“You made the decision to live another day. Don’t move from this spot and you might even last two.” Lailah patted his head on her way past. “I mean that. Don’t move. Don’t bother with warnings. It’s too late. You can’t save your nest, your clan or your family. Actually,” she said, tapping claws to her bottom lip, “I would lock myself in here if I were you. Oh yes. Do that. I might need you later.”
“I’ll do it,” I volunteered. Locking Henri inside the bastille with Fynn meant two less people to protect.
I shoved hard but met resistance. Peering around the door, I cursed at the sight of Fynn standing there with a bloody nose from where I had slammed the door in his face. When I turned to ask Lailah to order him back inside, he pushed Henri, slid through the gap and shuffled down the tunnel after her.
“Can you stop him?” I called after her retreating back.
Her steps never slowed. “It’s in their nature to follow.”
With one last glance at Henri, I nudged the hatch shut. He was safer in there, and without Lailah rescinding her order he stay put, I had no hope of moving him. With Henri secure and one brother in tow, I had three more to locate and hide away until this ended and they were restored to their senses.
Walking the tunnel was sickening. Up and down, up and down. Cast to bare foot, I trailed her.
As I counted who else was left, it occurred to me, “You ordered Asher to open the hatch for the risers. You wanted them loose in the stables. Why not attack us then? Why wait until now?”
“I gave no such order.” Her wings snapped in agitation. “I was not ready to reveal myself to you. The risers were under orders not to enter the nest, but, as I said, they aren’t trustworthy.”
Once again, my thoughts drifted to Edan. I couldn’t believe he was innocent in spite of Henri’s steadfast belief Edan wouldn’t betray him. Lailah claimed she hadn’t given the order. Who was left?
Try as I might, I could only see Edan leaving the hatch ajar. Yet I couldn’t discount Henri’s trust entirely. Given Edan’s perverse sense of humor, had he let a riser in on his way out as a warning? Intent as he was to escape the nest with his wife, I bet he thought it was a kindness on his part.
Fresh agony splintered down the front of my neck. Ignore it. The harder I thought, the farther the direction of my thoughts shifted from our potential enemies to the enemy I was becoming. It was all I could do not to touch the metal sigil that was happily burrowing its jaws in me.
We reached the stables in record time. Either Lailah was a fast walker, or her wings gave her speed. Wings. Would I grow my own? Would my skin pale and my veins run yellow as hers had?
Lailah’s voice intruded on my musings. “Idra must accept you before you’re given wings.”
I cleared my mind as best I could. “You can still hear me?”
“For as long as you live,” she said, “you are mine to call and mine to do with as I please.”
There was my answer.
She paused on the lip of the ramp to admire the chaos below before spreading her wings and leaping into the air, darting here and there to better survey her grand scheme as it came together.
I stopped where she had and shivered at the sight and the plummeting temperature.
Icicles hung from the yawning mouth of the open entry hatch, forming teeth ready to snap at any who risked passage. Through the stone frame, Erania’s white breast lay exposed, waiting for those who had invaded her to plunge their daggers in her heart. If her people died, then so would she. Who else could survive this unforgiving clime? The Segestriidae? No. The Necrita had lost any potential allies in that clan when they burned Titania and slaughtered its rulers. The Necrita themselves? Not hardly.
There must be a reason why they hadn’t ventured this far north before now.
If the Araneidae had caused Idra so much grief, based on what she had done to Lailah, it seemed to me she would have come to Erania and crushed Maven Lourdes herself. That she had avoided the northlands was telling. That she sent her firstborn in her stead was also telling. Cold must not agree with her. Perhaps Idra had gambled on her spawn being able to withstand the harsh climate, being half Araneaean, or possessing three quarters of one’s body. Fractions were never my strong suit.
The queen’s curiosity must have won over caution.
That or she didn’t care if Lailah came back alive.
Either way, Idra would have her answer, which was that Araneaean-spawned Necrita had the ability to survive the frigid northland clime. If that was a true revelation, then no cities were safe.
