by AJ Lancaster
Rakken’s gaze slid sideways to Marius, who’d remained silent, watching the exchange. “Apparently I’m becoming less and less obvious these days, even when I don’t intend it.” He sighed. “I am not used to parsing my thoughts into blunt mortal shapes.”
That was either an apology or a dig. Or, knowing Rakken, a little of both.
“Oh, yes, let’s call ‘being honest with people’ using blunt mortal word shapes. It’s clearly not your fault if you deliberately manipulate and deceive people for your own amusement; mortals are just too difficult to understand.” Marius gave the last words a bitter emphasis and wrenched himself up. Wyn started; he’d never heard Marius sound so vicious.
“Don’t tell me I am the one here guilty of pretence, Marius Valstar. I have never tried to hide what I want.”
A drawn-out eternity in which Marius and Rakken glared at each other from an uncomfortably close distance and Wyn rather wished he were anywhere else.
For a moment, Marius seemed to waver, his body swaying incrementally towards Rakken, as if he would close that gap. Wyn wondered how to beat a tactical retreat or, alternatively, whether to beat his brother to death. But then Marius jerked his gaze away with a sharp inhalation. “Go to the hells, Rake. And for the gods’ sake tell Wyn what he needs to know.” He stomped off, his footsteps loud as he left the library.
“What did you do?” Wyn asked. He deeply wanted to avoid his brother’s love life, but Marius was his friend, storms take it.
Rakken was staring at Marius’s retreating back with an intensity hot enough to crack stones and didn’t answer.
“If you hurt him…” Wyn began.
Rakken’s head whipped around. “He does not need your defence, Hallowyn. I have shown him what I am; he will keep his distance now.” There was a savage undercurrent to the words.
“And you’re going to keep your distance from him?” Wyn asked meaningfully, shifting his weight. A hint of spice in the air.
Rakken smiled narrowly. “Do you truly think your opinions on this matter hold the smallest interest to me, sparrow?” An evasion if Wyn had ever heard one. “But enough.” Rakken’s focus shifted in a way Wyn found unsettling, and his next words came with the force of a whip. “You’ve spent so much time in a mortal form compressing your power that of course it tries to surge loose each time you take your fae form! How else is it to learn the shape of you?
“You’ve rushed your way to magical maturity before your time with bullish force and no understanding, and now your lack of confidence in your own control is ultimately your undoing; one cannot ride the stormwinds by fighting them. And now you have an unborn child to protect—did you really expect that to have no effect on your own magic? Of course it’s trying to manifest properly even as you foolishly try to deny it. Blood calls to blood, as I told you before.”
“Is this you trying to explain clearly? Because it’s actually quite hard to tell,” Wyn complained, though understanding was starting to bloom in his chest. Oh. Oh, he had been so, so foolish.
“Embrace all sides of yourself and your powers should settle. Eventually.” Rakken bared his teeth. “If you survive the storm of your own making.”
“How reassuring.”
Rakken ignored him and gestured curtly for him to sit. Sighing, Wyn obeyed, and tried not to wince as the force of Rakken’s will washed over him, inexorable as the tide. It felt like hooks pulling out of his flesh.
After an interminable time, Rakken sat back. He looked even more tired than Marius, and his nose had started to bleed again. Rakken rubbed it away with the back of his hand, irritable.
“Koi was right; there is far less of it in you.” He held out an amulet; Wyn recognised it as a repurposed quizzing glass, bound with rowan-wood and shimmering with Rakken’s own additional charms. “Put this on. It should stop the compulsion from returning. I’ve yet to figure out how to keep it back without it; I’ve never encountered anything like it before. It shouldn’t be able to regrow, and yet it does.” There was unwilling admiration in his voice.
Wyn prodded at his memories, unsure exactly what had changed. It felt…tender. “I cannot tell what has changed.”
“It will take your mind a while to heal from the scars. But you should at least be able to hold on to the knowledge of who is responsible for this.” His tone had darkened. Their mother.
“Can you remove compulsion from yourself?” Wyn asked.
