He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 21

“We have a new problem. And a sort of solution. And a bigger problem.” Mateo spilled into his father’s office. His basket of berries skidded as he set it down on Tual’s desk and the little packet of bethl powder tumbled off.

His father wasn’t there, a few of the glass jars from the shelves open on his desk and the pot over his little trivet still warm.

Aria. The thought bubbled up like air pockets escaping sludge. Aria was still recovering from what had happened under the lake. His father must have taken her more medicine. Mateo racked his brain, the thought of Aria unresponsive replaying over and over—the way she’d fallen in the tunnel, then the sight of her gasping awake. The night before, when they’d first spotted Devoted auras out in the trees, Tual had rushed to put her away where the Warlord wouldn’t be able to see her aura. Maybe in the abbey where auras were blocked?

Mateo grabbed hold of the packages and ran for the entryway, not slowing until he got to the tower doors. There was no way Aria was hidden in the cliff rooms. It was dangerous up there, for one, but more importantly, the Warlord had already been on the island by the time Mateo had gotten back the night before. His father hadn’t reentered the cliffs, and Aria had already been hidden, so that meant she was somewhere on the island out of aurasight. Furrowing his brow, he felt for that fluttering, scrappy aurasight that Willow had pushed out for him while they’d been on the river, letting him replace Lia before the Warlord had. Breathing in slow, he thought of what he wanted.

And instead, he felt eyes watching him. Mateo turned to the bridge and stared into the trees on the other side of the water, and thought he saw…

Willow pressed into the edges of his mind, pulling him away from the thing in the woods to spread his aurasight like a length of ragged silk flapping in the wind. It covered the island from end to end, and up…

Up to the top floor of the tower, just barely tall enough that it would be outside a Devoted’s range. He couldn’t see anything—Aria wasn’t a gods-touched, after all—but he ran for the stairs anyway, knowing he was right.

Bursting into the single room at the very top of the tower, Mateo found Tual sitting with his legs crossed at the ankle, nose-deep in the pages of A Thousand Nights in Urilia. The room was darkness itself for a split second, deep circles under Tual’s eyes.

“Father—” Mateo stumbled into the room, and suddenly it was bright and cheery, a lamp lit next to Aria, who was propped up in a bed by the window, and a taste of energy in the air. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Your dad made a bunch of horsey-smelling people drag me here, and you haven’t come to visit once.”

Mateo froze, looking from her to his father. Tual looked up from the book with a hint of concern. “Are you all right?” his father asked.

“Yes, I…” Mateo blinked, the memory of darkness, of his father hulking in the chair and a lifeless lump under the covers where Aria was now.

She glared at him. “Don’t tell me you’re pretending to be even sicker than me now?” The breath she drew in shivered through Mateo’s mind, flashing back to her falling in the glass tunnel. But then Aria picked up a scone from a dish sitting on the covers and dipped it in the bowl of cream next to it. Taking a messy bite, she kept talking, crumbs falling from her mouth. “You were supposed to come visit me a long time ago. There aren’t any weapons up here.”

“That’s exactly why we moved you, Miss Aria.” Tual had gone back to the book. “I’m afraid you’ll chop Abendiza into little bits and make Hilaria cook them for supper.”

Mateo hadn’t seen his father since breakfast—not that he’d had any breakfast or lunch for that matter—and once again, his eyes slid to the dagger at Tual’s belt, the air around it almost blurred. Willow went still inside him.

But then his stomach grumbled, and Mateo only had eyes for the crumbly scones on Aria’s plate. “Can I have one of those?” he asked, reaching for one.

She grabbed it away, holding it over her head. “I don’t share with people who don’t remember to visit me.”

“You’d keep a scone back even from someone who is actively starving?”

“There’s plenty of food down in the kitchen. I’ve seen it. Next to the knives,” she said importantly.

Mateo frowned, watching the plate as she set it out of reach on her other side before turning back to his father. “I only came up here to tell you that the Warlord has decided I’m a shapeshifter, Father.” His hands were still full of bethl and berries because he’d forgotten to leave them in the kitchen for Hilaria, and now she would probably try to kill him too.

Aria sat up a little taller in the bed, Tual’s eyes flicking up to meet Mateo’s. But then they went back down to Thousand Nights. “Give me a moment. I’m reading to Aria.”

“From that?” Mateo goggled at the book’s shiny cover.

“The fighting parts. Honestly, the story is ruined by all that other stuff—it’s not even foreshadowed. Arben Trislight had a fabulous sense of story, but he wasn’t much of a romantic.”

