The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing by Tara Maya Read Free Book Online

would tear her into shreds. Umbral would not have to kill
her after he used her. She would die in his arms.
    Perhaps he knew that. Perhaps it was the real reason
he had not killed her yet. He wanted to break her first.
    Dead, burnt branches snapped at her calves, bare
under her cape. Because he had let her put on her old clothes, she
still had two important things: The corncob doll, and the shard of
the bowl that Kavio had broken before her. At the time, she had
thought no other pain could compare to the lash of his
rejection.
    Now she knew otherwise.
    Kavio had known the man in black would kill him. He
dreamt of it. The Banshee cried his name. Was Umbral right? Had
Kavio’s fate been set? Was her own death just as foreordained?
    She tripped over a root she could not see. A strong
hand steadied her before she could fall on her face.
    “Just a little further,” Kavio murmured
reassuringly. Except it was not him.
    Damn him. Damn Umbral.
    She wrenched her arm free. “Don’t touch me!”
    Dindi pulled away, staggered over another root, and
ran smack into a tree.
    Umbral picked her up and swung her over his
shoulder. He carried her that way the rest of the walk.
    She heard a multitude of groans, as if arising from
a crowd. The air stank of blood and rotting flesh. The Deathsworn
barked orders and the groans swelled.
    Umbral set her down on a log. He loosed the
blindfold. Light confused her eyes. Another sunrise had overtaken
them. The reflection off the snow hurt. Gradually she made out a
circle of black trees surrounding a square of four big black
stones. The clearing before the square of Deathsworn menhirs was
completely filled with rows of the dead and dying.
    There were so many.
    The dead were already in jars, and there were enough
of them. But the wounded. Oh, the wounded.
    Green Woods warriors thrashed on the ground, some
with braided beards, some no more than pink-chinned boys. Orange
Canyon warriors clutched their ram’s horn helms and howled like
infants. A handful of Tavaedies had been grouped together, more or
less with their body parts. Missing legs, missing arms, missing
heads. Bodies torn to shreds by talons, bodies smashed to jelly by
being dropped by flying Raptors. There were Raptors there too, and
wolves, both groups human at last in death.
    Umbral brushed the wet streak off her cheek.
    “This is my work,” he said softly. “I will leave you
here, but you still wear my leash.”
    A pulse of energy flowed through the black
shimmering cord, which caused exquisite pleasure to bolt through
her limbs. Dindi cried out in surprise, then clamped her jaws to
keep from moaning.
    She glared at him. “Stop toying with me.”
    “It’s a warning,” he said. “Through the leash, I can
make you feel bliss. I can make you feel pain just as easily. Don’t
make me show you the other side by doing something stupid.”
    The Deathsworn “worked” all morning—which is to say,
they killed people. The Deathsworn began their ritual with a dance.
After that, one by one, they brought the injured to the four
stones, one of which was laid flat, like the altar where Umbral had
first tied Dindi. Then Umbral or one of the others butchered the
humans as a hunter would butcher a kill: slit the throat, drain the
blood, remove the head, quarter the limbs. The parts were placed in
empty jars, which waited beyond the tree circle.
    Dindi forced herself to watch. This was what Umbral
would do to her.
    If she let him.
    The day never warmed, exactly, but the cold bit less
savagely. Umbral removed his headdress, cloak, and tunic. Though
his breath made misty swirls in front of him, he stripped to just
black leather pants and black leather gloves. His naked chest
gleamed with sweat. Kavio’s glorious torso, Kavio’s gentle
hands, bent to a purpose Kavio would have abhorred . That
thief, that bastard . One body after another he lifted to the
stone. One throat after another he slit.
    Once, he looked up just as she was staring hard at
him.