That was when Isadora flew straight into the air.
A communal gasp tore through the crowd, a woman screamed and the birds in their cages went nuts, flapping and screeching desperately. Galia had her hand extended to hold Isadora frozen in the air. The little Sparrow had woken.
I cursed. I couldn’t prick her back to sleep while she was in the air. Ryan arrived at my elbow with a questioning look. I motioned for him to wait.
‘Silence!’ Dren yelled and the room fell to a terrified hush.
‘Not impervious after all,’ Galia said. ‘But her mind is still closed to me.’ The woman was studying Isadora with a wicked smile. ‘Just like pet’s.’
‘No,’ Dren breathed.
‘It is,’ Galia laughed. ‘You fooled us, poor pet.’
‘Gods above,’ Ryan whispered beside me.
‘You know her?’ I asked.
‘Yes. She … didn’t look like that.’
I started weaving closer to the thrones. Ryan followed.
‘It was you, then.’ Galia was still addressing Isadora. ‘You killed twelve warders in this palace.’
A rustle of outrage from the warders in the room.
‘It’s not possible,’ Dren argued. ‘She’s defective.’
‘Don’t be obtuse,’ Galia snapped.
I caught sight of Isadora’s face. She was impossibly cold. If I were to cut open her chest I would find a heart made of chiseled ice sitting in the cavity. Softly, very softly, she said, ‘It was so easy to kill them. Warders are such cowards.’
The hall went still.
Dren and Galia stared at her and she looked right back, eyes a deeper red than ever. Red like vein’s blood. My heart pounded in a very unfamiliar way.
‘We can’t let them kill her,’ Ryan whispered urgently.
Leaning close, I whispered, ‘When this all turns sour, get your friends and family out of the palace and take them to the wharfs under cover of dark. There you’ll find a tunnel – a way out of the city. Say I sent you.’
‘You haven’t told me your name.’
‘I have a feeling you’ll soon learn it.’
‘You’re going to regret that,’ Galia told Isadora. ‘You’re going to regret everything: your entire life, your very existence in this world.’
I watched as my bondmate writhed in the air with sudden pain.
No. Not my mate.
Blood trickled from her ears and nose and eyes. What the fuck were they doing to her? I didn’t stop to think – I smashed my tray into a nearby guard’s face and blood splattered onto the marble. The sudden violence pushed everyone past their stress limits and they started scrabbling for the exits. I melted into the chaotic melee, forcing my way towards the Mad Ones. I had to stop them somehow from breaking into Izzy’s mind –
A single, ear-splitting scream tore from her lips. Lips I had kissed as I sheathed a knife in her heart. She dropped to the ground and crumpled like a tiny, broken doll.
And Dren and Galia turned as one to me.
They knew.
They had broken through whatever natural shield Isadora had over her mind, and they’d learned all that she was and everything she knew of me. My body locked. I couldn’t move a muscle. I was too late, unable now to prick Izzy back to sleep. We were both at the mercy of the Mad Ones.
The whole room froze and I realised I was not the only one who’d been locked. Everyone – all the guests, all the guards, all the servants – were bound by warder magic so heavy that I could feel its prickle in the air. The birds dropped dead in their cages, and the absence of their screeching was like someone had sucked the sound from the world.
An invisible hand dragged me forwards until I stood next to Isadora. She’d regained consciousness but looked drowsy with pain as she struggled to sit. I tried to reach for her but my body was no longer mine.
‘This might be the best day of my life,’ Dren crowed.
Galia was just as delighted. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to introduce two very famous people.’
No. No no no.
She turned all the bodies in the room to face Isadora and me; their feet moved with a collective, military step that echoed. Then Galia spun the two of us to face them and it was hideous, it was a puppet show, not a single set of eyes able to blink of their own accord. We just stared and stared and waited.
‘Before you stands Falco of Sancia, dethroned Emperor of Kaya, and the rebel Sparrow of the South herself.’
Shock hit, and disbelief. They didn’t need to move for me to feel it, it was so potent.
