by Ella Fields
Love made fools out of all of us. It lulled you into a false sense of security, and then it left you to burn.
But there was little time to soak in my anger—I could be furious with myself when and if I survived.
And I had no intention of dying a fool.
Panic sped in as the windows were shut from the outside. Raiden was out there.
And I was seated in a burning trap.
I half wondered if he was smiling, if he felt triumphant, or if maybe, just maybe, he was riddled with enough remorse to help me.
I wouldn’t dare hope for something I wouldn’t give.
I dived for the locked door and screamed, yanking and pulling. I slammed my hands against the wood, my nails chipping, fingers bleeding as I hurled wind and ice and every ounce of myself at the handle.
But the door wouldn’t budge.
If my magic wouldn’t work against the door, then I knew it wouldn’t work against the fire. Not while I was inside. Someone had hexed the carriage.
I screamed, and then coughed as fire licked the wood, and it began to groan. The sound of shouting and swords meeting resonated outside my death.
Tremors shot through my arms as I fumbled and tore at my gown. It finally ripped, and I secured the fabric around my mouth to buy me more time as I crawled across the scalding hot floor to my father.
My hands were torn, skin blistering, but I shut my eyes and wrapped them around the hilt of the sword, then pulled.
It slid from his head with little resistance, and my heart threatened to give out as I saw the insignia on the hilt.
Raiden’s sword.
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter if I was dead. If they got what they wanted.
Rage funneled through me with ice-sharp clarity. Thunder boomed overhead, and I grinned, the blade sturdy within my bloodied hands. I slammed the pommel against the weakened floor of the carriage.
Flames kissed my heels, caught my dress, and I encased myself in a bubble of ice to keep it at bay for just a second—the wood splintered and cracked.
I smacked it again and again until my next breath winded me when I met the hard earth with teeth-jarring impact.
I groaned, flames sizzling as my magic squashed them. Then I stopped breathing altogether when I saw our drivers and footmen dead on the ground. Their heads laid next to their sprawled out bodies, their blood joining and forming a pool around them.
I shifted at the sound of hooves meeting the ground, and then a face appeared, pale with fear-filled eyes. “Thank fuck.” Zadicus held out his hand. “Here.”
I took it, and he pulled me out. “Behind you,” I said, my voice too raspy to be heard.
He read my lips or eyes and turned, knocking the assailant’s sword to the ground and then ending him with a thought alone. Blood dripped from the soldier’s eyes, ears, and nose, and then another swiftly approached.
The smoke was blinding, but I stumbled around the carriage to find only a few remaining traitors left. The rest were nothing but shadowed specks, fleeing south over the hills.
A hand gripped my hair, and a hoarse scream left me as I was yanked back. “You should be in that carriage, burning in the darkness with your soulless father.”
The blade of a sword dug into my throat, and shocked, I didn’t feel the sting, only felt my blood begin to trickle. “Where’s Raiden?” Funny how even after the heart had been used and abused, it still wanted to know what it needed to.
His mother laughed, an airy breathless sound of satisfaction. “Gone. He thought you were dead. Job done. No need to stick around and smell your burning flesh.”
“Audra!” Zad roared.
The carriage erupted, a wild groan cleaving the air as it crumpled in on itself.
I used the distraction to grab her sword arm, swinging her over me into the dirt. A male I didn’t recognize appeared and buried his sword in Solnia’s chest.
She screamed for Phane, who rounded the remains of the carriage, face dark with fury. I met his sword with his son’s as he tried to imbed it in the male’s back.
He struck me in the shoulder, and I screamed, then slammed a gust of wind down his throat when fire erupted from his palm.
Before he could throw it at me, Zad was behind him, his sword cleaving through his neck.
His head rolled, and gasping, I turned to watch it land near his dead wife.
The male who’d killed her flung her heart to the dirt, and it slowly changed color, from crimson to black.
With adrenaline fueling every move, I sent my eyes everywhere, stumbling away from the dirt and landing on my ass. The pommel of the sword singed. I tossed it to the grass, gripping my upper arm as black smoke filled the lightning-streaked sky, and freezing rain started to fall.
My body shaking, I watched the trees around the carriage morph into sinister-looking faces. Faces of beasts that blurred and laughed. That laughed and watched as black crept in and stole every ounce of color from my world.
My hand went to that place on my upper arm. It had healed long ago. There was no scar, yet the slice of sharpened metal tearing at the skin could still be felt even now.
I’d been hurt many times before, and every injury had healed and never haunted.
I suppose it was different when you were hurt in a way that reached your very core, wrapped poisonous talons around it, and refused to let go.
Raiden was silent, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me with the bars between us. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on my arm, and his pupils larger than usual.
“Do you remember?”
He didn’t answer, only stared.
I eased forward and grabbed the bars. “Do you remember?”
“Audra.” He said my name as though it was the first breath he’d taken since this came to pass over a year ago. “What’s happening?” He met my eyes, then rolled over, heaving, his back spasming as he began to vomit on the floor.
With what he’d done fresher than the next pounding beat of my heart, I simply watched as he expelled what looked to be porridge onto the stones and started coughing. Coughing as if it had been his lungs drowning in smoke instead of mine.
