by Meg Cowley
“It makes sense to you?” he blurted out.
Dimitrius raised an eyebrow at him. “Yes. Plenty.”
Tristan held in a sigh of relief. Hopefully that meant it would be useful information.
“If you hear anything like this again, keep me informed,” Dimitrius said. “This was very illuminating. Don’t get caught. You did well.”
Dimitrius made to sweep past him.
“Wait!” Tristan said, then shrank back against the cold, damp wall, worrying his forwardness would earn him only more punishment.
Dimitrius paused, silent.
“P-please, can I have news of my family?” Tristan’s hands twisted together. “Are they safe? Are they well?” The last time he had seen his father, Landry had been injured and on the ground after his beating at the hands of the Order. Tristan could not bear to think of his father, the strongest and most kind man he knew, being subjected to such unfair treatment...but it, and his own treatment at the hands of the Order, only made him worry all the more for his brothers, sister, and mother.
“I do not think that wise, Tristan,” said Dimitrius.
“I need to know they’ve not come to harm,” Tristan said, meeting his gaze in the darkness, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes.
After a long moment, Dimitrius sighed. “All right. Perhaps. I will find you...and maybe I will have news on your family. But do not trust in hope, for it has forsaken this place.”
Despite Dimitrius’s warning, Tristan’s heart soared at his vague promise.
Twenty Five
The wall of dragonfire obliterated all in its path, instantly incinerating trees, the dead, and the living as it seared through the ranks of the goblin scourge before the dwarven masses on the rise. Guttural roars shook them all as the wind picked up, great gusts from the giant wings above their heads battering them.
Up the dragons wheeled in a long arc around the mountains to come in for another pass, and Korrin took his chance. At his command, the horns rang, and once more, the exhausted dwarven army charged down the bluff, the incline giving speed to their flagging feet, weapons raised by arms that ached with the bite of overuse but were fuelled by new hope and conviction.
Again, the dragons passed over. Bright flame blinded them all as it erupted from the dragons’ maws to cast roiling death over all those goblins still pouring forth from Afnirheim. Repeatedly, the dragons passed over as the dwarves fought the front line, decimating the goblin scourge until their flood, at last, slowed to a trickle.
The dwarves met the front line of the decimated and disorientated goblin scourge as the wall of heat blasted them all. Ragnar did not falter next to Halvar and their brothers as they became the wave of death, and the goblins melted before them. Between bonfires they wove, cutting down any dark, twisted bodies standing in their way, until the cliff loomed before them, the dark maw that was the shattered entrance to Afnirheim.
The central forces, commanded by Ragnar, had already entered, and the flanks followed, as the giant thuds of landing dragons tremored the earth beneath their feet. Ragnar chanced a glance back. Wings flared, they stood proud and tall, their scales gleaming in the faint sun as they stood guard in an arc across the valley floor. There would be time later to give thanks. Ragnar sent a prayer earthwards into the dark halls that he would live to see it. None of them had any idea what they would find in the ruined dwarven city.
He ran into the darkness, the great caverns lit only by what the passing dwarves had managed to grab that still burned from the dragons’ attack. Those who had gone before had rekindled brands in sconces, left burning debris along the way to light the passage.
What greeted them was death and devastation. The battle inside Afnirheim had been fierce. Entire bridges and walkways, halls and stairs collapsed amid monstrous piles of rubble, in which lay twisted, still bodies.
Noise ahead. A battle. It seemed the front line was now deep within Afnirheim. Ragnar and Halvar hurried their step, and their ranks followed, until they neared the clash of weapons deep in the heart of the mountain.
Dark shadows ran up and across the very walls themselves toward Ragnar, Halvar, and their dwarves, inhuman speed and capabilities given to their twisted forms. In the dark, their shadows were even bigger, and Ragnar’s heart stuttered with fear at the sight. Before them, Korrin’s command was already enmeshed in bitter fighting.
“Form ranks!” Halvar bellowed.
