by Ella Fields
His teeth were bared, a low growl rumbling as soldiers peeled themselves away, one being dragged by his comrade, his leg bent at a disturbing angle.
They were retreating. Why were they retreating?
I looked back at Elhn. He pushed through the throng, talking in a rush, and a few soldiers glanced up.
I did, too, and then I gasped and leaped.
I plummeted toward the square with everything in me at a speed I’d never flown before—fast enough that when I landed, I would break something. Likely many somethings.
Dade whined, shifting to take the brunt of my impact, and I bounced into him.
I shook my head, dizzy and fluttering against his side to my feet as a giant ball, clear enough to live in the sky and never be noticed, finished falling.
And engulfed us both.
Opal
“We’ve got him this time,” came from one of the soldiers who spat at us.
His saliva hit the orb, sliding down it as though it were a sheet of clear glass. I knew without touching it that it wasn’t. It hummed with a power I couldn’t name or recognize.
This time.
The blood on Dade’s wrist.
He’d said nothing had happened—hadn’t wanted to alarm me by stating someone had tried something. I turned to look up at the beast beside me, who lowered onto his stomach, bleeding in varying places yet gazing at me as though he were worried I’d injured myself.
“You fucking moron,” Elhn said, pushing to the front of the crowd and staring at the orb in evident dismay. His eyes closed, and he cursed, shoving at the male next to him. “Clean that filth off before her majesty arrives.”
The soldier frowned, as did some of the others, shifting on their feet. A few were bleeding in places, others howling in pain beneath the awning of the most popular bakery in the city. I couldn’t see them to gauge how injured they were, and I didn’t care.
I stuck my beak in the air when the soldier said, “Are you a traitor, captain? I’ll spit at the monster if I so please.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, dipshit,” Elhn growled into his face and stabbed a finger our way, “there is also a swan in there.”
“So what?” the ignorant ass said. Meanwhile, various sets of eyes widened around him. Perhaps they knew of our history enough to know or remember that although one of my kind had not been seen in a long time, every single one of us had been a Gracewood royal.
“The princess,” Rodney, a soldier five years my senior who’d sometimes brought me fresh seedlings when he visited the Spring Forest, said upon a rushed breath. I stared at him, seeing no point in doing otherwise. It wasn’t like I could talk to refute it, and if I shifted back, they’d know for certain. “It is her,” he said, blinking.
The male who’d spat at us cursed, then raced forward, studying me through the orb. “But it’s just a swan.” Giant dark brown eyes widened and blinked. “A huge fucking swan, but still a swan.”
I honked, and he flinched, rousing laughter from the soldiers who’d tried to hurt Dade just moments before.
The king grumbled behind me, then pawed me back closer to his side even though no one could touch me if they dared. My webbed feet tangled in the chains he’d snapped free from, and he flicked them at the clear barrier. It hissed, and I stared as the iron began to melt.
There was a collection of curses as the soldiers noticed, and then there was shrieking, the male quickly swiping away his saliva as my mother arrived. The orb zapped him, and his hair rose high on his head. He yelped, snatching his hand back and putting a healthy distance between us as he slunk between his brethren.
“Move,” my mother shouted, the soldiers all parting as she raced toward me, and her hand rose to her mouth. My heart sank with her knees as she stopped before the orb…
And screamed.
The silence that followed her ear-shredding agony was nearly as deafening. Dade grunted, tense next to me, and I felt my chest hollow with dread at the fear shining in her eyes. I tried to shift back.
I couldn’t.
Moving as close as she could get, the wind knocking her honeyed hair back from her shoulders to reveal the entirety of her stricken expression, my mother reached out as though she’d place her hand upon the orb.
It hummed with the approaching warmth as though calling to it, and she lowered her hand. “What have you done?” she cried. “Oh, stars, Opal, what have you done?”
Dade growled when Deandra approached, sword raised as though she’d slice through the orb. His feathered wing hauled me closer, nearly shielding all of me. I swung my neck around, but his gaze moved between the female soldier and the queen, muscles flexing and tensing behind me.
