‘To choose to believe all this comes from Azaer’s fear of death or its cowardice . . . I feel that would be a fatal mistake.’
— What does it want?
‘To tear down the Pantheon,’ Emin said with sudden conviction. ‘The shadow loves power over others - over its disciples, over those it tyrannises. Plans formed over millennia, a hand in the Last King’s rebellion; an end-game with the foundations of empty temples and war tearing through the entire Land - where Crystal Skulls are being collected by a peerless warrior and the weapons of Life and Death may soon come into play.’
King Emin took a weary breath and looked Legana straight in the eye. The cold glitter of his pale blue eyes seemed to shine in the burgeoning twilight, just as she knew her own, divine-touched eyes did.
‘Azaer is playing for keeps,’ he said almost in a whisper. ‘There will be no limit to the stakes when the shadow plays its final hand.’
— So we must work out how to kill a shadow, Legana wrote, a smile creeping onto her ethereally beautiful face, preferably by giving it everything it wants.
Awkwardly she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the king tense under the contact, but after a moment Emin relaxed and covered her hand with his. They stood together until the last light of day had gone, silently sharing the burdens of their callings.
CHAPTER 28
Dawn intruded. His head felt heavy, unwieldy and as he forced his eyes open and the hot needles of sunlight drove in, he gasped and wrenched his head away. As he shifted from his awkward sleeping position the pain moved to his neck, a spiked collar that sent arrows of agony down his spine. He tried to move his unresponsive fingers, making a weak effort to massage away the pain, while a hot throb ran down his arm from the point of his elbow, which felt as stiff and hurt as much as his neck.
He blinked until the blur of light and dark slowly came into some semblance of focus. A broken table lay a few feet away amidst the pottery shards of several wine bottles and piles of abandoned clothes. For a while he stared at the mess, not understanding what had happened. A shaft of sunlight cut a thin white line across the rug-strewn floor and ran up his leg and chest like a sword-cut. It hit another bottle, clasped between his legs, still intact but empty. It looked as if the wine that had spilled into his lap was now mostly dried.
He lifted an arm to remove the bottle and froze. The arm wasn’t his; it was bigger, and unnaturally black - like some creature of the Waste. He turned it over and tried to make out the markings on it —
— and grief hit him like a thunderbolt, slamming into his head and racing down into the pit of his stomach. Count Vesna doubled over as the void in his gut twisted violently, and he wrapped mismatched arms around his body as he started retching, spewing a thin stream of sharp, sour bile onto his battered boots. A coughing fit followed, deep, shuddering exhalations that ended in a choked howl of sorrow.
The ruby teardrop on his cheek flared warm as his armoured fist tightened around the arm of his chair, snapping the polished wooden armrest like a twig. Memory flooded back as black stars burst before his eyes: the scratch on Tila’s face as she tried to speak, her last words to him. It had been such a small thing, barely more than a graze. As the image appeared in his mind he recalled that sickening sense of hope he’d felt at, the cruel momentary waning of horror, the second before he felt the ruined mess of her back.
Trembling, he wiped the stinking spittle from his chin with a grimy sleeve. Away from the shaft of light, the room looked dark and still, wrapped in cold shadows. Nausea shivered through his body again, but Vesna did not care enough to fetch a bowl or move away from the puddle of puke. A black knot of pain was building behind his eyes, eating away at his mind.
‘Why her?’ Vesna whispered. The effort of speaking, even to an empty room, drained him of energy and his head sagged onto his chest. For a while he looked at the torn threads on