The Armies of Heaven (33 page)

“No!”

Another invisible lash struck. Belphagor had told me about this barbaric weapon from Russia’s past—Kae had used it on him, and nearly killed him with it. One hundred lashes, Kae told me once, were fatal, used as a de facto death sentence when capital punishment was not an option.

“I never wanted this!” I struggled with Misha, but he held me firmly. “Please stop!”

“It cannot stop,” said Misha. “You delivered Kae to the Midnight Court. What the plaintiff desires, she receives—if the defendant is found guilty. And they are nearly always found guilty.”

I turned my head away, unable to watch, as another strike split Kae’s skin. There were nearly ninety lashes still to come and Kae was screaming. I wept in Misha’s arms, listening to the terrible sounds of the unseen
knut
and Kae’s suffering, knowing that deep in my heart, I’d wanted him to feel the worst of agonies, to feel what he’d done to
them
, and to my soul.

The screaming stopped before he’d received half of his sentence. I turned, not wanting to see, horrified when I did. He hung limply from his bonds, emitting a low, continuous moan. Only this, and the involuntary jerking of his back as the
knut
continued to strike where there was little flesh to take, showed he was still conscious.

I gripped my throat. “He can’t take more of this. There must be something I can do. Please, Misha.”

He shook his head and I slid onto my knees and watched in mute horror. I had sentenced Kae to this. I had no right to look away. The hook of the
knut
made a terrible wet sound as it struck the pulverized flesh. Kae stopped moaning altogether after a dozen more and his muscles were still, though he was being torn to pieces. He was either dead or soon would be. I wept into my hands. I couldn’t even blame Aeval for this. This was my doing. I might as well have the
knut
in my own hand.

When the lash had cracked for the final time, Misha unchained Kae from the post and held his limp body gingerly against his chest.

The mask had slipped and Misha pulled it away. “Poor beautiful thing he is.”

He held his hand down to me and I took it, and the cellar wavered and winked out. We were now on the same peaceful terrace by the sea under a bronze sunset where Vasily and I had once found Misha soothing Belphagor’s pain. Misha lowered Kae’s body facedown on the reclining couch and left us.

I beheld my handiwork.
Bloody Anazakia.
I’d done this to him. I had willed him to suffer for crimes for which I knew he wasn’t truly responsible, to have the skin flayed from his back until he was beyond comprehension of pain. What might my sister Ola think of me now?

I touched the side of his throat and found a feathery heartbeat, life stuttering out of him. Even if the whipping weren’t enough to kill him, his body couldn’t handle the shock. I dropped to my knees beside the couch, dizzy with nausea. How could I have wanted this?

In childhood, I’d worshipped him, and in the wildness of blossoming adolescent desire, I’d thought him the loveliest creature in all the Heavens, burning with jealousy for a time that he loved Ola so. I’d come to understand as I matured that what we shared didn’t need to be romantic, that our bond was something beyond that; so much so that Ola had constantly fretted, plagued by the fear that one day I’d take him from her, though there had never been any danger of that. I had loved them both too much and Kae had adored her.

And then I’d hated him with every fiber of my being for taking them from me and leaving me desolate, hated him for falling prey to Aeval’s enchantment, though I’d led him into her trap. Despite it all, I’d fought for him, and he’d returned from that unspeakable hell—but there’d been nothing left in me then but pity.

And yet, I’d come to know another Kae since he’d returned to himself, a man who was fiercely loyal, brutally hard, and strangely fragile all at once.

My heart seemed to stop as the terrible truth splintered the walls of the keep I’d erected around it, my last defenses shattered under the ruthless engines of my own internal war. I
couldn’t
love him. Not like this. Not now. A strangled moan escaped me. I’d fallen in love with the man born from the ashes of the one I’d hated. And I’d destroyed him.

I hadn’t realized I was weeping until my tears fell against his shredded flesh, lighting where they touched in pools of luminescent radiance. Against his blood, my element had sparked our aetheric bond.

In Heaven, I’d been unable to heal without Vasily, but I had done it once in the world of Man—I’d healed Vasily himself, our aether creating a brilliant light that had washed over his burned flesh and made him whole.

