* * *
But then, the cruelest memory of all.
When her own time to wear the Zalyn’or came.
The minute the necklace touched her skin, a terrible knowing descended. And she finally understood, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that every last passage about the “wingeds” in the Ealaiontorian was true. And that the priestesses had been right all along.
She was an abomination. Dirty and evil and unclean to the bone. Even a lifetime of penance could never wash away her terrible stain.
Newly subdued and distraught with contrition, she threw herself into her art, glorifying the whole unwinged Alfsigr—that group she could never be part of. That shining, blessed thing.
Unlike her.
But there was something else flowing from deep inside her. Something the Zalyn’or could not extinguish—her love for her kind brother, Cael, and for Rhys, who refused to give up on her even after the necklace claimed them all.
* * *
“Did you have fire?” Ysilldir asks, breaking through Wynter’s tormented thoughts. “Before the Zalyn’or?”
Wynter winces with contrition and nods, almost imperceptibly. Wanting to disappear from the cruel weight of her shame laid bare.
“I want to get this Zalyn’or off,” Wynter says, feeling as if the words might detonate the end of Erthia. Her gut cinches, her wings tightening to the point they risk a tear.
Ysilldir’s silver eyes widen, fierce struggle in them. “I, as well.”
“I can barely think it,” Wynter admits tightly.
“Nor I,” Ysilldir says in grim agreement. “Wynter...” Ysilldir starts then stops, and this hesitancy catches Wynter’s attention, cutting through the owls’ collective drone of warning. “Do you think the other things that Sylmire said could be true? If the Alfsigr were all free of the Zalyn’ors...” Ysilldir stops again, then looks at Wynter dead-on. “Do you think we would feel desire?”
This surprises Wynter—not only the nature of the question, but the idea that the Alfsigr would cease to be such a uniformly chaste group if they were freed from the Zalyn’ors.
“Perhaps,” Wynter concedes, although just the idea of that type of desire seems too intense for Wynter to fully consider. Just touching people brings on such a rush of intimate memory and emotion; to experience yet more intimacy, and possibly a stronger pull and bond...
“Tamalyyn spoke to me after the Queen’s Council adjourned,” Ysilldir tells her, an unsettled gravity to the words. “She is convinced that if these Zalyn’ors are removed...that she and I are destined to formally pair as Goddess-bonded am’ior. And it is true that I have never felt a spark of friendship that is as strong as what I feel for Tamal.”
Wynter considers this, her heart going out to both Ysilldir and Tamalyyn, the young Smaragdalfar woman as passionate and boisterous as Ysilldir is reserved and contained.
It’s clear that Tamalyyn is madly in love with Ysilldir.
“Perhaps you will feel the pull of a closer bond to Tamalyyn if we gain our freedom,” Wynter considers, pushing past the thicket of bindings in her mind. “And perhaps you will be as some here, naturally free of desire and content in that path.”
“And you, Wynter Eirllyn?” Ysilldir asks, slipping into the Alfsigr’s casual use of full names. “Is there someone who you might love in a more passionate way?”
Wynter’s heart seizes at the question, instantly overcome by an upswell of grief.
Ariel.
“She’s gone,” Wynter finally says, barely able to get the words out. “She was killed by the Gardnerians.”
Ysilldir gives her a sympathetic look as Wynter reels from sorrow over her loved ones falling away, one by one.
Cael, Rhys. Where are you, my beloved ones? Have the Alfsigr locked you in a cold prison? Will they hurl you into the sublands below?
They both grow quiet as fireflies begin to light the skies, the gem-like tones of sunset brushed across the eastern sky, a soft crimson rune haze settling over the city.
“The Gardnerians are going to come after these lands,” Ysilldir says, her voice thick with a foreboding that mirrors that of Wynter’s owls.
Wynter looks to the sky, able to make out the glimmering edges of the multitude of huge garnet runes that are imprinted on the city’s nearly invisible dome-shield. “They won’t be able to get through the runic shield,” Wynter says.