“To me!” cried Ragnar, steeling himself. “Arms at the ready!”
Twenty Six
Dimitri sighed, disappointed, as Tristan recounted that he had no more news. After his close run-in with the Grandmaster, the boy had not dared venture near Khyrion’s quarters again, nor too far into any other private chambers. Dimitri could understand that. Khyrion was unpleasant enough to deal with for him, let alone a boy.
“Keep trying,” said Dimitri.
“Do you have news of my family?”
Dimitri pressed his lips together. He did, but he would not tell the boy. He would not destroy any hope the poor child had left. Would not tell him the fire he had seen happened to be his own family home, happened to have been the very moment, perhaps, the inferno claimed the lives of his beloved mother and sister.
“Please?”
Dimitri bit his lip. “They are well.” He forced a smile. I grow soft in my dotage. Perhaps Harper somehow drew out his better qualities after all. Or perhaps he was simply making sure his spy could work effectively, undistracted by grief and vendettas of revenge. In his heart, he knew the truth of it.
“Fa hasn’t been punished?” Tristan pressed, his gleaming eyes eager as he leaned closer.
“No,” Dimitri confirmed. That was true. Landry had kept his head down, producing weaponry for the Order. “They are safe. Worry not. It’s best not to think of them. Not here.”
Tristan scowled. “They’re the only thing I have to keep me going. I hate this place! I wish I could magic them all away!” he growled vehemently, then shrank away, as if expecting punishment.
Dimitri only regarded him with sadness. “Do not speak of it to anyone else, Tristan. Such talk will only see you punished again.”
“So what?” he muttered rebelliously. “I’m being punished anyway. The only thing these people know is punishment.”
Dimitri sighed. Within Tristan was the same kernel of anger he had possessed as a younger version of himself. The same kernel the Order had nurtured into a dark flame, hungry for revenge and power. He regarded the boy–his tousled hair, the set of his jaw, the hard glare in his eyes.
“Don’t forget who you are, Tristan,” Dimitri said. His voice was neither soft nor hard, but even. He hoped the boy would take his advice. Don’t become like me, he wanted to say, but could not. “Remember who your parents raised you to be. This time will not be forever. Darkness is upon us all, but that does not mean we are to succumb to it.”
Tristan glowered, but lowered his eyes.
“I must go. I have other business to attend to. Your punishment is complete for now. You are to be returned to the rank of Initiate henceforth,” Dimitri added, and Tristan’s simmering resentment flickered with surprise. “Keep your eyes and ears open. I may yet have need of you.”
His warning glance was the only parting he gave before he slipped away.
HARPER STOOD SHOULDER to shoulder with Tristan as the ritual finished. The circle of Initiates held their silent watch as the green flames faded between them, leaving a searing patch of black ashes against the pure white snow around them.
Harper trembled, unable to wrench her eyes away from the blackened bones within the remnants of the tongues of emerald fire. She knew the mid-winter festivity as one of feasting and celebration of a year done and a spring to come...not a sacrifice. The Order of Valxiron practised much differently. A taking of life, of blood, of energy to see them through the bare season.
She held in a retch as the gaze of the Second Grandmaster roved over them all, only a gleam of reflected green light in the black eyes v
isible under his hood. Her hands clenched into fists beneath her cloak, resisting the urge to wipe off the sacrificial blood daubed in the four-pointed star upon her brow. It had been hot and fresh when she had been anointed, but with the pervasive cold, it now felt like a frigid, wet finger upon her forehead.
“Our blood is your blood,” the Second Grandmaster murmured, and they echoed his words back to him. “Your blood is our blood. Until our end, we protect the cause. Nostri sanguinis est sanguis. Sanguis tuus noster cruor. Carmina nostro fine, nos causam defendat.”
With that, they were dismissed. Harper filed away beside Tristan, wishing she could speak to him, but not daring to. Dimitri had spared nothing with her. She understood why Tristan hobbled, why his eyes held deep shadows beneath them of horrors that no one his age should have suffered. And she understood how Dimitri had recruited him to spy for the secret resistance, led by the remaining dragon riders of the Winged Kingsguard, that was mounting against the Order and Saradon’s rule. She understood the simmering hatred that glinted in the boy’s eyes as he glowered at their mentors.
