by Elly Blake
The invisible tether that held Arcus snapped. He lunged forward, his hands snaking around Kai’s throat. They went down in a heap, rolling over the arena floor.
The Minax careened in a happy dance, and I could no longer fool myself that I was managing it. Everything was spinning into chaos. The moment I stopped trying to subdue the Minax, I found my voice.
“Stop it, you lackwits!” I screamed over the sound of punches and grunts. “Or I’ll roast you both!”
Kai slammed Arcus’s forearms, breaking his hold, then landed a cracking punch on his jaw. Arcus gave one back, then another. Bracing his back on the ground, Kai placed his feet on Arcus’s chest and, in a blur, flipped him on his back, got one punch in, and started to stand. Arcus swept Kai’s legs out from under him, tackling him as he fell.
I lifted my palms, already covered with fire. Brother Thistle, who had been watching the fight with an air of interested detachment, calmly raised his hand. “Allow me.”
He poured out a swathe of ice that covered both of them. Arcus punched and elbowed his way through the layers of ice, while Kai melted them. Brother Thistle just kept pouring out layer after layer after layer until Arcus’s movements became sluggish, and Kai growled in frustration when each layer he melted was replaced instantly.
Finally, trapped in ice up to their shoulders, they just glared at each other, each with a look of killing fury, breathing heavily.
I was so angry, I thought my heart was going to burn its way out of my chest, the Minax with it. The creature was whispering all the ways I should punish this indefensible nonsense. I was on the edge of trying one or two of its suggestions when Brother Thistle moved next to me and put an icy hand on my shoulder.
“Very good, Miss Otrera,” he said quietly. “Peace now.”
His cooling touch and a number of deep breaths brought me a measure of control. I was still furious, but I was myself again.
“You irredeemable fools!” I hollered, coming to stand between them. “We’re facing an enemy who would destroy us all in a blink, and here you are, trying to pulverize each other. We’re supposed to be working together! That’s the whole point of all this! If you two can’t do it, what hope is there for the Frostblood and Fireblood armies?” I threw up my hands. “I give up! Kill each other, for all I care! I’m leaving.”
I stomped away.
“Don’t you dare!” Arcus bellowed.
“Wait, Ruby!” Kai’s voice sounded hoarse. Maybe he’d taken a punch to the throat.
Good.
Hearing the smashing of ice, I tossed back a warning. “Don’t follow me, either of you! I’m liable to kill you!”
I strode through the open doors, past the silent guards, and into the castle. When I reached my chamber, I wrenched my satchel from the bottom of the wardrobe and commenced jamming it full of essentials, all the while making furious plans. I would ride to Tevros, hire someone to captain the ship, and find the pirate moneylender myself. Surely one of the other sailors knew where she lived. I didn’t need Kai. I didn’t need Arcus.
“Idiots!” I vented, buckling my satchel and slinging it over my shoulder. “Clodpolls!” I burst out of the chamber and stomped down to the kitchen to grab food for the journey to Tevros. I ignored the tall figure striding toward me through the corridor, as well as the quietly fascinated guards who stood at intervals. “Birdbrained maniacs!”
“Ruby.” Arcus’s voice, low and compelling.
“Leave me alone!”
“Ruby, please.” As I came to a corner, he reached out and grabbed my sleeve.
“No!” I swung around. His face was a swollen mess with blue blood smeared under his nose and on his chin. His lip was split and one eye was already darkening. “Is your nose broken?”
He sniffed. “No.”
“Too bad.” I turned away, stomping toward the kitchen.
His footsteps followed. “You couldn’t seriously expect me not to react to what he said to you. What amounted to a proposal of marriage, Ruby. In front of me!”
“Yes, yes. You’re all that’s frightening and magnificent. No one dare anger you, and so on.”
“This is not about my arrogance.”
“No”—I spun to face him—“it’s about the opposite. You are so threatened by him that you think it’s necessary to kill him rather than let me decide what I want.”
