Page 6 of Sword & Sacrifice

Penn swallowed nervously and looked between the two mages. How long until Alistair decides I’m not worth the trouble? “Adelaide, stop, please! It’s still Valerian’s body. He’s your friend, isn’t he?”

She gazed at Penn, her expression unreadable in the tumultuous dark. “I would rather mourn Valerian than fear Alistair.”

A bolt of lightning arced through the broken window, heading straight for Valerian.

“Val!” Penn forced his way through the barrier. It pressed around him on all sides, the air as thick as syrup, slowing his movements and strangling his breath.

The mage remained perfectly still, not trying to evade or block the attack at all. A foot away from him, the lightning connected with another invisible wall and spread like a spider’s web through the room, illuminating every dark corner.

The afterimages muddled Penn’s vision, and he struggled to blink them away.

Before Adelaide could ready another attack, Penn reached the mage’s side and grabbed his hand, twining their fingers together. Penn expected the mage’s skin to be as cold as the ice he generated but all he felt was a steady, familiar warmth.

The mage moved stiffly as he lowered his gaze to their intertwined fingers. Then he raised his mismatched eyes to Penn’s face. “You really are quite fascinating.”

“Penn!” Adelaide cried, her voice cracking. “Have you forgotten what he’s done? To Arnsveld? To your friends? Think of Archer. And Silas. And your own family!”

Penn flinched as a happy, smiling face flashed through his mind, an older version of his own. Someone who had died almost two decades ago. In some ways, half of the Arnsveldian deaths from the past fifty years could be blamed on Alistair’s actions. All of Alistair’s backend trade dealings that had led to higher prices of food and other necessities, plunging half of Arnsveld into poverty. The mines that collapsed despite the safety regulations in place, as if they’d been cursed. The war Alistair had spent decades instigating. One man had almost destroyed the country.

But all Penn could think was: Not Val too. He wouldn’t let Alistair take one more person from him, not as long as he could prevent it.

“I know what Alistair has done,” Penn said. “I also know what Valerian is capable of.” I know he’s still alive in there. “Let me take care of this. You take care of your daughter and Archer.” He stared at her, trying to convey what he couldn’t say out loud: warn Archer and Silas about what’s happening here. They need to know that Alistair is still a threat.

Adelaide stared at him in silence for a long time before saying, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

A red flash blinded Penn and he raised his hand to block out the light. An arm wrapped around him, pushing his head against a strong chest. He stayed that way, in the mage’s embrace, until the last traces of light faded away.

When Penn lifted his head, he sighed in relief.

Adelaide was gone.

Someone groaned in a corner of the room. Niall sat up, rubbing his head, and looked around blearily. “What happened?”

Chapter Four

For the second morning in a row, the capital city of Bellacosta greeted flames before sunlight. Funeral pyres dotted the beach, the sea waters close at hand if they needed to be extinguished. Though they were outside of the city proper, they still attracted a large crowd of civilians and soldiers.

Silas watched stoically from the sidelines, hands clasped behind his back. He wanted to wrap his arms around himself—or better yet, to have Archer’s arms wrapped around him—but didn’t want to show any signs of weakness. More than he already had, at least.

The first to burn were the Bellacostan soldiers who had died betraying their country. It was speculated that they were the ones who set the palace on fire the night before. Whether that was true or not still needed to be determined, but they’d used the fire as a distraction to break into the prison and free the disgraced General Varro. During their escape, they’d destroyed the prison, killing and severely wounding the Arnsveldian soldiers who tried to stop them.

These traitors had been stacked face down on their pyre. When Silas asked Archer why, he’d explained that Arnsveldians traditionally laid their dead to rest face up, so they would be ready to walk into the afterlife. Anyone buried or burned face down could only walk deeper into the earth and feed the roots beneath the surface.

Silas had never heard such stories before, and he suspected none of the Bellacostans watching understood the significance either. Still, he recalled the two funerals he’d attended—his sister’s first, and then his mother’s—and was glad they had both been entombed face up.

The pyre would burn through the day, with attendants keeping an eye on it to make sure the fire didn’t get too low or too hot. As Silas watched the flickering flames, memories of the palace fire flashed through his mind. The frenetic energy as everyone tried to extinguish the blaze. The smoke clogging his nose and lungs. His aching arms and stinging hands as he passed wooden buckets overflowing with water down a line.

A large hand grasped Silas’ shoulder and he looked up into Archer’s eyes. Orange reflected in his dark irises, adding a touch of warmth to his grim expression. “You don’t need to watch this,” he said, keeping his voice low so only Silas could hear.

Silas swallowed roughly. “I want to.” Want wasn’t quite the right word—he certainly wasn’t enjoying the smell of charred flesh or the overbearing heat from the flames. But he did want to see the end.

Once the traitors were dealt with, Alistair came next. Griselda had suggested making an example of the former Head Advisor, a warning to his co-conspirators and followers: “Let’s show the bastards what’s waiting for them when we finally catch them.” But Silas couldn’t stomach the thought of mutilating the corpse while a crowd watched.

There was no ceremony, no final words. No one even explained to the citizens what was happening. A group of Arnsveldian soldiers simply approached the second, smaller pyre, carrying a cloth wrapped bundle on their shoulders. They dropped it onto the wood pile and looked to Archer and Silas for direction.

“Do you want to keep the body wrapped?” Archer asked.

It would be easier if Silas didn’t have to see Alistair’s face again so soon after killing him, but unease tightened his gut. Some irrational voice in his mind whispered hidden fears: what if that’s not really Alistair? What if it was all a trick, and he’s escaped somehow? What if he’s still out there, biding his time, waiting to complete the plans he’d spent decades working toward? Silas had no idea what the mage was capable of. The only way to quiet the voice in his head was to see the body for himself. To watch Alistair turn to ash and fade into oblivion. “Remove it.”