Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection

by Hailey Edwards

  “Perhaps you have the right of it.” Edan’s grin turned sharp. “Perhaps I ought to cut the insolent parts out and leave those here for the risers to eat. Though if I did, not much of him would remain.”

  Asher’s deadpan response was as empty as air. “I would like to see you try.”

  “I would succeed.” Edan’s lip curled.

  “Edan.” I said his name softly. “Please.”

  “Take care.” He sighed in my direction. “My wife is far more forgiving than I am.”

  That title again. Its sound was nails raking across stone. My stomach churned to hear my brother call me his wife. Months into our ruse, the lie still sickened me. If I had claim to a weak constitution, that was the sole cause. Though Edan believed I was safer as a married female in a strange land than as an unwed one, I felt we could take care of any complications that arose if we would tell the truth.

  But truth was as two-pronged as a serpent’s tongue these days, and I had worse secrets to guard.

  Gods forgive us for shaming your most honorable institution with our falsehoods.

  I placed a hand on Edan’s arm. “I for one have no interest in being eaten by risers.”

  They were the mindless corpses of those who had died from the plague, and they answered only to their maker or to their own base urges. Hunger for flesh had driven them mad, and we six were the best meal they were likely to see for days. Not to mention our ursus, which were fattened and furred from winter.

  Edan lowered his sword. “Since we can’t outrun them, what do you propose we do?”

  “Running is all we can do.” Asher shrugged. “There are two score of them and six of us.”

  Heart pounding, I glanced behind us. “Perhaps I could—”

  My brother grasped my wrist. “No.”

  Asher studied me, considering what I might have offered. “If she can slow them down…”

  “If I flung your corpse under their noses,” Edan snapped, “that would slow them down as well.”

  Aware that Edan would throw himself into the fray if I attempted to confront the risers, I knew the best solution was simplest. “We will run, as far and as fast as we can. We must reach the veil first.”

  Asher gave me a grudging nod. “If we reach Beltania, there are Mimetidae guards posted there.”

  “With reinforcements,” Edan agreed, “we can cut down the risers before they reach the city.”

  “It’s settled then.” I tightened my grip on the reins. “We run.”

  “I’ll take point.” Edan sheathed his weapon. “Asher, you will bring up the rear. Marne, keep as close to me as you can. If we see risers, don’t engage them. It’s too dangerous for you, understand?”

  “Perfectly.” To him, I was one of the fragile hothouse flowers our master had doted on. Perhaps I had been that once, but I was so much more now than he knew, more than he ever wanted to know.

  With a grunt, Asher yanked the reins, and his ursus set off at a gallop toward the rear of our tiny procession. After taking one last look at me, Edan kicked his mount in the side and spurred her on at breakneck speed. My sow huffed then dashed after her sister as though risers nipped at her heels.

  Hours passed with naught but the ragged panting of our winded mounts and the crackling of ice under their paws to break the silence. As if we had set some terrible race into motion, the first sounds of risers reached my ears. Their snarls were vicious, their howls pitiful. Like any predator, they were unable to resist prey on the run. Unused to sustaining periods of great speed, our ursus grew winded.

  Ahead of me, Edan half-turned in his saddle to survey the road behind us and said, “He was too generous with his estimation.”

  “Can you see them?” I dared not turn and glimpse their approach. The sight of them never failed to stir something dark and hungry in me that I felt was best not roused.

  I was already not the same person I had been a year ago. I did not want to change again, become unrecognizable to me or to my brother as the person I was born, the person he thought worth saving.

  “No.” His eyes narrowed. “I hear them, though. They’re close and moving fast.”

  He was right. The risers were so close my skin prickled and my shoulders itched.

  A soft voice intruded on my thoughts, her plea a persuasive whisper in my head.

  “Kill the males. They are inferior to us. Join me, daughter. Take your army and rise to rule.”

