The Broken Realm

by Sarah M. Cradit

  Gretchen leaned down to whisper in the horse’s ear. “We have quite the trek ahead of us Silverwind. Shall we get on with it?”

  Silverwind snorted and kicked to life.

  * * *

  Ember’s heart raced so hard it pulsed into her fingers, her toes. It rose to her neck, radiating with warmth and promise. It rushed behind her eyes, sending dark spots circling into her vision.

  She had to go back. If Lady Gretchen awoke and found her missing, she’d send out a search party, which might come at the wrong time and then she’d have a big problem on her hands. She’d be forced to explain the feathers. Far too many to blame the birds. Those looking for her might even come in the middle of a transformation, and she couldn’t hold the form long enough to stay that way until they were gone.

  Yet.

  But she had transformed. She’d done it. All she’d had to do to make it happen was find her calm. All the straining and begging of the Guardians only held her back. She had to make peace with the magic stirring within.

  Flying was another thing. She could hop, but hopping wasn’t enough. She couldn’t hop her way to Midnight Crest and rescue her mother.

  She’d get it. Eventually. But she didn’t have eventually. Alasyr’s warning was not a casual one. Fear had pushed him to betray his family. For her.

  If only Marsh was here to see it. She missed him, more than she realized she would.

  “Ember? What are you doing out here?”

  Ember was so lost in her own head that she, at first, thought the words had come from a nearby rabbit. It seemed less strange, somehow, than coming from a child. She was shocked to see Torrin standing there.

  “What are you doing out here in the Forest of Lycana, in the middle of the night, without your mother?”

  “You didn’t hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “All the birds! They all flew away, I saw... well, first I heard them. It woke me up, so I jumped from my bed and ran to the window, and then I saw them.”

  “The birds?”

  “Yes, the birds! There were so many. I can’t count as high as the birds I saw. They were swirling around, in a circle, above the forest. So I followed them.” Torrin pointed to the sky. “Can’t you hear them?”

  Ember gaped at him as she looked up. There they were, just as he’d said. Thousands of birds. Not only ravens, but birds of all kinds, swirling in a constant circle, cawing, screeching.

  Were they for her?

  Torrin flashed her an impatient look. “You really didn’t see them or hear them?”

  Ember shook her head.

  “Mother’s blood. You must have been very busy with whatever you’re doing out here to miss that.”

  Ember crouched slightly to meet his eyes. “If I show you, can you keep a secret?”

  Torrin’s mouth parted in excitement. He nodded wildly.

  “Stand over there. And don’t close your eyes, Torrin. Not even for a second. If you do, you might miss it.”

  Torrin could hardly stand still. “Miss what?”

  “Watch. If I told you, you’d never believe me.”

  * * *

  Aylen was not the first woman in the kingdom to ride to war. This she knew from studying the histories in The Book of All Things, which was compulsory reading in her days of attending schooling, before her father shipped her off to the Sepulchre in fear for her life. There had been a brief war that broke out just after the Rhiagains were declared gods and placed upon the throne. At that time, the Southerlands, who had been the only Reach to stand united against the outsider kings, deployed not only every man and boy, but most women. But they were no match for the other three Reaches, who bowed to the new king and his family all too willingly.

  She thought of this as she enjoyed an ale in the warm and inviting Tavern at the Middle of the World. It was nicer than any establishment she’d patronized in the north, despite its secluded location, which seemed as intentional as the well-seasoned food and roaring fire in not one but several hearths.

  She was close, now, to where the men of Wulfsgate held camp. But that was not where she was going. She intended to ride east and join Brandyn, whom she’d once promised aid to. Fulfilling that promise mattered to her. She would not be allowed to join the men at the battle lines, but she could ride to Whitechurch to counsel, or to heal, or to whatever else he might need from her. She could yet find use for herself.

  “Another pour?”

  Aylen looked up to see the barkeep, Una, with her pitcher. Aylen nodded, and Una refilled her mug.