His eyes shadowed. “Can you blame me? What would I do if you didn’t choose me?” The vulnerability turned into challenge. “What would you do in my shoes?”
“I would package you up and send you off to Marella—”
“I never wanted Marella.”
I flapped my hand. “Whoever, and I’d wish you the best.”
“Really.” Oozing skepticism.
“Yes, really!” I tilted my chin up, wondering why the fury in my eyes alone didn’t give him sunburn. “Because I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me.”
“Neither do I!” He put his hands out as if to touch me, then seemed to think better of it. “But I can’t bear the thought of you with anyone else.”
The desperation in his voice tugged at the soft places inside me. “Well, I can’t bear the thought of you with anyone else, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go around trouncing the alternatives. It’s for you to decide who you want, and it’s for me to decide who I want. If we choose each other, that’s a happy ending. Anything else is doomed to fail.”
He stared at me for a second, then looked down, opening and closing his hands. I followed his eyes. His knuckles were scraped and bleeding. I shook my head and blew out a breath, angry all over again to see him injured.
“Do you remember when I was about to leave for Sudesia,” I said, “and you said that we needed to let each other go a little?”
His wary gaze snapped up to mine. “Don’t bring that up as an example of how reasonable I can be. I regretted those words as soon as you were gone. I don’t want us to let each other go. I want us to hold on with everything we have.”
I felt the same, but I had to make him see.
“Listen, Arcus. You said that because you didn’t want me to feel trapped. You wanted me to have choices because you understood that you can’t hold on forever if the person you’re holding is pulling away.”
He sliced the air with his hand. “And now I understand what it was like to think I’d lost you. I’m not willing to risk that again.”
My tone softened. “Are you talking about when I was ill at the abbey and you thought—?”
“No! That was beyond…” He shook his head. “I can’t even think about that. No, I was referring to what happened in Sudesia. I watched your engagement announcement, Ruby. I watched you kiss him, the man you were promised to marry.” He swallowed. “I thought you were gone, out of my reach forever.”
I paused to consider that, conceding to myself that it would have been agony. “I can only imagine how hard that was. If the situation were reversed, I’d have probably set the whole island on fire.”
“See? You don’t know what it’s like to lose me, so it’s easy for you to judge me harshly.”
“That may be true. But it’s not that I’m judging you for being possessive. I feel that way about you, too.” I took a deep breath. “But I do judge how you act on that feeling. You hurt my friend. You hurt my friend who is already hurting. I chose you, Arcus. Over him. He is the one left behind, despite being good and true to me. He was only arguing for a chance, thinking he had one. He doesn’t.”
“You have feelings for him. You care for him. I can see it.”
“Yes! I do! And I always will.”
He reared back as if I’d struck him.
“But it’s nothing to what I feel for you!” I grabbed the collar of his tunic with both fists and shook him—which barely budged his big frame. “I want you. I’ll choose you every day, over and over. Do you hear me? Don’t give me a reason to choose differently.”
His head bowed toward me. His breaths sawed in an
d out. His hands came to cover mine, pressing them against his chest.
“I don’t want you to choose differently.” His head dropped, his cheek coming to rest on my hair as his arms came around me. “Don’t choose differently. Ever.”
“Then don’t be a clodpate,” I muttered, trembling with all the emotions surging through me.
He paused. “Or a Miserable Blockhead?”
I huffed an almost laugh. “Or that.”
“Forgive me.”
“All right.”
“Just like that?”
“I’m a Fireblood. I’m allowed to be mercurial.”
He started to laugh, then groaned. “My ribs. I want to hold you, but everything hurts.”
“A good reminder for you.”
He chuckled softly, rubbing a hand over his chest. “You’re a cruel woman.”
Before I could reply, the Minax whispered in my mind. Cruel, yes.
“What’s wrong?” Arcus asked, sensing my change in mood.
I shook my head and forced a smile.
