44
Lyana
Lyana couldn’t move as the building behind her started to crumble. All she could do was stare as the rocks spilled loose, slowly at first, one dropping and rattling across the street, then another and another, until all at once the entire façade toppled, dropping almost in slow motion as the wall of solid stone made for her head, falling, falling, falling—
Something slammed into her from the side.
Lyana rolled painfully across cobblestone. Arms wrapped around her, holding her to a hard chest and closing her wings. The world disappeared as onyx feathers arched overhead.
“I’ve got you.”
The words were rough, raspy, and gone in a flash.
They reminded her of a dark cave back home.
They made her feel safe.
Two seconds later, they were replaced by a groan as the stones fell. The crunch of bones and the snap of feathers filled her ears. Lyana closed her eyes as though she could make the sounds fade, but they didn’t. The fact that it wasn’t her pain that she heard made it worse. Rafe was crushed, but still, he kept his elbows bent so he held the weight of the debris away from her body, keeping her safe against the ground beneath them. He trembled with the exertion. Another scream tore up his throat.
It was her turn to whisper. “Hold on. Hold on.”
Lyana managed to twist her palms and press them to his chest. The dark shadows receded as the area around her hands shone gold and she pushed her magic beneath his skin, trying to give him strength.
“Hold on.”
He had no breath for words, but it didn’t matter. His magic rose to meet hers, sizzling beneath his skin, so familiar, so forbidden, so frantic, a long-lost lover coming home. Their gazes met fiercely across the subtle shine of power, a moment that extended into infinity.
Then his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed. The weight of a hundred men landed on her as his muscles gave out. Her chest burned beneath the pressure. Spots filled her vision. The last thing she saw was her magic extinguish before the world faded completely.
45
Xander
An ear-piercing silence filled the square as he and the others watched the dust settle—the sort of quiet that made hairs stand on end, that made the heart stop, that made the world slow as though even the open sky were too small to contain the mounting terror.
Reality came back bit by bit.
The ground fell still. Droplets sprinkled across the stones, the pitter-patter repetitive and loud as water continued to splash in the shattered fountain. Sunlight pushed through the ashy cloud, dissipating it. A single stone broke loose and tumbled down the chaotic mound and across the floor, coming to a stop a few seconds later.
Then the first scream sounded.
It took Xander a second to realize it had come from his own throat.
“Lyana!” The word burned, as though claws had cut their way up his neck. Lightning ran down his spine, a jolt so scorching he had no choice but to jump into action. “Lyana!”
Xander flew across the square. Others followed, screaming their own sets of names. Where only minutes before there had been so much light and life, now there was a pile of rubble ten feet high and no telling how many bodies were buried underneath, caught in the crashing tide before they’d had a chance to fly away. He knelt, grabbing a stone in his left hand, his right arm shaking in fury as he tried with no success to pull it rock away. His grip was tight, his muscles strained, but he couldn’t get a good hold with only five fingers instead of ten. Another set of hands quickly came into view, helping him shift the stone. Xander looked up, about to give thanks, when he met the eyes of his captain.
“You should get to safety,” Helen said, though not an ounce of her believed he would. And without prompting, they knelt together to heft another piece of debris.
“Did you send for help?” Xander asked as they worked.
“On their way.”
“My mother?”
“Being notified.”
“Where’s Rafe?”
She didn’t answer.
He looked at her, heart thudding in his chest. “Helen, where’s Rafe?”
His captain’s gaze just slid to the rubble.
Stupid idiot.
Stupid, selfless idiot.
In an instant, Xander understood exactly what his brother had done.
Thank you.
There was nothing to say to Helen after that, to say to anyone. Nothing left but heavy breath and almost silent tears as every able-bodied person in the town square worked to clear the wreckage. The guards arrived shortly, lending their hands to the cause. And then the healer soon after, scurrying to where the recovered bodies had been laid—some barely moving, most horrifyingly still.
Xander had lost count of the stones he’d moved, one after the other after the other, until finally, a shout stopped him.
“Your Highness! Your Highness!”
Xander turned toward the sound. The peddler who had been showing him simple metal bracelets before the earthquake was frantically pulling at stones and tossing panicked glances in his direction. He raced toward the spot, stomach dropping as he saw what the peddler had seen—two pairs of feet intertwined, one wearing rich leather boots and the other elegant lace slippers, the sort not found on the city streets.
Lyana and Rafe.
“Helen!” Xander shouted. “Guards!”
They sped to heed his command, helping to strip the mound, the sight turning more and more gruesome as each rock was pulled away. There was a deep gash in the princess’s calf, but it was nothing compared to the injuries sustained by the raven on top of her. Rafe's black wings were bent and crooked, unnaturally slick in the sun. Snapped bones jutted through his crushed feathers. Water from the fountain splashed across their bodies, carrying streams of red through the cracks in the cobblestones. One of the guards lifted the tip of Rafe’s wing, exposing the bodies underneath.
Xander stepped back with a gasp—not of fear, but of the sort an intruder might make if he’d accidentally stepped into the middle of something he wasn’t supposed to see.
They could have been lovers.