  Your army, she said. Rule, she said. As if I could ascend without her sinking her hooks into me, as though I wanted to be the commander of a corpse legion bound to me through sickness and death.

  “You will not seduce me so easily, Idra,” I thought back at her. “I will not kill again for you.”

  “The more you fight…” she purred, “…the more I want you.”

  Bile rose in my throat. Too slowly I tamped down her voice and hushed her sickly sweet desires.

  “You will never command me.” I hurled the words. “I will not serve you or any other master.”

  Idra was the reason I was no longer Araneaean. I was something else, something worse. She and her harbinger daughters had spread the plague throughout the southlands, wiping out entire clans and cities. The vile nature of the plague meant those who died from it rose from their graves and became risers, the walking dead. But there were worse things plaguing the Araneae Nation, and I was half of one. Idra herself had tried to transform me into a harbinger. She had ripped a sigil from her neck and let it burrow into my throat, into my soul, until we were bound together in blood and in our thoughts.

  She was insane, bloodthirsty and cruel. If she had her way, I would become those things too.

  Thank the two gods for Edan, who kept me whole and sane and guarded me against myself.

  On the tail of that thought, the same bitter guilt that always simmered beneath my skin set fire to my temper. My poor brother was wasting his life on me. He should be finding a mate, settling down, making his own family and living his own dreams. Not being forced to care for his half-breed sister, or trapped in an incestuous marriage, no matter how false it was. At least in Beltania, that ruse would end. It must. I had had my fill of the charade. I was done with us pretending to be what we were not.

  That one lie corroded a soul already rusting and left my chest aching as my heart ground to dust.

  “Marne.”

  Tensing when Edan pointed up, I dragged my gaze skyward.

  I squinted against the brilliant reflection of sun on the falling snow. “I don’t see anything.”

  A heartbeat later, a shadow fell across my face. I swallowed the scream rising in my throat when I spotted the harbinger. She was a slight girl, or had been once, as pale as winter’s breast with massive wings that would have been more at home on a dragonfly than on a person, let alone one so young. I lifted my hands over my head to fend off her attack. I would die rather than return to Idra.

  I would never suffer enslavement again.

  The harbinger’s cackles raised the hairs on my arms. A heartbeat later, she dove.

  But I wasn’t her target.

  She swooped down and sank her elbow between Edan’s shoulder blades. He grunted and shifted in his saddle, grasping for his sword. Before he drew it, she clutched the hilt and flung it at me. I bent down as it sailed over my head. I reached for the daggers I kept on my belt and palmed one. She was too near Edan, and my aim was too rusty from the cushy months I’d spent in the lavish Araneidae nest while Henri examined me in search of a cure for harbingerism. Add to that my mount’s jostling pace, and I dared not risk the throw. I stood a greater chance of skewering Edan than our airborne enemy.

  “It’s me you want,” I yelled. “Leave him alone.”

  The harbinger bared her jagged teeth at me. “Idra wants him, so Idra will have him.”

  “Idra will never have him.” My back spasmed. “I would kill him first.”

  “You lie.” She jutted out her chin. “You would never harm this one.”

 
To spare him greater pain, I would. Then I would kill her for driving me to it.

  Fear galvanized me. I tossed the blankets from my lap into the snow. The jacket I used to shield myself from prying eyes came next. I flung it onto the road while kicking my mount’s sides until she roared her anger at me, startling the harbinger, who relented her attack on Edan to glance back at me.

  While I had the chance, I grasped the dagger and threw it with all my strength.

  It lodged under her collarbone, but she was quick to yank it free.

  Yellow blood poured from the wound and stained the grungy fabric wrapping across her breasts and over her hips to a short, flared skirt. She kicked her sandaled feet in the air, almost clobbering my brother during her tantrum. Once she’d composed herself, she dropped onto the saddle behind Edan.

  On the wind, I scented his blood as mine heated to a furious boil.

  I had warned her.

  I tore the confining shirt from my back, leaving me in a sleeveless silk chemise and pants.

