So. That was our traitor.
An interrogation would have been useful, but that was not how Nyxobas operated.
When the portal had sealed over completely, I glanced at Nyxobas—still the pale, gleaming eyes of the god and tattoos that shifted over his forearms.
His pale eyes were locked on me, and my chest hollowed out. Then, the violet in Ruadan’s eyes returned, and I let out a breath as the real Grand Master returned. The other knights were sitting around the sealed portal, shaking in their cloaks.
Melusine clutched a hot cup of tea, her hair drenched. “Good. That’s over. Barry was the traitor, and we can all move on with our lives.”
“Our very short lives,” said Aengus through chattering teeth, “considering we are about a day away from death. Where is the Horseman?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. I’m still working—”
“Then you have to try to help us!” shouted Aengus. “At least try.”
“And if I make it worse?” I asked.
“Don’t make it worse,” said Aengus.
Ruadan’s body had gone completely still, and his violet eyes burned in the gloom. “I know that you have the power within you, but you might not be ready just yet. It’s your choice, Liora. We can still try to find Adonis.”
I rubbed a knot in my forehead. “I’ll try. I just think I’ll need alcohol.” Then, I stared at the grass in the courtyard. Something wasn’t sitting right with me. Something besides my upcoming task. “But, I’m not quite ready to move on from the Barry situation yet. I mean, don’t you think Baleros could have sent someone more competent than Barry?”
“He was talking about his necklace,” Melusine added from over her tea. “Something about control. Like it wasn’t his fault.”
I glanced at Ruadan. “So you didn’t give him that lumen stone? I saw it on him in prison. Just for a moment.”
Ruadan shook his head. “That necklace didn’t come from us. Charmed, probably, with powers of mind control. Barry was a pawn.”
“The necklace was beaming with shadow magic.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I just don’t feel like this is the whole answer. Maddan said the traitor was someone I knew. He said that Baleros had a powerful ally. Barry was neither of those things.”
The night wind toyed with Ruadan’s hair. “I’m sure that wasn’t the entirety of Baleros’s plans. Everyone will remain on high alert until we’ve locked Baleros in our dungeons forever, chained with iron.”
I breathed in deeply. “When Nyxobas is in your body, do you remember what he says?”
“Most of it.” Then he frowned, his body still. “But he said something to you, and it’s a blank. I can’t remember it at all. What was it?”
When I thought of Nyxobas’s prophecy, I just wanted to wrap my arms around Ruadan and keep him close. I wanted him in that hot bath with me forever, locked away safely in his room. And most of all, like a lioness, my instinct was to destroy anyone who would come near him. I longed to tear their flesh off their bones, to turn their bodies to dust. I even wanted to destroy Nyxobas for what he’d said.
My love for Ruadan was a raging fire.
Darkness coiled around him. “What did he say to you?” he pressed.
It didn’t matter, because I wasn’t going to let him die, no matter what the prophecy said. “He just said that we faced danger. Nothing we don’t already know.” After Ruadan’s insistence that I trust him, the lie tasted like poison in my mouth.
But the thing was, Ruadan had a tendency to try to sacrifice himself—just like he had at Hampton Court Palace, when he’d tried to give himself over to Baleros. If Ruadan thought this was the ending—that he was destined to die—he might rush into it. I saw no reason to hasten that option.
“Look.” I gestured at the knights, who were sitting on the grass, most of them shivering and sweating at the same time. “Let’s get them all inside to the hall. I’ll have a bit of whiskey to calm my death instinct, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Now, please,” said Aengus. “We don’t have time for you to fruitlessly search the world for your father. My fingers are about to rot off. I think the tips of my toes have started to go necrotic.”
I glanced around at the Shadow Fae, all of them silent, staring at me. A painful-looking lump had formed on Aengus’s neck, and a red rash had climbed over Niall’s face.
Already, I could feel the wings at my shoulder blades aching to come out.