“You’re not concerned about the Warlord? Why didn’t you tell me about Belash Point? Or the plague in Chaol? Why didn’t you tell me my sister is a murderous tree-growing Basist murderer?”

Tual finally looked up from the pages again. “Did you just use murder twice in one sentence?”

“You have a sister?” It took Mateo a moment to look at Aria, her eyes wide. After a moment, her lips pressed together, and she looked down. “And being awful runs in the family, I guess? My sister’ll take care of that. She’ll slit all your throats like bananas.”

Mateo frowned. “Bananas?”

“Bananas are skinny and either too sweet or not sweet enough.” Aria’s voice struck a defensive chord. “Which is exactly like all of you.”

Something’s happening, Willow whispered, breaking into Mateo’s thoughts before he could make fun of such a terrible simile. I don’t know what it is. They locked Knox in a closet to stop me from listening anymore, and all I can hear is that loud dancer girl singing a song I don’t understand about a girl with no elbows.

Heat bled through Mateo’s cheeks. You mean the one about the girl with no knees?

Is there a difference?

He cleared his throat, pushing Willow away. “Why didn’t you tell me what happened to my family?” he asked Tual.

Tual closed the book with a snap, his fingers curving around the dagger’s sheath like a claw. “Why all these questions, Mateo?”

Willow suddenly unfolded inside Mateo’s mind with an animal roar, and Mateo couldn’t look away from his father’s hand on the weapon for a moment, almost as if his father had changed. Shifted. Like an actual shapeshifter was supposed to. But when he forced his eyes to focus, his father’s hands were the same as they’d ever been.

“They’re coming, aren’t they?” Tual jumped up from his chair, excited. “You know what to do?”

“I knew what to do for Lia.” Mateo swallowed. “All our plans accounted for Lia, not Belash Point. I told Cath—one of the Devoted—that it was my sister, that all the things they pinned to me were because of her following us around, and I think she believes me. The Warlord isn’t back yet, so—”

“She is back, and that is a perfect deflection.” Tual went to the door, glancing down at Aria, who was still being uncharacteristically quiet, her breaths coming too quickly. “I’ll go tell her to expect an attack from our rogue shapeshifting stalker, and you concentrate on your part of the plan. Everything will be fine.”

His fingers stroked the dagger, and the air seemed to negate around him, coalescing above his head like a crown. Then he left, a sort of glimmer remaining in the room where he’d been.

Mateo fell back into the chair Tual had vacated, shivers down his spine.

“Is she a shapeshifter? Your sister?” Aria’s face was gray, her jaw set with such fierce loyalty it made him ache. Had that been what he was to his sister before? Ready to live, die, kill for each other? “And do you really hate her so much?”

“I didn’t grow up with her, and she’s… made some poor decisions since then, I guess.” Mateo couldn’t stop the prickling in his arms, his ears roaring with the sound of wood cracking and growing, roots splitting the earth, and screams—

I wasn’t there. I couldn’t have been there. The thought was a drumbeat in his head. Was I there? Is that why Father took my memories? To spare me?

“I didn’t grow up with my sister, either,” Aria interrupted. “I just always knew she was there. Protecting us. She was more than us. I wanted to be like her.”

The ache in him grew. There were many worse people to turn out like than Lia Seystone. “I hope you are like her.”

“Because you are madly in love with her, I know—that’s why you’re so mean all the time, because she thinks you’re worse than snake poo.”

Mateo’s stomach sank. But he only shrugged. “You’re probably right.”

“I’ll tell her you’re all right, okay?” Aria mimed swiping a blade through the air, only to have her hands fall back to her blankets, sapped of energy, and Mateo’s chest ached even more. “You can read to me until she gets here. Finish the part about the Ivy King climbing into the black witch’s tower.”

Mateo’s fingers halfway to the book on the bedside table, he looked at her in horror. “The tower? I thought he was just reading the fighting parts?”

“Well, yeah. And the Ivy King is about to take the witch down!” Aria’s brow puckered.

Clearing his throat, Mateo picked up the book and turned a few pages, then a few pages more pages, the heat in his cheeks growing until he found something he could read about the Ivy King with his scaled armor and the witch with her diamond firekey. Willow was shifting uncomfortably in his head. Tual’s right, she whispered. Your red-haired swordy-girl. She could be coming. And your sister, too. I’ll keep checking.

Mateo gritted his teeth, the book heavy between his hands. If they come, then we’ll stick to the plan, he responded. Father’s plans never fail.

When Knox woke, everything was dark.

