This Poisoned Tide: The Last Water Witch Book One

CHAPTER 34

Ch. 34

As soon as Roth stepped foot back inside the oppressive confines of the King's palace, he felt the ghosts wrap their hands around his throat and press their thumbs into his windpipe.

He had walked these hallways since his time as Special Commander—often summoned by Ban-Keren for some unimportant undertaking which he could have just conveyed to Roth via one of his many servants—but each time it filled him with dread. Although he was now in charge of the Library and not the Elite Guard, the King still liked to keep him on a leash he could yank every now and then to remind Roth who was his master.

Roth had carried Eva's body along this very passageway, not over his shoulder, as would have been customary for a slain enemy of the King, but in his arms, so he could hold her against his chest in the hope that her journey into the dark came with some small sense of comfort. She had deserved more than to be treated like wasted flesh and bones. Like the carcass of some ruined animal no longer fit for purpose. If the King had noticed anything, he'd never shown it, but Dageor's ever-watchful gaze missed nothing. And Roth had lived under the priest's shadow ever since.

The dread he felt this time, however, was a different beast altogether.

This dread was one of fear and of a grief that caged his heart in woe, almost as if Juda was lost to him already.

Roth wanted to remain hopeful. After all, so far, fortune appeared to have been on their side. They had placed Juda exactly where they had planned for him to be. In fact, if fortune was something in which to put their faith, he had fared far better than Roth had ever dared to imagine he would. Of course, ask Juda of this, and he would say fortune was reserved for the fucking foolish and the hopeless dreamers, and he was neither of those.

But that was Juda. Arrogant to the last. It had never been hope that had kept Juda's plan alive, but belief in himself and a belief that Aleina stood beside him always, a permanent light on the dark seas.

Roth hoped he was right about that, but then again, Roth had lived with hope before The Order, and he had lived with it after. Sometimes, on dark and desperate moontides when the bottle was always within reach, Roth wondered what Aleina thought of him now, this man who had taken the most precious beat of her heart and thrown him to the wolves. No, not thrown him—made him become one.

He'd never forced Juda to do any of this, had never commanded him to join The Order, but even Roth knew he could have deterred the boy from following him on this path to vengeance. He could have sent him away—should have sent him away—to study at the Drasany Academy in Dreynia, or even to the Salt Templars of Carraterra. He'd have had to trade half of what he owned to get the Salters to take the boy, and he'd never have seen him again, but rather that than lose Aleina's son to this madness.

"Ah, Special Commander..." came Dageor's voice, cutting through the dread and leaving Roth with something distinctly unpleasant writhing in the base of his stomach.

Roth halted abruptly, as did the two Elite Guards at his back.

Dageor appeared at his side, seemingly as if he'd just separated himself from the shadows.

Roth gave a stiff bow of his head. "By Ban-Keren, my Lord Dageor."

"By Ban-Keren..." Dageor's smile was blade-thin and just as sharp. "My sincerest apologies, my noble Vi-Garran, it seems I must once again remind myself to address you in the proper manner."

They both nodded, a polite, almost imperceptive incline of the head while their gaze never broke from the other's. Their civility was a sham. Both knew it. But Roth knew better than to be anything but civil, even when all he wished to do was push his dagger through the priest's throat and watch the blood pour from his gaping mouth.