  Cold air shocked my skin, sending chills shivering through my body to quiver in my wing joints. With a short prayer our guards wouldn’t shoot me down, I flexed my cramped wings and leapt from the back of my ursus into the air. The other harbinger’s eyes widened to see me zooming toward her.

  Using Edan’s shoulders for a brace, she shoved up until she stood on the sow’s back and leaned against him for support. He was shrugging to dislodge her, but his ursus began roaring and thrashing its head. Harbingers smelled of unnatural death, and the ursus wanted no part of her rancid stench.

  Taking my other dagger in hand, I slashed at the harbinger’s back as she turned to launch herself into the sky. I cut through one of her bottom wings, and she shrieked in fury as the membrane tore.

  “Kill her,” the same voice coaxed. “She is unworthy to complete the kills I have set before you.”

  “If I kill her, it is to save myself or those under my protection. It’s not a glory I do for you.”

  “Your existence glorifies me.” Idra’s laughter made my head ache. “Finish her. Then find me.”

  “Find you? That implies desire to see you again.” I scoffed. “Of which I have none. Goodbye.”

  I sailed over the other harbinger and slid my blade through another wing, and then another.

  The harder she flew, the greater her damage became until she was barely hovering over the road.

  “We are sisters.” Her golden eyes pleaded with me. “Do not do this.”

  The flash of weakness, the knowledge she was injured beyond repair, was an aphrodisiac to me.

  My voice was husky when I said, “I have no sisters.”

  “Don’t.” Edan waved his arms in my periphery. “Marne, no. This is not who you are.”

  “I have a brother.” I raised my dagger. “And you tried to take him from me.”

  “No.” The harbinger brought her hands up to shield her face. “I had to. Idra—”

  I sank the blade in her stomach and used her waning altitude to cut her from gut to breast. I rode her corpse to the ground, watching as the light died in her eyes and the spark of her life extinguished.

  While her entrails warmed the snow, I fought the urge to sink my hands inside her and bring that hot, fresh meat to my lips. My mouth watered for a taste. The scent overpowered me, so rich, and I…

  Metal pressed into the side of my throat. Edan stood beside me with his sword drawn while I crouched over the harbinger’s carcass, ready to claw out his eyes for standing so near my kill. Cramps shuddered through me. Everything hurt. Everything burned. I was so hungry.

  “Don’t make me kill you.” He stroked my hair. “I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”

  Instead of sinking my claws into the corpse, I sank them into the snow, threw back my head and screamed until my voice broke and the worst of the pain had passed. Exhaustion toppled me onto my side. My wings curled protectively around me, and I rocked on the ice until Edan lowered his sword, assured I was in possession of my faculties again. He scooped me up in his arms and cradled me like he still loved me, like he still believed his little sister wasn’t a monster, though I wasn’t quite as sure.

  Chapter 2

  After the morning’s excitement, we relaxed our hectic pace and allowed our ursus to recover. Despite the fact I reeked of harbinger blood, which kept my sow’s skin shuddering, I refused Edan’s offer to ride with him.

  I wanted time alone. I needed to make peace with what I had done, not be coddled by him.

  My journal lay open on my lap while I debated how to put my actions into perspective. Nothing came to me. No flowery words or turns of phrase to change the stark truth that I had killed someone.

  Worse, I had enjoyed every minute. Regret had come later, much later, at the point of a sword.

  Edan ranged ahead, his head tilted back to keep an eye on the skies.

  I thought perhaps he wanted distance and quiet to sort through his feelings as well.

  “Writing again.”

  My sow grunted as Asher’s brown boar pulled alongside us.

  After closing the journal, I tucked it away. “It’s a nasty habit I seemed to have picked up in Erania.”

  He made a grumbling sound that could have meant anything.

  I frowned at him. “What was that?”

  Asher thrust out his arm. “I thought you might need this.”

