Erran Rutland snorted.
“Who’s that, Brandyn?” Gabi whispered. “Who is that man?”
“This is the man who stood at Aiden’s side when he killed our father,” Brandyn answered, drawing closer. He’d thought about this moment, of course, but mostly in his dreams, where he was taller, bolder, braver. He had never faced any man in combat, and if it was just the two of them, Waters would have bested him before he could draw his sword. But Mads was not a soldier now. He was not a steward of a Great Family. He was nothing but a man at the end of a sword waiting to die.
“My gift to you,” Khallum said. “Nephew.”
“And a generous one,” Easlan James said. He dropped a boot into Mads’ side. “The best kind.”
“I only ever did as Lord Quinlanden asked,” pleaded Mads carefully. The sword end stuck in his throat kept him from animation. “That is no crime, to serve your lord. You know this.”
“Do I look like I decide men’s crimes?” Brandyn asked him, stepping around so he could see the coward’s face. “I’m not the law.”
Mads must have seen something in Brandyn’s eyes that stayed his relief. “I had no quarrel with Byrne Warwick.”
“He had no quarrel with you. You still killed him.”
“It was not me—” Mads choked as Khallum pressed on the sword.
“I leave it to you to decide what to do with him,” Khallum said.
“What would you do, if you were me?”
“I am not you.”
His eyes passed to the James men, to Rutland, Law, and the others. But none had answers for him. Even Storm only watched him, impassive.
“Mortain took my sword. Will someone give me theirs?” Brandyn asked.
“Brandyn, listen to me! Listen to reason!” Mads pleaded. “If you take my life, you will be no better than those you bear vengeance toward. I am disarmed! There is no honor in murdering a man who cannot even defend himself!”
“My father was disarmed when you swarmed upon him in his nightclothes like cowards.”
“You don’t have to listen to the words of this filth, my lord,” Kaslan spat. “These lies of a traitor.”
Easlan James withdrew his sword and, turning the hilt, passed it to Brandyn. Storm’s hand fell away from her own.
“Thank you, Steward James.” Brandyn set the head of Mortain aside and looked at his uncle. “Have you seen the fields beyond Whitechurch?”
“We’ve been busy with this one.”
“Mortain has led the Saleen to slaughter,” Brandyn said. “Every last one.” He turned his attention back to Mads. “You are complicit. You did nothing to stop it. You aided him, protecting him while he enslaved them.”
“I had no choice!”
“We always have a choice,” Brandyn said, and before he could convince himself to listen to more of the creature’s pleas, he swung his sword to the side and brought it down upon the neck of Mads Waters.
Kaslan James reached down and hoisted the severed head.
Brandyn kicked Mortain’s head over to him. “Save them both. Gifts for my mother.”
48
Fly and Fly High
She had done it! She was doing it! What seemed like hours had passed, and Ember’s wings had not failed her. She was tired, but not as much as she’d expected to be. Not so much that she needed to find ground.
In all the exhilaration of her great achievement, she’d not paused her racing mind long enough to consider what it was like to be something other than what she’d been all her life.
A raven.
She, Emberley Blackwood, had ceased to have two arms and in their place she had wings. Her legs had become talons. Her scarlet hair, her one vanity, was gone altogether in this transformation, and she had no care of it. She didn’t miss it. She didn’t miss any of it.
An icy wind rattled the trees around her, and she angled her head—her small, perfectly angled scalp, her curved beak—lower to find cover. But her wings were greater protection than her arms had ever been on land. She glided over the wind like a ship riding a soft wave, and when she tried to laugh, the sound that came out instead was a trilling, excited caw.
She was still Ember. She was still herself, but she was... she was more now, more than she’d ever been or imagined she could be. The fire burning in her belly did not belong to a raven, or a young woman, but the mingled potential of two halves having found one another, fusing together to become one, at last.
Ember was meant to be here. She was called here, and had been rewarded for answering this call with bravery.
Torrin’s voice was small and distant. He was excited for her, but he also sounded afraid. It had been a while since she’d taken flight, and she’d left him all alone in the forest. But surely he’d understand? He’d do the same if he learned to fly, and fly high.
What was left now, but to fly to Midnight Crest and save her mother?
Ember braced against the ice, riding the ebbs and flows of the mountain wind. The higher she soared, the more the elements whipped her around, threatening her with certain death if she did not push back, fight for her right to be there, which was just as much as the wind and the freezing rain driving sideways. She was one with all these things, no matter how they tried to declare otherwise.
She didn’t know the way, but she’d watched Alasyr enough times to guess. Would he be there, waiting? He’d never shared the extent of his magic with her. She’d only seen him shift, never perform any great miracle, or even small ones.
Emberley had never known such cold. A thousand tiny bones ached against the onslaught. She forced herself to embrace this, as the other Ravenwoods must have for all the years they’d lived at Midnight Crest.
Ember pushed harder and higher. The peaks of Icebolt Mountain appeared behind a gap in the heavy cloud cover. She was close. But these clouds formed walls impeding her vision, and one wrong turn would send her crashing into the unforgiving crags.
