The sky was cloudless, the streets full of chatter and life.
Cassian kept scanning, a slow rotation over Velaris.
The river beneath me remained steady, but I could feel it roiling, as if trying to flee from— “From the sea,” I breathed. Cassian’s gaze shot straight ahead, to the river before us, to the towering cliffs in the distance that marked the raging waves where it met the ocean.
And there, on the horizon, a smear of black. Swift-moving—spreading wider as it grew closer.
“Tell me those are birds,” I said. My power flooded my veins, and I curled my fingers into fists, willing it to calm, to steady—
“There’s no Illyrian patrol that’s supposed to know about this place … ,” he said, as if it were an answer. His gaze cut to me. “We’re going back to the town house right now.”
The smear of black separated, fracturing into countless figures. Too big for birds. Far too big. I said, “You have to sound the alarm—”
But people were. Some were pointing, some were shouting.
Cassian reached for me, but I jumped back. Ice danced at my fingertips, wind howled in my blood. I’d pick them off one by one— “Get Azriel and Amren—”
They’d reached the sea cliffs. Countless, long-limbed flying creatures, some bearing soldiers in their arms … An invading host. “Cassian.”
But an Illyrian blade had appeared in Cassian’s hand, twin to the one across his back. A fighting knife now shone in the other. He held them both out to me. “Get back to the town house—right now.”
I most certainly would not go. If they were flying, I could use my power to my advantage: freeze their wings, burn them, break them. Even if there were so many, even if—
So fast, as if they were carried on a fell wind, the force reached the outer edges of the city. And unleashed arrows upon the shrieking people rushing for cover in the streets. I grabbed his outstretched weapons, the cool metal hilts hissing beneath my forge-hot palms.
Cassian lifted his hand into the air. Red light exploded from his Siphon, blasting up and away—forming a hard wall in the sky above the city, directly in the path of that oncoming force.
He ground his teeth, grunting as the winged legion slammed into his shield. As if he felt every impact.
The translucent red shield shoved out farther, knocking them back—
We both watched in mute horror as the creatures lunged for the shield, arms out—
They were not just any manner of faerie. Any rising magic in me sputtered and went out at the sight of them.
They were all like the Attor.
All long-limbed, gray-skinned, with serpentine snouts and razor-sharp teeth. And as the legion of its ilk punched through Cassian’s shield as if it were a cobweb, I beheld on their spindly gray arms gauntlets of that bluish stone I’d seen on Rhys, glimmering in the sun.
Stone that broke and repelled magic. Straight from the unholy trove of the King of Hybern.
One after one after one, they punched through his shield.
Cassian sent another wall barreling for them. Some of the creatures peeled away and launched themselves upon the outskirts of the city, vulnerable outside of his shield. The heat that had been building in my palms faded to clammy sweat.
People were shrieking, fleeing. And I knew his shields would not hold—
“GO!” Cassian roared. I lurched into motion, knowing he likely lingered because I stayed, that he needed Azriel and Amren and—
High above us, three of them slammed into the dome of the red shield. Clawing at it, ripping through layer after layer with those stone gauntlets.
That’s what had delayed the king these months: gathering his arsenal. Weapons to fight magic, to fight High Fae who would rely on it—
A hole ripped open, and Cassian threw me to the ground, shoving me against the marble railing, his wings spreading wide over me, his legs as solid as the bands of carved rock at my back—
Screams on the bridge, hissing laughter, and then—
A wet, crunching thud.
“Shit,” Cassian said. “Shit—”
He moved a step, and I lunged from under him to see what it was, who it was—
Blood shone on the white marble bridge, sparkling like rubies in the sun.
There, on one of those towering, elegant lampposts flanking the bridge …
Her body was bent, her back arched on the impact, as if she were in the throes of passion.
Her golden hair had been shorn to the skull. Her golden eyes had been plucked out.
She was twitching where she had been impaled on the post, the metal pole straight through her slim torso, gore clinging to the metal above her.
Someone on the bridge vomited, then kept running.
But I could not break my stare from the golden queen. Or from the Attor, who swept through the hole it had made and alighted atop the blood-soaked lamppost.
“Regards,” it hissed, “of the mortal queens. And Jurian.” Then the Attor leaped into flight, fast and sleek—heading right for the theater district we’d left.
Cassian had pressed me back down against the bridge—and he surged toward the Attor. He halted, remembering me, but I rasped, “Go.”
“Run home. Now.”
That was the final order—and his good-bye as he shot into the sky after the Attor, who had already disappeared into the screaming streets.
Around me, hole after hole was punched through that red shield, those winged creatures pouring in, dumping the Hybern soldiers they had carried across the sea.
Soldiers of every shape and size—lesser faeries.
The golden queen’s gaping mouth was opening and closing like a fish on land. Save her, help her—
My blood. I could—
I took a step. Her body slumped.
And from wherever in me that power originated, I felt her death whisper past.
The screams, the beating wings, the whoosh and thud of arrows erupted in the sudden silence.
