But I can’t waste that one minute. And I can’t risk forever.
Follow the wind.
I unhook the whip from my hip and give it a deft flick. My weapon licks the air, swerving toward an extension behind Cerulean. It cuts through this structure and unfolds into another pocket of fog.
Our eyes lock, caged, trapped. I’m not sure who moves first, but I think it’s me, because it’s got to be me. My whip lashes out. His reflexes kick in, the javelin lancing the air and blocking the hit. The collision pries our shocked eyes wide.
We spring apart. My weapon meets his again, strike for a strike. He rotates the javelin, spinning it between his fingers. The whip swats the air, flogging his attempts. We circle each other, our feet battering the planks, our boots thumping into a complex pattern as we thrust and parry.
The shaft of his javelin pivots, the bladed helix jabbing. The length of my whip flays, thwarting the blow.
I can’t hurt him. Please, I can’t.
He windmills his weapon low to the ground. I jump over it and hurl the whip in a broad, side-loop that catches his arm. The wet thwack of a lash stings my ears.
Yet the attack fails to upend Cerulean, glancing over his bicep like a ribbon. Despite the bond rendering us evenly matched, he’s holding back again. I know it from the chinks in his armor: the dread inflating in his pupils, the slower pace, and the lighter raps of his weapon.
I know it, sure as I know he’s gratifying the masses, whetting their appetites. Faeries crawl along the bridges, keeping a tally of the spectacle.
The swing of his javelin should flog me off this bridge. Instead, my whip hinders another thrust, the slack pulling taut. The tension jams our chests together, mimicking a pose we’ve been in before, when my crusade through the mountain began. Moments before the hornets attacked, we stood like this, spite infusing our veins.
Our panting breaths clash, our lips on the brink of collision. I hate this moment. I need to get past this moment. On impulse, I flick my tongue across the seam of his mouth.
Cerulean’s eyes dilate, exploding in a vibrant mosaic of blues. Hell, men. They’re all the same, magical or not.
Taking advantage of his momentary astonishment, my whip clips across the divide and clubs him sideways. He smacks into the ropes fencing us in. I shove my way past the guilt and make a break for it.
I reach the adjoining bridge as he rights himself. A quick glance rewards me with a private sight: A secretive grin crooks the corner of his mouth.
I keep going, dashing along the structure that burrows into a film of clouds. From there, it’s less a game of chase, more a game of disorientation. Every suspension lacks closure, The Lost Bridges a never-ending medium. They transfer me from one foundation to another, on and on and on.
Me, hiking rungs, jogging past poles, racing across platforms.
Him, scamming my progress, acting like an impostor.
Fucking Fables! Mist obstructs every grade. Each access leads to someplace nonsensical, splintering my sense of direction.
Up is down. Left is right. Forward is backward.
Maintaining constant vigil of my destination fails to help. Whichever gradient seems intended for the peak lands me farther from it.
I traverse one of the trestles, shimmying up its pillars. But at the top, I find myself at the bottom again.
Another divide brackets into an L shape. I follow the wind and turn the corner, which deposits me at the summit of an upper parallel bridge. I look over the railing, at the place where I’d come from. Cerulean materializes below, wads of mist bloating around his limbs. He reclines against the banister with his arms folded, tips his head to meet my gaping face, and winks like an evil prick. Even if he’s faking it, the Fae in him is also somewhat enjoying these sick antics.
The stunt wrings a curse out of me, reinvigorating my adrenaline. I hurl myself over the edge. My boot heels crash onto a new bridge, leagues from where Cerulean had been. Somehow, I’ve landed on a platform farther above the one I’d leaped from, but it appears to be the highest altitude yet.
With renewed hope, I let my whip and the wind guide me. Hustling past another projection conveys me into a screen of moisture. My muscles shriek with exertion, my thighs wobbling, perspiration swamping my armpits. Oxygen shaves the tissue from my throat.
I stumble in place, second-guessing my direction. Maybe I should backtrack and—
A cavernous groan rumbles across the bridge, rolling like a marble from behind. My pulse leaps into my throat. I know that sound, had been wondering if there were more of them.