“Then they’ll choke us off,” Ysilldir counters, frowning at the Spine. “No trade. No way to get out. All of us imprisoned in the Caledonian Mountains.” She fixes her eyes on Wynter’s. “Until Vogel finds a way in.”
A way past Amaz runes.
A shudder passes through Wynter in response to the horrifying idea.
“Vogel is growing in power,” Wynter reluctantly concedes, the thought like a crushing, submerging wave. “The things my wingeds show me, they are...unfathomable.” Wynter holds Ysillder’s silver gaze. “His power is lapping at the edge of the natural world.”
Ysilldir throws Wynter a significant look. “And soon he’ll be lapping at the edge of our minds.”
Apprehension mounts inside Wynter. “But...a piece of our minds is our own.”
“What if he finds a way in and we lose that piece?” Ysilldir shakes her head, the rows of metallic hoops pierced through her pointed ears catching the city’s scarlet rune light. “Wynter Eirllyn, I have been loyal to the Amaz ever since I came here five years ago. And I have never broken with their ways.” Her white brow furrows tighter. “But this time, I fear our queen is wrong. We need to find the rune sorcerer Rivyr’el Talonir. We need his help to break the Zalyn’or hold. Even if he is male.”
There’s a rustle in the trees and Wynter looks up, flocks of sparrows and starlings and countless other wingeds zooming down to land in thick rows on the tree limbs all around them, the birds’ incoming message gaining strength.
Warning. Warning. Warning.
The Shadow Thing is coming.
It’s coming. It’s coming.
It’s here.
* * *
Images flood Wynter’s mind, of a Shadow touching down on the wilds, all around the corners of things. Poised to slither its corruption deep into the natural world and subsume the elements that flow through it.
Hurry up, Elloren, Wynter agonizes as her sense of urgency mounts. Hurry up and come into your power before Vogel finds you.
She looks to the jagged peaks of the Spine.
The Shadow is coming for you, Elloren, Wynter thinks as she sends out a message with her flock of birds.
Warn her, she charges them, pushing against their reflexive protest and fear of the Black Witch.
You’re wrong about her, Wynter doggedly insists. You’re wrong. So, find her and warn her.
Tell her that the Shadow is here.
CHAPTER TWO
SHUNNED
RHYSINDOR THORIM
Sixth Month
Alfsigroth
Rhys Thorim’s whole body is alive with pain. He glances down at the streaks of livid scarlet blood slashed across his frost-white Alfsigr clothing, his vision blurred and crackling with stars from so many blows. Bright rays of sunlight flash against his eyes.
Alfsigr soldiers in gleaming silver armor impassively stand by holding bone-white runic whips, ready to strike again at the command of the Alfsigroth monarch, Iolrath Talonir.
Rhys pulls in a shuddering breath, the outdoor air startlingly sweet after being trapped in a prison cell for so many weeks, only their royal lineage dragging out the verdict’s final resolution.
Shunning.
Sentenced to the sublands below.
Two Alfsigr doves circle overhead, their arcing flight sweeping Rhys into a more intense sensation of vertigo.
A greater pain pierces his heart as he worries that these birds could be kindred messengers, able to send he
artbreaking images of himself and Cael bloodied on the ground to his beloved one, Wynter Eirllyn.
Rhys’s love for Wynter Eirllyn is so strong, not even the Zalyn’or imprint around his neck has been able to subdue it.
The taste of blood thick in his mouth, Rhys turns toward Cael Eirllyn, Wynter’s brother and the Elf he’s a bonded Second to.
Cael is also down on his hands and knees on the white marble ground, streaked in bright lines of blood and breathing heavily, his face defiant. A rope of bloody saliva hangs from the corner of Cael’s mouth, his strong, muscular form no match for the slashing power of runic whips.
Monarch Talonir’s rune sorceress steps forward.
The tall, dour Elf raises a silver rune stylus as she glares down at Cael and Rhys.
Rhys flinches as a translucent dome made of faint, whirling silver runes springs to life above him and Cael to encompass a large circle of marble beneath them. The ground under the dome begins to take on the fantastical appearance of a rippling silver lake, even as it remains solid to the touch.
But not for long, Rhys considers with great foreboding.