She broke through the clouds and the dark, towering spires of Midnight Crest appeared. And ahh, it was even more incredible, more amazing than she ever envisioned late at night when she couldn’t sleep for all her curiosity. How sad she felt for all those who would never see this for themselves; this beauty that was so unlike anything built on the ground.
Her approach came on fast. What had seemed so far away was now right before her, and then she saw them, too. Alasyr. Two others.
And her mother.
Mama!
They all stood behind the balustrades, animated, arms flailing, faced off in some kind of challenge. They were fighting. It had escalated. Ember had the horrible feeling she’d come upon the end of it, at precisely the right time to put a stop to whatever terrible end would come without her intervention.
Fate had brought here right now, at this moment, to put halt to the terror unfolding.
She winced and made her final descent, angling into a tailwind that helped ease her in closer without hitting the stone.
Alasyr turned and saw her. Panic colored his face deep red. He shook his head in furious rhythm. “Emberley! No!”
She tried to call back to him, but she was not Emberley, not in the way she needed to be, and shifting back now would send her careening thousands of feet to her death.
It’s okay! I did it! I did it, just as you said I could! She screamed these thing in her mind, pleading with her magic to send them to him without a voice. But the panic didn’t subside, and the two sorcerers she didn’t recognize both turned at the same time. The man’s look mirrored Alasyr’s and he spun toward the woman, in anticipation, in fear.
The woman’s mouth twisted into a grimace of blind hatred. She raised both her hands before her and thrust them forward, aiming them at Emberley.
“Nooooo!” Asherley cried and leapt forward just as Ember saw the source of her mother’s horror. Saw the arc of lightning fly from the sorcerer’s fingertips and travel swiftly across the wind. “Emberley, fly! Fly higher!”
The shock tore through her
. Her wings separated from her body, and she was spiraling, twirling through ice and clouds, and white and silver and frost, and then the white was gone, and there was only—
* * *
“What have you done?” Alasyr spun on his mother, the dread pushing through his limbs, flushing his face. “Mother, what have you done?”
“I told you. I warned you. You did this yourself when you brought them here,” Varinya replied, stumbling back against the balustrade, eyes drawn to her singed fingertips. When she looked up again, slack-jawed, it was her husband she fixed on. “You, Argentyn. You did this. You killed that girl.”
Alasyr looked into the air in desperation, that he might see Emberley reemerge, soaring higher, the death bolts having missed her after all. His heart knew better. He would never forget the sight of Emberley’s wings floating off into the wind as she disappeared into the storm.
He stepped forward, and his mother grabbed him by the arm.
“You will not go after her, Alasyr Ravenwood.”
Alasyr tore away. “You will never again tell me what to do. Either of you. Any of you.”
“If you leave here now, you leave here forever,” Varinya threatened. She bowed forward, clutching her belly.
“Remember this moment, Mother. Father. Remember it as the end that it will become.” He pressed into the balustrade and chanced a final glance at Asherley Blackwood. “I’m sorry, Lady Blackwood... I...”
Alasyr exploded into feathers and left Midnight Crest behind.
* * *
The figure observed the showdown between Ravenwoods old and new from the dark of corners.
They’d been there when the sorcerer lay with Varinya in the forest of man, and, later, when Argentyn made the decision to bring a half-blood to Midnight Crest; when Varinya’s blindness was replaced by awareness. They had done nothing—could do nothing—when Varinya spoiled herself, but they could spin the web that helped return the order of their careful world that had been disrupted.
Varinya had murdered the half-blood child in cold blood, a decision born of fear rather than reason. She was not wrong to do it, but she would pay for it, just as Argentyn would. As they both should, for knocking their world off balance.
And the child’s mother... ahh, it was her they should pay mind to. The figure could see within her an emergence occurring. She was waking up, as they all did, eventually. As the rest would.
The lingering draw of sadness beckoned, but the figure would not follow its call. What would happen next was long-needed. The pall it would cast across their heart would be just another tragedy needed to restore that which should never have been torn asunder at all.
* * *
Asherley’s rage deep from within screamed for an outlet. It was not her who pushed it back, bidding it to wait, but something did. Something rooted her to the cold, damp stones as she trembled through the most acute pain she had ever known.
Varinya and Argentyn argued over Varinya’s horrific choice to strike down a defenseless child. But Argentyn wasn’t on Asherley’s side, either. He was not defending her or her kin, but rather his own strange and unclear motives, which she had never discerned and now never would.
What woman could call herself a mother and murder another mother’s child?
Asherley again willed her feet to move. They did not obey. A surge of power spread to her fingers, and down, into her toes. It scorched her neck, which, though exposed to the ice and cold, now felt as if it was burning down to ash and bone. Asherley roared her frustrations forth into the air, but no sound came out.
Emberley. The remembrances floating across her mind were exquisite torture. Sweet Emberley, climbing on her father’s back in the forest as he feigned being a large black bear ready to eat them all. Stubborn Emberley, who she’d find in the barn late at night practicing her archery when it did not come to her naturally. Daring Emberley, who challenged the boys of the Reach to feats of strength they were not used to losing, especially not to a girl. Compassionate Emberley, who first killed the self-pity in Hollyn when her illness took hold, and then adjusted her life to be like her sister’s so that she did not have to be alone and left out.