‘Both are enemies of Kaya,’ Galia went on, her anger rising. ‘And they will be punished for their crimes against our proud, exultant nation.’
That was rich.
‘Death is too good for such destructive terrorists,’ she said, appealing to the crowd, though for what I had no idea, since not one of them could show her any agreement. ‘Death is freedom. No, instead we must seek a more apt punishment.’
No doubt something humiliating, torturous and traumatic, just for fun.
‘Emperor Feckless,’ Galia mused. ‘The man of a thousand faces. What an embarrassment you’ve been to us.’ She glanced at her mate. ‘What kind of man doesn’t recognise his own reflection?’
‘The master of disguise inevitably forgets his true face,’ Dren agreed.
They were rifling through my soul and speaking the truths they found. I’d never felt more naked, more revealed, more like an empty husk.
‘Their punishment is too precious to waste,’ I heard Galia murmur. ‘Let’s think on it.’
‘The dungeons then, for now.’
The Mad Ones gestured and the world went dark.
Isadora
I woke slowly to the sound of soft voices floating around me. My head pounded, trying to crack through its own skull.
‘So what did you do?’
‘Failed to bring you in.’
‘Oh, well, then I’m rather glad you’re in here.’
Blinking carefully, I managed to slide my aching body upright against a wall. When my vision returned I saw a dungeon cell, and in cells on either side of me sat Falco and Gwendolyn, chatting with no apparent concern for their whereabouts.
‘She wakes,’ Falco said.
I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the ache. I’d need my wits about me for this, whatever this was. Being held captive between two of my greatest enemies. Who were apparently completely at ease in each other’s company.
‘What are you doing here?’ I managed to ask Falco without looking at him.
He smiled flippantly. ‘Saving you. Obviously.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you know what I know. Which is now also what the Mad Ones know.’
Of course. I glanced at him surreptitiously, trying to weigh how I felt. There was no longer a tide pulling me to him. My skin didn’t itch to touch his. My lips didn’t tingle with his absence. But my heart held an endless weariness I now understood was the lack of his heart alongside it.
I turned my thoughts to more important things, taking in the prison cell and its trappings. ‘They don’t know everything,’ I muttered.
‘What do you mean?’
I couldn’t mention anything to do with our friends or the tunnel with the Viper right there, so I met his eyes. ‘They don’t know what’s important.’
He understood, the fear that had clouded his expression easing. ‘How?’
I swallowed and shrugged. I didn’t know how to describe the battle that had taken place in my mind. When Dren and Galia had waged an assault on my thoughts I had cloaked myself in the thickest, calmest lake I was able to conjure. I made every surface reflective and gave them back their own thoughts. When they went down one path I flooded it. They turned down another and I flooded it too. And yet I hadn’t been able to block everything. They were too strong. They found Falco, despite how I fought. They found him because he was right there at the surface, impossibly raw. But I wouldn’t let them have anything else
. Never would I let them have what mattered. So to distract them from the people currently fleeing through the tunnel, I had given them me. My childhood, my life, my fury. All the secrets I’d kept for so many years, the ones I had shared with no one. I gave them my cage, even though it was giving them my very soul.
And I would give them my soul, if it bought Finn, Jonah and Penn’s freedom. I would give it freely. Only I wasn’t sure who would take that deal. There wasn’t much of my soul left.
I turned to Gwendolyn. ‘You let Penn go. Why?’
She studied me, then glanced at Falco. ‘You wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Try us,’ Falco said.
‘I couldn’t allow myself to know I would do it before I did.’
I stared at her, confused. Then it sank in, the only thing such a statement could mean.
‘You’ve surprised me,’ Gwendolyn said. ‘And few are able to.’
‘Why?’ I demanded, so sick of physical appearance being all anyone saw or judged. ‘Because I look small and weak I should also behave so? That thinking will be the downfall of even the strongest.’
The Viper inclined her head. ‘You must prepare yourselves,’ she warned. ‘They will be planning something very bad for you.’