Rakken gave him a dry look. “Do you think I would un-bind you before myself? I hope I have removed enough. But then, the Spires was still able to connect with you even with the bonds you had tying you in knots.” His eyes glowed again; Wyn had never seen him this…dishevelled. “But you were only a boy, Hallowyn, when she left. The compulsion touched you lightly. Removing my own is like unthreading a needle in the dark. And Koi…” Horror surfaced in his eyes. “I do not know how he retained his sanity.”
Wyn shivered. “How long until we can undo ThousandSpire’s curse, then?”
They both turned as Irokoi’s presence came into the library. He is steadily undoing all my attempts to feign normality here, Wyn thought with resignation. Not that Rake was exactly helping either.
Irokoi had braided his hair neatly, but it wasn’t a mortal style, many fine plaits arranged like the fronds of a sea anemone, each decorated with a twist of blue ribbon. He also hadn’t quite grasped the finer points of proper mortal attire, the collar of the shirt Wyn had lent him hanging open, no waistcoat in sight.
Irokoi made a pleased sound as he took in Wyn’s wings. “You are very strange about showing off your plumage, Hallowyn. I had begun to think you ashamed.”
Rakken chuckled, and Wyn gave them both cutting looks.
“This spell, Koi. You said it had two parts,” Wyn asked. “Do we need Torquil and Aroset for the first part?”
Irokoi’s feathers fanned restlessly. “Well, no, but we will only have so much time after we retrieve Cat to complete the rest of it. We cannot just take the anchor away from ThousandSpire without consequence; the faeland will start to unravel without one. It’s not as if Cat initiated the curse for the fun of it! It would be safer not to risk beginning the first part of the spell without all the pieces in place for the second.”
It was on Wyn’s lips to say they were running out of time, but Rakken spoke before he could.
“How long can ThousandSpire survive without an anchor?” Rakken’s voice was hard.
“A quarter moon, perhaps.”
“Then that is how long you have to drag Torquil back from wherever he is hiding. We bring Cat back now. That is my price for helping you, brother.”
Irokoi looked between them unhappily. “I can bring Torquil back easily enough, but we have no plan to gain Aroset’s agreement. It is a risk, Rakken. Would you truly choose to take it with our land, our people?” Mismatched eyes met brilliant green ones, and the hair on the back of Wyn’s neck stood on end as a frisson of power moved in the library. Koi was a touch shorter, tilting his chin to look up, holding his black wings motionless.
Rakken didn’t back down. “We have more chance of persuading Aroset with Cat on our side, and I will need time to undo the compulsion on her. It is a risk I am prepared to take. We do the spell now.” He turned his fierce gaze on Wyn. “Go and get Lord Valstar.”
Slightly against his better judgement, Wyn obeyed Rakken’s directive—both of them. It felt beyond strange to walk through the house winged, his magic shivering with every step. Was Rakken sure this was a good idea? It felt a lot like inviting a lightning storm upon the Valstars.
But when he found Hetta, his magic surged as if to prove Rakken’s point. He grit his teeth, flattening his wings against his spine as he tried to bring it back under control. How had he failed to make the connection?
Hetta tilted her head in silent question at his choice of form, seeing straight through the glamour he’d cast. He told her what Irokoi had said and saw she was as conflicted as he was about it.
“But we don’
t have time to mess about either.” She held up the heartstone; they both watched it sway on its chain for a sombre moment. “And you’re worried about Cat too,” she added softly.
“Yes,” he agreed, to both these points.
They gathered at the Stones for the spell. The day was warm and clear, crickets chirping in the swaying grass. A starling murmuration looped loudly around the stones before continuing.
Koi gave Rakken a serious look before holding out a hand. “I’ll need one of Cat’s feathers.” Wyn had the peculiar realisation that Koi was looking at Rakken with a faint note of Behave, little brother, which would’ve been amusing in other circumstances.
There was a long, frozen moment, but eventually, Rakken clicked his fingers in the clear air and withdrew a feather—a primary, to Wyn’s surprise. Such feathers were shed only rarely.
Wyn wouldn’t have known by sight alone that it was Cat’s and not Rakken’s—the twins’ colouring was identical. Rakken reluctantly gave it into Irokoi’s keeping.