If Erania fell—my pulse hammered—then so would all the rest.
“This was inevitable.” Lailah hovered near my elbow. “The northlands held longer than she expected, but she always knew they would fall. This is but the first city we will drop to its knees. Once we lay claim to all the northlands in the name of the Necrita, the southlands will crumble.”
“We are not so easily defeated,” I panted, leaning against the wall until I could stand again.
“The southlands are close to anarchy. If things continue on as they have been, they will each kill their neighboring clans and leave us with nothing to do but stake our claims over the bodies.” She tilted my chin back. “Don’t give me that look. Sacrifices must be made if we are to succeed. This nest is but the tipping point. Those who are suffering look to the north for aid. If aid continues to arrive, our work is compromised. We can’t knock the legs from under this revolution if we allow food and water to pass through our lines into enemy cities, now can we?”
“Enemy cities,” I marveled at how militant her thinking had become. This Lailah scared me. I wished with all my heart the slobbering waif she had pretended to be was the real threat. This new face she presented to me—a unified Necrita with their riser armies—terrified me.
“You see?” She carried on as if I had agreed with her. “It must be done. Let’s not dawdle.”
Wary of the incline, I tested my footing and found it sure. Milling around the stables were a handful of risers, not an army, but enough to devour me if Lailah ordered it. One dragged its foot behind it, hobbling on its turned ankle. Mine gave a phantom twinge. If not for the cast wrapping mine, I would fare as well as she was. The cast supported me, keeping my bones aligned, and the treads prevented me from tumbling down the incline. Despite that, Lailah grew bored waiting for me and launched herself into the tumult brewing beneath us. Careful as I was being, I still rung a seam with the thin metal treads, and I stumbled, almost rolling face-first the rest of the way down.
Before I lost my footing, an arm linked through mine, preventing the fall.
I blurted, “Thank you.” I glanced over to find Fynn supporting me while he watched Lailah, wearing the same dazed expression. I extracted myself from him and nudged him aside. “I don’t know if you can understand me or not, but you must stay here. Don’t follow. Don’t give her a reason to remember that you’re here, and she may not forget why she’s letting you live, at least for a while.”
He stared blankly ahead. I patted his shoulder and stepped onto the stable floor.
Fynn came two steps behind me.
“Why is that still here?” Lailah called from overhead.
“You tell me.” I waved a hand in front of his face. “You’re the one pulling his strings.”
He didn’t even blink.
Staring up at her, I called, “Where are Kaleb and Tau being held?”
She loosed a shrill whistle, and the pair of them shuffled around the corner, risers clutching their arms. Their eyes were as empty as Fynn’s, and I wanted to pluck the wings from Lailah’s back for reducing my family to these mindless drones. But I wanted them to live more, so I played my part.
“You’re still missing one,” Lailah mused. “Ah. I believe that’s him there.”
I followed her smirk to a stall guarded by a pair of risers. Malik paced past the door, whirled and punched the wall with a snarl. Thank gods one of us was free from the Necrita’s grue
some influence.
In a heartbeat, Ghedi’s feverish antics filled my mind. I dared not think of him. In his room, in his bed, he might stay safe.
“Can we corral them all together?” I asked Lailah.
“I offer you all this—” she swept out her arm, “—and all you care about are your people.”
“You promised to keep them safe,” I reminded her.
“I said I wouldn’t kill them.” She resumed the study of her claws. “It isn’t the same thing.”
Panicked thoughts rolled through my mind, cluttering my brain until I was at a loss.
Lailah clamped her hands over her ears. “Must you do that?” she screeched. “Skin them. Wear them as a belt for all I care. Just stop thinking so loudly. I can’t take all the noise. Get rid of them before I do it for you.” Thrashing her head, she staggered away, unable to fly, barely able to flitter.
Before she changed her mind, I put my hands on my hips. “You heard her. Get in the stall.”
