This Poisoned Tide: The Last Water Witch Book One

CHAPTER 41

The face reflected in the mirror was not Juda Rotharo Vikaris.

No matter which way he turned, he couldn't see him in the glass. There was no angle he recognised. No feature that seemed familiar to him.

Who was this man? Who was he, now that he stood there, wearing the uniform of the Elite Guard. The britches were heavier than those of the Highguards, thickened wool with leather patches on the thighs and shins. A simple black undershirt underneath a two-piece leather tunic—arms of soft supple leather, the torso made from thick hide, with three wide scarlet straps that buckled diagonally across the chest. The thick twill cloak was hoodless and attached to the shoulders of the leather tunic with red and black heavy-duty snaps, which were decorated with the serpent and blade symbol of The Order.

On his right hip, the khilis, the fine point tapered sabre known only to the King's Elite Guard, and on his left, the kystos, the short, barbed whip.

Gone were the Druvarian braids, the ones he recalled Aleina painstakingly creating, smoothing hythea oil over them with her fingertips. The sides of his head were now shaved close to the bone. At the top, his long hair was scraped back and bound tight with thin leather thong.

Do you see me, mother? I cannot see me.

If he didn't know better, Juda would have thought the borer-worm larvae still lived within him, because he saw barely anything of the man he had once been. Certainly nothing of the boy. The boy was but a memory, a ghost in the dark, a breeze over the Setalah.

The Setalah. The water.

Juda closed his eyes and saw Elara. Droplets pooling in the indents of her collarbone. The binds wrapped around his wrists. Sea salt on his tongue. Her sinful mouth whispering his name.

Juda...Juda...my love...

He'd always thought love was as foolish as hope. He'd loved his mother, still loved her. But it was a love that pained him and a love that felt hopeless without her. It was also a love that had twisted into something where hatred thrived. Hatred for Ban-Keren, sometimes for Roth, mostly for himself. Vi-Garran had oft told him there was a fine line between love and hate, that it was easier to switch between extremes of emotion than meander within the shades in between, but Juda had always known that love and hate always existed together. It was not possible to have one without the other.

He loved his mother, but it had turned him into something he despised.

He despised the Naiad for the curse they had bestowed upon Druvaria, but he...

My love...

Juda swallowed and opened his eyes. Tilting his head back a little, he studied his reflection once more. The Batak oil burn did not bother him as it once had. If anything, to see it centred him—reminded him of that one certainty in his life he could control.

I am vengeance, I am hate, and I am death, and nothing more. By my blood.

"I always knew rats could climb, but never did I imagine they could reach such heights," a voice said in the open doorway.

Rimo Tor-Narun stood leaning against the frame, his stance casual, but his face pinched and hard as his gaze swept Juda's form from his boots to his head. For a moment, Juda was twisted in time, seeing Argo standing in the same place, his look not all hardened envy, but admiration tinged with desire.

It was not with admiration and desire he had last looked upon Juda, but with acceptance, pain, and devotion. Right up until the end, it had still been there.

Don't falter now, Juda. Give me the blade and know that I love you.

Love. That word again. The fucking fool. How could you love the man who would freely spill your blood into the dust?