by Jocelyn Fox
“I was saving up for a new one anyway,” said Vivian, scraping the last bite from her plate.
“Okay. I need to cash in some of that gold that Niall gave me for my truck,” Ross said.
“Evie probably knows someone.” Vivian stood and deposited her plate into the sink.
Tyr wandered into the living room just as a knock sounded on the door. The white-haired Fae looked sharply at the door, but Vivian fairly flew to answer it.
“Don’t worry, it’s a friend,” she said breathlessly.
Ross didn’t miss the little once-over that Vivian gave herself, tugging at the hem of her shirt and smoothing back an errant curl before reaching for the door handle. She also didn’t miss the way that Tyr walked behind Vivian and crossed his arms over his chest. She glanced at Duke and pushed back from the table.
“Think I’m gonna go make sure this doesn’t go sideways,” she murmured.
Duke chuckled and seemed unconcerned.
“Hey, Alex,” Vivian said, leaning against the door. “Ready to go?”
She slid out the door but Tyr reached out with blinding speed and caught the edge of the door before it closed. Ross lengthened her strides across the living room as Tyr opened the door and cocked his head to one side.
“Hey, man,” came a young man’s voice. “Nice hair. I like the look. I’m Alex.”
Tyr stared at the offered hand as though he didn’t know what a handshake was, though Ross felt certain he should have at least picked up that much during his centuries in the mortal world.
“Um, this is Tyr,” Vivian said. “He’s a…friend of the family. Staying with us a little while.”
Tyr didn’t have a bandage around his head anymore, but he still wore a bandage around his leg. Ross slid past him onto the porch, positioning herself between Tyr and Alex.
“Hey, Alex, I’m Ross,” she said with false cheer, shaking Alex’s still-extended hand. She gathered a quick impression of mocha skin, inquisitive dark eyes and a mane of tight curls that swayed as Alex moved.
“Nice to meet you,” he said reflexively, his eyes still focused on Tyr.
“No, you’re staying here,” Vivian said suddenly.
Ross and Alex glanced at her, Ross suspiciously and Alex curiously.
“Sorry, Tyr had mentioned earlier that he kind of wanted to come along,” said Vivian quickly.
Alex shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with it. No worries there.”
“I…just don’t think it’s a good idea,” Vivian said weakly.
Tyr looked at Ross. She blinked as she saw the concern in his gray eyes. “You know, Alex, there was this weird thing that happened a couple of days ago. I don’t know if you saw it on the news or whatever, but this crazy guy attacked our house. I think maybe an extra pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt.”
“Ross,” hissed Vivian.
“Like I said, no worries,” Alex said, though a hint of confusion clouded his face. He rallied and gestured to Vivian. “Ready to go pick up your Jeep?”
“You got a Jeep?” Ross said, raising her eyebrows.
Vivian nodded. “Soft-top. Figured…you know, less enclosed. Feel the wind in your hair. All that stuff.”
Tyr slid past Ross, favoring his wounded leg but still walking with the grace of a predator. For a moment, Ross wondered if she was doing the right thing, letting the Exile escort Vivian, but she felt a strange certainty that Tyr wanted to protect her. And that wasn’t a bad thing, given that the bone sorcerer and Corsica were still out there.
“You have your phone, right?” she called after Vivian.
“Yes, Mama Ross,” Vivian called back.
Ross watched the three of them walk down the driveway toward Alex’s car. She guessed that Vivian had explained the torched hulk of the truck earlier, because Alex didn’t seem surprised. Tyr walked beside Vivian, but a respectful distance away, his gaze turned toward the trees and then the road.
“Dinner’s getting cold!” called Duke from inside the house.
Ross sighed and walked back inside the house, closing the door behind her and hoping that she hadn’t just made a huge mistake.
Chapter 24
Calliea finished the last braid in Kyrim’s tail and stood back, admiring her work. The winged faehal flicked his tail experimentally and tossed his head.
“Well, it’s either that or crop it,” Calliea said, raising an eyebrow. “Which might be the solution anyway. Don’t want you to get caught on anything while we’re flying.”