  “No place for a woman tonight.” Una nodded at her armor. “Even dressed as ye are.”

  “Why tonight?” Aylen asked.

  “These men are preparing for war.”

  Aylen grinned, raising her cup. “As are we all.”

  Una shook her head. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand then smeared it on her apron. “Nay. Tonight, girl. They ride for the borders, planning to surprise the men from the north.” Una leaned in. “Your men, yes?”

  Aylen’s grin faded. “How do you know?”

  “Of war or your alliance?”

  Aylen shrugged. “Either. Both.”

  Una looked up, scanning the room quickly with her sharp eyes. “They see your armor, but pay ye no mind, for what doesn’t dangle between your legs. I see yer armor, and perhaps the men sleeping in their bedrolls need not be so surprised for what’s coming.”

  Aylen dropped her sack of coin on the table, heart racing. “How can I thank you?”

  Una looked at the money and chuckled. “I ken that’s enough right there.”

  Aylen could still hear Una laughing as she retrieved Witchwind and her bow and fled into the night.

  * * *

  The icy breeze burned his cheek. It whipped against his head, but his father held it firmly in place, resisting the thrash of the relentless wind.

  “I’ve seen you skulking these halls, like a specter. I know you know. What have you done with her? Where is she?”

  “Who? Where is who?”

  “Do not play me for a fool, Alasyr!”

  “Let me down before you kill me!” Alasyr demanded. He pressed his eyes closed. They were so dry from the exposure to the cold air that he feared they could leave the sockets on their own. He’d stopped resisting so hard. His father had him almost completely suspended in the sky, his hands the only thing keeping him from a hard death against Icebolt Mountain. If his father released him, he wouldn’t have time to find his wings before Argentyn struck him down. “I haven’t done anything!”

  “We both know that’s not true. We’ve talked about this before, haven’t we? How your curiosity would lead you down a dark path. Like it did Ravenna. You’ve flown a line too far with this one, Son. You should never, ever have involved yourself in this.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “When I think of Ravenna, it is not with sadness but annoyance, that we now have to invest our wasted time into Ryandyr. But this is why the High Priestess must deliver more than one heir. More than one daughter, more than one son. And you are not the only son.”

  Alasyr resisted the urge to look down. He knew what he’d see. The view was familiar, but he’d never beheld it aloft and floating in the middle of a budding storm. He’d never seen it through helpless eyes. “Tell me what you want and let me down.”

  Argentyn leaned in. “I want to know what you told your mother.”

  “I haven’t told Mother anything. I...”

  Argentyn’s face peeled back in a grin. “Ah, but you have. I can see it in your eyes. In your hesitation. But you’ll find no such hesitation in me, Alasyr. I would mourn you in the length of time it took to watch your bones shatter upon the crag below, and then I would go to find Nevyn and instill in him the same thing I once did in you, that you now seem to have forgotten. Duty. I would tell your mother, the others, that you had an episode and fell, too stricken by the tremors to shift into your raven form. You would
not be the first. It happens, in bloodlines as closed as ours.”

  Alasyr was now certain his father would kill him no matter what he said or didn’t say. You did not make such a threat if you weren’t prepared to follow through. “Perhaps you should be less concerned with what I’ve said and more with what you’ve done,” he hissed.

  “What I’ve...” Argentyn laughed. He removed one hand from Alasyr’s neck and wiped it across his own face. Alasyr choked at the loss of leverage. “So it was you.

  “I thought... I thought you were searching for Ravenna, and then I saw—”

  “Spying on your grandmother and me. You’ve known all along.”

  “Grandmother?” Alasyr stopped breathing. “Adynora?”

  Argentyn moved his hand back to his son’s neck. “And you thought your mother should know? What you saw? You cannot fathom what you’ve seen, and what it means. And now, she’s taken Lady Blackwood. Her blood is on your hands.”

  “She came to me,” Alasyr croaked. “I had no choice.”