SEVENTEEN
BLACK SAILS AT DAWN. TEN SHIPS, twenty, a hundred—spanning the horizon. A mix of Tempesian warships, Sudesian brigantines, and Safran galleons, hulls cleaving a bloodred sea.
They all sailed under one flag: a white sun on a black background. Above each vessel, a contingent of winged shadows flew the skies.
I floated above the masts, a wraith among wraiths. I felt no wind, no cold, only the swirl of emotions from the sailors below: eagerness, purpose, bloodlust, anticipation. Their tainted hearts churned for the next kill.
We shades would weave into their blood, drive them to more violent acts, then reward them for their compliance by multiplying their human sensations into something heady, rich, irresistible. Divine. Once they experienced this potent inebriant, their mortal shells were never the same. They would always need the next victim, the next conquest, the next massacre.
This dark bliss had already become their lifeblood, their reason for living.
The sails bellied out, a laughing tailwind careening us toward our target. Ahead, the shore was thick with warriors ready to fight, defend, die. Their pikes and axes glinted red with the dawn.
Clustered on the pebbled beaches, our prey held thoughts of love like talismans—warm thoughts of children, siblings, parents, spouses. Their families waited at home, praying for their victory.
We held thoughts of death. Anticipation wound tight in the mortals’ viscera. Elation filled us.
Soon, the rapture of battle.
When our small boats reached the shallows, our black-clad armies poured forth without hesitation.
We, the shadows, were their shields.
Before the first enemy archer could loose an arrow, or the first pikeman strike a blow, we sped to the waiting army. Reaving minds, we took over their thoughts and intentions. They dropped their shields, turned on one another, sliced throats, stabbed into gaps in armor—the soft flesh of thighs, under arms, necks—those vulnerable, unprotected spaces where blood pumped hot or cold.
Whether Frostblood or Fireblood, we distinguished not. Death in all forms pleased us. Fed us.
The shadows danced among the dying.
I soaked up every scream, every cry, every last wish, drawing out the agony as long as possible to savor each slow, rattling gasp. With whispered words, I slowed hearts, tightened veins, restricted the flow of blood to prolong those last precious moments, binding the spirit to the body for as long as I could.
And just when the once-proud warriors finally thought to escape this suffering and find peace, I cracked open their minds to tease forward each regret, each memory of shame, of hatred, of fear, of defeat, making their last moments torturous. I drew out their suffering with ravenous glee—like sucking the flesh of an oyster from its shell.
A few, we saved. Those with darkest thoughts, greatest rage, deepest hatred. Strong bodies with weak minds. We broke the spine of their identities and remade them new. Recruited them to our cause.
In this way, each battle swelled our ranks.
Finally, we slipped from the dead to the living, from conquered to conquerors. We entered their hearts and pulsed in the space between heartbeats, sharing our pleasure, making them crazed with it.
When it was done, bodies coated the beach, the faces of the dead contorted with their final moments of pain.
Our warriors stood panting, eyes wild with ecstasy, black tunics soaked with blood, hearts full of death.
Already, we planned the next slaughter.
Death was life.
And we, the shadows, hungered.
I woke gasping, hands flailing. A scream echoed in my ears. The euphoria of battle pulsed in my veins—pleasure derived from other people’s suffering.
My stomach roiled.
With a fiery fingertip, I lit a candle on the bedside table. Red-and-gold bed hangings fell at the corners of the four-poster bed. Soft light poured over the bookshelf and the upholstered chair by the darkened window. A wide-eyed face peered back at me from the wavy glass. I started, then realized it was my reflection. I remembered where I was—in my room in the castle. It was the last night before we set off on our voyage.
A knock sounded. “Ruby?”
I slid out of bed and padded to the door. As soon as I opened it, Arcus entered with a cold gust of air.
“I heard you scream,” he said in a sleep-roughened voice. His hair was ruffled, shirt undone, feet bare.
I blinked in confusion. I’d screamed? “You could hear me?”
