in the world.
He’d forgotten hope.
“Hope?” Dust demanded of the air. “What hope is there here, on an island falling into the sea? What hope is there to undo what I’ve done?”
He already knew the answer to that. He’d seen a moment more powerful than the ones he’d seen in the priests’ smoke, more certain, more crucial. He’d seen a battle, and a figure standing in shining armor, wielding a crystal sword with almost impossible skill. He’d seen that figure cut down, and he’d known that moment was the one that mattered.
Dust looked around and realized that somehow he had reached the coast of the island. There was a boat there that wasn’t his, but it was light, and it had oars, and it was easy for him to push into the water while behind him the island collapsed.
He bobbed in the boat, looking up at the sky, trying to decide what to do next, but in truth, Dust already knew what he had to do. He sat up, staring out over the water, looking at the island he had passed on his way here, and contemplating what would be needed to save the world.
He started to row.
While he rowed, he considered the central problem of the next thing that had to be dealt with: a foe who seemed so well protected that it would be impossible to defeat them, that even attempting it might destroy him.
Dust didn’t care about that though; he craved that destruction. If it came to him, he would welcome it with open arms.
“No,” he told himself, “not before I have done what I must do.”
As for the prospect of actually doing it, he would find a way. He was Angarthim, with all the training that came with that. Perhaps he was the only one who could do this. He could slip silently onto the island, and…
“That will not work,” Dust said. One glance at the clouds above the island he sought told him that. The signs there were filled with death and the prospect of it. He could be stealthy, but he would fail, and he would die. He needed to find another way.
Dust let the boat drift now, knowing that the currents from the spot he was in would take him to the island he sought. Taking one of the oars and the sharpest of his knives, he started to carve. He could make another if he survived this.
He whittled at the wood with steady hands, shaving curls of it from the oar’s haft until it started to come to a point. Dust refined that point steadily as the current dragged him in toward the island, turning it into something almost as sharp as the steel he carried, producing a javelin that was light, and balanced, and deadly.
Taking a pouch from his belt, Dust mingled the contents with sea water, then dipped the tip of his makeshift spear into the results, the wood hissing as it contacted the potion he had produced. He threw the pouch out into the water, too dangerous to touch now that the powder had been wetted.
He came in close to the shore, and already, Dust could feel the pull from the island, in the heady, sweet scent that seemed to fill every pore, making him want to draw closer.
She stepped from the forest there, and she was the most beautiful woman Dust had ever seen, although a part of his brain also saw past that in the same moment. He saw a woman who was everything he had ever wanted, and at the same time saw the claws.
He flung his javelin. It sailed through the air, and she twisted, fast as a snake, so that his throw barely grazed her. The point did break the skin, and Dust could only hope that the poison on it did its job.
The creature didn’t fall, though. Instead, the scent around Dust intensified, and he knew that he had to throw himself forward, diving into the water and dragging his boat to the beach.
She was waiting there for him, and now he realized that she simply was. She was impossible, because her beauty hurt Dust to look upon. He would have done anything for her in that moment. Anything.
“I am Lethe,” she said, in a voice like molten honey. “What do they call you?”
“Dust,” Dust said.
“And do you love me, Dust?”
“I love you,” Dust agreed.
Lethe stepped toward him, arms open, her beauty complete, perfect, absolute.
“Did you really think that your little spear would kill me?” she asked. Her mouth was open in a smile that was both beautiful and too full of teeth, all at once.
“No,” Dust admitted.
“No?” That seemed to take Lethe by surprise.
“The poison on it does not kill. I had nothing that would kill you. But I have things that can weaken you.”
“Weaken me?” Dust heard the fear there now.
“I love you, but I am Angarthim, and we can kill what we love if the fates require it.”
Dust struck out with a knife, the blade flashing across her throat. Lethe didn’t even have time to cry out as she fell. Dust had made her end as painless as he could, because what more could he do for someone he loved so much?
He knelt there, and he wept in his grief. He wept both because of what he had lost in Lethe, and because he still needed to be the killer he had been made into for a little while longer.
It seemed to take forever before Dust felt strong enough to stand again and make his way around the island. The place felt different now, as dead as the creature that had run it, lifeless and silent as Dust searched.
He found what he was looking for set a little way from a cabin-like home, discarded in a pile together as if they simply didn’t matter. Then, Dust guessed, they hadn’t mattered compared to the love of Lethe. Dust took the crystal sword, unsheathing it only long enough to admire how the blade shone in the moonlight before he put it away again. He wrapped it in the armor, taking both and moving back in the direction of his boat.
It took him another hour to carve a replacement oar, an hour beyond that to gather fruits and fresh water from the forest. Dust piled it into his boat and pushed it out into the water.
He started to row for the mainland, knowing that destiny lay ahead, for him, for Royce, for everyone.
CHAPTER THREE
Genevieve was finding that life in the king’s court was very different from life in the palace of Altfor’s father. For one thing, people actually looked at her as if she were noble, rather than giving her the looks of pity and disdain that had marked her out as a stolen peasant girl before.
For another, there was the constant sense of threat that came from knowing any misstep could get her killed.
“Will Lord Ber’s men be here before the final push against the enemy?” King Carris demanded of an advisor, standing from his throne and pacing the width of the audience chamber where he was discussing plans.
“There is no news yet, my king,” the man said.
“Which means that he doesn’t plan to be here,” King Carris snapped back. “He’s waiting to see who will win. Do our chances look so bad?”
“No, my king,” the man said. “Shall I send more messages to him?”
“Just one,” King Carris said. “Tell him that if he does not have his men with my army in time, I will kill him, and his family, and anyone else who stands with him. This is a fight against people who would take my kingdom from me; if he is not with me in that fight, then he is my enemy.”
“At once,” the man said.
More advisors and messengers came, each one with some fragment of news about the coming conflict. One lord came forward and knelt.
“My king,” he said. “I am Sir Verris of Yall. I have brought three hundred men with me to serve with your army.”
“You have my thanks, Sir Verris,” the king said. “You will be rewarded. Your place will be with the force that strikes from the north.”
Genevieve stood toward the back of the crowd of people, trying