She hurried through the streets and into the palace through ways unseen that Dimitri had taught her, scrubbing the ghastly mark from her skin as she strode, not daring to try and spirit herself back to his quarters as he would have done so easily.
It was dark when she arrived, the warm and welcoming gloom of safety, faelights burning low in sconces to light her way as she closed and barred the door behind her as quietly as she could. A flame flickered upon her finger as she de-cloaked, longing to burn it, but Harper refrained, clenching her jaw and extinguishing the fire. One day... She would one day burn it and everything associated with the Order.
“Dimitri?” Harper called in a low voice, but the drawing room was dark as she padded past it, then the lounge, then the study. Was it so late that he had retired already? She yawned, a deep tiredness taking root in her bones now that the rush of jarring anxiety had faded.
A rumble shuddered down the corridor, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Silence. Harper strained to hear anything more.
Is someone here?
The halls were dim, faintly lit with the usual warm, welcoming faelights, but somehow, there was a stain of darkness and foreboding. Harper sent her senses out as far as they reached until she felt him, cocooned in a ball of writhing darkness.
Panic started as she perceived the impregnable wall Dimitri had surrounded himself with. Is he all right? Is there an intruder in the halls? A hollow scream rang out–deep, hoarse. It’s him!
Harper’s hands tingled with magic held at the ready, and without a thought, she sprinted through rooms, across smooth, polished wood and stone, the soft, warm rugs, to the closed door of his chambers.
Moonlight pooled, pale and clear upon the carpets through the tall, high windows of the hall, but as she pushed open the door, there was only darkness within. It battered at Harper, sending a maelstrom of crushing menace toward her, lashing at her with invisible hands that tore at her hair. Harper charged in, letting her blazing magic loose. Her white fire fought with the darkness, slowly cleaving a path forward until she found him.
Dimitri writhed upon the floor, as if in a fit. His bare chest bucked and strained, his legs tangled in the violet folds of his sheets, muscles bulging and veins cording as he screamed, his voice hoarse, ragged, and contained by the tempest. Nothing seemed to attack him.
This is of his own making, Harper realised with horror as she beheld him. A nightmare of nightmares.
She raced to his side, trying to pin down his hand.
“Dimitri? Wake up!” she called, but her own voice was lost, too, as his hand wrenched from her grasp with the violence of his convulsions.
Kneeling beside him, she tried to pin down his hands once more, but they were too wild. She beat on his chest, trying not to be self-conscious about feeling the dark curls of hair upon his slick skin. With her last ounce of strength, she dove into his mind, lancing her own spirit at him, the light against the darkness, shearing into the centre of the turmoil within.
Thoughts, memories, scenes she did not recognise flashed through her mind. The Order’s halls, unfamiliar faces contorted in pain, writhing as Dimitri did under her now as she straddled him, trying to pin down his hips, legs, and arms, lest he hurt them both. Her eyes closed under the weight of his thoughts.
“You’re having a nightmare! Wake up, Dimitri!” she cried into his mind, cringing when the contorted face of a young elf-maiden screaming in pain lanced through her.
At once, the storm fell away. He bucked violently one last time, sending them both sprawling, tangled together. The dark storm about him dissipated, and the cold, baleful light of the moon shone through the cracks in the drapes, sending pale columns of light across them both.
His ragged breathing was all Harper could hear over the pounding of her heart as she wriggled, caught in his arms, her back pushing against the hard corners of a wooden dresser, the tangle of his blanketed legs weighing heavily upon her own. His arms tightened around her, pulling her closer, his hands sliding up her back.
She suppressed the rushing tingling at the contact, the betrayal of her body for craving what it had been starved of for so long. Does he know what he does?
