by Jane Kindred
“The name she gave is Helga Semyazovna of Raqia, Your Supernal Majesty. She’s locked in the tower. With the child.”
Aeval turned her sharp attention on him, and my heart leapt with fear. “The child? The child? The grand duchess?” When he confirmed this, she picked up her garments and marched resolutely toward the keep. “We wish to see this child. Take the rest of the prisoners in for now. We shall deal with them later.”
We were ushered inside to the great hall while Aeval and the captain mounted the tower stairs with a retinue of soldiers and Ophanim. Kae followed on his own. They separated us by sex once more, taking the men back to the dungeon, while the women remained in the hall, our “cell” occupied for the moment.
Behind Margarita and Vashti, Lively stood beside me looking ill. The soldiers guarding us began to joke among themselves about whether they’d rather have a mad grand duchess or a pregnant demon. She was not yet showing, but Lively had made no secret of her condition. I ignored them. I was busy steeling myself to bargain for our lives with everything I had.
If Aeval would spare Vasily and Belphagor, I would promise her anything, even if it meant confessing to the crimes of which she’d accused me. I would relinquish any claim to the throne for Ola or myself and accept permanent exile from the celestial sphere. And in exchange for my child, I was prepared to offer Aeval what she most desired. I would tell her Helga’s locket held the flower of the fern.
I couldn’t let myself think about what this meant for Heaven.
As for Kae, at that moment, I was willing to sacrifice him. By his own admission, he would be better off dead than living with the knowledge of what he’d done. And the others…I couldn’t think of them. I had to think of Ola.
Angry shouting carried down to us from the tower room. Helga wouldn’t bow to Aeval easily, I was certain. As they descended, I heard Love sobbing, and I wondered what Aeval had done to her. Love appeared first at the foot of the stairs, propelled by an Ophan, her eyes red and swollen as if she’d been crying for some time. Aeval swept down behind Love, her face white with rage. Helga and Ola were not with them.
The Ophan shoved Love forward and she fell weeping at my feet. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Fear hammered in my chest. I knelt down and lifted her shoulders. “For what? What’s happened? Love!”
“Helga,” she gasped between sobs. “I couldn’t stop her.”
“What do you mean? What has she done?” My heart stopped when her brown eyes looked up into mine, drowning in grief. “Where is Ola?”
“The Cherub.” Love choked back her tears. “Helga conjured him somehow. I begged her to take me with her. I didn’t want Ola to be afraid.”
“No.” My fingers went numb and Love slipped from my hands onto the ground. “No! She can’t be gone again!” I jumped up and ran for the stairs, but the Ophan pulled me back with an arm around my waist. “Let me go!” I screamed.
He lifted me off the ground, but the painful prickling of his touch meant nothing to me in the face of losing Ola. I railed against him, pulling at his arms and beating uselessly at his chest, until the ophanic current rendered me insensate and he dropped me to the floor.
Aeval crossed the room, garments swirling about her white fur boots against the stone, to challenge her Ophanim Guard. “What do you know about the Cherubim? They are your choral cousins. Are you part of this sedition?”
“We know nothing of it. The Ophanim serve the throne of the Firmament of Shehaqim.” The voice crackled in my head like a burst of static on a telephone in the world of Man, and I tried to cover my ears, but my hands wouldn’t move as I wished.
Beside me, Lively was ill, and I almost joined her. Someone gave her a cloth to wipe her face and she knelt down and cleaned the stone floor with it in an almost automatic gesture, as though used to scrubbing on her hands and knees.
“She left me,” Lively murmured to herself. “Auntie left me to die.”
Love pulled me up to lean against her, and I sat shaking in her arms while my muscles recovered from the Ophan’s touch. “Please forgive me,” she whispered.
“No,” I slurred. “Not you…” I couldn’t organize my thoughts or speech enough yet to tell her she needed no forgiveness.
“We will have an answer.” Aeval paced with a careful fury, a lioness who had already cornered her prey and was now determining the best way to take it down. “Where are Our Seraphim?” She flung out her hand with a sweeping motion, and an arc of flame seemed to soar from it across the stones. Where it touched, Seraphim materialized, and I turned my head away from the brightness.
