Another step. He grabbed my wrist and I yanked my arm hard to the side, twisting his instead. Quick and graceful, like Raeth. Silent and purposeful, like Aven. The instant his grip loosened, I pulled my arm back and stepped forward, closing the distance between us and angling the point of the dagger at his throat. We both stopped, breath held.
“Windsbane,” I said, my voice softer and rougher than I meant for it to be. “From your sprite.”
His blue eyes bore into mine. A tiny part of me, a cracked piece of my heart, trembled and melted. The rest wanted to scream and scream. I refused to do either, not now. Maybe after, if I survived, when I was alone—then I could scream until there was nothing left.
“You don’t have the courage to kill me,” he whispered.
“No, I don’t.” I didn’t let myself think about what I was doing. I just acted, the whirlwind of fury and grief and shock and pain driving every movement, and I rammed the dagger as deep into his shoulder as it would go. He gasped and lurched forward, and I yanked the blade out with a tearing sound that almost made me sick. But he stayed on his feet, face draining of color and hand pressed to the wound, and fixed a glare at me that should have made me run.
Instead, I looked past him to the falling prisoners. More and more. “Call them off.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Even if you don’t care about the sirens, there are selkies out there. Your people.”
“They’re as good as dead by now. We all are.”
I lowered my voice, tightening my grip on the knife. “Call them off or your other shoulder’s next. I know how painful windsbane is, remember?”
I could see it eating at him, working its way into his system. The subtle tremor in his breath. But his voice was as steely as mine. “Go stop them yourself, if you care so much.”
I didn’t have time to waste arguing with him. I couldn’t stay here. I cast Moray another look—the sprite was still speechless—and then bolted away, toward clashing weapons as guards turned on one another, loyalties torn. The tense peace between the races breaking down at last.
Into the slaughter. The only way I could think of to stop it—make it happen myself.
“Hania!” Moray broke out of its shock, and I stopped and glanced back to see it dart after me.
Aven said, “Moray.” The sprite paused, hovering midair between us. “Not one more inch. You’re forgetting who you are.”
None of us spoke. I watched Moray, unable to move, waiting. It had known Aven all its life. Aven was its first—oldest—best—friend. Maybe the one friend it’d had before me. What would stop it from turning around if Aven asked it?
Its eyes landed on me, so wide they drowned out the rest of its pained expression. One of the few semi-whole pieces of my heart cracked. Then it turned to Aven.
“You’re forgetting who you are,” it murmured. “I know what Lenairen did, and I know what this Court means to you, but my friend would never do this.”
Aven stiffened, face paling by the second as blood seeped between his fingers and down his arm. His voice turned to a growl. “I spent centuries ensuring you were my sprite just for you to walk away with her?”
Moray’s voice was as quiet and stinging as a whip, but I heard every bit of pain beneath it. “Sprites are not owned.” It turned to me, heaved a long, unsteady breath, and started forward again.
I didn’t move as it drew level with me, and even then I watched it. I had no words, and it didn’t look like it wanted to hear them, so we kept going. There were more important things to do; I could deal with my shock and grief and agony later. But we made it only a few steps before a piercing screech rang through the air, making me duck my head, hands over both ears. It kept going and going, rising and falling, and the earth trembled.
Every movement slowed to a stop, every figure pausing and staring upwards. I saw terror on faces and I knew I should have felt it, but the sound drowned out everything in me.
“What is that?” I gasped.
Aven’s laughter came from behind us, tired and broken. When I dared to glance back, his head was bowed, dark hair slanting across his face. “I told you, we’re all as good as dead.”
“What does that mean?” He was the last person I wanted to ask, but I need answers.
Moray’s gaze looked up ahead. “What happened to Marassa?” it breathed.
Marassa? I’d forgotten about her. I shuddered. “She—I—she fell.” Moray kept silent. “What does she have to do with that?”
I should have used the calm to my advantage. I should have found the surviving prisoners and ushered them to safety. Something. But my knees were fixed.