I ran. I ran for my side of the Sidra, for the town house. I didn’t trust myself to winnow—could barely think around the panic barking through my head. I had minutes, perhaps, before they hit my street. Minutes to get there and bring as many inside with me as I could. The house was warded. No one would get in, not even these things.
Faeries were rushing past, racing for shelter, for friends and family. I hit the end of the bridge, the steep hills rising up—
Hybern soldiers were already atop the hill, at the two Palaces, laughing at the screams, the pleading as they broke into buildings, dragging people out. Blood dribbled down the cobblestones in little rivers.
They had done this. Those queens had … had given this city of art and music and food over to these … monsters. The king must have used the Cauldron to break its wards.
A thunderous boom rocked the other side of the city, and I went down at the impact, blades flying, hands ripping open on the cobblestones. I whirled toward the river, scrambling up, lunging for my weapons.
Cassian and Azriel were both in the skies now. And where they flew, those winged creatures died. Arrows of red and blue light shot from them, and those shields—
Twin shields of red and blue merged, sizzling, and slammed into the rest of the aerial forces. Flesh and wings tore, bone melted—
Until hands encased in stone tumbled from the sky. Only hands. Clattering on rooftops, splashing into the river. All that was left of them—what two Illyrian warriors had worked their way around.
But there were countless more who had already landed. Too many. Roofs were wrenched apart, doors shattered, screaming rising and then silenced—
This was not an attack to sack the city. It was an extermination.
And rising up before me, merely a few blocks down, the Rainbow of Velaris was bathed in blood.
The Attor and his ilk had converged there.
As if the queens had told him where to strike; where in Velaris would be the most defenseless. The beating heart of the city.
Where was Rhys, where was my mate—
Across the river, thunder boomed again.
And it was not Cassian, or Azriel, who held the other side of the river. But Amren.
Her slim hands had only to point, and soldiers would fall—fall as if their own wings failed them. They slammed into the streets, thrashing, choking, clawing, shrieking, just as the people of Velaris had shrieked.
I whipped my head to the Rainbow a few blocks away—left unprotected. Defenseless.
The street before me was clear, the lone safe passage through hell.
A female screamed inside the artists’ quarter. And I knew my path.
I flipped my Illyrian blade in my hand and winnowed into the burning and bloody Rainbow.
This was my home. These were my people.
If I died defending them, defending that small place in the world where art thrived …
Then so be it.
And I became darkness, and shadow, and wind.
I winnowed into the edge of the Rainbow as the first of the Hybern soldiers rounded its farthest corner, spilling onto the river avenue, shredding the cafés where I had lounged and laughed. They did not see me until I was upon them.
Until my Illyrian blade cleaved through their heads, one after another.
Six went down in my wake, and as I halted at the foot of the Rainbow, staring up into the fire and blood and death … Too many. Too many soldiers.
I’d never make it, never kill them all—
But there was a young female, green-skinned and lithe, an ancient, rusted bit of pipe raised above her shoulder. Standing her ground in front of her storefront—a gallery. People crouched inside the shop were sobbing.
Before them, laughing at the faerie, at her raised scrap of metal, circled five winged soldiers. Playing with her, taunting her.
Still she held the line. Still her face did not crumple. Paintings and pottery were shattered around her. And more soldiers were landing, spilling down, butchering—
Across the river, thunder boomed—Amren or Cassian or Azriel, I didn’t know.
The river.
Three soldiers spotted me from up the hill. Raced for me.
But I ran faster, back for the river at the foot of the hill, for the singing Sidra.
I hit the edge of the quay, the water already stained with blood, and slammed my foot down in a mighty stomp.
And as if in answer, the Sidra rose.
I yielded to that thrumming power inside my bones and blood and breath. I became the Sidra, ancient and deep. And I bent it to my will.
I lifted my blades, willing the river higher, shaping it, forging it.
Those Hybern soldiers stopped dead in their tracks as I turned toward them.
And wolves of water broke from behind me.
The soldiers whirled, fleeing.
But my wolves were faster. I was faster as I ran with them, in the heart of the pack.
Wolf after wolf roared out of the Sidra, as colossal as the one I had once killed, pouring into the streets, racing upward.
I made it five steps before the pack was upon the soldiers taunting the shop owner.
I made it seven steps before the wolves brought them down, water shoving down their throats, drowning them—
I reached the soldiers, and my blade sang as I severed their choking heads from their bodies.
The shopkeeper was sobbing as she recognized me, her rusted bar still raised. But she nodded—only once.
I ran again, losing myself amongst my water-wolves. Some of the soldiers were taking to the sky, flapping upward, backtracking.
So my wolves grew wings, and talons, and became falcons and hawks and eagles.
They slammed into their bodies, their armor, drenching them. The airborne soldiers, realizing they hadn’t been drowned, halted their flight and laughed—sneering.
I lifted a hand skyward, and clenched my fingers into a fist.
The water soaking them, their wings, their armor, their faces … It turned to ice.
Ice that was so cold it had existed before light, before the sun had warmed the earth. Ice of a land cloaked in winter, ice from the parts of me that felt no mercy, no sympathy for what these creatures had done and were doing to my people.