Slowly, I turn on my heels. The cougar stalks from the milky film, its graceful, queenly shoulders rotating. The reams of its peridot irises slit, focusing on me.
“Shit,” I squeak, frozen in place.
The animal opens its maw to reveal a set of sabers distending from its gums. A coliseum’s worth of shouts and cackles encircle the bridge. The Fae are watching, salivating.
One thing I’ll credit them for, they didn’t send this animal after me. They wouldn’t exploit or manipulate the fauna that way, which means these bridges must connect to the feline’s habitat. I’m invading its space. I’m the intruder, imposing myself on the hungry beauty’s turf.
As it is, she already sees my terror, probably smells it wafting from my glands. If I run or turn my back, that will confirm I’m prey.
Which means I’m about to get stupid. Instead of running, I make myself appear as large as possible, expanding my chest and shoulders. Then I take the slightest of steps toward her.
The cougar twitches, suspicion flashing in her pupils. My mouth dries, crisp as parchment. I venture another dumb step, and the creature backs up, hissing with uncertainty.
Silence descends over the scene. The breeze stalls, stifling the Faeries’ jeers. But I don’t need to see or hear them, to know they’re rapt.
Cerulean. Where’s Cerulean?
My glorious jackass of a mate has been making appearances at every turn, and now he decides to pull a disappearing act?
The foundation buckles beneath my weight. A crack wallops through the stillness and breaks the trance. The cougar’s tawny hackles rise, a growl rumbling from its throat. My trembling knuckles slide toward my whip.
The animal pounces. Midflight, a crescent of razors spring from its paws. I dive to the right, tumbling across the bridge and surging to my feet. My whip thrashes the ground in rapid succession, striking the floorboards to ward off the creature. I’m hoping the display will scare it, intimidate it from attacking again. We sidestep one another, but the creature swats. I vault away, the curved daggers of its claws tearing through my skirt but missing flesh.
The cougar’s stronger, smarter, stalking me to the poles, where it hems me in. Yet something’s odd about the way it’s moving. A force keeps winnowing the animal off course, jerking its limb off-kilter. That frustrates the cat, as if…as if the air prevents it from disemboweling me.
The air. The wind.
Cerulean.
Enraged, the cougar shoots from the coils of its haunches. I dodge, clambering onto the slender ledge while thrusting my whip. The weapon—or maybe it’s the wind again—pelts the barbed paw aside, the claws shearing at nothing.
Its tail is another matter. As the defeated animal wheels from the contact and retreats into the mist, her furred appendage thumps into the railing, uprooting my balance. My arms jolt outward, pinwheeling to break the fall.
And I see it. The translucent stream of a gale winding through the ether, rushing toward me. It hooks around my midriff and flings me backward, plunking me safely onto the bridge. The world capsizes. I crumble to the planks, then totter to a sitting position and scan the network.
Overhead, Cerulean looms from a suspension. In spite of the distance, I catch his frenzied expression, all traces of feigned smugness gone.
Now the quiet isn’t riveted. It’s skeptical.
“He’s helping her!” one of the Fae shouts.
Voices c
arry. Outraged screeches. Stupefied roars.
Cerulean’s gaze swerves toward the cacophony, his ears picking up on the stampede. A legion of wings beat the air, pumping in a frenzy of directions. His complexion pales as he swings back to me.
They’re coming. If he’s rigging the game to my benefit, somebody’s gotta stop him.
Swiftly, he mouths, “Jump.”
I gawk. And then I lurch to my feet, scramble over the railing, and heave myself into the abyss.
The air catches me—and then he catches me.
I land, cupped in Cerulean’s arms, his wings snapping outward. The translucent screens flare, cradling me as he pitches down, zooming toward one of the bridges.
Looping upright, he drops me onto a vacant suspension. Without pausing, Cerulean vaults back into the fog. I can’t see anything, only hear it. Screams and bellows carve through the vista, the whine of steel and whistle of arrows severing the atmosphere.
“Cerulean!” I shriek, whirling this way and that. “Moth!”