She could not deny there was something between them, born of shared desperation and hope, but after her foolishness with Aedon, she was under no false impression that anything could happen between them, either. They were both far too broken and hopeless, their past lives and futures so far diverged, no bond would ever be possible.
“Dimitrius!” she called urgently.
Slowly, his eyes fluttered open. He blinked, clearing them as he focused on her.
“Harper?” he said slowly, as though disorientated, his violet eyes holding a glint of something wild and otherworldly in them.
Even the way he says my name..., she thought, before guiltily pushing the thought aside.
“You had a nightmare, I think. I saw... Well, I’m not sure what I saw. I think I saw your nightmare.” Her hands still pushed against his chest, and below her palm thundered the thud-thud-thud of his heart. Their faces were inches apart, his breath hot on her cheek. She suppressed the instinct to reach out to cup his face, lace her fingers through his tousled hair. Wooden contours dug into her back.
Dimitri shuddered at her words. “I hope not. It was dark and terrible.”
Harper had definitely seen dark and terrible things. She shuddered as the vision of a woman screaming in pain flashed through her once more. “Are you all right?” she murmured, pulling her hands back from his chest and clasping them together against her own.
At the movement, Dimitri glanced down and blinked, as if suddenly realising their close proximity, legs tangled together. He shifted away quickly, leaving a cold, yawning void where his warmth had been, and staggered to his feet, grasping the silken sheet about his waist to conceal his modesty, before offering her a hand.
She rose, but he did not drop her hand immediately, staring at her intensely. “I’m not sure how you did that. Emyria and the others know to leave me to burn through the storm when it hits. It could have been dangerous. I did not have my wits about me, but... I am grateful. Thank you.”
Harper swallowed and nodded.
“I sometimes had nightmares like this. Not for a while, but now, almost nightly. Returning to the Order has caused them to resurge.” His shadowy face held pain and dislike. “I did terrible things amongst their ranks. Things I will never be free of.” The shadows beneath his eyes pooled even deeper, betraying the exhaustion and despair within him.
Harper had longed to speak with him, dispel the chill and her feeling of sickening anxiety at what she had seen that evening, but she held her tongue. When he faced his own demons, ones that appeared to be far worse, she could not add her own to his burden.
Her eyes slipped from his face, down the rippling muscles of his torso, to his navel...and the fabric gathered below in his bunched fist. She slipped
her hand from his.
“Sleep well,” she said with a small smile and walked away before he could reply.
That night, she tossed and turned. Her own dreams were filled with torturous remnants of his, mixed with their bodies wrapped together and indecent thoughts of what might have happened, but tempered with fragments of the dark, ravaged lands Erendriel had shown her what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Twenty Seven
Aedon awoke to a light, warm breeze ruffling his hair. He turned his head, groaning at something digging into his back, before panic drenched him and he leapt to his feet, disorientated and frantic. His head smacked into something hard and he cursed, ducking away and looking around.
Bark. Vines. Greenery.
Panic assailed him once more and his hands flew to his face. Skin. Nose Eyes.
Aedon sighed in relief, taking stock of his surroundings. For a moment, he thought he had lost, become one of the forest’s prisoners, damned to eternity within the wood.
Wood did indeed contain him, he realised, as he slowly spun in the narrow, short confines of the wooden cage around him. He was trapped inside a living, breathing prison of another kind. He moved to the edges, gently placing a hand upon the wood, which shivered at his touch, sending his heart jerking at the potential threat. Tentatively, he peered between the lattice of leaves beyond.
He was high above the forest floor and below the canopy, though he could tell little else of his surroundings. The light had softened, as if the sun had begun to sink. How much time had passed? Aedon did not know. Trees surrounded his position, as he had expected, and he could not see far into the distance, blocked by them.
I am in the middle of a forest, after all.
His attention snagged on the huge trunk of a nearby tree. Feathers... Brand. Leafy vines chased up the tree, bulging out to form a recess–much like the one he found himself in–and Brand’s unmistakeable brown and cream feathers were visible inside.