Falco met my eyes for only an instant before turning away. ‘We have already known something very bad,’ he said. ‘I dare them to try.’
And though he hadn’t meant to, he bolstered me. Fortified my edges, my shields, the surface of my lake. His courage inspired my own. I dare them to try.
‘When the time comes, remember – it’s not as far as it looks,’ Gwendolyn said.
We had no time to question what she meant. The Mad Ones had come. They blacked out the world once more, and this time when I woke it was to find …
A cage, hanging over a chasm.
And the end of courage.
The end of calm.
Chapter Fourteen
Ava
In the dark we crawled. It was a bad place, this tunnel. A bad night. People wept as we led them through the narrow space, the blackness a heavy veil upon us. Some panicked, tried to get out but there was no going back, only forward, and slowly.
Finn, Jonah and Penn had already led a group of a hundred people through and Osric and I were bringing up the rear of the second group we’d managed to wrangle: another two hundred.
Only three hundred citizens of Sancia. Pitifully few. We would keep going back for more but not until tomorrow night, and we would only have time to do so many trips before the warders discovered us.
As dawn broke we emerged, Osric and I the last two out. The crumbling cliffs broke away beneath us but we were close enough to sea level that scrabbling our way down was easy enough. From here we would head north along the rocky coastline.
An hour or so later Osric made his way back along the long line of weary people. I was at the back, making sure no one was left behind. ‘We’re far enough now,’ he informed me. ‘It’s safe to connect you to your husband. Tell him to hurry.’
I nodded and a thrill quickened my weary heart. Osric closed his eyes and placed his hands on my temples. A tingling sensation ran down my spine, and then it hit me.
A tidal wave of pain. Excitement fled; there was only bone-deep terror. The girls? I screamed through our throbbing bond. Where are our children?
But he couldn’t answer; he was a maelstrom.
Osric let me go and I staggered to the ground, a guttural moan pulled from my lungs. I was almost blinded by the pain but I squinted up at the warder and gasped, ‘He’s dying. My husband is dying, and I have no idea where my daughters are.’
Thorne
For days and nights I ran, Howl by my side. Up through ice, through a cold deeper than any, flanked by wild, howling wolves.
I had traced the scent of my family through the city, slowed by soldiers who either attacked or offered help. Not all the soldiers of Vjort followed Sigurd – some still remained loyal to Ambrose and me. I followed the trail to the temple where Finn and I were married, my heart swelling in relief. Of course this was where they’d come.
But the temple was empty and the old couple was dead. The scent had gone cold, and though I hunted every inch for a sign that they’d been here, I found nothing, only the broken bodies of the people who’d married my wife and I. Which meant one thing: to find my family and avenge my King, I needed my berserker army.
So through ice I ran until I reached the creatures under the mountain and bid them follow me south to war.
We stopped on a hill overlooking the city wall, taking a knee to catch our breaths. Goran, once king of the berserkers and now my second, crouched beside me to survey Vjort. He was twice my size, a hulking boulder in the dark. He bore that rough, earthy scent of strength and threat, of animal, but never again would I be bothered by his scent; I took pride in knowing his strength belonged to me.
‘Entrances?’
‘The main gate is to the south. There are several further points of entry both east and west. All are guarded by no more than a few men but have warning bells to alert the barracks inside.’
‘The number of men?’
‘Ten thousand. But not all with Sigurd.’
‘How many with him?’
I shrugged.
‘Ten thousand, then.’ Goran grunted.
Against one hundred berserkers.
‘We take Sigurd and the six who work his trade and I guarantee the rest will fall to us.’ Civil war in Pirenti was almost nonexistent, and despite Ambrose’s noble beliefs about violence, at least our means of ascension to the throne caused the country to respect and fear its leader, forestalling any uprisings or dissent. We were, at heart, a loyal nation. It took a large disruption for someone like Sigurd to mount an open rebellion.