I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t shift. I could only nudge the feathers of Dade’s wings from shielding my view and stare back at her.
The soldiers at her back stayed quiet, watching, awaiting orders. Yet her attention stayed fixed on me and the wolf she’d trapped. It seemed to settle in her then, her face falling. Her mouth trembled as she released a resigned breath. “Fetch Silver,” she said, then repeated herself, her voice raised. “Someone fetch the sorceress now.”
As a small group peeled and raced away, we continued to stare. My heart thundered. The warmth of the bubble surrounding us seemed to increase with each passing minute.
Silver arrived, wreathed in snake-like shadows that evaporated right before the fifty-odd soldiers. The males and females eyed her as she neared, that serpentine smile in place.
Eyes glued themselves to the snakes twining around her upper arms, some daring enough to drift over her lithe, supple frame outlined by a tight long gown of glittering rubies.
She tutted. “Oh, Nikaya.” A pleasure-roughened groan accompanied her next words. “This is too good.” Her hands rubbed together, the glee in her voice evident in those red eyes. “My stars, just look at them.” Stopping before the orb, she dragged a fingernail down it. Nothing happened. No charge. No recoil. “Aren’t they quite the pair?”
The gown bent with her like water over a rock as she crouched, whispering, “Yes, quite the mated pair.”
My mother’s eyes shuttered, then reopened on the sorceress as she rose to her feet. “Fix it.” Silver’s eyes flashed, and my mother urged, “Please.”
“You asked me for an impenetrable cage for a beast.” She sketched a hand our way. “So that is what I gave you.”
“There has to be a way out.”
Silver’s smirk made Dade stiffen. “There’s always a way out.” Floating closer to my mother, she brushed some of her golden hair over her shoulder, her smirk falling while a long crimson nail traced my mother’s cheek and jaw. Her voice melted into a softer tone I’d have never thought the overconfident sorceress capable of. “And as we already know, it will always cost you something priceless.”
My mother’s wet eyes flared wide when Silver said quietly, “I’m all out of favors now, my love.”
Watching them, something murky began to clear, but then she was gone, my mother left snarling at fading dark air.
Her hands swept into her hair. “Shit.” Elhn wisely told the soldiers to back up, allowing her a modicum of privacy. “That fucking female and her fucking riddles.”
Dade huffed, and I swung a glare at him that said this wasn’t funny. Not in the slightest. He merely yawned, and I felt my eyes grow huge at the sight of all those too long, too sharp teeth.
He licked his lips, then sniffed and smiled with his eyes.
I had no idea how he could remain so calm, how he could find any shred of humor in this situation. Then I remembered he’d been subjected to worse. He’d been on battlefield after battlefield. He’d been raised and conditioned for violence and brutality.
Which was why we were here, trapped and beholden to a riddle-loving sorceress and a queen out for revenge.
I shifted on my feet, swinging my neck downhill to where Silver’s lair was.
When feather meets fire, vengeance will expire.
&nb
sp; My mother called my name, and I turned back. “Listen to me carefully, okay?”
I had no place else to be. She knew I could understand her just fine from the many times she’d chased me around the castle when I’d accidentally shifted as a youngling and couldn’t figure out how to shift back.
“Yes,” she said, and a bead of water slid down her cheek as though she was remembering those times too. The times when my father would pretend I wasn’t what I was, but my mother would scoop me up by my webbed feet, hang me upside down, and deliver me to my rooms where she’d read me stories until I’d settled enough to change back. “Just like then, we need to do this together.”
I blinked. We couldn’t do a thing together. Not only because I was in here and she was out there, but because we were now enemies.
She’d sought to kill my mate all the while knowing how it would kill me—for that same pain was clearly still far too fresh for her.
“Together,” she whispered. “Don’t be afraid.”
I wasn’t afraid of the orb. I was afraid of what she’d do to my husband once we were freed. And so I shook my head.