His room. The hold beyond the open door. Even the ship, only covered by slumbering, white auras. For a moment, panic jolted through Knox’s chest, memories of other times he’d suddenly awoken with no memory of how he’d gotten to where he was like a pall in his mind. Of the tomb, of Anwei bleeding on the ground—

But then he saw aurasparks on the deck. Anwei. Awake and headed toward the canoes. Frowning, Knox sat up. Usually the bond pointed him right toward Anwei, but it felt cold.

Had something happened to make her pull back? He ran a hand down his face only to freeze on a grainy bit of dried paste stuck to his cheek. It smelled of river.

Knox pressed his hands to his cheeks. Anwei had been in here. Anwei had been in his bed. She’d kissed him….

He stood, heart pounding as he went to the ramp and up onto the deck to where her aura was next to the boat’s rail. Pausing behind one of the discarded crates, he watched her, Jaxom’s angry orange light making her only a silhouette against the rocks—

The boat had moved. He looked around at the trees, the pool, the rocky outcroppings. Then back to Anwei, who was opening her trunk where it had been left by the drums. He started to step out until he saw what was in her hands.

At once, horror and wanting broke out inside him because she was holding the pockmarked sword. Whole again. There, right in front of him. He took a hesitant step forward, Willow’s presence charging at him, stronger than ever as if she could taste holes in the barrier Anwei made around him and was checking every single one.

Anwei looked up, falling back a step when she saw him. The bond hadn’t been pointing her to him either, or she’d have known he was watching. Which was when he remembered the end of the dancing, the cup of something he didn’t recognize burning down his throat. “You’re awake,” she whispered, her husky voice too soft.

The canoe bobbed on the other side of the railing.

He’d gone dizzy right before Willow had pulled him under. He hadn’t been dizzy or clouded any of the other times, had he? Knox’s insides seemed to curl up in protest, in revulsion.

“Anwei…” He started across the deck, and her hands went deep into her medicine bag, her aura swirling thicker. Knox stopped, the bond a wilted thing that hung slack between them. “Anwei,” he tried again. “I’m… going back below….” But he didn’t. “Why did you do it? You know how I feel about…” Herbs. How he’d always felt about her magic. It wasn’t fair to say it that way—before it had always been because he knew it was Basism and Basism was supposed to be bad, but now his skin crawled in a new sort of horror. Anwei had poisoned him to get him out of the way.

She’d kissed him while he was fading to make sure he didn’t notice what she’d done, because then Willow would have understood what was happening.

Anwei didn’t move, frozen.

But then she smiled. “Go back to bed,” she said as if there wasn’t a canoe floating in the water behind her. As if the shapeshifter sword that held his sister wasn’t there in her hands. “We didn’t put you in the watch rotations because I was worried Willow would try to drop you and let someone get into the boat.”

The evening was playing out in his mind in slow motion, Anwei laughing with him, sitting by him, pressing against him. As if they were different people, people with no gods or goddesses, no shapeshifters, no ghosts of the dead standing between them. Like another life.

It hadn’t been fake. He’d felt it so clearly across the bond. But at the end, she’d been so angry—

Anwei stepped into Jaxom’s moonlight, her face a smile that was using all the wrong muscles. “Go back to bed, Knox.”

You can’t let her pull away, Knox. Calsta’s voice was distant. Fighting against Willow, who loomed so large he could almost feel the brush of her claws. “Please tell me you didn’t—” he started. There was nothing but air between them, the words hanging in it as if they couldn’t go away now that he’d said them out loud. “I would have just gone to bed if you’d asked me. I would have walked into the forest without looking back if you’d asked me.”

“Stop.” Anwei swallowed, then looked up at Castor’s glow higher in the sky. “Please go back to bed. Please. You shouldn’t have woken up.”

“Devoted heal faster than normal people.” The words tore out of him like a blade. “We’re partners, right?”

She nodded, the sword bristling from her hands like an unkept promise.

“Partners don’t lie, Anwei. Partners don’t…” The last moments between them flashed through his mind, and he couldn’t let them go. Don’t let her push you away, Calsta whispered again, farther than ever, but Knox didn’t want to be the one sacrificing this time.

Don’t let her push him away? He was the one with reason to be angry.

“I can’t believe you poisoned me, and then—”

“I can’t do this right now.” Anwei kicked one foot over the rail.

“Do you care at all what I want, Anwei?” Knox stepped closer, his whole body buzzing. “We have always trusted each other—that means knowing the other person is going to be there, but it also means not having to check your own drink for noxious herbs.” He looked at the sword, despair like a knife in his gut. “I’ve been pleading with Calsta to tell me how to let Willow go because I didn’t understand how the sword could be gone with Willow still here. Have you had it this whole time?”

