“And if the gods have need of your friend?”
“What use do the gods have for a mortal?”
The goddess lifted her shoulders. “They treated with you.”
Eda bit back a curse. She felt it would be deeply, deeply wrong to swear in front of a deity. “Can you cure her?”
Raiva’s eyes softened, deep sorrow radiating from her face. “Little Empress. Your friend is on her own path now. Just as you are on yours. I understand now, what he did, why he did it, even though I do not agree with how it was done.”
“What who did? My lady?”
Raiva put her hands on Eda’s shoulders, her grip light and strong at once. “You met Tuer’s Shadow when you were a child. Now you are grown, and you must seek Tuer himself. He’s calling you, little one. There is no one else who can save him.”
“I don’t understand.”
Raiva smiled, though grief lingered in her eyes. “Seek the god, dear one. Fulfill your oath.”
“But—”
“That is your answer. I am sorry it is not the one you wished to hear.”
And then Eda blinked and she was kneeling beside the pool, her hand still slick with oil and ashes, the blood drying rusty-brown on her palm.
Ileem turned to look at her, his blood running red down his arm. He looked shaken, as if he had stared into the mouth of a shadow creature and been eaten. “What did you see?” His voice shook. His whole body shook.
Eda realized she was shaking, too. “Raiva keeps her own council. She won’t help me.”
He nodded, briefly touching his ear cuff then letting his free hand trace the stream of blood on his arm.
“What did you see?” she asked him softly.
“Rudion came to me. He showed me everything. Eda, he showed me how to save Niren.” Ileem’s eyes focused on hers, and he grew steady again. Calmer. “Rescarin is lying about the stone for the temple. It’s already here, in Enduena, in a herder’s village east of the city.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She forgot how to breathe.
Ileem grasped her bloodied hand with his. “Let’s go find it. Let’s go save Niren.”
They rode hard across the desert and into the starry night, dust swirling up from their mounts’ hooves to cling to their skin and choke their breath away. Eda could barely think beyond the words Ileem had spoken to her down in the well. They pulsed through her, hope tangled up with her anger at Raiva’s riddles, at her terror for Niren and the fear they were already too late.
Ileem had told her the rest as they climbed the endless steps back into the night. Rudion had given him a vision of the stone held hostage by part of the army Rescarin had sworn to Eda he’d cut in half, of mercenaries swelling the ranks of that army, of them drilling on their practice grounds down in Evalla’s capital city of Eron. Of Rescarin’s trap, carefully, painstakingly laid, to take her crown and subdue the other Barons. To make himself Emperor. To destroy the temple she’d tried so hard to build.
On and on they rode, the night spooling out behind them like threads of darkest blue. She wanted to go faster, faster, to outpace her fears, but the horses needed rest, and Eda herself was aching with weariness. Her guard called an apologetic halt about three in the morning, spreading his cloak out for her over the hard ground. She collapsed onto it, and Ileem sat beside her, gleaming like a god in the moonlight. Eda had never felt so frantic, so vulnerable, and he exuded safety, steadiness. She stared at him, wondering how she’d ever thought someone so beautiful could be her enemy, wondering how beauty suddenly held meaning to her when it never had before. She wanted to sink into him, to kiss him until she could no longer breathe, to forget that such things as gods and vows and empires existed. To run away from this life she’d fought and clawed and killed for. To not look back.
And yet she also wanted to run on alone into the desert, find the stone, save Niren. She couldn’t stop. There wasn’t time to stop.
“Get some rest,” Ileem said, giving her hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. “The gods will keep her safe. Rudion promised me.”
She took a breath, and her eyes shut of their own accord.
She woke to the rosy glow of dawn to find Ileem curled up a few feet from her, snoring softly. He looked younger when he was sleeping, an innocence about him she hadn’t realized was absent when he was awake. The shadows lengthened in the advent of the sun, golden light spilling over the planes of his face, sharpening their edges. And then he opened his eyes, and the innocence was gone.
Moments later they were back in their saddles, thundering on across the desert, the sun beating down relentlessly to make up for its all-night absence. Sweat soaked her clothing, grit clung to her skin and her teeth. Her heart roared inside of her, begging the gods for more speed.
It was maddening to have to stop and rest more and more often as the heat grew increasingly intense. They took a midday rest, sheltering in the insufficient shade of an overgrown bush, its leaves scraggly and sharp.
Ileem seemed as tense as Eda felt. They shared a water skin, passing it back and forth between them, and she liked to imagine she could feel the ghost of his lips on hers when she drank after he did.
“Did Rudion say anything else?” she asked softly.
