Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

days afterward as he was tortured in the prison of Loramendi, where she awaited her own execution.
    That was the Thiago whom Karou saw—killer, torturer,savage—when he appeared before her a lifetime later in the ruins of Loramendi.
    But… it all looked different now, didn’t it? How, after all, in the light of what had come to pass, could she argue that he had been wrong?
    Akiva should have died that day, and so should she. It
had
been treason, their love, their plans, and worst of all: her fool mercy, to save the angel’s life not once but twice, so that he might live to become what he was now. The Prince of Bastards, they called him, among other names. Thiago had made certain she heard them all—Lord of the Misbegotten, Beast’s Bane, the Angel of Annihilation—and behind each name lurked the accusation:
Because of you, because of you
.
    If it weren’t for her, the chimaera would still live. Loramendi would still stand. Brimstone would be stringing teeth, and Issa, sweet Issa, would be fretting over his health and winding serpents around human necks in the antechamber of the shop. The children of the city would still run riot on the Serpentine in all their many shapes, and they would grow up to be soldiers, as she had, and be cycled through body after body as the war went on. And on.
    Forever.
    Looking back now, Karou could scarcely believe her own naiveté, that she had believed the world could be some other way, and that she could be the one to make it so.

16
T HE I NHERITORS
    In her doorway, Karou thrust out her hand and said, “Thiago, just give me the tooth.”
    He stepped closer, so that his chest butted at her fingertips and she had to pull them back. Her pulse stuttered. He was so near; she really wanted to move away, but to do so would give him space to enter, and she must not do that. Since joining with him, she had tried hard never to be alone with him. His nearness made her feel small, so weak by contrast, and so… human.
    With a magician’s flourish, he opened his hand, revealing the molar as if he were daring her to take it. What would he do if she did—grab her hand?
    She hesitated, wary.
    “Is it for Amzallag?” Thiago asked.
    She nodded. He had asked her for a body for Amzallag, and that’s what he was getting.
Aren’t I the compliant little helper
, she thought.
    “Good. I’ve brought him.” He raised his other hand, which held a thurible.
    Karou’s belly flipped. So it was already done. She didn’t know why this part of the process unsettled her so much; she supposed it was the image of two creatures going off into the scree and only one coming back. She hadn’t seen the pit, and she hoped she never would, but some days she could smell it: a fug of decay that gave reality to what was usually remote. Thuribles were clean and simple; the new bodies she made were as pristine as Thiago’s clothes. It was the other bodies that bothered her—the discarded ones.
    But in that way, as in pretty much every way, she was alone. Thiago was unfazed. He swung Amzallag’s thurible as if he had not just murdered a comrade and pushed his body into a pit of rotting corpses. The comrade had been willing, after all; anything for the cause, and the old bodies just didn’t serve the new purpose, so Karou was replacing them, one by one.
    The Wolf fixed her with his pale stare, so intense it made her want to back up a step. “It has begun, Karou. What we’ve been working for.”
    She nodded. A chill ran through her. Rebellion.
Revenge.
“Has there been news?” she asked.
    “No. But it’s early yet.”
    Several days ago Thiago had dispatched five patrols of six soldiers each. What exactly their missions were, Karou didn’t know. She had asked, but she hadn’t exactly argued when Thiago told her, “Don’t worry about that, Karou. Save your strength for resurrection.”
    Wasn’t that what Brimstone had done? He had left the war to the Warlord, and she was leaving the rebellion to the