He stepped closer, looking at me with concern. “Our rooms share a wall. Were you dreaming again?”
I rubbed my arms, still shivering with reaction. I couldn’t get warm.
“Here, get under the covers.” He moved to pull back the quilt. I crawled into bed and he tucked the blanket around me.
“What happened?” he asked softly, the bed depressing with his weight as he sat on the edge.
I leaned on him, resting my cheek against his shoulder, needing his contact more than I needed warmth. “A battle.” My throat felt tight, every word an ache.
He smoothed a hand over my hair. “Against whom?”
I stiffened. The warriors in the dream had been Frostbloods. His own army. I didn’t want to tell him that I’d imagined killing them, that I’d reveled in their pain. What kind of sick mind did I have to dream such things?
I still felt a deep conviction that the Gate wasn’t open. If it were, the Minax in my heart would feel it, and I would know it. So the dream hadn’t been a scene from the present… but it could have been a vision of the future. The future Eurus was planning.
“Ruby, what’s wrong? I can see you’re upset. Talk to me.” After a minute, his hand tightened on my quilt-covered knee. “Tell me something. Anything.”
His worry pulled at me. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d done in the dream.
“I feel like”—I opened my palms, struggling to put it into words—“if I tell you, I’ll pull you into this web… this web I’m caught in. And then you’ll be caught, too.” And you’ll see how twisted I’ve become and you’ll never want to come near me again.
My throat closed and my eyes pricked with tears. I turned to blink them away. My heart felt empty. I checked for the Minax.
I couldn’t feel it. Where was it?
Had it left me?
Panicked, I grabbed Arcus’s face, tilting it down so I could search his eyes. My hands burned from the cold of his skin. I could feel my thumbs digging into his cheeks, but I couldn’t gentle my touch.
“Ruby!” His large hands covered mine. “For Tempus’s sake! What’s wrong?”
My breathing hissed in and out like a ragged wind. The east wind laughed as it sped us toward the battle. I shook away the memory.
His eyes were the same icy color as always. I pushed his cuff from his wrist and checked the vein. Frostblood blue. No sign of the Minax.
I sat back, shoulders slumping with relief
.
He slid a palm to my cheek, turning my face and scrutinizing me. “I don’t understand. What is this web you’re talking about? What has you so scared?”
How could I tell him that despite my expressions of confidence, I was no longer sure whose will was stronger, the Minax’s or mine? I’d told myself I was in control, but the nightmare had completely unsettled me. It had made the essence of the creature clear, shown me all that it wanted. Its goal was to crowd out my consciousness until there was nothing left of me, just as the shadow had done to the warriors.
The longer it was in me, the less I could sense it. It was merging with me more each day, seamlessly blending itself into my own thoughts so I could no longer reject its dictates. In time, I would be the shadow in my dream.
Fine tremors started in my chest and arms, and I hugged myself to stop them.
“Turn your back to me,” Arcus said in his this-is-not-a-request voice.
I did, and his hands came to my shoulders and kneaded the tense muscles. I resisted at first, too anxious, but soon the tension started to drain from my upper back. My eyelids slid closed.
“Tell me about your dream,” he said, his voice compelling, almost hypnotic.
I shook my head.
He sighed. “I don’t like it when you won’t talk to me.”
“It was awful,” I whispered. “And I don’t want to think about it.”
Another sigh. For several minutes, he continued the gentle pressure with his thumbs against the sides of my neck.
“Better?” he asked finally.
“I’ll pay you to never stop,” I joked softly, half in a trance.
After a pause, he chuckled, low and silky. “How much coin do you have?”
My lips curved up. “I’ll pay you in kisses.”
His hands stopped, then started again. “It will take a great many,” he warned.
“For you, I have an unlimited supply.”
His lips replaced his thumb on my neck. “I want them all.”
“You don’t haggle very well,” I argued a little unevenly. “You’re supposed to demand more payment and then I offer more until I’m unsatisfied. That’s how you know you have a good deal.”