So I was supposed to cure them, but I had no idea how. Right now, I felt about as competent as a dog sitting at a desk with a pencil to complete his income tax returns.
Would instinct take over and show me the way, or would I simply kill everyone in the city?
I guess we were about to find out.
In the Great Hall, the knights sat at tables over steaming cups of tea, looking at me expectantly. I’d had enough whiskey to give me a good buzz, and I now felt much more confident about the situation. I was a death angel, and I could do this.
Ruadan touched my arm. “Are you sure you’re ready to try?”
“I think so. I’m feeling better about it. And Demented Mike said I was as powerful as my dad.”
“Demented Mike?”
I bit my lip. “Granted, his nickname probably doesn’t inspire much confidence in his pronouncements. Anyway, he’s the demon-fae I pulled from the shadow void. He thinks I can do it.”
Ruadan nodded, then stepped away from me. I closed my eyes, trying to summon my angel side. Someone’s coughs echoed off the high, stone ceiling. I waited for my wings to burst out of me.
Nothing was happening, and I could practically feel the frustration of everyone around me. How did I make this happen?
Someone—Aengus, probably—let out a dramatic, exasperated sigh.
I opened one of my eyes to see what was happening. Just the knights, glaring at me from their wool blankets, steam from tea curling around them.
“Just give me a minute,” I muttered.
The last times I’d transformed, I’d been panicking: when Ruadan had invaded Eden, when I’d thought he was going to die at Hampton Court Palace, when I thought he might be dying within the Tower. So, I just had to channel that sense of panic, that primal flame of protectiveness.
I glanced at Ruadan and the World Key glowing at his neck. Nyxobas said this ended with Ruadan’s death. Baleros planned to slaughter my lover, to cut the skin off his body. Wild, protective fury roiled in my chest as I looked at him. I wanted to rip Baleros limb from limb, to spread his bones and flesh to the far corners of the earth so I could keep my love safe.
That flame in my heart ignited, and electric power shot down my shoulder blades. My shoulders flung back, arms stiffening.
I’ll bury your bodies in long-forgotten graves. The yews will feed from your flesh.
Euphoria ripped through me, and wings erupted from my back, lifting me higher, toward the rib-vaulted ceiling. Why did death feel so glorious?
Now, I simply needed to control the death magic, to pull it away from the Shadow Fae. Except, I didn’t really feel in control. In fact—
The Great Hall below me seemed to fall away, and I was no longer in the Institute, but back in my cage, covered in dirt. Ciara snored by my side, and Baleros stood above me, grinning down at me. “Let’s let the little monster out of her cage, shall we?”
The gate creaked open, setting me free to do the one thing I was good at. The one thing the monster had been born for.
Killing.
When I’d crossed into the ring that day, sword at my waist, I’d been expecting the usual opponents: a cyclops, a demon, a horde of vampires. Instead, I found a scrawny teenage boy. With his peach fuzz mustache, acne, and terrified expression, he looked oddly human.
But Baleros had trained me well. I knew never to underestimate my opponent, no matter how weak he looked. I knew that survival meant striking first. Baleros’s seventh law of power: Kill or be killed. Hesitation meant death. The scrawny boy bef
ore me was likely a shapeshifter, disguising himself as an innocent.
It wasn’t until my blade went through his neck, when I saw the blood and the bone and the piss staining his jeans, that I’d understood the real situation. He was just as he’d appeared—a terrified human boy.
As the crowd stared at me in stunned silence, their expressions told me everything I needed to know. This had been a different sort of lesson from Baleros. The lesson here was not one of survival.
The lesson was that I was a monster.
And monsters belonged in cages, didn’t they?
Someone was calling my name now—screaming it, in fact.
The image of the arena thinned, until I found myself in the Great Hall once more, hovering above the knights. Now, the only sound was my wings beating the air.
“Liora!” It was Ruadan. “Stop.”
