Fallen Princeborn: Chosen

by Jean Lee

  Another branch comes swinging out as the half-hare shrieks, “Kiiiiill!”

  Charlotte slides into the sand and slashes again. The blade’s fire burns gold-hot. Smoke billows through the tangle of oily limbs and into the Incomplete’s face. The Incomplete oak coughs, stumbles, and falls upon the bottom of the broken tree, forcing it upright. Arlen clutches Aine tight to his chest as they swing violently upward to a terminal height. Arlen’s arm wrenches free of its socket, but he will not let go.

  Liam tilts so sharply his longest primary feather drags through the sand, but he makes the turn round the unsteady trunk. One more turn and he’ll be under them.

  But the Incomplete oak is no longer coughing. And Campion is back on his feet.

  Dorjan snarls, his haunches tight, his green eye sharp on the Incomplete oak, his blue eye fixed on Campion.

  Campion glances up at his Incomplete henchman. “You know the next line, don’tcha? That baby’s gotta fall.”

  Dorjan froths at the mouth as he vaults at Campion, but the Incomplete’s waiting. The chorus of thorns sing as they tear the air and strike Dorjan across his body. No blood falls, but Dorjan lands with a painful yelp and a cloud of ash. His human form emerges, writhing in pain.

  The Incomplete oak screeches and kicks the broken tree out of its precarious balance.

  Bark cracks.

  Splinters fly.

  Branches snap.

  Aine screams.

  Dammit, only time for one, which one which one?! Charlotte’s heart screams, cries, panics. Campion’s sweating palmfuls of poison—one grab and Dorjan’s dead. The Incomplete’s ready to drag slam the broken tree into the ground, crushing Arlen and Aine, maybe even Liam. She can’t save them all, she can’t save any of them, she can’t—

  Liam.

  His wings beat with a hurricane’s power until he pulls them in for the plummet, the drag too great, but he must not let it conquer him. He unfurls inches from the ground, and the thud of two bodies on his back moves him to cry victory before another thorned branch can whip him down. He carries them up and over the green canopy to the beach.

  “I see Cairine!” Arlen’s voice carries above the wind and voices below. Liam sees her galloping along the beach, her muzzle pointed at the tree line. Then they see the monstrous tentacles less than a league off, closing in, curling in the air as Medusa’s hair. “She’s going to stop the reinforcements!” The fear in Arlen’s voice is too heavy for the wind to hide.

  Charlotte whoops as Liam flies the others out of Campion’s reach. “Liam caught’em, Dorjan!” She hears Dorjan’s muffled laughter in the sand, sees her friend struggle as Campion stands too damn straight, hardly wounded.

  “No, you fucking idiot, NO!” Campion punches the Incomplete’s leg. Its screech grates on Charlotte’s teeth as a fist-sized boil of poison bubbles and spreads upon the Incomplete’s leg.

  The Voice in Charlotte’s heart is confident, even sly. You saw Liam’s blood dagger on the beach. You got all this sand. Make it a weapon.

  “Hell to the YES!” Charlotte holds the blood dagger up with both hands. “Hey, Campion!”

  He spins around, nostrils flaring beneath two twitching eyes. “Shoulda killed that borderland girl when I had the chance. Ain’t no heart like a scared young heart.”

  Dorjan shakes as he raises himself up on his elbows, mouth still full of growls and curses. “You. Will. Not. Dare.” His fingers claw sand with every deep breath that pulls his limbs into him, sets them burning black fire. His teeth fill his dark jaws like comets in the night sky. His green eye holds enough fury for him and Charlotte both.

  Campion takes it all in. Laughs. “Touch me. Just try.”

  Dammit, Dorjan, he’s playing you while the Incomplete pulls back for another swing. Charlotte shakes the sweat from her eyebrows. “Take the tree, D.”

  Dorjan’s blue eye glares.

  “Do it!”

  The branch lashes through the air as Campion stalks forward, hands out. “Just touch me, dog, C’MON!”

  But Dorjan leaps over Campion and throws all his front weight upon the Incomplete’s trunk body, causing it to teeter backwards.

  The Voice pumps the bellows in Charlotte hard and fast. The inner flame grows in her eyes, fingers, smile, blade. Tongues of flame trail the air as she drives the dagger down into the sand.