“Do you know why we’re called the Dragon Court, Hania?”
I shook my head, raising my eyes to the sky like everyone else. To the rolling storm clouds. The shaking and screeching that echoed.
“Marassa is one of the last of an old race. Unless they’re drowned, their magic is released when their common form is killed. Lenairen’s armies hunted them near extinction during the war.”
I swallowed the fear crawling up my throat. “I killed her common form, didn’t I?” Moray nodded. “What’s her other form?”
“Lenairen called them dragons.”
My heart stopped. I looked from the darkening sky to where Moray gaped at Marassa’s limp body impaled on the stake. Once sleek and regal and beautiful, now bloody and broken.
And twitching, like puppet strings pulling at her fingers and heart.
Her mouth was wide open, the source of the earsplitting sound, though the rest of her appeared as dead as before.
Spines pierced through her flesh from the inside out. Long, thin, and jet-black. More and more, along her wrists, her shoulders, her high cheekbones. Shredding the fine fabric of her dress. Hundreds rising in lethal clusters. Her groomed fingernails darkened and lengthened to talons to match them.
Her eyes opened in the same instant the screeching stopped, and after a second of absolute silence she lurched up, talons digging into the wood above her. And began to pull.
The only sound in the graveyard was of tearing flesh as she dragged herself, inch by inch, to the top of the stake. Shreds of bloody flesh scraped along the wood behind her and a fresh wave of nausea mingled with my horror.
My chest burned, and I sucked in a thin, weak lungful of air. In and out. If I didn’t focus on it, I feared I’d stop breathing entirely and never start again.
Marassa wrenched herself free and landed on the ground in a crouch, head bent, dress billowing around her. Cracking echoed through the air, like a hundred breaking bones, and shards of black ripped their way free from either side of her spine. I stumbled, choking on a cry. Moray drifted closer.
The new spines kept lengthening, like the most beautiful, intricate, lethal crystals of ice, climbing into the air with blood rolling down their edges. She had wings—inky-black and built like they were made of ice shards.
Her gaze passed over the graveyard in one quick, graceful sweep, and chaos erupted again. Some people screamed or ran. Some raised weapons. Some bowed to their undead queen. Some dropped to their knees and prayed.
I couldn’t move.
“What kind of magic is that?” I breathed, half-afraid the quiet question would bring her attention to us. I couldn’t look away as she got to her feet, rolled her shoulders like she was loosening stiff joints, and surveyed the nearest group to her with a low snarl.
“A dark kind,” came Raeth’s answer behind me. I jumped and glanced to him, but he raised one finger to his lips before I could speak, keeping his voice a whisper. He eyed Marassa. “We all come from somewhere, or so the stories say. Sprites from the waves, sirens from the moon, selkies from the wind. Her kind comes from Below, where the rest of us avoid treading at all costs.”
“Dragons.”
“Only a nickname. ‘Dragons of the deep,’ Lenairen used to say.”
“What do we do?”
“Her magic’s awakened; she’s no longer cont
ent controlling us. We kill her, before she kills us.”
The finality in his answer sent chills through me. It wasn’t that I wanted Marassa to live; after all she’d done, I wasn’t feeling merciful to her. But did today need more killing?
And, besides that, trying to kill her again seemed like a very, very bad idea.
Then I looked around at the people motionless as they watched her. At the talons she trailed along the jaw of one of the selkie prisoners, his eyes closed tight and whispered prayers to the lost gods on his lips.
At Moray, who usually was above such silly things as fear or worry, dull and tired and scared.
At Raeth, grimmer than I’d ever seen him. Streaked in blood and dirt, clinging to scavenged weapons.
Back to the crowd, to Marassa. She stepped over a corpse and white hair fluttered in the wind beneath her feet. Long and silky, now knotted with blood. My blood went cold. Raeth put a hand on my arm, jaw clenched and silent.
Kieras, strong and loyal and good. Not ten minutes had passed since I’d spoken to her, and she was dead.