As a unit, Kaleb and Tau marched to the stall. Fynn lingered near me until I gripped his arm and dragged him. He ambled unwillingly behind me, all the while his pining gaze tracked Lailah.
Malik scanned our brothers from head to toe. His silvery gaze asked me what he could not.
“The Necrita are attacking Erania,” I whispered. “Lailah won’t harm you, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop someone else from doing it for her.” I stiffened my spine. “Move aside,” I ordered the nearest riser. It shuffled away from the door, barely hissing at me. Proof my change was underway.
My stomach knotted, palms going damp where they gripped Fynn. “Take care of them for me, Malik. When this is all over, return to the bastille. Henri is waiting. Tell him that I…” I regretted not having more time with him. Lips trembling while I spoke, I hurried on, “You know where to find Ghedi.” I couldn’t look at him when I touched the sigil at my throat. “Lailah owns me now. Don’t be a hero. Don’t try to save me. You can’t. Trust me. All you can do for me is survive. Do that, all right?”
The firm set of his jaw told me he had no intentions of honoring my wishes, but I hoped if we met again, I retained enough of myself to let him go without the savage trappings of Lailah and Hishima’s twisted end. Better for this to be how we each remembered the other. While I was still myself, almost, and he was still himself, nearly, and all those we loved were still salvageable.
Before hot tears sprang to my eyes, I spun on my heel and went in search of Lailah.
Chittering sounds resonated through my head. I stumbled against a stall and cupped my hands to my ears, but the noise came from a place I more sensed than heard. Once the worst of the disorientation passed, I singled out a voice. No. Two voices. Wait. Were there three? More? Too many. Far too many to count. I couldn’t tell except to say they all held the same melodic notes as Lailah’s song.
Tamping it down, I pushed from the wall. Without thought, I found my way straight to Lailah.
It was as if the path had already been determined. I had only to walk it.
“There you are.” She grinned. “I was calling you.”
I rubbed my temples. “Is that what you were doing?”
She prattled on, “Did you stable the others?”
“I did.” I hated admitting as much to her, but her awareness was burrowed deep in my head. She knew the answer before asking. That she had bothered was some odd politeness on her part.
Moving forward with her agenda, she didn’t seem to care. “Can you use a sword?”
“I had basic training.” I admitted, “It’s not my best weapon. I lack the form for it.”
“Oh.” She flicked her wrist, and a riser scuffled off, sword in hand. “What do you prefer?”
“I’m best with a net, but a glaive will do.” Mine still leaned in the corner of my bedroom.
“A net.” She blinked at me. “Surely you are more mercenary than that.”
“Hishima paid me for what I could do,” I snapped, “not how I chose to do it.”
“Temper, temper.” Lailah hummed under her voice. As my patience threatened to snap, one of the risers appeared, dragging a hefty glaive I bet Braden had used when out with the ursus. The riser, who once had been female, was now little more than sagging meat decaying over a hobbled skeleton.
Without lifting its head, it tossed the glaive to me. The familiar weight in hand soothed me.
“This show is one best watched from the outside,” she said. “Bring your weapon.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I wasn’t about to wade through a sea of risers unarmed, no matter how courteous they behaved for me now that I wore Lailah’s mark and kept her company.
“What about a coat?” I asked.
She scowled. “Are you cold?”
I thought about it. “No.” I hadn’t been for some time now.
“Good. Then you’ve answered your own question.” She plucked at my gown. “This will do.”
Even if key pain receptors had been dampened by the sigil, it wouldn’t save my toes or feet from frostbite. All it would do was to ensure I was comfortable while my extremities blackened.
Figuring that the worst had already happened, I took Lailah on faith and hoped she was right.
The climb up the incline to the outside was harder. My ankle worked, but…it was wrong. It didn’t hurt, didn’t bother me at all, except for the mental image I kept seeing of the bones grating against each other as I walked. Luckily for me another wave of sound crashed through my mind, leaving me breathless and disoriented, which meant I no longer cared about my ankle. Not now when my brain felt as though it had been ground to pulp and was leaking from my ear. I dry heaved, but it had been too long since I had eaten for me to do more than wish I had food in me to purge.