I looked down at the Shadow Fae, my gaze roaming over Melusine, Aengus, Turi…. To my horror, they looked worse. Melusine’s skin had taken on a greenish hue, and her eyes had closed. The glands in her neck were purplish with swelling. Aengus lay sleeping, his chest still rising and falling.
Only Ruadan was still standing.
My wings retracted, shooting back into my body. I fell hard to the stone floor.
This had been a terrible idea. I was made only to kill, not to heal. They never should have counted on me.
I pushed myself up to my feet, dusting off my body. My failure was crushing, and I felt it like a pain in my chest. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to control this power.”
“You haven’t had time to learn,” said Ruadan.
If Baleros didn’t live in my mind, would it have worked?
Melusine groaned, her eyelids heavy. “Fix this.”
I gripped my purple hair, ready to pull it out. “I will. I will. I just need to get to my dad.”
Ruadan touched my shoulder. “We’ll find Aenor. We will get to your father. We can search the Tower’s records for references to her whereabouts.”
“Searching records sounds slightly time-consuming. Okay, tell me if this means anything to you. Any idea where we would we find someone who sold human finger bones and smelled of soil, honey, lemony flowers, and limestone?”
“Black elder tree. They have lemon-scented flowers.”
“You are full of amazing facts.”
He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “Black elder trees and limestones—the London Wall, by Barbican. She’s underground, perhaps, because of the soil and the fact that you’re generally not allowed to sell bones above ground.”
I gripped him by the shoulders. “Good. Good. We have a location. I’m getting my lumen stone and my bug-out bag, and we’re going to find this bone-selling freak.”
And it had to work, because the Shadow Fae wouldn’t survive much longer.
Chapter 17
I gripped my bug-out bag, trying to push out thoughts of my failure and of the knights dying in the Great Hall. I still had a bit of a buzz from the whiskey, but it wasn’t enough to lift my dark mood.
This time, we’d come armed. I had no idea what we were going to find when we met Aenor, Flayer of Skins, but everything I’d learned about her so far led me to believe she was a complete psycho. And if I really needed to, I could always beckon the mist army to me.
We’d shadow-leapt to Barbican in only a few minutes. Here, moonlight and the distant glow of streetlights illuminated the crumbling old Roman wall. Empty windows in the wall gaped like dark wounds. Once, it had protected the city from barbarians. Now, it was just an ancient fragment, a testament to a forgotten London that intersected with a serene canal.
We were sniffing the air, trying to home in on the scent of lemony blossoms and human bones. The damp breeze skimmed my skin. I had the sense that in this ancient part of London, we were walking over layers of lives, centuries of souls that now still clung to the crumbling rock wall.
Ruadan inhaled deeply. “Honey,” he said. “That’s the one scent not native to this place. It must belong to Aenor. We’re in the right place.”
At last, we were getting somewhere, and my pulse raced with anticipation. I sniffed the air too, and after a moment, I got a faint whiff of honey.
To our right, modern apartments loomed over a placid canal, but Ruadan had thought Aenor might be underground. Now, I tuned into a powerful magic that thrummed through the air. It felt like the music of string instruments vibrating over my skin. Was that Aenor?
Ruadan pointed at a squat tower inset into the Roman wall. “The scent of honey is coming from there.”
He led me around the corner to a dark alcove within the wall—a hollowed-out tower, one side of it collapsed. The dark canal flowed serenely by its side. I couldn’t see much in the darkness—just grass and the crumbling tower, overgrown with plants.
“Honey and lemony blossoms,” I whispered.
Ruadan caught my eye. “When we meet her, be cautious. We don’t really know what the note meant.”
I frowned. “I suppose.” A terrible thought twisted in my skull. “You don’t think this could be a trick played by Baleros, do you?”
Ruadan shook his head. “Baleros had no way to get into Eden. But we should be careful anyway. Things could have changed since your mother wrote that note. Just don’t announce who you are right away, until we learn more about her.”
“Okay, fair enough.”