‘They will fall,’ came Goran’s reply. Sigurd might feel safe rebelling now, but by dawn he most definitely would not. A lesson was coming for him.
There was a gaping wound in my chest that I would fill with blood; the treachery of disloyal men had now taken two fathers from me.
The plan was so simple it was hardly a plan at all. We walked straight up to the north gate in full view of the sentries on the wall and waited for them to ring the bells before we smashed our way through the locks. Let them know we were coming, let them all know.
My dozen wolves lifted their heads and howled our approach, long and chilling into the night. They flanked Goran and I at the forefront of our army with Howl at their head. I heard men shouting, saw them running. The bells had reached the barracks in the distance so it wouldn’t be long before the troops organised. I had little fear that they would try to fight us. Pirenti men didn’t fight berserkers. Pirenti men hoped and prayed that berserkers would fight with them and for them, but never against them.
We walked straight for Iceheart’s.
The Jarl was nowhere to be found tonight. I signaled and Goran took his men inside to kill every soldier. This was where the business was done, where the women were sold, where Sigurd built his new empire. So it would be the first place to fall. They fought back, but not for long. Once the tavern was empty of the living, I burned it to the ground.
We surged through the streets; it had begun to snow. Past the square in which I’d committed my first executions. That night was clearer in my memory than any other. I remembered swinging my axe into the necks of those four men, I remembered their expressions, their mouths and eyes, the way their blood had fallen on the snow, the scent of their fear and then their deaths. I remembered how I’d felt that night, how heavy with despair, and with a cool kind of detachment I realised I felt no such thing now, on this eve of many, many more executions. I felt nothing, only hunger.
Da spoke up then, but not in the way I’d come to expect from him. He stalked through the snow at my side, and said, ‘Easy, son. We kill the guilty – the traitors, the threats, those who have harmed or seek to harm us. We don’t kill for pride, and we don’t kill the innocent.’
He stopped
in front of me, staying my feet. Then my father said, ‘Strength is not bloodlust.’
My mouth twisted into a bitter grimace. I felt betrayed. After all these months of you poking and prodding and pushing me to be like you – to be ruthless and brutal – now you pull away scared?
I shook my head and strode forward, leaving him behind. My real father was Ambrose and he was dead. I needed no other and never had. Thorne was soft after all, just like Sigurd and the rest of them, like all but my berserkers and me.
We reached the castle and I waited at the bottom of the steps. By now there was a wide crowd of onlookers. Contingents of military lined the street, waiting for commands. Men and women had come from their houses, drawn by the promise of violence.
‘Fetch the traitor,’ I said. Goran smiled and took the wide stone steps three at a time.
He was not long in the castle. Soon Sigurd emerged and, after only a slight hesitation, descended to meet me. He was flanked by a dozen of his own men, but the traitor smelled like he was about to piss his breeches in terror. He managed to maintain the mocking act, pausing several steps above me. ‘Princeling.’
I clasped my hands behind my back. ‘Where are the royal princesses and the Lady Roselyn?’
Sigurd frowned. ‘Lost your women, princeling? Don’t look at me – we couldn’t find them either.’
‘And the King?’
The Jarl leant forward, holding my eyes. ‘I killed him. Nice and slow, while he begged for mercy.’
My lips curled, baring my teeth. The wolves sensed my intent and let out low growls. ‘My berserkers want blood,’ I told Sigurd. ‘Shall I set them free to destroy this cursed city once and for all?’
‘I have ten thousand men at my back.’
I turned and surveyed the street. ‘Actually,’ I murmured, ‘they look as though they’re at my back.’
Sigurd made a gesture to the soldiers who’d been with him in the castle. ‘Sound the order to attack.’
I looked up at these soldiers. They were watching the berserkers spread out behind me, and glancing at each other uncertainly. I met the eyes of the one in front, Sigurd’s right hand. ‘Feel free,’ I told him. He hesitated, weighing us up, weighing it all, and then he bowed low to me. The rest of Sigurd’s soldiers were quick to do the same.
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