After a minute, he swiped the back of his hand over his mouth, then rolled to sit against the wall. “I don’t…” He shook his head, his cheeks billowing as he exhaled. “I didn’t mean to.”
I gripped the metal so hard my skin threatened to tear. “Didn’t mean to what? Kill me and my father?” I laughed, low and without humor, slowly loosening my grip as I went to stand. “Oh, but you did. All along, that was your plan. Trick the heartless princess into believing you could love her. All the better to ruin her, right? You should consider yourself—”
I stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped moving as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out tiny purple crumbs.
Lavender crumbs.
He gazed up at me, confusion a heavy cloud between us.
My mouth opened and closed, and so did his. His eyes swung from the crushed remains of the purple flower to mine and back again.
Bile thundered up my throat, and I raced out of there to the sound of my name being hollered.
“Audra, wait!”
Azela was reaching for her sword, eyes wide and darting from me to the shouting king.
“Lock the gate, lock the door,” I rushed out before hurtling up the stairs and throwing myself through the first exit of the castle I found.
Upon the small balcony, I gulped in breath after breath, sliding down the rough exterior of my home as the kitchen staff smoking pipes on their breaks glanced over at me curiously.
Whatever they saw on my face had them emptying their pipes and hurrying back inside.
“He’s having moments of clarity,” Gretelle, the head of Truin’s coven, said. “And then he’s confused.”
I eyed the aging crone, my fingers tapping at the arm of my throne as I surveyed the listening guards. “Has he been ill again?” Since seeing the lavender pieces in his palm, I couldn’t brin
g myself to return to the dungeon.
I had no idea what to do with that. Had he carried it with him even during his life as one of the exiled? Or was it some type of parlor trick? Perhaps he’d asked one of the guards to fetch him some to help with any nausea.
I’d asked Truin to come yesterday, and she had, but after watching him for a full five hours and only gleaning splotches of rational mind, she’d said she needed help and left.
“He’s angry, then he’s remorseful, then he’s confused, then he’s asking for you, then he’s asking for Casilla.” The crone narrowed an eye at me. “Who is this Casilla?”
I waved the question away, wanting to snuff the kernel of hope that kept on rising within. “His betrothed from The Edges.”
Gretelle’s creased face scrunched further, and I withheld a laugh. Never had I seen the woman look so perplexed. She shook her head. “Well, then. I suppose I’ll return in the morning with some of my sisters and tools.”
Truin cleared her throat. “I’d like to stay, Audra. To keep an eye on him.”
The crone pursed her lips. “He should have someone with him, yes.” She stole a quick side glance at me. “He’s in a right state and could do with some familiar faces.”
I ignored the jab and bid her farewell, watching her hobble to the door where Ainx waited to escort her out.
Truin glanced at the remaining guards, then took a seat below my throne on the marble step, her patterned yellow skirts flaring around her as she set her basket down. “Are you okay?”
I sighed, slouching a little in the uncomfortable chair. “Define okay.”
She smiled, reaching inside her basket to resituate some herbs and a bottle of dark green liquid. “You should go see him. It’s true, you know.” She peered up at me. “That he was asking for you.”
“I know.” He’d been asking for me for the past two days. Ever since I’d ran out of there with my brain and heart exploding.
“You’re scared. Now you’ve gotten what you so desperately sought, you’re scared of what you’ll soon need to do.” There was no hesitation to her words. Only gentle assumption.
My throat tightened, as did my hands around the armrests.
Ainx returned with a box in hand and his face paling. “My queen, one of the messengers just arrived.”
“Evidently,” I said, eyeing the box with a raised brow. “What is it?”
Ainx held it away from him as though he was afraid to sully his uniform. “It smells of decaying flesh.”
My stomach dropped, and I rose, moving around Truin to descend the stairs and take the box from him.
A scream lodged in my throat when I tore off the gilded golden lid to find two long fingers tucked away on a crisp white pillow. Drops of blood stained the satin in a few places, like crimson beads over snow.
They looked as if they’d been hacked from his hand, the skin prickled and pruned where the blood had dried, bits of bone peeking out.
Truin made a retching sound behind me.
With unsteady hands, I slid the lid back on and clutched the box tight to my stomach. Relief and regret warred. “He’s alive then.”
Ainx nodded. “Though I loathe to think how many body parts might be severed before he’s not.”
I ignored the undertone to his statement. “Prepare Wen and several guards.”
“Where are you going?” Truin asked.
I was already leaving the room with plans to grab a small satchel and change of clothes. “To visit an old friend.”
The lord of the east lived a half day’s ride from the castle, and though I’d never ventured to his estate before, I’d heard talk of it and some of my guards knew the way.
As far as I was aware, with the exception of a few staff, the lord lived alone. Ever since he’d lost his wife.
Rumor stated that she threw herself off a cliff into the falls that crashed downstream to meet with the Gray Sea some months after giving birth to a stillborn. I’d often wondered if she was the reason he’d never found someone else. If perhaps she was the reason our every exchange in our earlier days, and even now, was swathed with conflicting moments. I’d never asked.