Frozen solid, dozens of the winged soldiers fell to the earth as one. And shattered upon the cobblestones.
My wolves raged around me, tearing and drowning and hunting. And those that fled them, those that took to the skies—they froze and shattered; froze and shattered. Until the streets were laden with ice and gore and broken bits of wing and stone.
Until the screaming of my people stopped, and the screams of the soldiers became a song in my blood. One of the soldiers rose up above the brightly painted buildings … I knew him.
The Attor was flapping, frantic, blood of the innocent coating his gray skin, his stone gauntlets. I sent an eagle of water shooting for him, but he was quicker, nimble.
He evaded my eagle, and my hawk, and my falcon, soaring high, clawing his way through the air. Away from me, my power—from Cassian and Azriel, holding the river and the majority of the city, away from Amren, using whatever dark power she possessed to send so many droves of them crashing down without visible injury.
None of my friends saw the Attor sailing up, sailing free.
It would fly back to Hybern—to the king. It had chosen to come here, to lead them. For spite. And I had no doubt that the golden, lioness-queen had suffered at its hands. As Clare had.
Where are you?
Rhys’s voice sounded distantly in my head, through the sliver in my shield.
WHERE ARE YOU?
The Attor was getting away. With each heartbeat, it flew higher and higher—
WHERE—
I sheathed the Illyrian blade and fighting knife through my belt and scrambled to pick up the arrows that had fallen on the street. Shot at my people. Ash arrows, coated in familiar greenish poison. Bloodbane.
I’m exactly where I need to be, I said to Rhys.
And then I winnowed into the sky.
CHAPTER
59
I winnowed to a nearby rooftop, an ash arrow clenched in either hand, scanning where the Attor was high above, flapping—
FEYRE.
I slammed a mental shield of adamant up against that voice; against him.
Not now. Not this moment.
I could vaguely feel him pounding against that shield. Roaring at it. But even he could not get in.
The Attor was mine.
In the distance, rushing toward me, toward Velaris, a mighty darkness devoured the world. Soldiers in its path did not emerge again.
My mate. Death incarnate. Night triumphant.
I spotted the Attor again, veering toward the sea, toward Hybern, still over the city.
I winnowed, throwing my awareness toward it like a net, spearing mind to mind, using the tether like a rope, leading me through time and distance and wind—
I latched onto the oily smear of its malice, pinpointing my being, my focus onto the core of it. A beacon of corruption and filth.
When I emerged from wind and shadow, I was right atop the Attor.
It shrieked, wings curving as I slammed into it. As I plunged those poisoned ash arrows through each wing. Right through the main muscle.
The Attor arched in pain, its forked tongue cleaving the air between us. The city was a blur below, the Sidra a mere stream from the height.
In the span of a heartbeat, I wrapped myself around the Attor. I became a living flame that burned everywhere I touched, became unbreakable as the adamant wall inside my mind.
Shrieking, the Attor thrashed against me—but its wings, with those arrows, with my grip …
Free fall.
Down into the world. Into blood and pain. The wind tore at us.
The Attor could not break free of my flaming grasp. Or from my poisoned arrows skewering its wings. Laming him
. Its burning skin stung my nose.
As we fell, my dagger found its way into my hand.
The darkness consuming the horizon shot closer—as if spotting me.
Not yet.
Not yet.
I angled my dagger over the Attor’s bony, elongated rib cage. “This is for Rhys,” I hissed in its pointed ear.
The reverberation of steel on bone barked into my hand.
Silvery blood warmed my fingers. The Attor screamed.
I yanked out my dagger, blood flying up, splattering my face.
“This is for Clare.”
I plunged my blade in again, twisting.
Buildings took form. The Sidra ran red, but the sky was empty—free of soldiers. So were the streets.
The Attor was screaming and hissing, cursing and begging, as I ripped free the blade.
I could make out people; make out their shapes. The ground swelled up to meet us. The Attor was bucking so violently it was all I could do to keep it in my forge-hot grip. Burning skin ripped away, carried above us.
“And this,” I breathed, leaning close to say the words into its ear, into its rotted soul. I slid my dagger in a third time, relishing the splintering of bones and flesh. “This is for me.”
I could count the cobblestones. See Death beckoning with open arms.
I kept my mouth beside its ear, close as a lover, as our reflection in a pool of blood became clear. “I’ll see you in hell,” I whispered, and left my blade in its side.
Wind rippled the blood upon the cobblestones mere inches away.
And I winnowed out, leaving the Attor behind.
I heard the crack and splatter, even as I sifted through the world, propelled by my own power and the velocity of my plummet. I emerged a few feet away—my body taking longer than my mind to catch up.
My feet and legs gave out, and I rocked back into the wall of a pink-painted building behind me. So hard the plaster dented and cracked against my spine, my shoulders.
I panted, trembling. And on the street ahead—what lay broken and oozing on the cobblestones … The Attor’s wings were a twisted ruin. Beyond that, scraps of armor, splintered bone, and burned flesh were all that remained.
That wave of darkness, Rhysand’s power, at last hit my side of the river.
A Court of Mist and Fury Page 53