Kyrim snorted as though to tell her that such a suggestion was ridiculous. Calliea chuckled, forcing herself not to wince even though the motion stirred up the still-healing ache in her side. Her ribs and stomach bore a rippled conglomeration of thick scar tissue, ridges of angry red interspersed with silver. At least the dark lines of stitches that had spread over her skin like a black spider web had been plucked out by one of Maeve’s healers the day before, leaving little pinpricks that barely bled.
It had been nearly ten days since their failed raid on the Unseelie Princess’s dungeon. Calliea still drank white shroud before sleeping to avoid the dreams, though she knew she had to face them at some point. The white shroud made her sleep just a little bit longer than she ought, and it wrapped her mind in a haze for the hour after waking. Khal helped, but the amount she had to drink to chase away the aftereffects of the white shroud with any kind of efficiency left her feeling jittery and high-strung.
Kyrim shook his head and pawed at the ground, half-opening his magnificent wings. He looked back at her, his liquid, intelligent eyes curious.
“Yes, yes, we’re going to go for a flight,” said Calliea. Her hand found the familiar curve of her whip coiled at her hip. She checked the straps on the harness that circled Kyrim’s chest and looped under his forelegs, and then she checked the straps on her own harness, the supple leather straps encircling her upper thighs feeling foreign after so long on the ground. At least when Merrick or Vell or whomever else felt like they had the right reprimanded her for flying so soon after such a grievous wound wouldn’t be able to say that she had been completely reckless.
“All right then, my handsome boy,” she said to Kyrim. “Ready to feel the sky under your wings again?”
Kyrim pranced in reply. The other winged faehal in the paddock watched them from the fence, and one of them whinnied in jealousy as Calliea leapt onto Kyrim’s back. The explosive movement cost her: a sharp burst of pain in her side knocked the thoughts from her head for a moment, but then she regained her senses and finished clipping herself into the harness. She wrapped one hand in Kyrim’s mane. They didn’t have a hill to launch from here, but that was no stumbling block for their winged mounts now. She heard the other mounts shifting restlessly, snorting in excitement as they watched, and she vowed to gather her Valkyrie and institute formal training once more. She’d become lax as their commander after the great battle in the sky over the White City.
But before she could expect her warriors to train on their winged mounts, she had to be sure that she could still match their skill on Kyrim.
Behind the cathedral, a long stretch of bare ground provided a narrow lane for exercising faehal on the ground or letting them gain speed to leap into the air. Calliea turned Kyrim toward the lane. She felt him quiver with excitement. A different kind of dread gathered in her stomach, oily and dense, mixing queasily with the ache in her side. But she pushed aside the discomfort, shifted her weight forward, and tapped Kyrim with her heels.
Her winged mount surged forward, his wings still half-folded as he gained speed, his head pumping and his great legs propelling them forward faster and faster. Calliea leaned forward and crouched on his back and shoved the pain of her side from her mind. She felt Kyrim’s muscles rippling under his smooth coat, his lungs working like Thea’s bellows at the forge. They flashed past the halfway mark, a white stone pillar with a red stripe painted by one of the Valkyries to mark the distance.
Excitement rushed through Calliea’s chest, d
rowning the pain of her ribs and the strange dread swirling in her stomach. For the first time since the raid, she focused wholly on the task at hand, feeling weightless, as though she did not have a physical body but her consciousness had merged with Kyrim, his flashing limbs and the wings held quivering at their half-mast position. They galloped past the three-quarter mark, a blue stripe on a pillar. The wind rushed in her ears. She felt Kyrim gather himself and a cry of jubilation began to build in her throat. He launched himself from the ground with a mighty leap, his body almost perpendicular to the beaten path, Calliea clinging to his mane like a burr. After the spring of his mighty hindquarters, he snapped open his wings and gave one, two, three rapid downward strokes, straining upward, gravity still trying to claw at them. Calliea let loose the joyous, wordless yell that coursed through her entire body with the brightness of a pure elation that she had almost forgotten, a current of unadulterated exultation flowing fast and deep through her veins.