Aeval stalked the room. “Your cousin Cherubim have betrayed the throne of Heaven. They have stolen the child We sent you to find.” She stopped and scrutinized one of the Seraphim, having no difficulty looking him in the eye despite the brightness of his countenance. “How did the Cherubim know about the child?”
“All of Heaven knows about the child,” answered the Seraph in his devastating voice.
“All of Heaven does not know she shares your blood. But it would seem this peasant Helga knows it and intends to use it to rule Heaven.”
“She was the mother’s nurse,” said the Seraph. “Perhaps the mother told her.”
Aeval turned on me, incredulous. “This Helga was your nurse? The nurse of the House of Arkhangel’sk is leading a peasant revolt against my throne?” When I said nothing, she crossed the floor with swift, furious strides and hauled me to my feet. “Is she your nurse!”
“Yes.” I nodded, dizzy. “Helga—my nurse.”
“And so the two of you planned this together.” She shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth.
“Stole her. She stole my Ola.”
“You expect me to believe you just happened to be here with the leader of the rebellion, yet you are not in league with her.” Aeval shoved me away and I crumpled back to the floor.
Love caught me and glared up at Aeval. “It’s your fault.”
It was hard to say which of us was the more startled at Love’s tenacity. Aeval simply stared, as if a piece of the furniture had begun to speak.
“It’s because she found out you wanted her stupid flower.”
Aeval focused on Love with deadly calm. I grabbed at Love’s shirt, shaking my head in desperation, but it was too late. She would not be deterred.
“I heard her talking to the Cherub. Because of a ’fern’ flower, Ola and I have been prisoners for two hundred and forty-two days. And now…” She trailed off as her voice broke.
Aeval’s silvery eyes narrowed on me, taking on a feral, preternatural glow. The lioness was about to pounce. “That—peasant—has the flower of the fern? How did she get the flower of the fern?”
“She took it from me,” I managed.
An expression of such utter astonishment crossed her face, it was almost comical. “And how did you—?” Aeval paused, the feral silver of her eyes shadowing over with outraged understanding. “Those little bitches.”
She hadn’t known. I swallowed a nervous burst of laughter that threatened to erupt from my throat. Despite himself, Belphagor had been right all along. She hadn’t known about the flower at all.
But something was puzzling me. “Why?” I made a weak attempt to sit up as my coordination began to return. “Why are you punishing them?”
Aeval gave me a perturbed glare. “What are you babbling about?”
“The syla. If you didn’t know they’d given me the flower, why are you tormenting those defenseless creatures?”
“Tormenting the syla?” Aeval looked baffled. It was clearly not an expression she was used to wearing. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about, though I can assure you those ’creatures’ are far from defenseless.”
“Then why are your Seraphim killing them?”
It was hard to be certain in the brightness of their countenances, but it seemed the Seraphim cringed.
Aeval’s baffled expression slowly hardened as she turned toward
the firespirits, biting out each word as a carefully enunciated barb. “What have you done?”
The seraphic radiance wavered. “Her Supernal Highness is mistaken.” The Seraph’s tone betrayed nothing, though with a voice like a steel hammer to the skull, intonation was largely irrelevant.
“I am not mistaken. I saw them burn.” I rose unsteadily. “The snegurochki told me in the Midnight Court—”
“What were you doing in my Midnight Court?” Aeval’s eyes flashed with outrage.
I stared down her challenge. “The syla invited me there, and from what I understand, it hasn’t been your Midnight Court in some time. They said the Seraphim had destroyed the summer and autumn syla and were waiting to destroy the spring.” I looked at the Seraph who’d spoken. “They destroyed them by forcing themselves upon the syla.”
The Seraph stepped close to me, his radiance flaring brightly. “The grand duchess lies.”
I stood under his glare without flinching. “They told me the Seraphim claimed to have been sent by you, Your Supernal Majesty. To punish them.”