No. They’re about to be hurled down into the subland abyss. For their support of Wynter Eirllyn.
An Icaral.
Anguish sparks in Rhys’s core, matched in intensity by the pain streaking through his back.
But his resolve is unmoved.
They could whip him completely to shreds and he’d never turn Wynter over to the Alfsigr. He only regrets not getting to see her one last time to tell her how much he loves her. How much he’s always loved her.
“Caelidon Eirllyn and Rhysindor Thorim,” the ivory-robed monarch booms, his silver eyes glacially cold as the line of white-robed Alfsigr Royal Council Elves look on along with their cold-eyed soldiers, all of them grouped around the Royal Council’s guarded entry into the Subland Realm, the pale marble walls around them carved into a swirling design.
“You have set yourselves against both Alfsigroth and our Blessed Shining Ones by sheltering a Deargdul demon,” Monarch Talonir mercilessly continues. “You are hereby shunned by Alfsigroth, not fit to stand on the blessed, sunland soil of the High Elfkin—the unblemished Elfdom. You are infected with the evil of the Deargdul, corrupted beyond redemption and a danger to Alfsigroth.”
The monarch straightens, his prismatic eyes flashing sunlight as his tone takes on a hard-edged, official cadence. “For the crime of refuting a clear summons to bring the winged Deargdul demon Wynter Eirllyn to Alfsigroth, I sentence you, Caelidon Eirllyn, and you, Rhysindor Thorim, to banishment in the sublands. You are hereby cast out of all Elfindom, in this life and the next.”
A white-robed priestess steps forward, an ivory crown set on her long snowy hair, its silver wrought into the shapes of the Shining Ones’ sacred flock of starlight birds flying in a swirl. Sacred silver runes are marked on her flowing garments, and she’s bracketed by several Alfsigr soldiers in silver-plated armor.
The dour rune sorceress falls in behind her.
All of them pass through the runic dome as if it’s made of air, the runes flashing silver as they make contact with it, but Rhys knows that he and Cael would run into a solid wall if they tried to get out.
The soldiers descend on Rhys and Cael, strong hands gripping their arms as they yank them both over and force their backs to the ground.
Fresh sparks explode in Rhys’s vision as horrific pain streaks down the lash wounds on his back. Cael groans low in his throat and Rhys turns to him, his friend’s head tipped back in obvious distress, the misery in his pale silver eyes so intense that Rhys’s heart gives an agonized twist.
The priestess unsheathes the sacred runic blade at her side and strides to Cael as he’s held pinned to the ground. She drops down to one knee, takes firm hold of the center of Cael’s tunic, and slashes her blade straight down its length, exposing his pale, bruised chest and his Zalyn’or marking. Then the priestess expeditiously moves to Rhys and does the same, triggering a fresh explosion of pain through Rhys’s body as he bites back the urge to cry out.
And then, the rune sorceress presses her rune stylus into Rhys’s Zalyn’or tattoo, the tattoo giving a painful sizzle before morphing into a three-dimension runic necklace, a shadowy rune pendant dangling from a slim silver chain. Then she moves to Cael and repeats the process before gracefully rising.
“You are hereby no longer a child of Alfsigroth,” the priestess declares to Rhys and Cael both, disgust swimming in her gleaming eyes. “You are vile creatures of the Deargdul and, as our Ealaiontorian commands, are to be cast down into their pit of corruption.”
Dazed from his crippling haze of pain, Rhys looks up at the gem-like blue of the sky, the pale birds wheeling, the blinding white of the sun, its rays fracturing in his vision.
The most horrible realization bolts through him, devastation spearing in with it—
After he and Cael are thrown into the sublands, Wynter will be all alone when she needs them the most.
He and Cael know that the priestesses have been given new powers to enforce every rule of the Ealaiontorian, with no deviation from the holy book’s rigid words allowed.
And so they’ve sent the Marfoir after Wynter again.
But not just two this time. Thirteen of the horrific Alfsigr assassins.
Rhys struggles against the soldiers’ restraining grip as the priestess kneels before him once more, grabs up the chain of his Zalyn’or, and slides her rune blade’s edge just under it, then pulls the chain taut.