Sun rays splinter through the mist. I run, barreling past wooden beams. The bridge guides me to a pair of intersecting gangplanks, where I survey the range frantically. I crawl onto the banister, my toe losing its foothold as an arrow whizzes past me.
With my view obscured, I give up and hop down. Sprinting toward the nearest sheet of film transports me to a lower trestle bridge. Its crisscross ribs span the extension beneath the uppermost platform.
“What’s the rush, human?” a slimy voice coos.
“Slow down, little scum,” a second one drones.
“Or you’ll disappoint us,” a third one preens.
A trio creeps from around the stakes. Leers coil across their firebird faces, the blisters of their eyes reflecting infernos. The phoenixes from the masquerade slink around the trestle masts, their yellow flesh crackling.
I spirit around a column, monitoring their approach. I can’t help the pang in my gut, because this ancient feud feels pointless, when it hadn’t before. Why does it have to be like this? If they’d never crucified humans as inferiors and plagued us to death, and if the villagers had found another way to defend themselves, and if things were different, if both species could become one force…
Stealthy bodies lunge toward me, their wings aflame. My digits grapple for the whip and let it fly. The weapon snaps across the first Fae’s cheek, his body twisting at a ghastly angle as he goes down. The remaining Faeries charge, girdling around the stilts.
The slap of wings penetrates the bridge. A shadow veers through the area—a splayed pair of fringed panels. Blades of noise rent the scene. A javelin arches, slices through, and stabs the boards between me and the Fae.
Cerulean crashes onto the platform. He lands in front of me, hunched on bended knee, his right palm planted on the ground in a battle stance that shields my body from them. His wings cleave several posts before slipping into the slots of his coat.
I skitter backward, catching his profile amidst a debris of wood shavings. Fury, hysteria, and guilt strain his face. He wants to protect me. That doesn’t mean he’s eager to maim his kin, especially after betraying them as their ruler and denying them a future on this mountain.
Wounded treachery contorts their faces. “Why?” the female demands, her throat filled with gravel. “Why, Cerulean?”
“Because I love her,” he confesses.
His admission punctures the last vestiges of my heart. He could have made it easier on himself, given himself an excuse by revealing we’re bonded. At this point, it wouldn’t have pacified them, but it would have tempered their sense of treachery. Yet that’s not what he chose to say.
The Faeries blink. Their expressions wrest from shock, to confusion, to devastation. In the end, rage digs crevices into their faces.
But this isn’t their fight alone. I rush beside Cerulean, bracing my whip and sensing his eyes click toward me.
The firebirds move at the same instant we do. Cerulean yanks his weapon from the floor and wheels it into a spiral. The Faeries catapult into one another, blasting together with a speed that rattles the spokes. Fists and daggers clash with a spearing javelin.
I tackle one of the males, lashing my weapon and dodging his knife. The action travels across the bridge, the lot of us hurdling around the slats. With a dizzying spin of the javelin, Cerulean blows his adversaries into the railing, where they keel over in a heap atop the planks. My whip drives a gash into the last one’s back, then sweeps his boots out from under him.
Cerulean and I whirl on another. We pause, panting for air.
A legion of infuriated Faeries swarms the lower bridge’s skeleton, flooding from all locations. The shell of a beetle’s torso. The stripes and muzzle of a bobcat. The conch horns of a ram. The wings of avians and insects.
Battalions of tall figures, along with dwarves and pixies. Among the familiar swords, arrows, and curved daggers, they wield exotic blades that rotate, split into sections, shoot spikes, or fly like shooting stars.
We race toward the pandemonium. Clincher is, not all of them are fighting us. They’re fighting each other, handfuls of the Fae remaining loyal to Cerulean, maybe hoping he’s got a sound reason worth defending. The rest ambush us, the brawl escalating to both bridge levels.
It’s a hopeless, grisly display, shimmering at the edges with sparks of magic. So many faces and souls—gorgeous to the point of hellish, frightful to the point of ethereal.
Through mist and torchlight, they duel using animalistic reflexes. Fleets clash in midair, their wings jetting around one another. Claws and pinchers strike. Jowls open, and tusks sink into flesh that spurts fonts of blood.