  Fire spreads faster than a spark on dry leaves. White-blue flames explode knee-high and encompass Campion in a heartbeat. He struggles to summon his squirrel body, but the poison seems to seal him inside his human skin. “I. Can’t. Change!” His body convulses, sending a shower of oil into the flames.

  The oil catches fire.

  Fast.

  When the single, hoarse, ravaged scream ends, Charlotte pulls the blood dagger out.

  Chest-high glass towers jut in tilted points towards the crusty charcoal body curled in the middle. A few black flakes blow into the cooling breeze. Charlotte only looks long enough to see a few curls of smoke above the glass tips. She wipes her eyes of tears. She doesn’t want to think about why she’s crying.

  And the Incomplete leaves little time for tears. It rights itself as Dorjan prepares for another lunge and aims all branch-whips at the wolf—

  Only to be caught by a golden eagle.

  Arlen appears in the thicket opening. “Come on!” he calls with Aine held tight against his chest, his free arm wobbling helplessly at his side.

  Charlotte runs out of the thicket as Liam’s talons hoist the Incomplete up by one branch and Dorjan rams the trunk just beneath the half-hare’s head. Already weakened by Campion’s poison, the trunk cracks. Falls. Thorned branches smash upon the spikes. All becomes a cloud of ash and glass.

  “Arlen, your arm. We gotta pop that back in.” Charlotte gives Aine a quick scratch above her ears while she sheathes the blood dagger. “Ready?”

  Liam and Dorjan burn back to human skin without one glance behind them. “Let me,” Liam says with all his masterly gravitas. Charlotte holds up her hands and stands back—there’s no sense arguing with true healers. “Dorjan, take Aine so Arlen can lie down.”

  Wet ash still stinks up the air. The ground rumbles a marcher’s rhythm. Shee-it again. Charlotte cups her hands over her mouth and yells, “Cairine, come on. We gotta get moving before more show up!” What’s she waiting so far down the beach for? We can’t go south yet, not without healing up first.

  But Cairine shakes her head. “I smell them!” she calls. “Get Aine away, and I will follow!”

  Now Charlotte’s the one who growls. “Frickin’ ay, that woman’s as stubborn as, as—”

  “You? Yes.” Dorjan says as he tucks Aine’s head against his neck and hums. He does not want the cub to see the worry flushing beneath his own cheekbones. “Come now, or I’ll call you nothing but ‘Auntie’ for a hundred years!”

  Liam stretches Arlen’s arm out to the side and gently moves it in a slow C motion upward. Pop. His eyes meet his teacher’s, so bright yet so dark, and he says, “I care now.”

  Arlen’s hand, working again, squeezes Liam’s so tight he may as well have never been injured. There is just enough time for a smile before Dorjan sets Aine—and her tongue—loose by Arlen’s face.

  SNAP. A lustrous green crown sways and crashes into the sand a dozen feet from Cairine.

  “GO!” Cairine roars, and barrels towards the tree line.

  A massive groan, the marching rhythm now a quake, the air awash with constant snaps as a thorned branch rips a tree out of the ground and bludgeons Cairine, sending her massive hulk rolling into the shallows.

  The branch releases the tree into the air as three more Incomplete skulk out of the forest and towards the mother bear.

  “Cairine!” Arlen cries out, rolls to his feet, whining Aine in his arms. Hot wind blows round his ears—

  Dorjan charges with vicious speed as he howls at the thorned hands raised up to strike.

  Charlotte runs with blood dagger in hand as its magic trail sparks beh
ind her.

  Liam sheds skin and bone for feathers and talons as the eagle in him burns its way free, lifting him into the air.

  The Incomplete have circled Cairine. She coughs water while evading the thorned branches that whip over, but do not touch, the water. Their screeches of frustration almost send Charlotte spinning off-balance into the sand. “Someone shut those Ent-Gits the HELL up!”

  One turns. Raises a branch, thorns black as mold in the sun, ready to skewer Charlotte like a human shish kebob.