Rafe’s arms, now slack, cradled either side of Lyana's chest, although they must have once held her weight. Her palms were pressed against his abdomen, fingers still gripping the fibers of his shirt. His face was buried in her hair. Hers was nestled against his neck. Their legs were entwined. The entire scene was oddly intimate in a way Xander didn’t quite understand. If not for the blood and the gore, they could have been in a bedroom, doing something else entirely.
The guard gripping Rafe’s broken wing turned a questioning gaze on his prince. But the move was enough to bring them all back to reality as the raven on the ground began to scream—a wild, uncontrolled sound.
“Careful!” Xander snapped at the guards, deflecting his sudden anger to the easiest target as he rushed to his brother’s side. “Rafe, Rafe.”
Grunts and groans were his only response. But as difficult as they were to hear, it was far, far superior to silence. Because it meant Rafe was alive, and that was all Xander needed to know. Because if his brother was alive, he would recover. He always did.
“I want four of your best men to carry him back to his rooms,” Xander said, turning to Helen.
She stepped forward, murmuring so only the closest guard could hear, “You mean to the healers, surely?”
Xander's face hardened. “To his rooms. And not a soul is to disturb him. Understood?”
Suspicion sharpened her eyes, suspicion and defiance, but she held her tongue and nodded, remaining loyal before a crowd, though there would be questions later. Questions about why and how his brother had managed to survive yet another event that had killed so many others.
Xander had no time for that now.
As soon as Rafe was peeled away from the debris and lifted into the sky, he fell to his knees beside the princess, who, unlike his brother, had yet to utter a word. Xander slid
his arm beneath her neck, careful with her head as he raised her torso onto his lap and used his other hand to rub her cheek. Her dark skin was still warm. Her lush lips were parted. Her dress was wet and wrinkled, but there was no obvious injury aside from the gash in her leg.
“Lyana,” he whispered.
Someone passed a wet cloth to him, which he gently pressed against her brow. No breath came in or out of her mouth. Her chest didn’t stir. Her body remained limp.
“Lyana,” he urged more loudly. “Lyana!”
The princess’s eyes opened wide as she inhaled sharply, her body jerking as though returning from the dead. She began to convulse with coughs.
“It’s all right. You're all right,” Xander murmured as he rubbed her back.
Lyana shook her head, opening her mouth to emit only raspy air and shuddering breaths. “What?” she finally sputtered. “Where?”
“There’s been an earthquake,” Xander explained.
She shook her head, blinking rapidly as though trying to clear her senses. She coughed again, but the sound formed a word. “Rafe?”
“He’s fine—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “But where is he? What happened to him?”
Xander paused, taken aback by her first words. “You know?”
How could she possibly know?
Lyana cast him a quick glance before her lids fell, but not fast enough to hide the knowing glint in her eyes. “I mean, good. Good. I’m sorry, I’m so confused. I need Cassi. Where’s Cassi?”
“She wasn’t with us,” Xander said slowly, unsure if Lyana was disoriented or acutely aware as she put her hand to her head and frowned, wincing as if in pain.
“She wasn’t?” the princess asked, voice mystified. Then her eyes widened again. “Oh that’s right. She wasn’t. I'm all mixed up, Xander. Please forgive me…”
She trailed off, taking another deep breath, and tried to stand.
This time, he knew her yelp of pain was real. Xander jumped to his feet, throwing his arm around her waist as her leg gave out and she swayed on her feet, wings fighting to keep her upright.
“Helen,” he called. His captain of the guards was there in a flash, hands clasped behind her back, waiting for orders. “Please take the princess back to the castle and see to it personally that our most skilled healer visits her rooms to check the wound on her leg. Tell my mother I’ll be back soon.”
“My pr—”
“Thank you, Helen,” Xander said, cutting off her protest. “I’ll be home soon.”
She tossed him a tired look and shook her head, but an affectionate smile pulled at her lips because she knew him, and she knew why he was staying. She obeyed, quickly calling a guard who swept the princess off her feet despite her quiet protests and launched into the air.
Xander watched them fly away for a few seconds, unable to fight the knots forming in his gut. Then he did what he needed to do—what his people needed him to do. He pushed his personal turmoil away and returned to the task at hand.
Xander remained in the town square for hours—lifting stones until his fingers began to bleed, letting his people cry on his shoulder, leaning over the bodies piled on the ground, using a wet rag to clear the blood from pale brows, searching for signs of life, and directing the healers to those with the best chances of recovery.
He was a beacon of strength.
A fixed point in the midst of so much chaos.
They needed him, and he held on to that as he fought to stay focused, fought to ignore the image of Rafe and Lyana entwined, the gleam of understanding in her eyes, the questions churning in the back of his mind—questions about what had really happened between these two people who claimed to hate each other, about what had really happened to make a dove pick a raven as her mate.
46
Cassi
Lyana fell asleep soon after the healers left, exhausted from the day and from the gash in her leg, which gave Cassi the chance to finally go looking for some answers. The golden streaks of sun had long since faded from the horizon, and the moon was already rising. Her favorite time of day was here—the time for dreaming.
