Page 89 of Storm Front
ChapterEighteen
Marius and Ranger were sleeping when Glaive found them.
He couldn’t say how long he stood there. Ranger had his arm around Marius’s shoulders, and Marius’s head was tipped to the side, his face relaxed. They’d led Glaive on a chase through Kallistos, but it had only been a matter of time before Glaive found them—with their breaths rising even and slow, Ranger’s mouth slightly open, as it always was when he slept. Beyond the trees that sheltered them, thunder rolled, and Glaive took a measured step back.
He would return to Staria. He’d find the nobles who hired him and… convince them… to drop their search. Then he’d disappear. Find something else to do until the floods came. Become a farmer, maybe. He’d never tried being a farmer before.
But when he moved, Marius stirred, and Glaive reflexively raised his crossbow, his fantasy vanished in the face of centuries of reality. Marius opened his eyes and tensed, quiet and still as a deer, a hand on Ranger’s chest.
Glaive jerked his head to the side, and Marius, without question, slipped out of Ranger’s arms.
So he loved Ranger, too. That made it even worse. Glaive tied Marius’s hands together, then grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him up the hill beyond the trees. There were standing stones there, an old altar to a forest god, perhaps, with a space just wide enough to fit a body.
For Ranger’s sake, it would be quick. No one needed to know that Glaive hadn’t drawn it out, making Marius beg for death with a cut tongue and broken fingers. He’d keep it painless, if he could, like a mercy killing on a battlefield.
As he dragged Marius along, Glaive looked back into his pale, drawn face. “Do you have ceremonies for the dead, in Duciel?”
“What?”
It felt odd to say it. Like Glaive was just figuring out the Starian common tongue. “Do you have rites? Do they bury you, or leave something in the grave?”
“I don’t… oh fuck, I don’t know, please.” Marius started to shake. “Don’t ask me.”
Glaive stopped at the crest of the hill. “There’s an old ritual to honor the dead. You burn the body on a pyre, and the smoke carries the soul to the stars. They used to say it made souls immortal, gave them the strength to come back one day. I could do that for you. The ashes, we… we buried them.”
Marius stared at him, his eyes too wide. “Why are you saying this? Do you do that with everyone you kill?”
“I used to.” Glaive pulled Marius to the altar and laid him on it. He set a hand on his chest, which rose and fell too fast. “It’ll be like falling asleep.”
Marius frowned, then gasped when a raindrop struck his cheek. Glaive looked up, still holding Marius down, and his chest constricted painfully as rain fell in sheets over them both.
“No.” He moved closer to Marius. “You can’t come for this. Not for this!”
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Marius froze as a voice called out through the rain, and he thrashed under Glaive’s hand. “Tal!”
Tal. Taliesin. Yes, that was Ranger’s name, wasn’t it? Names had power, in their way. It meant something, that Ranger trusted Marius with his true name.
When Ranger burst through the pouring rain, Marius let out a broken sound that struck Glaive like a hammer blow. He raised his crossbow and fired into Ranger’s shoulder, hoping that would be enough to hold him back. He could survive a shot to the arm, but it would dizzy him, make him stumble.
“Turn around, Red,” Glaive said. Names had power. He couldn’t sayRanger, couldn’t sayTaliesin. It had to be Red. Colors didn’t matter. They didn’t represent anything. “It’s done now.”
Somehow, Ranger got to his feet. It reminded Glaive of the way Andor would wearily pick himself up during drills, determined to fight alongside Kelta. The resilience in his tiny body, pushing through the pain in his lungs. He’d been so brave. So young, cut down by a man raised by a viper, who never knew anything but poison.
Glaive shot Ranger again, this time in the thigh. “Turn back. This isn’t for you to see.” Ranger had to live. Marius, well, he’d tried to run. He’d done his part, and Glaive would make it quick if not painless. But Ranger couldn’t die like Tyr, like Andor—
Gods, even Marius didn’t deserve it, whatever he’d done to those nobles who wanted him dead. Glaive was certain of it—Ranger wouldn’t love someone unworthy. He felt suddenly like he was being swept by a current too powerful to fight, fumbling for the only thing he knew how to do.
“Please don’t do this,” Ranger said. “I can take him away. They’ll never know—”
“You know I can’t do that,” Glaive said. Death was already coming. Why else was the rain falling like this, drumming over the grass, shaking the leaves in the trees down the hill? Death was coming, and he would take Ranger and Marius together if one of them did not turn back. But they weren’t listening. It didn’t matter what Glaive said, how heavy he laid his dominance—Ranger wasn’t backing down.
Nyx wouldn’t have, either.
“Go find our house, Tal,” Marius said. “Go find it and live there, and write to my brother. Live our story, yeah?”
“Not without you,” Ranger said, and Glaive could feel the pain in his voice. That kind of pain had toppled an empire, once. “You said it yourself. It’sourstory. There isn’t one for me, if you’re not in it.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Red.” Glaive aimed the crossbow again, his arms heavy as stone. “But you know I will.”