Dade huffed, nostrils wider than my head flaring as he curled into me and stared me down.
I glared. No.
Yes.
You know what they’ll do.
He inclined his head as though it wasn’t a big deal, eyes narrowing with impatience.
“Opal,” my mother said. “Opal, look at me.”
I did, reluctantly, and she smiled, silent tears dripping down her face. “I promise. He will be free to leave.”
I stiffened, knowing she spoke true but still wary.
Dade’s wing lifted as though he believed her, telling me I should too.
I stared at her, and she stared back with glistening eyes. Mine did the same when she said, “I’m sorry.” Swiping beneath her nose, she whispered, “I didn’t want to believe it. That you two had…” She shook her head, finally saying, “That you had bonded. If I didn’t know, if I didn’t believe it, then I could go through with what my aching soul hungers for.” I waited as she peered at the king. “Vengeance.”
I knew without looking that he held her gaze, for when she looked back at me, her eyes were no longer wet but determined, her jaw gritted. “But I can’t do it. I thought I could, but I cannot put you through this pain, and though I had to try, Opal, I had to… I am sorry that I did.”
I edged forward, and she placed her hand upon the orb, warmth sizzling from underneath it.
Her teeth clenched. Her hair began to rise. But I knew before she gestured with her free hand what I had to do.
I pressed the tip of my wing upon the orb, right over her palm, and I nodded. A crack echoed, slicing into my skull, my bones, as I flickered between forms. “I’m sorry,” she said again, terror in her voice now. “Return to me, please.”
It felt like pushing from the deepest depths of the ocean, crawling back into myself. My heart thrashed, and my sight dimmed and blackened. The orb cracked again. Dade’s heat became firmer at my back as though he’d changed back already. Emboldened, I unraveled, each breath stuck and uncatchable until…
I panted on my knees. “Okay.”
The ball fractured under our touch, rivers of gold striking through the clear orb in fast succession. We all gazed up, and Dade gathered me to his chest right as it exploded. As clear and sharp as glass, fragments rained over us, cutting and clinking as they hit the cobblestone.
When it ended, I twisted to inspect Dade, noting a cut at his mouth and eye, my hands patting down his stiff arms…
Then the screaming registered, my mother already on her feet as the war bell chimed from the castle.
A collection of howls, ferocious and haunting, was the only warning we had before beasts, some winged, all wolven, split through every alleyway.
The cavalry had arrived, and with it, another fracture large enough to slice me in two.
Only this time, it was not an orb but my heart.
Dade grabbed for me, a dagger in his hand he hadn’t used earlier, and pushed me behind his back. “I’ll call them off.”
He’d… but they were already shedding blood. With claws and teeth and strength and numbers that were no match for our own, they attacked.
My mother stood frozen beside me, her wide eyes drinking it all in, then Elhn approached, barking orders for us to move, and she turned to grab my hand. “Inside the bakery.”
I followed, floating upon the shock that seared its way through me, laying waste to every hushed word and bruising memory.
He’d lied.
He’d lied, he’d lied, he’d lied.
He’d looked me dead in the eye and lied through his razor-sharp teeth when he’d promised that he would come alone, when he’d promised that he would behave and that my people would be safe. When he’d promised the bloodshed would end.
I’d believed him. I’d believed in him. I’d believed that he’d changed, and that he’d finally begun to learn—to understand.
I’d been a fool to believe a wolf would ever be anything but a wolf.
When we reached the bakery, Elhn ushered us inside, and I slipped past him as he pulled the door closed. He reached for me, but I was already gone. A sword laid beside a fallen soldier, her eyes staring up at the sky as she bled from her mouth and a wound in her stomach.
I bent down, holding my hands over her stomach, warmth flooding and flowing through me, closing it but not fast enough. The female’s red-brown eyes slid from the sky to mine, her mouth forming words I couldn’t hear over the roaring and screaming and terror that had been unleashed upon my city. “Stop him.”
Stop him. Don’t save her. Stop him.
