I am here. And it is happening again. Must I sit by and watch everyone die in Saylok too?”
“It is not the same.”
“No. This scourge is slower.” She was close to tears, but even tears felt like too much work.
“You must rest now. Nothing must be done tonight.”
She was so weary, she didn’t trust her legs to take her back through the tunnel and up the stairs to her bed, but she rose and made her way to the hatch hidden behind the rock.
“Promise me—”
“I will not give up,” she sighed, finishing his sentence. It was how they always parted.
“And Ghisla?”
“Yes?”
“I love you too.”
12
HOURS
Days later, just after the night watchman wailed, Ghisla crept down to the cellar to call out to Hod. She had just pricked her finger and begun her song, her back to the door, when strong arms wrapped around her, and a hand covered her mouth.
For a moment she was too stunned to do anything but blink into the darkness. She could not see who assailed her. She could not see anything, and she flailed, throwing her head back, but he was tall, much taller than she, and her head thudded off his chest. She tried to bite at the fingers covering her face but bit her lip instead, and blood pooled in her mouth.
With his hand over her mouth, he could not control both of her hands, though his weight against her back made her flailing useless. She started to choke on the blood that dripped down her throat. She couldn’t breathe, and she clawed at his hands.
When her legs buckled, her assailant stepped back, creating space to push her down to the floor. His hand moved from her mouth to her clothes, and she coughed and choked, spitting up blood and gasping for air.
“No one can hear you, Daughter,” he whispered.
She screamed in response, sending her voice pinging off every surface.
“No one can hear you,” he insisted, but she screamed louder, finding a note so high and sharp it stabbed at the backs of her eyes and tore at her throat. She pressed her hands over her ears and screamed louder, the song of terror and outrage one she’d never sung before. And the man who clawed at her legs and pinned her to the floor was suddenly singing with her.
Screaming with her.
Then he was gone. His weight was gone. His hands and his heavy limbs were gone. A draft brushed against her bare legs, signaling the cellar door had been opened, but she did not stop. She simply curled her knees into her chest and screamed harder.
Light bloomed moments later.
“Liis. Liis. Daughter, stop. Stop!” It was Dagmar. Dagmar and Ghost. And she was saved.
“Who was it, Liis?” Dagmar asked. His pale eyes were bleak, and he kept a distance, letting Ghost tend to her. Her lip was battered and her throat was raw, but she was otherwise unharmed.
“I don’t know,” she rasped. “I was singing . . . and I didn’t hear him come down the stairs. I hung the torch on the sconce in the corridor. He shut the door behind him, and it was so dark.” She traced the scar on her hand with her thumb. She’d been singing to Hod. That was why she hadn’t heard the man.
“Was he a keeper?”
“I—I don’t think so. He was big in the way a warrior is big, not a keeper. And I think he had . . . hair. It was pulled back, but I fought and kicked, and a few strands came loose and brushed my face.”
“Thank the gods,” Dagmar exhaled. Ghisla wasn’t certain if he thanked the gods for her safety or for the reassurance it had not been one of their own who’d attacked her.
“Why did he run? Did he hear you coming?” Ghisla asked.
“He was gone before we came,” Ghost answered. “Otherwise we would have passed him on the stairs. Your scream was not just a scream, Liis. It was a blast. I thought my ears were going to burst. Dagmar’s did.”
A thin trickle of blood stained the shoulder of Dagmar’s purple robe.
“I’m sorry,” Ghisla said, but she wasn’t. Her screaming had saved her life.
They alerted Master Ivo and the other keepers, as well as the king and his guard, but nothing was ever done to find her attacker. It was an attack of opportunity, more than anything, but he had been in the temple—or mayhaps he had been in the cellar all along—and Ghisla and the others felt even