Ruadan crouched down. “She’s here.” He reared back his arm, then rammed his fist into the earth, all the way up to his elbow. He moved his arm around for a moment, seemingly grasping something.
Then, with a groaning sound, he pulled up a wooden hatch door. And as he did, the faint smell of honey and lemon hit me—along with the metallic scent of blood.
Aenor.
But before we could leap in, the sound of hissing echoed off the stone behind us. My pulse racing, I whirled.
A small horde of vampires was moving for us. There were at least twelve of them—large, ancient vampires, their movements swift and precise, fangs bared, armed with swords. Odd. Vampires usually just used their teeth and hands.
My blade was already out, and Ruadan drew his sword, ready to take them on.
A dark smile curled my lips. It had been far too long since I’d killed anything, and bloodlust pounded through my veins. The angel of death in me was stirring once more. Gods, there were a lot of them. They must’ve been lying in wait.
I will slake my thirst on your blood.
I let my body fill with the ancient shadow magic of the lumen stone, and I leapt closer to the vampires, touching down on the stones with a swing of my sword. My blade hacked through the first vampire’s neck, slicing off his head. The winds of battle rushed through me, and I pivoted, attacking another vamp.
My sword clashed with his, sparking in the night. Soon, I was moving like a storm wind, whirling and ducking as we fought.
Ruadan fought by my side, gracefully attacking. Clouds of ash darkened the air around us as we killed the vampires. My wings ached to emerge, but I fought hard to keep them down. The last appearance of my angelic side had not gone well.
Pivot, strike, carve…. I drove my sword through the heart of a female vampire, then through her neck. Her body dissolved into ash so thick I coughed.
My blood thundered as more vamps crawled from the shadows. Why did they keep coming for us, when they saw death awaited them? Maybe we were outnumbered, but they were on suicide missions.
I rip open your veins. I cover your eyes, fill your mouth with soil.
The tip of a blade swiped me from behind, but I danced away from it, nearly losing my balance.
The vamps were all around us—too many for this to be a coincidence. It was at this point that I noticed the gleaming magical necklaces around their throats.
Baleros was controlling them, just like he’d controlled Barry. They were mindlessly following his orders.
Pivot, strike, carve.
Ash rained around us as the vampires met their final deaths. I
stole a quick glance at Ruadan. His savage grace, brutal and controlled, took my breath away.
Pivot, strike, carve.
I inhaled clouds of cinders. Where they hells were they all coming from?
Somehow, Baleros had been watching us closely.
Death kissed my skin as I moved among them, ushering them to their final graves.
I will end you all.
From shadows all over the courtyard, crawling from behind the Roman wall, through its gaping windows—more and more vamps were coming for us. Now, a sharp coil of panic curled around my heart.
Each one of them wore a glowing, magic necklace—and they all wanted to slaughter Ruadan. Baleros had been watching us, either through spies or a scrying mirror, and he’d sent his entire army here to slaughter us.
I took a step back toward the Roman wall, quickly getting backed into a corner. My pulse was racing out of control, but I didn’t want to unleash the monster now.
We needed help.
As I swung my sword in increasingly wild arcs, I whispered the spell for the mist soldiers. “Mogidellior deusaman.”
As soon as the spell was out of my mouth, a thick fog curled around the vampiric mob, until I could hardly see them.
I leapt up to one of the crumbling tower walls, crouching on a stony outcrop. From there, I used the few fae commands I knew to control the mist soldiers. I changed the shapes of the soldiers, transforming them into beasts that ripped the vampires apart.
“Aerouant dispennior.”
A group of mist soldiers melded together into a dragon with enormous teeth, and the creature roared. It slashed at the vampires with its talons, its ethereal body tinged with moonlight.
“Diaoull lazannior.”
Beastly creatures formed from the mist with talons the length of swords, teeth sharp as iron spikes, tails like thorny maces that crushed the vampires’ limbs.
“Evell dispennior.”
Court of Dreams (Institute of the Shadow Fae Book 4) Page 9