She was right. He’d said he’d call them off, but I’d made the mistake in believing he’d protect my heart once.
I refused to be so stupid ever again.
Gritting my teeth, I forced more of my energy inside that wound, and then I gathered her hands and pushed them over it. “Keep them there and don’t move.” She blinked, and I raised my brows. “That’s an order.”
I took her sword and slunk around two crimson and gold males, a battle axe meeting a broadsword and nearly cutting the steel in half by my head.
I didn’t look to see if I recognized them. I couldn’t. I kept moving, dodging running citizens, pushing by a cart that’d been deserted a little ways up the slow-sloping hill.
“Opal.”
I stopped at the sound of his voice and looked up.
There, atop the rooftop nearest me, landed the king of wolves, the blood king, the murderous thief of my heart. He eyed my stolen sword, then said, “Duck,” as a boulder sailed over my head, flying through the shop window behind me.
Glass crashed and tinkled, and then two males stumbled to the ground, weapons gone, fists and teeth bared. “Enough,” Dade thundered.
The male halted, holding the gold soldier at bay as he swung blindly up at him from the ground.
Dade’s gaze fell upon me, heavy and searching. I gave him nothing but ire in return. He stiffened.
He knew exactly what he’d done. But rather than waste time and piss me off more, he thrust his fingers between his lips, whistling four times. “Lower your weapons and retract your claws.” He then hollered through cupped hands, “Fall in line to return home.”
Elhn was marching up the street, heading straight for us. Confusion crumpled his features, and blood leaked from his nose as he gazed upon our soldiers. Some continued to lunge and strike at the crimson legions, while others stepped back, baffled and glancing around while the warriors slowly fell into two long, even lines.
Elhn ordered our soldiers who would not relent to cease fighting, barking their names as though he’d personally kill them himself if they disobeyed.
Dropping the sword, I fell back against the door as Dade landed before me and stalked forward. “Swan, you must understand—”
“That you lied to me?” I laughed, the sound cracking. “Oh, I understand tha
t perfectly fine, asshole.”
He grimaced, dragging a bloodied hand through his hair, red streaking the blond. Someone called him, and he threw a look at his gathered wolf packs over his shoulder, then stared back at me. “I’m sorry, okay? But I knew this would happen.”
“So tell me that,” I said, each word scalding, hissing through my teeth. “Tell me, talk to me rather than lie to me.”
He stopped advancing three perilous steps from me. The breeze swept some of that soft hair over his forehead, his eyes a rival to the darkness that had invaded the sky. “Would you have listened?”
Stunned, I flattened the palms of my hands against the door at my back.
Would I have? I would’ve liked to think that yes, I would have, but this… what we had become multiplied daily, and I couldn’t keep up. I’d humored him, fallen for him while doing so, while trying to make a difference, but I’d never wholly trusted him.
We both knew that.
His name was called once more, but he did not acknowledge whoever it was.
“I guess we’ll never know.” Eyes, too many, were upon us, but that didn’t stop me from saying on a burning breath, “All I know is that I’ll never listen to another word you say.” The moans of the wounded, the shrieking of crows coming for the dead, slithered inside this new bubble of our own making.
His face fell and paled, his hand trembled as he took a step forward and reached out as though he’d touch me. “You don’t truly mean that.” He blinked as though suddenly unsure and stopped toe to toe with me. “Do you?”
“Don’t,” I warned. Knocking his hand away, I whispered, “Leave, and take with you the knowledge that I lied too, and that I never wanted this.” I dragged my eyes from his mouth as it opened and met his narrowed gaze. “You needed to be stopped. Someone had to stop you.” I lifted a shoulder as though I cared nothing for everything we’d been and all we could’ve been when I cared far too much. “So that’s what I did.”
Dade studied me, rage unfolding, sharpening and twisting each feature. It oozed from his pores and rolled off his skin. I’d witnessed him angered, though I’d never felt it quite that potently before, as though I were standing too close to a fire and starting to sweat.