Lailah wrinkled her nose. “I wonder if all spawn are so delicate.”
“I can’t— There’s too much noise,” I groaned. “In my head.”
“Consider yourself fortunate.” Her lips twisted. “There is a mental link between each spawn and her mother, and all her siblings. My mother is Idra, the mother of our race. Can you imagine what that must be like?” Her head tilted, listening a moment before her eyes shone with familiar madness. “No. You can’t. Be grateful that in your head there is just you and me and her when she wishes to be.”
New respect for Lailah blossomed in me, no doubt aided by the venom her drone was pumping in me. That she retained any shred of her sanity amazed me. That she evidenced any compassion was a testament to the morals she once held and an echo of the person she had been before Idra.
At the top of the ramp, we stood overlooking the summer stables. When my brothers and I had first arrived in Erania, there were no footprints, no indication we weren’t the only visitors the northlands had ever seen. During a handful of days, everything had changed. Erania was no longer pristine.
Deep grooves carved her cheeks. Her face was bruised, her virtue stolen by risers who had burst down her doors, devouring her livestock and plundering her stores while slaughtering her people.
The proud citadel, the frozen heart of our nation, Erania was falling.
She just didn’t know it yet.
“Ah. There you are.” Lailah gestured toward a line of risers marching steadily into a swirl of snow obscuring their destination from me. “Have the others arrived? Are our forces in position?”
Wiping flakes from my eyes, I started at the sight of Asher. His black eyes were sunken, and the same vacant stare Henri wore masked Asher’s face while he nodded his assurances to Lailah.
She dug in her tattered pocket, withdrew a key I had never seen before and tossed it to him.
Henri’s key. It had to be. She must have lifted it off him before we locked him in the bastille.
Asher caught the key in his fist and transferred it to his pants pocket without even a glimpse. “They came as you said they would,” he mumbled. “They are where you asked them to be.”
Twirling in the air, Lailah kicked up flurries
that pelted Asher and me. “Then let it begin.”
Pounding his fist over his heart, Asher bowed to her, then set off in the same direction as the risers were trudging. He passed through their ranks, vanishing from sight. I took a step that way.
“You won’t see anything from down there.” She waved me on. “This way, dear.”
Panic seized my heart when my limbs leapt to obey her without pausing for my consent. My strings were being pulled before I fully realized how well Lailah had tied me. Grunting, I did my best to follow her up a sheer rock face that may have been part of the wall. Perhaps a new section since no guards peered over the edge to check our progress. That or the risers had handled them.
Abandoned sounded much better to me. Too much death burdened my conscience as it was.
When I pulled myself up over the wall to a flat section at the top, I got my first good look at the city of Erania. The sight buckled my knees. In all my travels, I had never seen a city as coldly beautiful as this one. Black stones in the wall under my feet matched the distant mountain range.
More buildings rose from their vast and glorious city than I could invent purposes or names. Houses more palatial and grander than the quarters my clan’s paladin kept dotted the landscape. To hear clans murmur that the Araneidae had more gold than the gods was one thing. To behold the evidence of their unimaginable wealth made my head spin. No wonder the Necrita wanted Erania shoved to her knees. If the Necrita commanded the Araneidae’s veritable fortress of ice and rock, then who in the southlands stood a chance against their might? No one would endure their wrath.
Lailah sat on the wall, swinging her legs over its edge. “Let the entertainment begin.”
Below us, armed risers surged through the valley. “How will they breach the nest?”
“Your friend Henri is so fond of his hatches. There are several we plan to employ, those I believe will lead us straight into the heart of the nest.” Her heels banged on the wall. “I knew your attachment to him meant I couldn’t use him in the field, but his master key will suffice.”
Angry shouts from the risers snapped my attention to the starting point of the battle.
Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection Page 109