She’d told me to be safe, and I hadn’t even thought to extend her the same.
The ice in my blood turned to fire, boiling it. Searing through my veins. I wasn’t going to see more people I loved die. Aven might have believed we were as good as dead, but we weren’t dead yet.
“Take care of the people here,” I said. “And Aven. I’ll end this. I said I would, and I will.”
Raeth’s hand tightened around my arm, stopping me from stepping forward. “You’ll what?”
I looked down at his hand instead of at his face. It was easier. “Let go. Please,” I murmured.
He didn’t. “You’ll be killed.”
“Hania, please,” Moray added.
“If I am, so be it. I’ll die helping you. I never thought I’d survive today, anyway.”
I looked up to see the way his eyes flicked over me. Assessing. “You’re in no shape to even attempt anything like this.”
I wasn’t. Every inch of me was sore and weak, injured. But my resolve was steel. I had to do this. I would. “It’s my fault this happened. I need to try to fix it. Please, Raeth.”
Our eyes connected, a battle of wills. Raeth had always given me the choice to go against what he wanted. He was the one person who could truly force me, and the one person who never did. He let go, slowly and cautiously, and nodded.
Moray landed on my shoulder. “I’ll go with you.”
“No. You’re not recovered. And I need to do this on my own.”
The sprite hesitated but lifted into the air. “Be careful, please. Come back.”
“I will.” We all knew I couldn’t promise that, but we could pretend I could.
Raeth crossed to one of the nearer corpses—one of the guards he’d ordered to jump. I couldn’t tell if the fall or something else had killed him, but Raeth did nothing but nudge the body aside with a foot to retrieve the guard’s bow, and then tugged the half-full quiver free. He held both out to me without a word. I took them, running my fingers along the smooth wood of the bow. Better made than Tobin’s, a sleek and fine weapon befitting of a queen’s guard.
He’d remembered.
Heart racing like lightning, I looked at him as that wolfish grin spread across his face. No fear, no worry, just Raeth. “Give her hell, darling.”
I secured the knife to the thin belt of my dress, slung the quiver over one shoulder, and climbed onto Raeth’s calm, steady asketi. The powerful stallion waited like he understood what I needed. I dragged in a deep breath before I turned to face Marassa.
And whistled.
The sound cut through the murmuring of the battered crowd, and Marassa’s head turned. Stormy eyes narrowed as they fixed on me, and she straightened and stalked forward.
“You,” she hissed, voice low. “You barbaric, foolish little piece of human filth. Look what you’ve done.”
I forced a grin and hoped it was as convincing as Raeth’s. “You’re welcome.”
“I was pure. Pure!” she screeched with a chomp of sharp and needle-like teeth. “Did you think you would kill me? I beat your beloved siren with a scrap of magic to my name—and you believe you can survive me now that it’s awakened?”
“I believe I can try.” I lifted my chin, struggling not to tighten my grip on the reins. Stay calm. “Try to keep up, dragon.”
I clicked my tongue and the stallion took off, racing across the blood-soaked dirt. My hair flew in the wind, rippling with his mane, and the thudding of his hooves echoed my pounding heart.
Behind me another screech, shrill and primal, ripped through the air.
Faster, faster, faster.
No turning back now. I would die or Marassa would.
I risked a glance to find her a shadow against the sun, soaring high above me. Every thought on keeping my balance, I retrieved a bow and nocked it. Breathe. In. Out.
Concentrate. I didn’t know how far away she was. I didn’t know if I could aim like this. But I leveled the point with her gliding form, easily keeping pace with the asketi, and loosed it.
I didn’t wait to see if it hit. I turned to where we were headed, to the sliver of blue water coming into sight. So close, but still so far away.
Would it work? Would she be so blinded by her arrogance and fury that she’d actually follow me to the water?
I doubted it, but I didn’t have another idea.
I urged the stallion to go faster, soaring across the uneven ground, but he never faltered. We kept going, like we were flying as much as Marassa, rounding the broad lake so swiftly the world was nothing more than a blur of blue and brown.
