The Heart Forger

The words filled me with foreboding. I watched them, the necromancer and her familiar. Am I distasteful now? he asked, without looking away from the fire. Am I that much different? Never, she said quietly. How did you raise me? Silver heart's glass can't, I didn't. She looked down, her hands trembled. I was so full of the dark. I felt powerful enough to believe I could stop the sun, and so I did. He knelt before her then, taking her heart-shaped face in his large hands. Are you angry at me? For the first time, I saw her afraid. Do you resent me for bringing you back to this chaos? I promised you with my dying breath, with my blood and your heart in my hands. I promised that I would crawl out of my grave and kill everything that stands between us. He bent closer, kissed her hard. She kissed him back, hungry, her hands stroking his neck. He drew her tightly against him, as if holding her could never be enough. I turned away. There were faint marks on the bone witch's neck when we left the next day, and her eyes were very bright. The death seeker sported no injuries, and his gaze was gentle whenever he looked at her. The Donorian capital, Santiang, lay before us. I took in its high walls and fortified towers. I saw the bobbing torches of the men who manned its garrisons. Even from this distance, I saw their fear rising, higher than any flag they could wave. I watched the familiar reach forward to wrap her in his arms. I watched the dark Asha relax, leaning back against him with a vulnerability she rarely allowed herself to show. The Donorians will not surrender easily, Tia, Lord Cailan said. That will not matter. Their gates shall fall anyway. We rest here tonight and begin on the morrow. It will give them time to send their women and children away, and the rest to put their affairs in order. It is not too late. We can go anywhere. They won't find us. For a moment, I saw the temptation in her eyes, the longing his words sowed. You know they will do the same to the next bone witch after me, and the next, and the next. You know this will never end. The death seeker pressed his forehead against hers. Then we will fight. The girl turned back to her throng of faithful undead. Thank you, she told them softly, the way one might tell a bedtime story to children. Sleep and wait. The corpses sighed in unison, a frightening sound that echoed from the nearest ghoul that clawed at her skirts to, as I imagined, the farthest of her carrion, many miles away. And as one, they fell. They sank down like groundwater, the land swallowing them whole, until no trace of them remained. What was once a company of thousands of corpses became a fellowship of three and seven, and the deva bathed their goodbyes. The asha sat by a fallen log, gathering stones. The death seeker gestured, and fire sputtered from the pile. She gestured at me to sit, and I complied. You have more to tell me, I said, knowing this was far from the end of her tale. Yes. She gazed thoughtfully at the fire, at the flames licking through the stone. Then, like it was the most normal thing in the world, she said, I suppose the trouble began again when I tried raising a king from the dead. One. He does not look so formidable, I lied to myself, staring at the warped, decaying body before me. I can defeat his will. I will break him. It is a wonder what Mickey had ever seen in him. It was not the first time I had deceived myself in this manner. Neither was this the first time I had raised King Vanner from the grave. But if I repeated that mantra enough times.