All these Emberleys were now gone. Snuffed out by a scared, weak priestess who could not see past her own fears, and had allowed herself to be consumed and driven by them.
Argentyn was telling Varinya that he would kill her, consequence be damned. And yet he only stood there, bold enough for the words, but not the action.
Asherley closed her eyes and envisioned her hands closing in on his throat, the life draining away as she reiterated the words of his wife, the one thing Asherley could agree with her on: You did this.
Argentyn suddenly ceased his animated but empty dressing down of his wife. He stumbled back against the stone balustrade, clutching at his neck in clawing, haphazard grasps. Varinya dropped her own anger for a moment, the rage in her eyes dying away to confusion. She tried to aid him, peeling back his hands, but her efforts availed no results. His nails dug at his neck, drawing long, bloody lines down his flesh as he barked for breath.
Asherley’s fury took a pause. Was she... was she responsible? She’d imagined it, yes, but she had never possessed such a power as this, she...
Asherley imagined Argentyn Ravenwood flying upward into the air and then out, out into the abyss, his neck snapping before he could shift into his escape.
Asherley gasped inwardly as Varinya half fell over the edge reaching for her husband, who rolled into the air and then, following a loud, satisfying crack, disappeared into a patch of clouds.
Varinya stumbled backward. She struggled for breath through her confusion. With a start, she whipped her gaze to Asherley.
“You did this.”
The laughter started and she never wanted it to stop. If she could always feel as she did now, there would never again be pain she couldn’t survive. Byrne, Hollyn, Emberley, she could channel them into this feeling as she avenged them, subsisting on this gift of retribution that was greater than anything she’d ever known before.
Varinya started to move closer and stopped. She was afraid.
“You murdered my child. I should find yours and return the favor.”
Varinya’s throat ebbed as she swallowed. She threw her head back. “Ravenna is more than all of us. More, even, than you, Lady Blackwood. She may not know it yet, but, like you, she will find herself when she most needs it.”
Asherley grinned down at her hands. “The source is Midnight Crest. Isn’t it?”
Varinya glared proudly in her silence.
“It isn’t you. Or your mother. Or her mother. There’s something here, within the stones, that gives you what you are. And as you find yourself farther from the source, the gift cannot sustain itself. Ravenna’s power comes from elsewhere, and that is the secret you protect, isn’t it? Is this why you sent her away?”
“Rhosyn may have given you a drop of her blood, but that does not make you a Ravenwood. You know nothing. And if you listened to my husband’s theories drip from his lips, you know even less.”
“If I’m wrong, my drop of blood, as you say, would not be enough to do this.” Asherley pressed her lips tight, grunting as she lifted Varinya into the air with magic alone. Magic that had found her, chosen her.
Varinya’s gown swished as her feet kicked. She reached for her neck, as her husband had only moments ago, but with none of the same vigor. “What are you waiting for, then? Do it.”
“I wanted to see your face, to see the feral acceptance that you’ve entered the final moments of your pathetic life,” Asherley said, and then, with a pass of her arms, she sent the High Priestess to the same fate as her husband.
Now, she was alone. The only company was the sound of the wind whipping through the stone pillars, bouncing off the empty halls.
Asherley dropped to her knees.
49
A Thousand Tiny Cuts
Ravenna soared high above Duncarrow. She was engulfed in flame, but it did
not burn her. It hardly touched her at all. Anyone with their eyes cast to the sky would see a magnificent ball of fire, but she was only warm from it, like the hint of morning sun coming up on the horizon.
She flew in circles around the keep, signaling no intention to land. How long could she do this? Before, her raven wings could keep her aloft for hours, but now?
Ravenna closed her eyes and pointed down, toward the White Sea. She glided just above the surface, enjoying the soft briny spray tickling the underside of her wings, which were now longer, and no longer black but a fiery, vibrant orange.
She had a strange urge to dive beneath the surface. Something within nudged her, whispering that she could swim now, too. Go on, try.
Later.
Now, she had to find within her the nerve to return to the place that had nearly destroyed her. She’d been someone—something—else then, and now she was this, but the fear remained. She would shed this, as she had her raven self, but to do so properly would take time, and Esmerelda did not have time.
With Ravenna gone, Oldwin and the king would turn their attentions to the only daughter of the Southerlands. No doubt these attentions would be born of rage at the scene Ravenna left behind in her wake.
She’d already suffered one loss born of her failure. Though she was changed—her magic, too, though the extent of these differences were yet unknown to her—some of the remnants of who she was remained, such as the amulet Drystan had never taken off. Not even as his life was taken from him. When that magic seeing over him died away, something within her died as well. Ravenna’s life had been a series of many deaths, and she had no time to grieve them, only to use them, to turn pain to power.
Ravenna let her toes skim the sea’s surface once more and then pushed back into the sky.
* * *
Esmerelda huddled in the corner of the room. The body of the dead king taunted her. The pool of blood beneath him traveled fast when he’d been more freshly dead, so fast she’d pulled her feet inward to avoid being touched by even a drop of it. He’d been dead long enough now that it slowed its spread as the last drops left him.
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