Panic rears inside Rhys at the thought of losing the Zalyn’or, along with the sudden, desperate desire to beg and plead to keep the necklace. To recant every blasphemy and do penance for his corruption, for his traitorous thoughts.
To scour his own mind.
But he grits his teeth and battles the feeling back, his love for Wynter stronger than the pull to keep hold of the Zalyn’or.
The priestess slices through the necklace’s chain, silver sparks flying off it as Rhys has the sense of his whole body momentarily losing its form. Then the priestess wrenches the necklace from Rhys’s neck as she drones the shunning words from the Ealaiontorian holy book, branding him as forever non-Alfsigr.
One of the polluted.
Rhys can barely hear her.
Emotion surges up, up, up inside him with volcanic force, his entire mind sharpening as grief, rage, and rebellion gather into a whirling storm within him and the image of a white bird made of blinding light blazes for a split second behind his eyes.
He whips his head toward Cael as the priestess rips the necklace from Cael and the arms that grip Rhys fall away, the soldiers and priestess and rune sorceress all retreating through the silvery shield dome.
Rhys draws in a hard breath, lit up by the incandescent outrage rising within him. Defiance rising, he quickly regains his sense of balance and starts to push himself up from the ground as Cael also gets to his feet and straightens to his full, intimidating height.
There’s a look of sudden, raging shock in Cael’s silver eyes as he levels them at the Council and the priestess. His gaze narrows and flashes like a volcanic storm, his pale fists clenched, a cataclysmic level of rebellion firing in his eyes.
Rhys straightens as well, ignoring the slashing pain.
As they both face down the entire Alfsigroth hierarchy.
“What have you done?” Cael seethes, the force of his tone like a blizzard, sweeping in with monstrous force. “What have you done to your own people?”
“Silence the Evil Ones,” the priestess demands of Monarch Talonir.
“You’re not trying to silence us because we’re Evil,” Cael snarls. “You’re throwing us into the sublands because even your Zalyn’or was not enough to subdue our minds. You’re afraid of us. Because you can’t control what I say—” he jabs a finger toward Rhys “—or what he writes.”
&
nbsp; Rhys is mesmerized by Cael’s open rebellion, at the beautiful, vengeful creature before him. Gone is subdued Elfin Cael. He’s like some magnificent other being.
The Cael that Rhys remembers from before the Zalyn’ors.
Angry Cael.
“You can never control us,” Cael rages. “Because our power of free thought is too strong.”
“Cast them into the sublands,” Iolrath Talonir orders the rune sorceress. “Where the Evil things reside.”
The rune sorceress steps forward and points her stylus at the ground beneath Rhys and Cael.
“Long live the Resistance!” Cael cries with enough rage to shake the heavens as the ground gives way.
Rhys’s arms fly up, his stomach lurching, as he falls along with Cael into subland darkness, hurtling down as the circle of sunlit world above them flies up and away, the birds small, circling dots on its receding palette of blue.
Rhys cries out as he hits the ground, his wounds a blaze of pain as the sunlit hole far above them shudders to a close, like a mist quickly solidifying.
Silence.
And then...a sudden flash of bright green light, as the surprisingly sharp emotion of fear cuts through Rhys’s pain.
Along with Cael, Rhys turns toward the source of the light.
It’s coming from runic arrows, nocked into bows, as several Smaragdalfar Elves close in, murderous expressions on their emerald-patterned faces.
Their weapons aimed at Cael’s and Rhys’s heads.
CHAPTER THREE
STORM RISING
VOTHENDRILE XANTHILE
Sixth Month
Eastern Realm,
the Wyvernguard
“Your sister, Elloren Gardner, is the Black Witch.”
Trystan Gardner stills as Commander Ung Li grimly conveys this world-altering news, Trystan’s water power instantly suspended inside him.
Vothendrile Xanthile’s own power freezes as well, and he understands fully, in that moment, why they’re standing in Ung Li’s private meeting room, a circular tower at the pinnacle of the Wyvernguard’s North Twin Island. Why they’re surrounded by soldiers.
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