Page 135 of The Stolen Throne
Thinking I can knock her away with sand, I pull my power forward so hard, the telltale whistle of sound doesn’t register until there’s an arrow protruding from Vida’s shoulder.
On a grunt of stunned pain, she drops her shears. I have to lurch to the side to avoid them hitting my face, and my movement finally tumbles her to the ground. Before I can begin to absorb what just happened, Horus is pushing her legs off me and trying to drag me away. In the same instant, Bene lands on a dune nearby, beside Omma and Tabra. When did they get here?
I only let Horus take me so far away before I’m struggling to get up. “Vida,” I say, stumbling back to her. “Tell me what you know.”
She blinks as if trying to wake herself from a nightmare. She pushes herself to kneeling and stares at the arrow protruding from her body. Where Horus shot her shouldn’t kill her. All he did was stop her.
“I had orders,” she whispers. “Kill you, get Aryd’s amulet…”
Eidolon knows I have Aryd’s amulet. How? While he’d know that the rulers of the dominions were given them, he’d also know that Trysolde’s ancestors buried the Wildernyssian one. I don’t think he’d assume any of the current rulers are lugging them around. He didn’t seem to be aware of mine when I left the palace. I can’t be sure of that, of course, but wouldn’t he have taken it from me if he’d known?
Dread makes my stomach plummet. He didn’t know when I was in the palace, but he knows now because she told him.
Silent tears make tracks through a fine dusting of sand covering her face. She doesn’t look up. Doesn’t look at me. Even from here, I can see the way her entire body starts to quiver. “I had no choice.”
My heart is breaking, cracking like the walls around my dominion. “Why didn’t you come to me? To Reven or Vos? Anyone? We would have helped you.”
Finally, she lifts her head. It’s not me she looks at, but Horus, who has another arrow nocked and trained on her. “Help my family,” she whispers to him. Pleads.
Then she snatches the shears from the sand and runs straight at me.
Horus doesn’t hesitate. I barely register the sound of the loosed arrow before it’s sticking out of her chest. A kill shot this time.
“No!” I think I scream. Everything inside me goes blank at the sight of blood gurgling out of her mouth as she drops to her knees.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, then flops forward, the life draining from her body.
I scramble over to her, but somehow Horus beats me. With almost frantic hands, he pulls her onto his lap and wraps his arms around her. Head bowed, he murmurs prayers I’ve only heard at a distance growing up around the Wanderers.
I fall back onto my ass in the sand and slip my hand into her limp one. My heart waits for her to squeeze it back, but she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. She’s gone already, mercury eyes glassy now and staring up at me.
“Damn it, Vida.” Horus’s whisper is a scrape of sound. “What did you make me do?” He dashes away a tear before it has a chance to fall.
Wanderers don’t cry. That’s not how they grieve. Which makes every silent sob, every heave of his shoulders, that much harder to bear. A gavel of my own pain and guilt.
He’s known her for years. Years together in the Shadowood. Years with that cheerful smile and her insistent friendship that can win over even the most guarded person.
I would know.
But he still killed her. For me. To protect me.
And now it’s killing him.
This is what the ageless King of Tyndra does to people. What he turns them into. Forces them to become.
“We need to go.”
I jerk my head up at the sound of Omma’s voice to find her standing close by, holding Tabra up. My sister’s sunken eyes slide from Vida to Horus, silent tears streaking down her cheeks. Omma, though…she’s looking at me with the uncompromising hardness I’m all too familiar with.
“Don’t cry over someone who tried to kill you, girl,” Omma says in a voice that matches her face.
I didn’t realize that I’d started crying, and I swipe at my cheeks, hating that she can see my tears. “She was my friend.”
“She was just desperate.” Horus breathes deeply. “Desperation is as close to depravity as a pure soul like hers can get. Trust me. I know.”
I drop my gaze to Vida’s face and brush her hair out of her eyes. Eyes that look shocked by her death. “I would have helped her.”
“Of course you would have.” Tabra’s voice is thready but sure. She’s always believed I could do anything.