I didn’t know if my bond with Kae would do the same, but if it were to come to anything, I would have to touch his wounds. Trembling, I sat on the edge of the couch and lifted Kae’s head to place it in my lap. As I centered my hand against the gruesome wreckage of his back, the aethereal light skittered beneath my palm and ignited in a tremendous burst like simple fire encountering a pool of kerosene instead of a pool of ruined flesh. The radiant fire that had been a pale lilac in Heaven ran up my arm in a deep indigo flare that engulfed us both. It burned like scalding water.

I screamed, unable to let go of him as it blazed ever brighter, skating like a devouring hunger over the raw flesh of his back. But under the unearthly, violent glow, something was happening—flayed bone mending, rivulets of blood coalescing into new veins, ravaged sinews knitting together beneath a translucent skin.

When it began to restore the damaged nerve endings in his flesh, he cried out, though he wasn’t quite conscious, his body convulsing with electrical impulses.

At last the burning heat of the aether began to dissipate, though it still glowed around us for some minutes afterward, and Kae’s body relaxed. When the aether had finally run its course, he moaned softly in my lap as if waking from an ordinary sleep. I marveled at how the aether had made whole every stripe from the magical lashing, but restored the marks from the earlier beating—one Belphagor must surely have administered—as if they were now intrinsically a part of him.

Kae opened his eyes, staring out at the amber ocean as if trying to understand what he was seeing. “Realm of the Dead,” he murmured, sounding tremendously relieved. His voice had also been restored; whatever damage to his larynx he’d received in the fire during the Solstice Conflagration had apparently healed as a magical wound.

“No,” I whispered, stroking his hair. “I’m sorry. You’re still here with me.”

Kae blinked at me, disoriented, and then sat up and scrambled back as if horrified to have been touching me. He put his hand over his undamaged eye, turning the unscarred portion of his face away from me. “Where’s my mask?”

“Kae, you don’t need it. You’ve never needed it. The part you show the world is the only part that was damaged.”

When I pulled his hand away, he turned toward me with a pained look. “This is what you call undamaged? This twisted flesh? This oozing socket?”

“Your left eye is perfectly whole.” I laid my hand against his cheek and he flinched. “The skin you’ve kept covered has no scars.”

He shook his head and turned away, unable to accept what I was saying, determined to hide his face. “You gave me to her,” he said after a moment.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Those were her terms. She would leave Heaven, never to return, if I let her try you in the Midnight Court. I don’t expect you to forgive me—”

“
Forgive
you? For what? For wanting to hurt me finally, after all? For hating me?”

“I don’t hate you. And I didn’t want to hurt you—”

“Of course you did. For the love of Heaven, Nazkia, of course you did.” He met my eyes, and I couldn’t lie again. “And you had every right. But what I cannot understand, what I cannot forgive, is punishing Azel.”

I bit my lip to hold back tears. “I’m not punishing him. This is the only way to keep him from Irkalla. He’s safe in the Unseen World.”

“How can he be? How can he be safe with
her?”

“She’ll be kind to him. The syla have seen it. He will be adored and cared for. He may even forget where his life began.” I had to make him understand. “I couldn’t leave him with Helga. And I couldn’t do what had to be done by the laws of Heaven.”

He frowned at me, unconvinced. “What about Azel Helisonovich? He cannot want this.”

“My brother was dying.” I brushed at the tears I could no longer stop. “He wouldn’t have lived another year. Aeval will give him a life he could never have had. He can run and play, and ride horses without fear of injury or overexertion. He can be a child—and he can grow up. I only hope he’ll forget us all.”

Kae sighed heavily and gave me a reluctant nod. “And who am I, now?” he asked after a moment, as if speaking to himself. “What am I to do?”

“You are the field marshal of the queen of the Firmament—”

“By all the Heavens, Nazkia!” He leapt to his feet and paced away from me, as if resisting the urge to strike me. “Enough! That game is over.”

“It’s no game,” I protested. “Why must you be so difficult?”

“Why must
I
?” He laughed sharply. “You’re impossible. You think I’m your childhood playmate, for Heaven’s sake, that nothing has changed—”

“Everything has changed!” I rose and crossed to where he stood glaring defiantly at me out of an eye he imagined he didn’t have. “Yes, you were my playmate. You were my cousin, my brother, and my dearest friend, and I never stopped loving you, not even in the darkest moments.”