  Dorjan springs and clamps down upon one arm, splintering it to pieces in his mouth. His black fire hisses out, and he lands in a roll of legs, arms, and vulnerable skin, spitting splinters and oil. The limb flails and whips its tendrils out towards him, dragging itself towards him—

  Another tree’s branches scatter poisonous oil across the sand as they reach for Liam, but he pulls his wings in to dive, then unfurls them to glide inches above the sand under the arms, around the trunk, and to the back of the third. His talons dig into the trunk beneath the Incomplete. The poison burns, but he must drive this thing to the ground before its thorns find Charlotte, who runs towards the battle without one shred of fear. True bravery, my warrior queen of the tower—the heart’s fire in Liam’s chest burns so high it numbs all poison and pain. He pierces the the Incomplete’s neck with his beak, tearing it apart before lifting off again, hungry for battle.

  Charlotte kicks up the lakewater as she runs for Cairine and the tree rearing its other arm up to strike. Blood dagger high, the Voice in Charlotte’s heart steadies her aim with a rhythm like the beat of Liam’s wings. Aim true.

  “You can’t have her!” Charlotte cries and throws the blood dagger. The blade spins, creating a ring of fire before it lands deep in the joint between the Incomplete’s arm and trunk. Fire spreads, and the Incomplete beast screams as it fights to break free of the trunk—

  The fallen branch’s thorns snake through the sand too damn fast for Charlotte to stop; they’re going to get Dorjan before he can catch his breath—

  Liam swoops in, talons out, and knocks the branch into the lake. Water erupts in a cloud of steam, and the limb fizzles into black nothing. Liam transforms, grabs Dorjan off the sand. “What’s wrong?”

  Dorjan spits the last of the splinters and manages to say, “Damn wood’s poisoned.”

  “A weaker poison, at least, or our heart’s fires would no longer burn.”

  Dorjan scrunches his face. “By Aether, are you actually right about something?”

  No time to answer—thorns tear through the sand inches from their feet.

  “Kiiiiill!” One last Incomplete still stands, branches burrowing into the ground. Thorns thrust themselves into the air, tips shining with poison. Thorns grow by the tree and in the sand. They will come to Dorjan and Liam—

  Green luminescence spirals out of the lake, engulfing the tree, driving it into the sand. Another net, and then another—Captain and Obsidian Mouth rise from the water eight skips from the shore. The magic in their ropes sizzles and holds the tree fast to the ground.

  Still the thorns grow. They multiply beneath the falling third tree and Charlotte, retrieving the blood dagger—

  Liam and Dorjan both transform. Liam surges for Charlotte and grabs her up before the thorns pierce her feet, whileDorjan jumps over the thorns and lands in the lake, where not a thorn rises. Water steams and magic crackles around his fire.

  Liam feels Charlotte’s fingers wrap around one of his legs. Her heartbeat is strong, in rhythm with his own. “Don’t you go starting one of your aerial tours, now,” she says. To joke in battle! Only a true warrior queen could laugh when besieged by the enemy.

  Liam drops Charlotte onto Cairine’s back and hovers above the tree as the Stellaqui pull, pull, pull Incomplete and tree both towards the water. The Incomplete within the net snaps at the rope with its mangled jaw. “Kiiill mee…”

  Liam transforms at the very edge of the lake’s reach and kneels. The thorns of the sand shrivel in death. When he looks at the Incomplete’s eye, sees the lavender swirls spasm, he almost feels pity. “Your wish will be granted, never fear.”

  Captain unleashes another sea-scream, and the Incomplete’s oak body explodes into a massive cloud of sawdust that surges up and over into the forest. Only a single thorned branch remains limp inside the Stellaqui’s net, the Incomplete’s wretched body still sewn to wood scraps with his own veins.

  Dorjan’s jaw remains dropped from wolf to man. “Bloody—they can do that?”

  “A pity we missed the others,” Captain says cooly. “The librarians have never studied this kind of land magic.”

  Cairine growls in approval. “Please give your sovereign my thanks.”

  Liam motions Charlotte over. “Perhaps here on land we can apologize properly. Captain! Is your comrade able to leave the water?”

  Captain sea-speaks to Obsidian Mouth. He looks none too pleased, his eyes little more than guarded slits, but with a final few clicks Captain persuades him to toss his rope and walk onto the shore. “You’ll have to pardon him. He thinks Miss Meatbag is going to melt his eyes next,” she says as she drags the netted Incomplete towards the lake’s edge.

  Dorjan’s laugh has all of Arlen’s music. Most of it, anyway. “Oh, that, THAT is my name for you, forever and always!”

  Cairine tisks. “Dorjan, would you please, you’re worse than your uncle.” Charlotte just shrugs it off.

