot gathered there, tasting of hot anger and bitter agony that wasn’t just mine. I searched out the source, finding Casteel’s father. His features gave nothing away, but his emotions had broken through his shields and projected outward, crashing through mine.

“That opening in the floor in there?” Naill cleared his throat, taking a step back as if the distance could somehow erase what he’d witnessed. “It looked like some sort of well. It goes deep. Real deep. We dropped some rocks down it. Never heard them land.”

Meaning, there could be more. Bodies that had either been dumped or had fallen into the well. Gods.

Opening my eyes, I looked behind me to where many of the Atlantian soldiers stood in silence, and I knew what I would feel if I let my senses stretch. Horror. Horror so potent, I would never be able to wash it away. They all knew what the Ascended did, what they were capable of, but this was the first time that many of them were seeing it.

“What will we do with this place?” Vonetta asked, her back to the Temple.

“There is only one thing.” I lifted my chin, searching the sky. A few heartbeats later, a purplish-black draken broke through the clouds. The shouts of surprise from those who had remained in the city echoed through the valley as Reaver stretched out his large wings, gliding overhead. “Burn it,” I said, knowing he would carry through, even though he couldn’t hear me. “We will burn it to the ground.”

Reaver swept up with a powerful lift of his wings as Valyn asked, “And what of them?”

I turned to the Priests and Priestesses clothed in white. The two Ascended had already been dealt with. I opened my senses wide then. None of them felt guilt or even regret, and those were two vastly different things. Regret came when it was time to face consequences. Guilt was there no matter if one paid for their sins or not. I wasn’t sure if it would have changed anything if they had felt either of those things instead of what I sensed from them.

Peace.

Just as with the Priestess, they were at peace with their actions.

They hadn’t just stood by, doing nothing. They weren’t merely another cog in a wheel they couldn’t control. They were a part of it, and it didn’t matter if they’d been manipulated into their faith. They had been taking children, not to service any god or True King, but to feed the Ascended.

“Put them on their knees.” I walked forward, reaching for the wolven dagger at my thigh. “Facing the bodies.”

Valyn followed as the soldiers obeyed. “You don’t have to—”

“I will not ask any of you to do what I would not do myself.” I stopped in front of the kneeling Framont. His eyes were shut. “Open your eyes. Look at them. All of you. Look at them. Not at me. Them.”

Framont did as I demanded.

A flash of silvery fire lit the darkening sky as Reaver circled the stone Temple, unleashing his wrath. “I want them to be the last thing you see before you leave this realm and enter the Abyss, for that is surely where each of you will find yourselves. I want their bodies to be the very last thing you commit to memory, as it will be the last thing the families who claim their own will ever remember from this day forward. Look at them.”

The Priest’s eyes shifted to the bodies. They weren’t filled with awe this time. They weren’t filled with anything. He stared at them and smiled.

Smiled.

I swung out my arm. Red sprayed the white of my armor as I dragged the bloodstone blade across his throat.

The receiving hall and banquet chamber of Redrock had become an infirmary by nightfall. Injured soldiers and wolven had been laid out on cots. Banners baring the Blood Crown Royal Crest had already been stripped from the chamber and throughout the castle.

No Oak Ambler guards or Solis soldiers had been merely wounded. No survivable injuries. Those who had surrendered were under guard at the Citadel’s jail, and I tried not to linger on thoughts of exactly how many lives had been lost as I made my way through the now-mostly-empty cots. Just as I tried not to think about what had been under the Temple of Theon—what had been done to the children.

I…I just couldn’t think about it.

So, I’d gone from one wounded to another, healing them. I did it, thinking that since it was an ability that had developed before I Ascended, it couldn’t weaken me too badly.

That, of course, could be dangerously faulty logic, but it gave me something to do that was helpful, while a group went to inform the people of Oak Ambler that they would be able to return to their homes tomorrow.