Chapter 223: Her Cruel Rage

Malik, despite his better judgment, finally turned around.

He did it slowly; he had to, because his body would not do it any faster.

He lifted his head, let the hood slide back, reached up with his good hand and tugged the rag down from his face.

The morning light touched it.

It was a gaunt face.

The cheeks were hollow, the lips cracked, the skin drawn tight over the bones.

The hair that hung around it was the color of bleached linen.

The eyes were a pale gray.

It was the face of a stranger.

No one in that camp would have known it.

Except the one who was looking at it now.

Huda had stopped screaming.

Lying in the dirt at the end of her chain, her bloody fingers still outstretched, she stared up at him with her mouth open.

The tears were still running down her cheeks; she did not seem to know that she was crying.

Her eyes moved over the stranger’s face, from the white hair to the hollow jaw, and uncertainty flickered at the back of them.

Malik looked at her.

He looked at the wrecked wrists.

He looked at the swollen feet, bare on the stones, and at the ruin of the pink dress.

He thought of a girl who had shouted at a shepherd about his walking stick. He thought of a small child in a window, grabbing for the Sun.

And he smiled.

It was a gentle smile, and it was the cruelest thing he had ever done.

Malik did not give her a name. He did not give her his hand or his voice or the face she had cried for. He could not, not here, with a hundred men watching and the sky full of eyes.

If he told her the truth, she would scream it across the whole plain.

And every Angel in Devil’s Maw would turn its head.

So he gave her the only mercy he had.

A mercy that cut like a blade, because it was only half of the truth.

He held her gaze, he let the smile settle, and he said it again, very quietly, in a voice meant for one person alone:

"The head was fake."

Malik watched the thin candle flare in the dark of her eyes, and her body go rigid on the ground.

He did not look away.

Huda did not breathe for a long time.

The stranger’s words sat in the air above her, and she seemed to be looking at them directly.

’The head was fake.’

It was a simple sentence.

Fake. The head was fake.

The golden eyes were amber beads.

The face she had held in her lap, sobbed over, and begged for, was made of clay.

If it was clay, then it was not him.

If it was not him...

The thought stopped there.

It could not climb any higher.

She had gone too many nights without letting herself finish a sentence like that, and her mind had forgotten what hope looked like.

But something bright had cracked open in her chest, and it hurt worse than the chains.

Her eyes went to the stranger’s face.

White hair, hollow cheeks, pale eyes, and a strangely familiar smile.

Her lips parted.

"Who..."

Malik turned his back on her.

He needed to, because if he looked at her one heartbeat longer, he would have said something stupid.

"Kill them!"

Safira sprang into action.

Letting those Invaders go would have been the smarter option, but...

"They deserve nothing but death."

The Backbone of Devil’s Maw was mad.

These bastards dared to take Huda hostage.

They dared to claim their Sultan’s head as their trophy!

None would be left alive.

All agreed with that, despite it being exactly what Safira herself had said they could not afford.

A hundred retreating men met rising blades and pounding boots.

Malik saw the whole thing go down in the space of a breath.

The Order, which was hunting for any scrap of light, would surely hear about the little... skirmish in the riverbed and send somebody to look; everyone present knew that very well.

’Hm.’

He looked down at the powder on his palm.

There was a lot of it, clay and horsehair, ground fine, a gray dust that clung to everything.

He lifted his hand to his mouth and blew.

A cloud rolled across the stones.

It was only dust, and it was only a few handfuls.

But the wind was blowing towards the center of the camp.

Malik disappeared in that smoke.

It was not Devil’s Footsteps, and it was not fire.

His body’s strength was enough for him to reach the enemy’s leader.

Nobody expected a cripple to be dangerous, and Malik was far beyond that.

The enemy leader had his sword up, his eyes on the approaching cloud of sand.

He never saw the one-armed figure coming in low along his blind side.

Malik’s fist struck his head.

It was a hammer strike, brutally executed.

Without even a scream, the bastard was dead, just like that, crushed into the ground.

The blade spun out of his now-twisted fingers and stuck quivering in the dirt.

"You..."

It took less than a second.

Nobody saw it.

Malik reached into the Invader’s belt, felt around, and found what he was looking for.

A ring of keys.

They were heavy, hung on a loop of cord, and the largest of them was etched with a dark rune he recognized.

The Rukh-draining cuffs had a lock.

Every lock had a key.

The man had worn it on his belt, close to his heart, for the pleasure of feeling it.

Malik stood, turned, and flicked the ring across, seemingly towards someone.

It spun through the air in a long arc, reaching Safira.

She caught it without looking.

Huda was to be freed.

But before then, all of these Invaders had to feel a fraction of his might.

Safira, his final disciple, made sure of that.

Cruel was her rage.