The staleness of my sweat clashes with the nausea of overripe fruit and the brine of deep puncture wounds. A glossy spray of crimson stains my fingers. The visual shoves bile up my throat, but the rising sun spikes my veins with adrenaline.
I glance to where a globe of light skims the range. Daybreak is nearing.
I jump over a post, my whip snagging around a nodule tacked in the ceiling. Looping forward, I smash my heels into an insectile Fae with antennas. The crunch of bone resounds between us.
I let go of the slack. Before landing, I lasso another arm and pull it from the socket. The owner of that limb howls, submitting to the ground.
Before I can recover the whip, talons tear across my bicep. Black pain speckles my vision as I register a Fae with a ravenlike mien, a spiky rail of plumes tracking down the center of his skull. He hones in, but a wee fist pops into the scene. Papery knuckles bash into the raven’s visage, the blow chucking him into one of the posts.
I stumble around and meet two rings of topaz. Moth rolls her shoulders and jogs backward from the fallen Fae, the silk of her wings set wide. She notices me gawking and snorts disdainfully. “What are you looking at?” the whippersnapper grouses. “Fight!”
I wish I had a second to chuckle. Moth and I hurtle into the mob, the crush of bodies blocking my view. I swerve left and right, unable to tell which Fae to combat, which to stay my weapon from. And where’s—
“Lark!” Cerulean roars.
I open my mouth. Too late, he unleashes his wings and charges into the sky, searching for me.
Moth flies to the top suspension, swerving around a bend, vanishing after him. A second later, she shrieks Cerulean’s name. My pulse beats out a violent tempo. Desperate, I scramble up one of the trestles, lugging myself over the edge and onto the uppermost rampart.
I stand—and a red hand clamps around my throat. One of the phoenixes squeezes my neck like it’s a tube, cutting off my air supply. I splutter as the enraged Fae hops onto the ledge and thrusts his arm, suspending me over the gangplank. My legs scissor, and my fingernails scratch his wrists.
The phoenix wears that disgusting forehead band with its charm of a human fingerbone. He spews, “Magicless spawn. You took him from us, but you won’t take this mountain. It’s ours! You have no right!”
The fog begins to sink deeper into the abyss,
yielding to the disk of sun burnishing the vista. I dangle above the valley, thinking I just want to go home, just want my sisters, my father, my sanctuary. I just want to care for the fauna of my world, of both worlds. I just want that life.
And I just want to love him back.
The phoenix fixes to drop me. His digits loosen from around my neck—and he topples over, a javelin’s tip goring his torso and spritzing it red.
I don’t have time to gasp, much less to vomit. I don’t have time, because I’m falling.
Released from the Fae’s grasp, my body plunges into a cloud of mist, then I jolt in place, a set of fingers clinging to mine. I flip my head toward the frantic pupils hovering over me. Cerulean hangs upside down, his legs hooked around one of the distended ropes that secures the planks underneath the lower bridge.
Lacerations break his face into sections, like an old map. “Lark,” he rasps.
“Cerulean,” I flounder, the elevation licking my scarred kneecaps, the wind buffeting my skirt. I tell myself not to look down, not to look down, not to look down.
It’s all right. I won’t fall, because he’ll catch me.
But at his petrified stare, doubt worms into my stomach. That’s when my eyes skate toward what’s left of his wings. They’re in tatters, the plumes stripped to their rachises and exposing the torn membrane.
Mauled wings can be critical to a Fae, limiting strength and reducing magic. A yeasty paleness soaks into his flesh, leaching the pigment from his blue lips, so they resemble the pastel tint of ice. His body trembles with effort, his jaw ticking from the stress of my dead weight.
He’s hurt badly. And he can’t fly.
He must have used the remnants of his power to materialize here in time. I want to grapple for my weapon, but not at the expense of slipping again. When I brave a quick glance, a baleful moan slides off my tongue. The whip is gone, buried someplace in The Solitary Forest.
Meanwhile, the feud continues, the Fae unaware of what’s happening below.
Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) Page 31