The memory of Akos’s dad’s death surfaced: his broken skin, the rich color of his blood, like the currentstream above them; the bloody blade that Vas had wiped on a pant leg as he left the house. The man with the polished Shotet armor and golden-brown eyes who couldn’t feel pain. Unless—unless.
Unless Akos touched him.
He didn’t bother to reason with Vas. It was a waste of time. Akos just started toward him, his boots scraping the grit they had tracked onto the glass floor. Vas’s eyes looked even colder, despite being such a warm shade of hazel, because of the lights coming from beneath him.
Akos had the heart of prey; he wanted to run, or at least keep space between them, but he made himself press against that space. Breathed open-mouthed, with flared nose; never breathing enough.
Vas lunged, and Akos let himself be prey, then; he sprang away. Not fast enough. Vas’s knife scraped his armor. Akos winced at the sound, turning again to face him.
He would let Vas get a few close calls in, let him get cocky. Cocky meant sloppy, and sloppy meant Akos might live.
Vas’s eyes were like stamped metal, his arms were like twisted rope. He lunged again, but instead of trying to stab Akos, he grabbed his arm with his free hand and slammed him, hard, against the cell wall. Akos’s head snapped back, smacking into the glass. He saw bursts of color and the glow of the floor against the flat ceiling. Vas’s hand was clamped around him, stern enough to bruise.
And close enough to grab. Akos seized him before he could try to stab again, pressing his knife arm back as hard as he could muster. Vas’s eyes went wide, startled by his touch. In pain, maybe. Akos tried to slam his forehead into Vas’s nose, but he just tossed Akos aside.
Akos fell. The grit they had tracked in clung to his arms. He watched Teka dragging Isae and Cisi away, one hand on each arm. He felt relief, even as blood or sweat tickled the back of his neck; he wasn’t sure which. His head throbbed from the impact with the wall. Vas was strong, and he was not.
Vas licked his lips as he stalked toward Akos again. He kicked, hitting Akos’s armored side. And again, this time driving the toe of his boot into Akos’s jaw. He sprawled flat on his back, covering his face with his hands, and groaned. The pain made it hard to think, hard even to breathe.
Vas laughed. He bent over Akos, grabbed the front of his armor, and pulled him half off the ground. Flecks of his spit hit Akos’s face as he spoke.
“In whatever life there is to come, give your father my greetings.”
This, Akos realized, was his last chance. He put his hand on Vas’s throat. Not even grabbing, just touching, the best he could do. Vas gave him that startled look he’d given before, that pained look. He was bent, leaving a strip of skin exposed beneath his armor, right over the waistband of his pants. And while Akos was touching him—forcing him to feel pain again—he drew the knife he kept in the side of his boot, and stabbed with his left hand. Up, under the armor. Into Vas’s gut.
Vas’s eyes were so wide Akos saw the whites around his bright irises. Then he screamed. He screamed, and tears came into his eyes. His blood was hot on Akos’s hand. They were locked together, Akos’s blade in his flesh, his hands on Akos’s shoulders, their eyes meeting. Together they sank to the ground, and Vas let out a heavy sob.
It took Akos a long time to let go. He needed to make sure Vas was dead.
He thought of his dad’s button in his mom’s hand, its sheen worn away by his fingers, and pulled his knife free.
He’d dreamt of killing Vas Kuzar so many times. The need to do it had been a second heartbeat in his body. In his dreams, though, he stood over the body and raised his knife to the sky and let the blood run down his arm like it was a wisp of the currentstream itself. In his dreams, he felt triumph and victory and vengeance, and like he could finally let his dad go.
In his dreams, he didn’t huddle near the cell wall, scrubbing at his palm with a handkerchief. Shaking so badly he dropped the cloth on the glowing floor.
Vas’s body looked so much smaller now that he was dead. His eyes were still open halfway, and so was his mouth, so Akos could see Vas’s crooked teeth. He swallowed down bile at the image, determined not to throw up.
Ori, he thought. So he stumbled toward the door, and started running.
CHAPTER 37: CYRA
RYZEK TOOK HIS HAND away from his stomach. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, right by his hairline. His eyes, usually so piercing, were unfocused. But then his mouth drew down in a frown that was unexpectedly . . . vulnerable.
“It’s you who made a mistake,” he said, in a higher, softer voice than I had ever heard from him. It was a distinct voice, memorable: Eijeh’s voice. How could both Ryzek and Eijeh be living in the same body, surfacing at different times? “By forcing his hand.”
His hand?
The sound of the crowd around us had changed. No one was even looking at Ryzek anymore. All heads were turned toward the raised platform from which he had just descended, where Eijeh Kereseth now stood alone with a woman in front of him, a knife held at her throat.
I recognized her. Not just from the footage of the kidnapping that had played on screens throughout the city the day she was taken, but from the past day of watching Isae Benesit talk, laugh, eat. This was her double, Orieve Benesit, face unscarred.
“Ah yes, this is the blade I was waiting for,” Ryzek said with a laugh, his natural voice returning. “Cyra, I’d like you to meet Orieve Benesit, chancellor of Thuvhe.”
Her throat was purple with bruises. There was a deep cut in her forehead. But when our eyes locked across that substantial distance, she didn’t look like someone who was afraid for her life. She looked like someone who knew what was coming and intended to meet it with a straight back and a steady look.