  Liam takes the blood dagger from Charlotte’s hand, smirks. “Remember—”

  “I brought it on myself. Yeah, yeah.”

  Obsidian Mouth’s eyes dart from Captain to Liam to Captain to Charlotte. He points his fin-arm at Charlotte and shakes his head emphatically.

  “Yes, I know she’s a terror with this thing.” Liam can’t help but chuckle. “But it’s mine, really. And I’ve healed with it before.” With a quick scrunching of sand between his toes to reaffirm the blessed earth surrounds him and not that Stellaqui darkness, Liam holds the blood dagger to Obsidian Mouth’s face and, with a quiet spell and steady fingertips, calls back the heat that melted the merman’s face. The smooth glassy look of obsidian returns to a river stone’s texture. When Liam lifts the blood dagger, the merman’s mouth opens, closes, swirls into a star, swirls back.

  His fins flap across his face as he clicks a thousand, well, clicks a minute. “Captain, Captain! They did it! I can”—he unleashes a quick burst of sea-scream, a few notes of sea-song— “I never thought! Oh, I take back all thoughts about pinching your eyelids open to watch the librarians dissect Miss Meatbag’s organs.”

  Charlotte covers before Liam’s inner storms have a chance to react. “Well ain’t that sweet? You’re welcome, Mr. Not-Captain.”

  “Sergeant will do. Few of our names work well in land-speak.” He gives a bow to Liam and Charlotte, then Cairine, ignores Dorjan altogether— “librarians dissecting what?”—then jogs far enough into the water for his tailfin to work. With his rope back from Captain, he helps her pull the whimpering Incomplete away from the shore.

  Captain marks the farewell signal in the air as Queen Avo did before. “As the queen commands, our war is not with the House of Constantine. This water will never hurt you or members of your kin.”

  With that, Captain and Sergeant dive under. The water silences the Incomplete’s screech with the swiftness of a knife.

  Cairine shakes her body vigorously to dry her fur—soaking everyone else in the process. “Here is our advantage over Orna. Orna’s creations lose their power in Aranina, so we must keep Aranina close at all times. Let’s get Arlen and Aine, and move...” her words trail into another growl, and not a kind one. “Where are they?”

  Arlen and Aine are nowhere to be seen.

  14

  On Scarred Land

  Silence and dust fill what remains of the thicket. With half the trees gone, sunlight finds every nook and corner, leaving no shadows to hide a cub, an uncle, or a villain. Everyone blocks their eyes the moment they come in
, the shattered glass spikes dazzling like an iced pond beneath the noonday sun.

  Charlotte skirts one side of the shattered glass and branches. She looks inside Arlen’s satchel. There’s one last muffin. A small chunk falls and cracks into a handful of crumbs more fit for a bird than a girl. Charlotte still wants to eat them. Even when monsters were pounding their way up through the Pits, you made me muffins.

  Liam scouts the other side, uncovers the herb roll and empty velifol pouch. His breath is shallow but steady. “He would not leave these of his own accord. Not even to hide.” He carefully sets the items into the satchel.

  Charlotte wraps its strap round and round her hand. Strong leather that can take beating, yet still be soft to the touch. Just like Arlen. You took care of me before you even knew my name. Charlotte rubs the heel of her hand into her face before anyone can see her crying. You called me a caring heart once. My heart’s got nuthin’ on yours.

  Cairine tears into the sand with her front paws as thunder grows in her belly. “Where are they; where could they have gone?”

  “Campion.” The name twists Dorjan’s voice like a curse. He nods at the center of the glass towers. Nothing’s there.

  “The hell? I burned his ass, Dorjan, you saw, I…” Oh god, I failed, and now he’s going to kill Arlen and his daughter because I failed. I failed everyone.

  “Breathe, girl!” Dorjan barks, with a sharp rap of his knuckles on her head for good measure.

  “Ow!” But the Voice in Charlotte rushes in before any more tears can fall.

  Now is not the time for pity, Charlie. You cannot hunt when self-pity muddles your senses.

  Liam bounds around the circle, speckled curls blowing about his face, “Don’t you hurt—”

  “She was hyperventilating, Lover Boy.” Dorjan’s green eye reflects every jagged point upon the ground. A few branches are snapped into Vs where someone had walked—or been forced to walk. A few curlicues of steam still hiss where Campion’s poison sank into the brittle trunk.