Farther from the others. Farther from help if I needed it, but farther from putting them in danger. Let her focus on me, so Raeth and Moray could focus on everything else. Making sure no battle started up again, helping the injured, cataloguing the dead. Dealing with Aven, however they would.
I swallowed bile and raised my head to check on Marassa. Flying lower now. I could feel her gaze fixed on me.
There. Far enough. I pulled the asketi to a stop and threw myself off, gripping the bow, and watched as she dived. Not to land—talons swiped at me and caught my shoulder. I yelped and dropped, snatching another arrow and readying it.
Come close again, I dared her mentally, but didn’t have the courage to speak the threat aloud. I kept the arrow trained on her instead, working to keep my hands steady. She swept toward me and I stepped back. Water sloshed around my ankles. She pulled up seconds before touching me, a broken laugh echoing through the air.
“You look scared, girl.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“Aren’t you? Your heartbeat says otherwise.”
I loosed the arrow and watched it fly through the air. It caught her in the leg and she let out an echoing roar. I took another step into the lake and repeated, “I’m not scared of you.”
Three more arrows. Not many, but I’d make do. I readied another.
Marassa stayed low, hovering close to the ground and glaring. Fresh blood snaked down her leg. “You aim more skillfully than I expected. If things weren’t what they are, I might consider letting you train to be one of my warriors.”
Another step, my eyes on her. “You made things what they are, not me.”
“Lenairen made things what they are.” I let the arrow fly. It soared past her shoulder and she giggled. “Perhaps I spoke too soon.”
I took another step back as I fumbled for my next arrow, but my foot caught on a rock and I tripped. Her feet touched the ground.
“Truly determined, I’ll give you that.” I loosed the next arrow before she finished, and her eyes widened for an instant as it lodged in her ribs. I smiled. She glanced down at it, touched her fingertips to the wound, and then continued. “But determination is nothing without power or strategy. You’ve led me right to the water, little girl, and I intend to thank you for it. I always wondered what this magic would feel like.”
She
clenched one hand into a fist, and the water surged up around me. A column of it blinded me, cutting off everything but shock and panic as my feet left the ground. Before I could begin to think of what to do next, it swirled and pulsed, switching directions so it was barreling to the ground. It flung me with it, and my back cracked against stone. What little breath I had left my lungs.
I scrambled to keep hold of my bow and find my footing, but another wave hit me with all the force of the first, knocking me to the ground. And again. Again.
Water rose into my nostrils. I scrabbled in place, lifting my head long enough to gasp a breath. Another wave struck.
Raeth had said her kind didn’t die unless they were drowned. Marassa herself had spoken of the tidespeople Lenairen had drowned during the war.
She controlled the water, but it was her biggest weakness, too.
I managed to blink the water from my eyes to see that she stood away from the lake’s edge. Her feet stayed safely dry.
I dug my fingers into the sand, steeling myself against the next wave before it hit. As soon as it passed, I scrambled to get my feet beneath me before the next came. I’d grown up in the water. I didn’t fear it, not anymore. It held some of the most terrible memories of my life—my mother’s death, my fight against the selkies—but also some of the greatest. Summer afternoons with Tobin and Grandmama. The otherworldly glow of the passing beneath the ocean surface. Floating along with the waves, eyes closed against the sun.
The ocean was in me. It was home, and always had been.
The wave threatened to pull me back to the ground, but I dug my toes into the loose dirt and sand and rocks and stiffened every joint. I wouldn’t fall. Never again.
I drew my final arrow and, in the brief second my vision was clear, let it fly at Marassa one last time.
It found its mark in her heart.
She let out a strangled, surprised sound and faltered, hand clutching at the arrow as if to pull it out. The water dropped and settled.
I had seconds, if that. One chance while she was distracted. I bolted forward, snatched at her dress, and threw my weight toward the water. Everything I had went into the movement, into pulling her off her feet a second time. I’d been lucky before; I prayed my luck wasn’t going to run out now.
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