With a swift motion like a striking snake, the Seraph raised his wings and slashed out at me with an arc of fire. Behind me, Love screamed, and I whirled to try to evade it, taking the brunt of the strike against my shoulder. A searing pain shot through my skin, like being struck with a skillet pulled from the fire. At the same instant, the Seraph made a grating roar of pain. He twisted around to locate the source of his agony. Kae stood behind him, his sword embedded in the Seraph’s back.
“Enough!” Aeval’s anger echoed from the stone walls.
Kae retreated smoothly, unseating his sword, and the Seraph stumbled to his knees in front of me with a sort of molten ichor flowing from his wound.
Aeval rounded on Kae and shoved his chest. “Don’t forget you take orders from me. And you—” She circled the Seraph. “You have no will but mine. If you have taken it upon yourself to act of your own accord in the world of Man, I promise you shall never have freedom. I have not convened the Midnight Court in a century.” She turned her gaze on me. “But it is still my Midnight Court. And it seems even in Heaven there are claims in need of judging.”
The queen circled the room, observing the other Seraphim who had offered neither to confirm nor refute the wounded Seraph’s denial. “Will you make the case for your innocence? Do you stand with your groveling brother and swear you have no knowledge of what the grand duchess claims?” Her eyes darkened dangerously. “Or are you part of this conspiracy with a pack of lowly demons?”
They remained stubbornly quiet.
“One of you will answer me, or I will drain you of your element one by one. Have you or have you not attacked my wood spirits?”
“They are not your wood spirits,” one of the Seraphim replied.
“That was the wrong answer.” Aeval pierced him with her stare, and his radiance flickered. “You were bound by celestial oath to obey the rulers of Heaven.”
The Seraph at my feet coughed up more of the glowing ichor as he fell forward onto his hands. “You are not a celestial. And you have allowed this one to live too long.” One of his upper wings slapped out toward me, and the heat of it struck me before the wing itself, but again Kae moved swiftly, this time slashing off the tip of the Seraph’s wing and darting forward to plunge his sword into the glowing heart of the creature.
Aeval’s angry shout was swallowed up into the Seraph’s horrible shriek. Both her fists were outstretched in a familiar motion, one dripping seraphic ichor and the other dripping water. Kae stumbled against the Seraph as she began to squeeze the life from him.
After everything she’d done to him, I would not cede his life to her. I leapt forward to close my hand over Kae’s on the hilt of his blade. The spark of radiance between us before had been no fluke. A vivid amethyst surged around our hands, traveling up the steel of his sword to connect with the Seraph’s fire, and it was as though our radiance became a solid wall of water. The luminous amethyst wave rushed over the Seraph, the surface of him roiling with the contradictory elements, and it seemed to pull away his fire, taking the radiance with it as it rolled over him.
When the wave receded, it left him gasping on the ground, Kae’s sword still glowing with a field of light where it pierced him, and the Seraph’s glorious flame a pale, wan flicker. Around us, the other Seraphim glowed with the same sickly light. Kae pulled out the blade, and I shuddered and let go of him, realizing with a sickening start that the same blade had once been buried in me.
Aeval, livid a moment before, stood with a look of frank curiosity on her flawless features as she gazed about the room. “You’ve…neutered them.” She lifted her hand, her fingers pulling at the air as if experimenting with an element we couldn’t see. The remaining seraphic radiance flowed toward her like ghostly threads with her motions.
She smiled at me unexpectedly. “It seems the two of you in your joint folly have inadvertently saved me the time and effort of a messy castration.” She regarded me with a gleam in her eye. “You may yet prove useful to me. And you, my darling angel”—she shook her finger playfully at Kae—“you, I shall deal with later.” Aeval’s expression turned hard, and she extended her arms to encompass the room, fingers curled into the invisible seraphic radiance. “As for the Seraphim, you five have damned your race.” She yanked the ghostly threads into her fists. “I will stop the Pyriphlegethon. You will never leave the Empyrean again.”
The Seraphim wailed miserably as what little remained of their fire began to dissipate, and this time I managed to cover my ears. They were so wretched I almost felt sorry for them for a moment, until I remembered what they’d done to the syla.