“It will aggravate me if you use that for any malicious purpose, brother.”
Irokoi beamed at him before turning back to the rest of them, eyeing their positions critically.
“Four points on a five-pointed star,” he said eventually.
“Are you counting me in this?” Hetta asked.
Rakken answered. “What you carry, rather. Their blood is your blood for our present purposes.”
Wyn frowned. “Is that wise, using the unborn as an anchor?”
Hetta’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I want to know the answer to that also, because it greatly changes my willingness to participate in this.”
“Of course I accounted for that in the spell,” Irokoi said, sounding hurt. “Why else did you think I went to such trouble to add an eddy into the design to catch any backlash?” He waved at the lines of spellwork before turning earnestly to Hetta. “Not that there should be any backlash.”
Wyn frowned at the spell lines, trying to read them. It had been so long, and he’d never had any practice at this sort of advanced magic, but he saw that there were more folds to the spell around one of the anchors, safety mechanisms he faintly recognised. There were also gaps in the spacing—more than four. He frowned at them. “There are pieces missing.”
Rakken shot him a dry look, as if he’d announced that the grass was green. “Obviously, Hallowyn.”
“Because it’s a two-stage spell,” Irokoi said.
“Which even if you hadn’t already been told such, a fledgling should have the wit to see.”
Irokoi ignored Rakken. “The first stage will help us with the second, when we have all the bits for it. Can’t do one without the other. That’s the trouble with things linking together. We need a lot of power. Otherwise obviously I wouldn’t be using unborn people for extra resonance.” He nodded at Hetta, who gave a dubious nod in return.
“We are breaking a curse laid by the High King.” Rakken’s words were sober.
“Well, more like finding a loophole in it,” Irokoi added. “Honestly, if we didn’t have the power of a faeland to draw on, I don’t think this would be possible.” He grinned at Wyn. “Thank goodness you followed my advice.”
Wyn had interpreted that bit of crypticness correctly, then, in the undersea; Irokoi hadn’t been surprised by Hetta’s pregnancy. He narrowed his eyes at Koi; his brother was keeping far too many things from them still.
When Irokoi had them arranged to his satisfaction, he triggered the spell. Lines of connection sprang forth between them, a space gaping where Cat should have been. Blood to blood.
The spell drew on them all, a heady thing, the magic glittering like a whirlpool, washing around the circle in a storm.
Cinnamon on a sea wind. Catsmere’s storm-scent was warm-edged with spice, like his own, and it bloomed into being as the air warped. Power built, and that gap began to beat against the rhythm of the magic, like the wind pulling on a kite string.
The space jerked one last time, and then the spell collapsed.
Cat was on her hands and knees, panting, her wings a mess of broken feathers and dripping blood. The Maelstrom’s magic crawled over her, setting Wyn’s teeth on edge, and for a heartbeat he was frozen by the memory of the storm snapping his wingbones like toothpicks.
Rakken had already reached Cat by the time Wyn broke free of his paralysis. Rakken helped her fold into a sitting position. One of her wings hung at an unnatural angle, and she held her left arm gingerly and breathed in the careful way that Wyn recognised because he too knew how it felt to breathe through broken ribs. Blood dripped from her hairline—her hair too dark to make the wound obvious—smearing one of her eyes shut. There was so much blood it was difficult to tell the full extent of her injuries.
But she was alive.
Her expression was achingly familiar, the quick, assessing way she scanned her surroundings, giving nothing away of her own emotions as she took in her brothers all arrayed about her. Oh, Cat.
“How long have I been gone?” she asked.
“Sixty-seven days, nine hours, and thirty-two minutes, in mortal time,” Rakken said, and his voice had cracks in it. His eyes glowed as the words spilled out of him. “How could you, Cat? How could you?”
“Someone had to see to the safety of ThousandSpire.” Cat fixed on Irokoi. “Is it still in stasis? Did you find some other way?”
“That someone did not have to be you alone!”
