Yethyr stood, looking up at the white peaks and the stars above. He held me so limply that my edge trailed in the snow. The bitter wind was freezing. The icy night air could kill him if he stayed out for much longer, but he dared not reenter the tent.
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t.
He couldn‘t.
Ruzar was still there. His broken body. His blood-soaked clothes. His lifeless, hopeless eyes…
Yethyr squeezed my hilt so hard that I hurt his palm. He trembled from more than the cold.
Ruzar had always been there. Even before his father was. It was not inaccurate to say that the chef took more time to raise Yethyr than either of his parents ever did.
And now he was dead, worse than dead. He was trapped in a cursed sword, forever barred from the Heaven he had earned.
Yethyr dared not cry. The tears would probably freeze his eyes. Denied the ability to express his grief, he instead turned to wrath. For a moment, a split moment, that wrath was toward himself.
He had denied Ruzar his plea for a quick death. He had given him my blade instead, despite all risks. How had he not seen it? How had he not seen it? It seemed obvious what Ruzar would do, now that it had happened. How could Yethyr not have warned him?
It was his fault. It was all his fault.
He looked over the barren, frozen landscape, alone and hollow. None of the others had emerged from the tent to follow him, not even Jaetheiri. He did not blame her. Someone had to deal with Ruzar’s body because Yethyr was certain he couldn’t.
He caught a flash of color from the corner of his eye.
Frozen orange fur.
The cat.
It was dead. Again. Cold exposure had killed it. Yethyr crouched over it, knowing it would be back soon. Strangely, illogically, he felt guilty about letting the blasted demon shiver to death.
He dismissed the feeling at once. This horrible pit in his stomach was for Ruzar and Ruzar alone. It had to be.
But that did not soothe him.
Yethyr knew only one way of dealing with guilt, and that was willfully pretending it was not there. He rejected his brief real clarity. Taking responsibility was uncomfortable. So instead, he turned his wrath upon me.
I could feel the shift immediately. It made sense to him. It answered the question of how he could have been so stupid. The curse of my father had made him give Ruzar my blade. I had made him do it.
I resented that. Idiodic Brinn customs caused this, not I. Perhaps my father’s curse had made this happen. In fact, it was likely, but my father’s curse and my will were two separate things, and I resented being conflated with it. I had told Yethyr not to give me away. I had nothing against Ruzar. I had tried to warn him.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Yethyr had heard that warning. He knew it! But to avoid directing his rage toward himself, he chose to overlook what he knew. All that mattered was freeing Ruzar.
“The sword can’t,” I tried to explain in his voice. I didn’t know how to release any of the lives I had taken. Yethyr ignored me or, more accurately, he pushed through me. He intended to dominate me, right here and now.
Before, clawing his will into me had been a personal quest. Now, Ruzar’s spirit was at stake, and he would not be denied.
Yethyr’s deathsong pounded against my steel, with more force than he had ever dared before, and I felt myself caving. He was in me again, hearing music of the world as I heard it—the firesong of the campfire within the tent and the watersong that might be from the local clans far away. The windsong was whipping through the peaks above. The mountain beneath his feet was old stonesong. As old as God, Yethyr thought, and felt awe. Instead of distracting him, his religious ecstasy bolstered him, reminded him of his task.
“Let Ruzar out!” Yethyr commanded. He unleashed a composition of calling, and the life within me danced to the addictive rhythm. He summoned their spirits to him, again and again. And yet, no matter how much he called, no spirit leapt to him from my blade. They banged against my intricate composition of steelsong from inside me, trapped, forever trapped. The sensation of jostling within me, squirming within me, was terrifying. I tried to escape from them; I tried to let them escape. It was no use.
My steel might as well have been a cage, for them as well as for me.
Yethyr wailed in frustration. He could feel Ruzar straining to answer his call, so close and yet as far from Heaven as Hell.
“I will break you,” Yethyr vowed to me. He was sobbing now, heedless of the cold. “I’ll tear you apart to get to him. Mark my words, I’ll get Wesed out here and—”
Something soft brushed his hand. He blinked down to see orange tabby fur brushing against his bone gauntlet. In his distraction, I wrenched Yethyr out of my thoughts, but the Prince didn’t notice.
The cat, alive once more, was rubbing her head into the back of his fingers.
Yethyr recoiled, death on his lips, but the words did not come. The cat had moved on to rub his knee, making a rumbling sound that somehow was as soothing as a selkie’s watersong. Yethyr’s tears stopped. He had forgotten his rage. In its place was confusion. Slowly, he returned his hand to where it had been, and the cat pushed herself beneath his palm and rumbled even louder. She was soft. She was gentle. She was…
Comforting.
The demon was comforting him.
Yethyr scrambled back. The cat yowled in displeasure, but made no move to follow him. She blinked her bright green eyes up at him, tense and wary, ready to bolt at the slightest hint of deathsong. Her tail lashed, and fire rippled through her orange fur. She was bigger than before. Her trip back from Hell had changed her, just a little bit more.
She was a demon. Yethyr knew she was a demon, and yet, it was not hate in her green eyes.
Yethyr knew how to handle the cruelty of Hell. He did not know how to handle the sympathy of a demon. He fled back to the tent, feeling her eerily understanding gaze follow him.
He felt it still once inside the tent. Somehow, she had followed him into the tent itself. He was certain of it.
He glanced about, but he did not see her. Instead, he saw Jaetheiri picking through Ruzar’s bloody clothes.
The others were watching him. He wrangled his expression to neutrality or at least, he tried to.
“My Prince?” Jaetheiri asked warily. “Are you…alright?”
Yethyr remembered the demon’s comforting green eyes. He remembered the spirit of Ruzar, trying to answer his summons. He remembered the song of the world that he so briefly heard through me. “I am fine.” It was so obviously a lie that he felt duty-bound to change the subject. “I just…communed with Bonesong. I know where to go.”
“You know where the Datreans are?” Nisari asked.
“No. But I think I know where the locals are.”
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Who's at fault for Ruzar's death