Then they were level with the first turrets of the great cathedral and Kyrim leveled out into a gentler climb. Calliea felt the strain of his wings become less urgent as he found a zephyr and spiraled up into the sky. She glanced below them and saw the other winged faehal galloping around the paddock, spreading their wings and neighing in encouragement and longing. Then the noise of life on the ground fell away, and there was only her and Kyrim, the sweep of his wings and the beat of her heart as they arrowed up into the perfect blueness of the noon sky. She didn’t look down again for a long time. Instead, she felt the sun on her face, the wind rushing past, plucking at her hair and her shirt, the silkiness of Kyrim’s mane in her hands, his small satisfied snorts now and again, the muted thrum of his wings through the air and the silence when he coasted on a current of air, wings extended but not beating.
Calliea’s chest began to ache with the pure happiness of flying in the cloudless sky, no battle below her and no enemy ahead. She took a deep breath, the coolness of the air slipping over her lips and soothing the sudden tightness in her throat. In the solitude of the sky, she let the emotions of the past days wash over her, no longer fighting the tears that gathered in her eyes and streamed down her face. She let herself feel the anger and disappointment at her own failure to see the second attacker in the dungeon; the cold, frozen fear that gripped her in the moment after she fell to the frosted flagstones, knowing she would probably die; the hot, aching shame of being the point of failure, forcing the others to choose between trying to save her life and freeing the Princess.
When her tears ran dry, she felt wrung out and empty, but in a good way, as though she’d been carrying a heavy pack for the past days without realizing it and had now finally slipped its straps off her shoulders. Kyrim, for his part, made clear his enjoyment of their time in the sky, banking now and again in tight turns, dipping one wing low as he circled. Calliea leaned to one side and gazed down at the expanse of the once-magnificent White City, slowly being restored to its former glory. Mountains crouched on the horizon, wreathed in mist and stippled with evergreen forests. The golden light of the late afternoon sun painted the pale stone of the city in washes of cream and amber. She picked out the dome of the cathedral, its great steps and columns rendered small by distance. From there, her eyes roamed to the west, toward the Unseelie stronghold, the armory set into a hill and the fallen tower that she remembered even in the darkness. As if he read her mind, Kyrim banked westward.
A prickle of foreboding touched Calliea’s neck, but she brushed it away. The Unseelie did not own the skies. The skies belonged to the Valkyrie. They had won dominion of the air from the creatures of Malravenar, first slaying his monstrous dragon and then dueling his cadengriff and other winged beasts over the White City. For an instant, memories of the battle surfaced in her mind’s eye, so visceral that she was transported for the moment back to that day. The ground shook and thunderous explosions vibrated through their bones as the Valkyrie dropped the last of their enchanted glass orbs containing that all-consuming fire onto the City. Fingers of gray smoke drifted up into the highest formations of the Valkyrie. As they dove lower, flakes of ash caught in their hair and in the manes of their mounts. The scent of charred flesh and the howling of the creatures trapped within the raging fires wrapped around her as she freed her whip from her belt, guiding Kyrim with her knees, alert for creatures but also glancing to the left and the right to check the arrow formations of her magnificent warriors.
Kyrim wheeled sharply, breaking Calliea’s reverie. She grabbed a handful of mane and gripped his sides convulsively with her knees, her instincts taking over as she felt the harness tighten around her legs. With a muttered curse, she shifted her weight back to centerline and patted Kyrim’s neck. The dark faehal didn’t acknowledge her silent apology, craning his neck as he gazed down at the perimeter of the city, his delicately curved ears swiveling rapidly.
Calliea frowned and swallowed the rest of the anxiety that had surged into her throat at losing her balance. Kyrim’s instincts had saved her life more times than she could count in the time since he had become her mount. He had been a trained warhorse, after all, and the High Queen’s sorcery had not been applied to capricious faehal. She regarded him now as her partner in battle, a friend to be relied upon, not a creature to be mastered. Hence, she stood in the harness and leaned to the left, scanning the ground and trying to pick out what had caught Kyrim’s interest.