Cassi pushed through the door connecting their rooms and collapsed in her own bed, body exhausted from the long days in the practice yards, even as her mind whirled with the night’s adventure. She slipped into her spirit form before her eyes had fully closed and turned back immediately, floating through the wall to lean over Lyana, who was out cold. Reaching with her spirit magic, Cassi pushed against Lyana’s soul, trying to sense a change, a new awakening, any sign.
There was nothing.
She frowned and pushed harder, latching on to the energy of her friend’s magic, searching for a new spark, a new strength. Lyana grumbled in her sleep and rolled over, as if she somehow sensed Cassi’s prodding.
With a sigh, Cassi pulled away.
It had to be you, she thought, staring at her friend. It had to.
The earthquake that shook the island had been magic through and through. A pulse of power had blasted through the air, invisible to anyone except those with magic in their veins, and had rattled the spell that kept the isles floating. That happened from time to time, when someone with immense power was born or came into their magic.
It wasn’t Lyana’s birthday yet.
But it had to be her. It just had to.
With a frown, Cassi turned to the window and soared through the curtains into the open sky. There were no answers in Lyana’s rooms, at least none she could find. Instead, she made her way to the royal quarters to check on the other magic-user she knew.
Rafe was lying face down on his bed, wings spread as wide as they could go, bent and bruised, but already looking better. His back rose and fell in a gentle rhythm as he breathed deeply. He faced the balcony, his arms acting as pillows to his head. Deep grooves were etched into his brow, in a scowl even sleep couldn’t quite wipe away.
Cassi reached for his spirit.
It was strong and sturdy. The silvery sparkle of his magic was a warm caress against her soul, but much like Lyana’s, it felt no different than it had every other time she’d touched it. With a sigh, Cassi drifted back into the night, ready to find her king, when a whisper on the breeze made her pause.
“It wasn’t the princess’s fault. It wasn’t either of their faults.”
The voice was Xander’s, annoyed and frustrated in a way the mostly jovial prince had never sounded—not that she knew him very well. Their interactions had been few, but still, the anger in his tone made her curious. As did Lyana’s title on his lips.
“You weren’t there, Mother. There was no time to think how it might look. Rafe risked his life to save my mate. Before I even knew what was happening, they were buried in rubble.”
He was standing in Queen Mariam’s room. Well, not standing so much as pacing. His face was covered in a fine layer of dirt, and blood stained his clothes. The tops of his wings were lowered in exhaustion, but his expression displayed a fiery strength his muscles did not.
“It doesn’t matter how it was,” she icily replied. “It matters how it looked.”
The queen was seated at her vanity table, putting cream on her face, ebony wings perched so only her primary feathers slouched on the ground. Through the mirror, she watched her son as he walked behind her.
Xander paused to run a hand through his hair. “And how did it look? I was there, yet somehow you managed to see something I didn’t from all the way up here.”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Lysander,” she murmured, tilting up her chin as she applied lotion to her neck, her movements so casual they didn’t match the iron in her tone. “So will you one day, if you want to remain king. And while you were diligently tending to your people, they were talking behind your back, whispering about the fire-cursed bastard who was trying to seduce our new queen and lure her into Vesevios’s arms—”
“Mother, that’s ridiculous! Rafe would never—”
“They said he brought the ea
rthquake just so he could have the chance to act a hero. They said he survived where countless others died because his god is giving him power. They said he has us tricked with his magic. They said his very existence in our house is making Taetanos weak.”
“What would you have me do?" he asked. "We can’t succumb to frightened gossip.”
“Frightened gossip has the power to bring a kingdom to its knees,” she told him, and turned in her chair, long skirt dragging as she moved. “Our family has been in power a long time, but it wasn’t always that way. The ravens are loyal, but even loyalty has its limits. Perhaps you should consider that before you decide which side to choose.”
Xander met his mother’s gaze and held it for a minute. Then he released a heavy breath, somewhere between a sigh and a growl, and stalked from the room without another word. Cassi’s focus slid to Queen Mariam, who waited for the door to close before catching her head in her hands, her frigid strength melting away. Her face moved back and forth as her fingers rubbed at her temples, until, with a hiss, she stood. The monarch flattened the wrinkles in her sleeping gown, then she straightened her back and pinched her cheeks, as though even in the privacy of her own chambers she couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness, or any hint of vulnerability.
Cassi left her to the loneliness of her room and slinked back into the night, not completely sure what to make of the encounter. She let it replay in her memory so she could recount every detail, then cleared her thoughts to concentrate on the only soul she needed to find that evening.
“Did you feel it?” she asked as soon as she finished spinning his dream, placing them back in the dreary gray room with walls that loomed.
“I did,” her king replied, sapphire eyes filled with storm clouds, lips drawn in a grim line opposite to the smile spreading hers.
“It was a sign, the sign we’ve been waiting for,” Cassi said, finally letting some of the excitement from the day leak into her tone. In the world above, surrounded by the corpses of ravens, both children and adult, there’d been no place for eagerness. But in this dream, standing wingless by her king’s side, all Cassi could think was that everything they’d been waiting for, everything she’d been working so hard to achieve, was here. She was almost done, almost free from the cage her dual life had become.
The Raven and the Dove Page 26