  He tossed my coat to me. It was damp from being trampled into the slush on the road, but he had dusted it clean. Once I shrugged into the garment, he offered me one of the blankets I had discarded. My fingers brushed his by accident. Instead of yanking his hand back, his grip tightened under mine.

  He seemed determined not to be the one to break away first, even if his skin was crawling.

  I saved him the trouble. I jerked it out of his hands and bundled myself. “Thank you.”

  “Your shirt was ruined.” His gaze lingered on the slice of chemise visible under my coat.

  “The journey is almost over.” I struggled not to squirm under his regard. “The coat is enough.”

  As he stared, my skin tightened. My nipples stung as though the cold had not numbed them.

  Asher’s disapproving scowl twisted something in my chest. “What are you?”

  I let the fur slide through my fingers and lowered my head. “That’s a rude question.”

  “You disemboweled someone in midair.” Anger thrummed in his voice. “I deserve answers.”

  “What did Henri tell you when you accepted this position?” I was genuinely curious.

  “That my experience with Lailah made me uniquely qualified to protect you.”

  Lailah, a true harbinger, had sung for Asher and enslaved him with her voice. Under her control, he had commanded her riser legion in the battle to overthrow Erania, a city his clan, the Mimetidae, had sworn to protect. By obeying her, even against his will, he’d turned on those dependent upon him.

  I knew how he felt. Raw. Frightened. Hollowed. There was no cure for what he had suffered.

  I understood why his gaze cut through me and why his voice retained that edge of steel.

  He wanted answers, but he wouldn’t like the ones I had to offer.

  “What did he mean by that?” Asher prompted me.

  Just to be contrary, I twisted the question into one of my own. “What do you think he meant?”

  “That is not an answer.” Asher huffed. “I took it to mean you’re somehow affiliated with them.”

  “Affiliated with the Necrita?” I scoffed. “I am their castoff, not an agent of theirs, if that worries you. As you could tell from our encounter with the harbinger today, her kind bear me and mine no goodwill.” I risked a glance at him. “She came for my—for Edan. I would not let her have him.”

  “Her kind.” His gaze slid over my spine, leaving chills in its wake. “Are you not the same?”

  In appearance, yes, we were. Who delved beyond that these days? “Do you think we are?”

  His pause gav
e as clear an answer as any he had offered me thus far.

  “You revealed yourself to three males who saw combat in Erania. They fought the risers, and if they did not see Lailah herself, they were well informed of who and what she was. They’re good males, each of them, but they don’t understand what it means to be enthralled by the harbinger song.” He cut his eyes to mine. “They don’t understand that there are areas of gray, people who have done horrible things while not in possession of themselves. I fear they won’t listen to me, to reason.”

  I picked at the fur spread across my lap. “You think they’ll harm me now that they know.”

  “There’s a good chance they will try now that they’ve got the notion in their heads.”

  “Thank you for warning me.” I kept to myself how shocked I was that he had bothered.

  “I warn you to protect them.” He tugged on his mount’s reins. “I don’t want to see them dead.”

  Lips pressed together, I trapped my defense behind my teeth and nodded.

  “Keep an eye out,” he called. “The risers are still out there.”

  Asher fell behind, no doubt resuming his place at the rear of our procession before Edan noticed and rebuked him for dawdling. Or worse, Edan might punish him for speaking to me. Asher hated me quite enough as it was. He was, it seemed, a tenuous ally, and I would prefer to keep him as such.

  Though the sun had dipped below the tree line, the bitter cold was slower to set in than usual.

  Between the limbs, fading light cast welcome heat mirages through the branches. Breezes stirred the air, carrying the scent of drying grass. I inhaled until my lungs were full of the heady summer smells. Laughter clogged my throat, and Edan turned as though he’d heard the joy I had not voiced.

  Wrinkles creased his eyes, and the weariness tightening his mouth relented to allow him a smile.

  Once my cheeks grew flush, I folded the fur and tied it to the supply roll behind my saddle.