Kae flinched but held his challenging stance. “Your foolish sentiment aside, that man is dead.”

“Yes, I know he is. But it doesn’t matter.” My heart beat painfully in my chest. “Because that was a child’s love. And I’m no longer a child.”

It took a moment for him to grasp, but the dawning comprehension was almost comically visible on his face. The color drained from his cheeks and his mouth dropped open, his eyes so wide it had to hurt.

And then his mouth snapped shut and his eyes narrowed before he stepped forward and slapped me. “Don’t you
dare
.”

I gripped my cheek in surprise, now burning with much more than girlish embarrassment, and gave him back his own defiant glare. “You never answered me that day in the rain outside Elysium: tell me you don’t love me, then. Go ahead.”

His fists clenched at his sides and he moved away from me, shaking his head in angry amazement. “You’re beyond impossible. You little…
brat
.”

I laughed in astonishment. “Am I twelve?
Bozhe moi.
You’re the one who’s being a child.
I love you.
Tell me you don’t love me back.”

“Stop saying that!” He charged toward me and grabbed me by the arms as if he’d shake me like the insolent child he professed me to be. Whatever he saw in my eyes gave him pause. “Damn you, Nenny,” he whispered, then gripped me tightly and kissed me as if compelled.

I slid my arms around his neck, trembling with relief, and melted into him, the soft spark of aether on his lips tingling like absinthe before he pulled away. For a moment, I feared he’d thought better of the impulse, but Kae was blinking rapidly, an odd expression on his face.

“There’s something in my eye.” Tears welled in the eye he imagined gone, and something glistened in it.

I reached up and caught the moisture poised on his lashes with the tip of my finger. Sparkling with the sharp, crystalline facets of a piece of ice or a sliver of glass, it resolved itself into a drop of dew, like the glittery substance that had fallen on us in the Midnight Court, and vanished.

“
Oh.”
Kae clutched his chest, and for a dreadful moment I feared I’d lose him after all. “My blood. It feels…warm.” He blinked again. “And I can see you clearly.” He covered his right eye, staring at me. “I thought it was gone,” he whispered in amazement. “I thought the eye was gone.” He lowered his hand and reached to stroke his fingers through my curls, regarding me with wonder. “Everything has been so dark and muddy. Look at you—my little Nenny. You came for me in the depths of hell.”

Misha took us to say good-bye to Azel before we left the Unseen World. Through one of the doors in the mirrored corridor I’d seen on my last visit, we stepped out onto a wide-open, rolling lawn of green. Unlike the garden hall in which I’d once spent time here, it appeared to have no walls, only arches that seemed to float in the air, leading to other halls.

Dressed once more in his field marshal’s uniform, with pants tucked into the tall, glossy boots and the woolen frock coat swinging about them, Kae walked beside me. Misha had given him a patch for his cloudy eye, and he now wore this instead of the heavy mask he’d hidden behind for months.

There were stables on this lawn, and here we found Azel standing on the base of the carved wooden demi-door, his elbows perched on the top of it, looking in as the leshi stable hands groomed the horses.

He turned his head at the sound of our approach and surveyed us with interest. “Hello.”

I smiled. “Hello, Azel.”

“The other pretty lady said I can ride any horse I like. But not all by myself. Not until I’m bigger.” He frowned. “Have you come to take me to the other place?”

“No, sweetheart.” I touched his arm lightly. “You may stay here as long as you like. Do you like it here with Queen Aeval?”

“I like horses.” He turned back to watch the groomsmen.

Kae spoke unexpectedly. “I like horses, too.” He looked surprised at the sound of his own voice.

Azel glanced up at him. “You’re the man with the funny mask.”

“Yes. I threw it away. I didn’t need it anymore.”

I took Kae’s hand, and he held tightly to mine as if in need of courage.

Azel studied his face with a solemn look before turning to me. “Where’s Ola?”

“Ola is with her papa and Beli at home. We’re going to see her now.”

“She has two papas,” he observed. “I haven’t any.”

Kae looked pained.