  “Then you will understand that I, too, have no choice,” Argentyn said with a look that was almost sad, but Alasyr was not fooled. He was practicing, for later, when the others discovered Alasyr’s tragic fate.

  “Release him, Argentyn.”

  The vise around Alasyr’s neck was too strong for him to turn, but it was his mother’s voice he heard. And others, murmuring around her. A surge of relief passed through him. He knew that he had very narrowly escaped death. Argentyn might have still done it, had she been alone, but with others, his punishment for the murder of another Ravenwood would be swift and decisive.

  “We were only talking, Varinya.” Argentyn pulled him in and dropped him to his feet, a loving smile painted on his face as he touched his son’s cheek. It was more sinister than the earlier promise of death. “Weren’t we, Alasyr?”

  The warning flashing in Varinya’s eyes was enough to cut them both down. But it was reserved for her husband alone. “You ever touch my son again, and there will be no tribunal. No court to decide your fate, only me. And my vengeance is stronger than any magic I wield.”

  Argentyn laughed, eyes darting across the group of witnesses. They said nothing. They weren’t there to join Varinya in the tearing down of her husband. Only to watch.

  “That is all,” she said, and as she walked past, she reached a hand to Alasyr. He took it, joining her. He didn’t look back, but he didn’t need to.

  She hadn’t stayed her husband’s hand, only delayed it.

  * * *

  Torrin watched Emberley for hours. The dark turned to light, and his battle to fight off the beckoning sleep raged harder with every tick that passed. Mama would be angry when she found his bed empty, but the punishment would be worth it. Whatever it was, it would be worth it.

  He’d seen the Ravenwoods, of course. Strange as they were, they were part of the skies in Wulfsgate. But he’d always thought of them as different, like monsters in the forest were different, or the Medvedev, whom he’d never actually seen, were different. It was hard to imagine being something different, when you’d always been what you were.

  But Emberley, she was supposed to be like him. She was his cousin, his family. And now he’d watched her not once, nor even twice, but over a dozen times, transform into a raven. Poof went the air and flesh was replaced by feathers, feet by talons. Her small red mouth curved into a beak. He could watch this forever and notice something different each time. He had a thousand questions, but he said nothing at all, in fear she might decide to rescind her invitation.

  Yet try as she might, Emberley could not fly higher than the nearby tree that had been cut down by lightning. When her frustration took over, she couldn’t even transform anymore. Torrin perched on a nearby log, dangling over the edge in anxious anticipation each time. He would’ve done no better, his heart racing, stars dancing before his eyes when she’d fail. She said she needed peace, and he had no idea where to find that in himself. He was in awe.

  At last, she paused, exhaling with her whole body. “Torrin, tell me about your happiest memory of your mother.”

  Torrin frowned. “Why?”

  Ember closed her eyes. She held her arms out and started to slowly spin. “Tell me. Please.”

  Torrin groaned. “You’re being weird.” He nearly laughed then, for her request was the least weird thing about her that night.

  “Yet you’ll answer me, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I guess in Wintertide when she lets me come into the kitchen and help bake for the townspeople.”

  Ember continued her spinning. “Oh? And what do you bake?”

  “Cakes. Pies. Roulades. Bread. You know.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Torrin scratched his head. “I don’t know what else there is to tell. I like rolling the dough out. It’s fun to watch the edges grow longer the harder I push. Oh! And sometimes she lets me taste the custard or the filling. You know, what’s left over after they go into the oven, that is. And then there’s...”

  Torrin had gotten lost in the telling. He looked up and saw a raven spiraling into the sky, gaining more height with each push of its wings.

  His mouth dropped as he watched her soar above the treetops and into the skies, where she disappeared altogether.

  43

  An Honor to Serve

  Lisbet had a sense they were coming upon others even before the man stepped into their path.

  Eavan and Gabi both made for their daggers, while Meadow hung behind. Lisbet hesitated. She was immediately disarmed by the all-consuming, inexplicable sense that the man standing before them was their friend. The utter absence of malice radiating from his invisible aura—the kind she now saw on all people—startled her.