“I didn’t mean—” More heat flared in Anwei’s face than he expected, and he fell back a step as she kicked her other foot over the rail and landed in the boat. “The last time we got into a scrape, you tried to impale me with this sword. The time before that, you tried to strangle me. This sword makes you hurt me, Knox.”

“You know that wasn’t—”

“On purpose. I know. You talk about barriers and bonds and magic and Willow being too close but far away. How was I supposed to know that this time the sword wasn’t going to steal you the same way it used to? It was luck that kept me alive before, and we need more than luck going forward.” Anwei pulled the mooring line free. “At least I do. She just needs you to keep breathing.”

“I don’t even want the sword anymore. Our bond blocks her from controlling me. That was the whole point of us being together, Anwei. You protect me from her.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re getting something from our bond.” Anwei picked up the paddle, the threads of their connection fraying as she turned toward the rocks. “But I think we’re all just a little hazy on what exactly it covers, which is why you need to go back to bed.”

He put a hand to his ribs unconsciously, something in his side twinging. “You’re choosing something different now. Different than in the tomb, or earlier today when we sank the ship, even when you were off doing Calsta-knows-what when I was locked in the cabin.” The gaps in his mind from that evening started to solidify, ending with her lips against his and starting again here with Anwei holding the sword that had broken his soul as if she meant to use it like a weapon. “I’m not useful anymore.”

Anwei’s head gave an angry shake. “Don’t be ridiculous—”

“You said you can’t be with me because you can’t stomach sharing me with Calsta, but that’s not it. You can’t choose me because being with me would be an oath. It would mean doing what the nameless god and Calsta want.”

One second Anwei was staring at him, and the next the sword was out of its sheath. Knox’s insides contorted, and his heart began to pound at the sight of the pockmarked metal, the truth of what he’d said like an anchor rusting at the bottom of his stomach.

“I do not make oaths,” she said quietly, letting the point of the sword rest on the deck. “You wanted this sword fixed. The only reason you stayed with me was that you thought I could help you do it.”

“And then I fell in love with you.” The words came out before he could even think, truer even than the sword she was holding. Willow lurked at the back of his mind, but she didn’t ask him to take it, didn’t ask him to kill Anwei as she’d always done. “I dedicated my life to Calsta, and she showed me how you could still be a part of it because I love you. Which wasn’t enough for you.” The words choked inside him. “You say you haven’t made oaths? You’ve dedicated your life to a shapeshifter, Anwei. At least gods give something back.”

“You have the gall to—” Anwei spun around, and Knox hated the way her armor looked broken and that he’d been the one who had done it. She put a hand on that medicine bag of hers once again, but she didn’t open it. “This is my choice. This is my war. And like I said back when all this started, you are not invited.”

“Because you can’t stand to lose another person you love?”

“Because you will make me lose!” Anwei shouted. She set the sword down in the boat and picked up the paddle. “My whole family is dead. Everything I was supposed to be is dead.”

“Killing Tual isn’t going to fix what happened to you. It won’t change the choices Mateo made, the choices your family made.”

“It will be a fair ending.” She dug the paddle into the water and started into the darkness. “You can’t take that away from me. I won’t let you. I’m finished with being bonded if it means I have to give up everything I want. I’m done.”

The bond tensed.

Knox couldn’t move, Calsta a swell of panic inside him. She pushed at him, yelled in her little guttering words to fix this. As if even this one corner of his life couldn’t belong to him.

But it was too late to fix anything, because Anwei was already gone, nothing left of her but a ripple in the water.

Which was when his side began to burn. The anger scorching him from across the bond flared, and then the bond itself began to char. Don’t let her shut you out. Calsta’s voice was suddenly loud, the undercurrent of panic turning to desperation, as if she couldn’t replace words fast enough to tell him what to do. Not all oaths are spoken out loud. She cannot break this one. She cannot break this one, Knox, she cannot!

She doesn’t want it, Calsta! His head was spinning, the wound in his stomach suddenly wet and raw. The sickness that had been pressing up inside him burrowed out through his skin. Anwei was unspooling him, as if he were nothing but an old scarf and Anwei the string, pulling him apart knot by knot. Their scorched bond began to fray.

Willow flickered like mad at the back of his head, her claws pressing through the holes forming in the wall between him and the ghost. “Anwei?” Knox rasped. He lurched forward, off-balance, and hit the rail. Unable to catch himself, he fell forward into the river, the shock of cold water on his skin dulled and remote. He swam toward where the boat had gone, his breath smoldering like panic in his lungs.

But Anwei did not stop. Anwei was gone.

And then the water around him began to boil.