The winged faehal snorted and folded his wings as he shifted into a dive. Calliea pushed aside the ache in her side and thrilled to the wind rushing past her face. When she’d visited Niamh in the healing ward before going into the mortal world, Quinn had suggested eye coverings, strangely named goggles in the mortal tongue, which he said would enable the Valkyrie to fly faster and through debris without worrying about damaging their eyes. She knew his suggestion had merit, but she just couldn’t picture the devices. For now, she just blinked the tears from her eyes and pulled up her scarf over her mouth so the cold air didn’t take her breath away as Kyrim arrowed toward the ground.
At first Calliea mistook the baying of the hounds for the whistling of the wind in her ears, but as Kyrim sped closer to the ground she spied a trio of great black hounds on the plain beyond the last towers of the Unseelie portion of the city. Remnants of the great wall that had encircled the city in its golden age lay scattered across the green expanse, the white stones stark as bones against the verdant grasses. Clumps of trees had sprung up in the weeks since Malravenar’s defeat, their growth spurred by the power of the Queens in the City. And in the distance, mist wreathed the forests, the first small mountains of the Northern Wilds ridging the earth, their spines reminding Calliea of the great bulk of the dead dragon’s carcass so long ago.
Kyrim overtook the hounds. They didn’t cringe or slow as his shadow rippled over them, their great bodies stretched in their intent, distance-eating lope. Calliea stood in her harness and looked ahead, trying to see the hounds’ quarry. She forced herself not to flinch as a Glasidhe streaked toward them, though Kyrim shied slightly to one side as the small comet flashed past his head.
The Glasidhe skillfully reversed direction to match Kyrim’s pace, but that seemed to take the last of her energy. Calliea deftly caught her in one cupped hand and gently deposited her in Kyrim’s mane, where she could gain a secure hold and ride without fear of being crushed.
“Laedrek!” cried the Glasidhe, her small chest heaving. Her aura shimmered blue and purple, lovely as all Glasidhe were, but the small Sidhe’s hair and raiment were disheveled, her gown dirtied and her hair in disarray.
Alarm coursed through Calliea. “What are the hounds hunting?” she asked, almost having to shout over the wind.
“Lady Guinna!” wailed the Glasidhe.
Kyrim leveled out from his dive and pumped his wings, flying a stone’s throw above the ground. Calliea glanced back and saw that the hounds trailed them at an uncomfortably close distance. She unhooked her coiled whip from her belt and looked ahead. Finally, she picked
out a diminutive woman among the tall grasses, running toward the nearest stand of trees. The woman’s dark hair streamed behind her like a banner. She ran with admirable speed, but Calliea could already see that she wouldn’t make it to the trees before the hounds caught her.
“Queen Mab has sent her hounds to hunt!” cried the Glasidhe in Kyrim’s mane.
“They’ll kill her?” Calliea asked in horror. The Glasidhe seemed overcome by emotion and couldn’t summon the words to reply, letting out a wordless cry of anguish instead. It was all the answer Calliea needed. She sat up and glanced back again at the three hounds, her gaze cold and calculating now. Killing one of Mab’s hounds would probably anger the Unseelie Queen, but if she had to do it, she would.
“Do you want to land or do this from the air?” she asked Kyrim. “Strike them if you must, but once the woman is aboard it’s to the sky again.”
The faehal tossed his head and increased his speed. Perhaps if they reached Guinna with enough time, they wouldn’t have to face the hounds at all, Calliea thought.
“Hold tight and keep a sharp eye out,” she told the Glasidhe. “Move if you have to, I don’t want to crush you by accident.”
The Glasidhe nodded, her dark eyes huge in her pale face.
With a few more strokes of his powerful wings, Kyrim brought them closer to the fleeing woman. Calliea had to admire the small, slender Unseelie if just for the fact that she hadn’t looked back at all, focusing instead on reaching her goal. It still wouldn’t get her to the trees before one of the hounds leapt onto her back and took her down as a wolf downs a deer, but it was admirable nonetheless. It showed a certain kind of fearlessness that Calliea could respect.
“Guinna!” she called, loosening the coil of her whip in one hand as Kyrim strained to close the distance between them.
The woman glanced over her shoulder at her name, her pale face terrified but determined. Her eyes widened in shock at the sight of the Valkyrie, and she stumbled and fell, stunned, into the long grass. The little Glasidhe gave a shriek and launched herself toward Guinna.