Dvadtsatoe: A Thief in the Night
One moment, the Seraphim were burning through the green wood of the leshi’s cordon around the fairy ring at Tsarskoe Selo, and the next they’d vanished in a cloud of steam, as if doused.
Misha had stood beside his half brothers as long as he could, but his human side couldn’t withstand the flames. Where the charred flesh on the limbs of full-blooded leshi would peel away and be renewed, he would be permanently scarred if the fire burned deeply enough.
As a rule, the leshi felt little obligation to assist in the matters of the syla. They might be siblings of a sort, and they were more than willing to share each other’s beds, but they occupied themselves with very different concerns. Normally, however, the syla were quite capable of taking care of their own matters; the power to entrance and confound was not something to be taken lightly. But nothing like this had ever happened before in the Unseen World. The Seraphim had threatened its very existence.
As predicted, the firespirits had returned to the world of Man at the vernal equinox and lain in wait. The syla could not remain unseen. It wasn’t in their nature—particularly on their birthday—and they had stepped from the arms of the leshi into the world of Man in their quaternary dance. The leshi posed as trees, hoping to catch the Seraphim as they came to accost their sisters, but they weren’t expecting the sudden violence that descended.
Misha had never seen anything like it. The syla had believed the Seraphim to be acting as agents of the queen, yet the firespirits now seemed to be taking out their hatred for the queen herself on the syla they considered to be her kin. This conception wasn’t entirely correct, as Aeval had merely styled herself as the Unseen Queen as she now styled herself Heaven’s, but it was a distinction that mattered little to the single-minded Seraphim. In the time-honored tradition of conquering invaders, they invaded the personal and profaned the sacred, violating that which they couldn’t subdue.
It was the epitome of all that Misha abhorred in Men and could never comprehend. The burden weighed upon him personally as a descendant of Mankind, but to see it among the celestial Host was a first in his experience. He’d observed with horror the injuries of the syla who’d escaped below. The syla were less substantial, less earthy, than their male counterparts—less substantial even than humans—and it hadn’t tak
en much to damage them. Like the leshi, their tissues could be renewed, but when the burns were so extensive, the syla couldn’t heal. The fire continued to burn and simply consumed them from within.
The leshi surrounded as many syla as they could reach for their protection, but even leshi burned, and in some ways burned more efficiently. They were forced to retreat, and they fled with the injured to take them below. The Hall of Echoes had always been sacrosanct, and they believed they were safe, but something had opened the doors to the Seraphim, allowing them to cross the threshold, and it could only have been the flower of the fern. Whoever possessed it had unleashed its power to disrupt the barriers of the spheres.
That was when the leshi had banded together on the mound and blocked the Seraphim’s way, and Misha was certain they wouldn’t have held for long. Green or not, they had an inherent and inevitable inflammability. He’d retreated to the Hall of Echoes to tend the wounded, when finally the raging sound of fire above their heads simply ceased.
Misha went up alone, fearing the lack of sound indicated something ominous had happened to his brothers, but instead, he found them standing speechless in the dissipating steam. One of the syla joined him, and she stood beside him as the leshi puzzled over the Seraphim’s sudden disappearance.
She seemed unfazed and smiled at their bewilderment. “It is as we have seen. Padshaya Koroleva has stopped the fire angels.”
Misha shook his head with a wry smile. Belphagor’s little blond angel had come through.
…
Kae stood at the top of the dark lookout watching the monk huddle against the bastion below. He’d come here to throw himself into the fires aeonian. Aeval had tested him, calling him to her bed after the Seraphim were dealt with, and he’d gone, not out of desire, but out of an unquenchable hatred for himself. She seemed particularly pleased that he came to her by choice, taking it as evidence that he was still her agent, and she’d ridden him harder than one of the horses from her stables.
He lay staring up at the ceiling, his body participating, while his mind was full of violent images. He thought of taking her delicate neck in his hands and squeezing the life out of her, of gutting her on the end of his sword, but if it were possible to overpower her, he knew the demon Belphagor would have done it at his first opportunity, instead of spending nearly a year as her kept whore.