A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)

Chapter Eighty-Three

Voices drift in from the hall.

"She's been at it for hours." Arno's voice whines. "We're losing time."

"Soldier boy, she's hurting. You must learn patience." Ratu, holding him back. "Learn to be still or I'll whack you with that broom."

I draw a curtain over the doorway, craving an end to the infernal waiting.

Kane stands behind me. It is only us and the too-still Serkan. I stand over my father's bed, staring down upon him. A face weathered with old scars, handsome skin, browned from fighting so many blistering battles in the sun. Callused palms that once ran red with blood, eyes that held fire. My face is his, a warrior's. A conqueror. Unforgiving. Relentless.

A peasant's son, stolen from his family and brought to a foreign land.

Too still. Unnaturally still.

"Your name is Serkan Ngayoh," I whisper the words like a prayer against his gray-black curls. "You were called the Cleaver of Men. Your name is Serkan Ngayoh. You were called the Cleaver of Men. Your name is—."

It is then that, frustrated from it all, I choke up. My throat swells, my tongue heavy.

In the legends, the hero would have swooped in and saved their father from the jaws of death. But I failed. Life is not like the legends.

I came too late.

"I can't say the words anymore. Kane, I can't say the words."

Kane falls to the ground beside me, his tall frame dwarfing my own. He cradles me in his larger arms, and when I lean back, he wraps his fingers above my beating heart. "That's okay."

I shake my head, feeling my anger rotting within me, making my heart like stone. "No, it's not. I came back and saved him from Elio's clutches. I killed my traitorous cousins. I became a Champion despite being a woman. I've done everything to make him proud, and now he gets sick?" I hit the earth, wanting to rip something apart, to feel something die beneath my hands. "He was fine when he left. He was fine, he was..."

But I know the truth.

Ratu told me.

The guards broke him when he was in Elio's prisons. Chains. Beatings. All he had to do was rat me out, but he refused. As much as I wanted to save him, he wanted to save me.

I came too late.

I remember my father, the last time I saw him fighting back in the Emperor's training yards. Fighting those young village boys, trained in Elio's self-same madness.

"Ode..." He wheezes, sweating with a scimitar in his hand, "get out of here, daughter. I'm doing this to protect you!"

I clench my fists, wanting to throttle Elio's tattooed throat. "He shouldn't have sacrificed himself for me. I thought I could save him before they hurt him." I shake my head, feeling so powerless.

Kane holds me tighter. I tense up. Quiet, breathing like a child in his arms. "Nothing can stop mortality from taking its toll, Ode. I cannot reverse my own handiwork." He sighs, his breath rattling through my curls like wind through trees. "That is how I made you."

My eyes are swollen, the new scars ache from holding Kane's glowing eye. I wonder how he feels, seeing through my borrowed eye. Is the world duller now, or is it just heavier and more tiresome? Maybe it's everything and nothing at once. "Why make us to die?"