“I didn’t stop you entering the Maelstrom alone, Mouse, when you judged the risk worth it.” There was an old bitterness to the words, a bone that had been picked at many times before.
Wyn had never seen the twins at such intense odds before, and watching them glare daggers at each other felt akin to the sun faltering in its arc.
Rakken’s lips drew back from his teeth, but he bit back whatever retort he’d been about to make, remembering his audience. The twins turned, the public facade of unity firmly back in place, though Wyn knew it would disappear the instant the two of them were alone again. Rakken’s wings still vibrated with anger.
Cat sought out Irokoi again. “The Spires?”
“The curse holds. But there’s no one anchoring the faeland, with you here.”
“Why did you pull me out, then?” She tried to get up and failed. “The Spires could’ve survived without a ruler, in stasis. It cannot survive with no one to anchor it. Would you see the end of our land, our people?”
“It can survive a little while. And we have a plan for the rest.”
Cat sagged. “There is no one else left. We have exhausted our bloodline, and the land finds us all wanting.”
“There has been a compulsion upon us all that prevented the Spires from choosing freely.” Rakken explained the rest in a tight voice. “Look at me, and I will begin to undo it, though it will take some time. Time which we must use as best we can.” He looked to Irokoi. “Go.”
Irokoi made a face. “Don’t order me about, Mossfeathers, as if it were me who decided on this order of events. But very well. Don’t forget to gather up Set in the meantime. Ask him to explain it to you,” he added at Cat’s sound of inquiry before sweeping away on wings of midnight.
Cat rubbed her head with her good hand. “Interesting, but first this, I think.” She grimly attempted to straighten her trailing wing. The low buzz of the Maelstrom’s energy spun in eddies at the movement. “Dislocated rather than broken. Mouse?”
Rakken felt along the bone and nodded. “Yes.” He made a sharp, jerking motion and Cat hissed, her face pale as he put the joint back into place. She swallowed and put out an imperious hand. Rakken helped her to her feet. Her wings still hung oddly, feathers torn off or bent akilter in many places and she moved gingerly, as if she didn’t trust her body not to betray her. She leaned on Rakken for support despite the tension still singing between the two.
Her gaze locked with Wyn’s.
“Hallowyn.”
He flinched. “You knew I wouldn’t take the throne, even when I d
id not,” he said.
Her eyes glittered. He’d never seen her angry like this before, or at least, not at him. There was more than mere rage in her, and the deeper, colder emotion spiked her words when she spoke: disappointment. “It was obvious where your heart lay. You would not choose Faerie over Mortal. I cannot even blame you for it. You are what you are, Hallowyn.”
“Can you forgive me?” He shouldn’t ask, and especially not now, when she was so newly emerged from the storm, every movement so evidently paining her.
She weighed him. “If ThousandSpire rises once more, yes. If it falls, then no. I understand, but no.”
He swallowed. He didn’t think he would forgive himself in that case either.
Cat’s gaze flicked to Hetta, and her eyes widened. “You are with child, Lord Valstar.”
“Er, yes,” said Hetta, and then, with some exasperation, “Can you tell just by looking?”
Cat smiled, genuine. “It’s because it’s my brother’s child, and you used the shared blood to call to me,” Cat said. “A child, Hallowyn! I will have to teach them to fight,” she told him matter-of-factly. “For you will be of no use in such things.”
“I wasn’t intending that they should live in a world where they need to know such things,” Wyn said, though he could not keep from smiling in return.
Her smile faded. “They will be greater fae and half human. The world wasn’t made for such, so you must prepare them to face it.” Her expression shadowed. “Set will not react well to this news; she will see them as competition.”
“If only we could be sure to tell her, it would make for excellent bait,” Rakken said idly.
Wyn stiffened. “No.”
Cat was frowning between them in confusion, and Hetta looked much too thoughtful.
“Where do we think Aroset is right now?” Hetta asked. “Could she still be in Meridon? Or in Greymark, since that’s where all those reports about wing worshippers have come from? It seems very unfair if she’s started a cult in the human world, but if she has, presumably she’s paying some attention to mortal news.” She met Wyn’s eyes. “She might come find us, at the Conclave.”