  Her father would chide her for hesitating. Her mother would remind her that all strangers were dangerous, and softness was a weakness. But it was not softness that stayed her hand. It was not softness that kept the others from unleashing an attack upon him.

  Lisbet’s greatest lesson from the Medvedev was to listen to her instincts. Now, they told her to approach this man. That she had no choice. They were meant to meet.

  She held both hands to her sides, staying her cousins. “Who are you?” she asked him.

  Lisbet fell a little bit in love with him when his first question wasn’t a return one about what three girls were doing alone in the forest.

  “Godfrey, they call me,” he said. His mouth stopped short of forming a smile. “And you?”

  “Don’t you dare tell him!” Eavan hissed. Lisbet smelled her fear. One more part of her awakening revealing itself. Like auras, but stronger. “No man has any fair business at this hour!”

  “Lisbet Dereham,” she said, and both girls behind her gasped. “This is Eavan Quinlanden, Gabrianna Blackwood, and Meadow Ashenhurst. We’ve come in search of my brother, Drystan, who we believe...” Here, she faltered. “We believe has come this way.”

  Godfrey nodded, taking each of them in. “Three of the four houses standing before me. I feel compelled to drop into a bow.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Lisbet answered.

  “Four houses,” Gabi countered, shifting her shoulders back in pride. “My father was a Warwick.”

  “Byrne,” the man said, nodding into his understanding. “I was grieved to hear of his loss. I met him once, years ago. He was a good man.”

  “He was a great man. And none of us are just one house anymore, Sir Godfrey,” Gabi answered. “Not since the Epoch.”

  “Yes, of course you’re right,” he replied. “It seems perhaps we were meant to cross paths. While I’ve not come across your brother, I travel with someone else who will no doubt interest you. Brandyn Blackwood.”

  Gabi cried out. “My brother! He’s here? Where?”

  Godfrey took a step closer. “Not here. He camps with Lord Warwick, across the ridge.”

  “Uncle Khallum and Brandyn?” Eavan whispered. “They’re together? Here?
What the Guardians has happened since we’ve been away?”

  Godfrey looked at Gabi when he answered. “The murder of your father set into course a path for war. The Westerlands is full of Quinlanden men, in every corner of the Reach. Brandyn is now Lord of the Westerlands, in the absence of your father, and your mother, who has escaped from Duncarrow. But it is not safe for him. It will not be safe anywhere until this threat is neutered.”

  Gabi stepped forward, around Lisbet. “Mother’s blood. My mother was at Duncarrow? And she’s escaped?”

  “She was taken when your sister did not appear at the Right of Choosing. She went in her stead. But she was not there long. She escaped by ship, at night, with others.”

  Gabi turned to Lisbet and Eavan. “Then she must be safe!”

  Lisbet afforded her a quick, encouraging smile but something was troubling her. “If there is to be war, why are you here, in Whitechurch? Is my uncle—that is, Lord Quinlanden, now truly the enemy?”

  Godfrey gave her a strange look. “You were serious when you said you’d been away. Where in the kingdom could you have gone that you did not know any of this?”

  The three girls exchanged glances. “The Hinterlands,” Eavan said, surprising Lisbet with how easy she’d come around to the man as well. “We were first prisoners, and then guests, of Yseult of the Drumain.”

  Godfrey raised both brows. “Quite a story you must have. For another time.”

  “For another time,” Lisbet agreed. “Then you are here to confront Lord Quinlanden?”

  “Lord Quinlanden is a pawn of another man, though man is a generous word for such a creature as Mortain of Ilynglass.”

  “My father’s sorcerer!” Eavan cried. “The one who enslaved the Medvedev!”

  All at once, Lisbet understood more than she cared to. “That’s who Drystan has come for,” she whispered to herself. “To avenge the Saleen.”

  Godfrey’s face darkened. “If your brother has come to confront Mortain, I hope he has come with more than his desire to do it. Mortain’s magic is no trifle.”