At first it was because I didn’t care to. And now, it was because I probably cared more than I should.
Though it was rare for our kind to vow more than once in our long lifetimes, it still happened. There were few ways to escape a vow. Death, pleading—so long as both parties were in agreeance—with the crown, or treason.
Zad had remained a fixture in my court in the days after Raiden had been exiled for the latter.
Word declared his manor to be a sprawling glass rectangle with gardens upon the roof that overflowed to curtain the sides of the house, giving the appearance of an oversized, inside out greenhouse.
The whispers were not wrong, though they rarely ever were.
We exited the dark foliage of the Winding Woods and emerged into a starlit valley. Hooves thundered down the incline as we hurried to get out of view. We might have been in the lord of the east’s territory, but that had never stopped miscreants from doing what miscreants did before.
Dirt sprayed beneath Ainx’s horse as he led the way through mounds of moon-kissed grass riddled with white flowers.
I could see stables to the far left of the gated estate; a large white wooden expanse that looked as though it’d house at least twenty horses. Idly, I wondered if he had that many, or if he kept space for guests. Then I wondered how often the broody beast even had guests.
I shook off my useless thoughts and relaxed my thighs as we wound into the valley of his home. Behind the white wrought iron fence, which I knew would be warded, was a thin forest that stretched for miles—all the way to the cliffs where his wife took her life.
We dismounted as soon as the gates opened, our legs aching and stomachs growling after stopping only long enough to relieve ourselves and refill our canteens.
I grabbed my satchel from the saddle and handed Wen’s reins to Azela as a female with golden hair and matching eyes appeared and directed the guards to the stables.
On my own, I absorbed the pristine gardens filled with every type of flower imaginable, and even some that didn’t seem real. They littered the lawn before Zad’s glass home in small clusters, in larger groups upon the fence line, and in beds that raced along the glass exterior.
The scent of jasmine, lavender, roses, and other unnamable flora saturated the early evening air.
Drawing a slow breath, I felt my eyelids flutter.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, my queen?”
I spun around. Zad stood before the towering glass doors, his feet bare and his gray tunic loose. He swept a hand through his long hair, but it was futile. The auburn strands fell back in place to curtain his cheeks.
With leaden feet, I moved toward him, the bag hanging from my shoulder weighing much more than it should. As I dragged my eyes from the lord to his large home, I noticed that even though it was made of glass, you couldn’t actually see inside. My own reflection and the star-sprinkled sky stared back at me.
“We need to talk.” I glanced around, then met his curious gaze. “Inside. I received a rather alarming delivery this morning.”
Zad’s lips twisted. For a moment that caused my breath to quake, he just stared. Finally, he straightened from where he’d been leaning against the open door. “You needn’t worry about unwelcome ears. There is no one here who’d betray me.”
I snorted, sweeping past him inside when he gestured so. “What makes you so sure of yourself?”
“Besides the fact that I pay them handsomely?” He left the doors open, seemingly amused as my mouth hung open, my eyes hungry as they took in everything beyond the small foyer. “I haven’t hired anyone new in years. My people and friends know it’s a death sentence to betray me.”
I was too busy taking in the night sky through the walls and the slanted gaps in the ceiling to be jealous—gaps between the grass, dirt, and gardens above. “This is magical,” I said, mov
ing down the hall.
“By all means, show up unannounced and just make yourself at home.”
I ignored his dry tone, my boots scuffing soft on the charcoal speckled marble floor as I peeked inside as many rooms on the first floor as I could.
A sitting room decorated in whites, blacks, and grays. A study near the kitchen dressed in dark wood and leather upholstery. An entertaining area, housing two large black velvet chaises with orange and silver throw pillows, and three armchairs with black and brown fur blankets draped over them. A fire was dancing in the giant black crystal hearth. Ancient paintings of glittering landscapes and half-naked winged females lined some of the stark white walls.
Standing on the black woven rug, I turned and traipsed past Zad back down the hall, bypassing a bathing room riddled with dark tiles and red towels to the kitchen at the opposite end.
Two males were laughing as they wiped pots and pans and rehung them above the counter. They froze when they saw me standing there, absorbing the brick and wood and wide expanse of the room.
“Majesty.” Quickly, they bowed. A blond male said, “Uh, can we get you something?”
“I’m fine.” I turned to leave, and my face smacked right into a hard chest. “Oof.”
For a moment, I just inhaled the smell of cloves and mint.
Then Zad’s hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me back. “If you’re done exploring, I’d like to get to the point of this visit.”
“So rude.” I huffed, tearing away and heading to the dark wooden stairs. “I’ve yet to see upstairs.”
He grabbed my hand and tugged me back down them, and I groaned as he pulled me back down the long hall to a small sitting room. I sniffed at the stiff white-on-white armchairs and tables, and the small fireplace. “The other room seems nicer.”
“That room is for guests.”
“Is that not what I am?” I turned to him.
“You’re many things, Audra, but a guest is not one of them.” Gently, he pulled my satchel from my shoulder. “What’s going—” His head jerked. “Darkness be damned, what is that fucking smell?”