I sucked in a breath and waited a few moments before daring to pull away from Navan’s grasp, feeling the strangeness of the wings for the first time. They were bigger and heavier than I’d expected, the shift in balance almost making me fall over. Managing to keep upright, I focused on trying to flap them, but nothing happened.
“Let’s start small,” Navan suggested as he unfurled his own majestic wings. He wrapped his arms gently around me and lifted me up off the ground. I held him tight, taking a moment to enjoy the feel of his body pressed against mine, now that I wasn’t in a world of pain.
“It’s going to be hard to concentrate,” I whispered with a shy grin.
He smiled. “Focus, girl,” he chastised. “I want you to think of your wings like muscles. Think about what you want to move, and move it.” His hands strayed along my back to where the wings had emerged.
I did as he asked, picturing the new lines of muscle and sinew that had been created and focusing on getting them to move. To my surprise, the left wing flapped slightly. I shrieked in delight, trying it again. This time, it gave a full flap that almost encompassed the two of us entirely. Focusing even harder, I flapped the right, then the left, before bringing them both together, giving me my first sight of both wings together. They were dark and sleek, though not nearly as leathery as regular coldblood wings. Mine had an almost green sheen, like the feathers of a magpie whenever they caught the sun in a certain light.
“Good. Now I want you to try soaring on an air current,” Navan said. He held my waist and flew me toward a pocket of warmer air. He paused as he felt out a suitable current, before holding me over it. “Open your wings and let the current push you upward.”
I obeyed, feeling elated when my wings caught the rush of air, my body shooting upward. It was only when the current ebbed that I began to panic, as I started to plummet to the ground. I flapped frantically, but I couldn’t get both wings to move at the same time, causing me to jolt from side to side. Navan swept down and grabbed me before I got too close to the ground, his laughter sounding sweet and comforting in my ear. He turned me around in his arms and held me close.
“Not bad,” he whispered. “And I have to say, now that I’ve gotten used to it, there’s something about Winged Riley that is incredibly sexy.” He dipped his head and kissed me full on the mouth, one hand locked around me, his other holding the back of my neck.
“Likewise,” I managed. There was something about being so close to him, in such a dangerous setting, that made me want to tear his clothes off.
I hadn’t thought about the prospect of sex with Navan in too much detail since Bashrik’s interruption just over a week ago, but right now it was something I couldn’t ignore. All I could think about was his body against mine, his lips exploring every inch of my skin, his hands discovering every secret I held. It wasn’t really something Navan and I had spoken about, though our bodies had said plenty on the subject.
“How much longer do we have to stay out here?” I asked, breathless. There was only thin material between us as we hovered in the air, clutched against one another.
“As long as you want,” he murmured, dipping his head to kiss my neck.
“Maybe we shouldn’t… We might have an audience,” I gasped, little shivers of electricity rippling up my spine.
Navan grinned. “Then think fast,” he chuckled, before dropping me out of his arms.
I yelped, my stomach turning as I fell. I forced my mind to focus, and, to my surprise, my wings flapped in unison, stirring up gusts of wind beneath them that carried me safely upward, keeping me away from the ground below. I giggled delightedly, my cheeks still hot from Navan’s kiss, and soared through the cold air, feeling the rush of it against my bare skin as I swept this way and that.
“You’re doing it!” Navan cried. He flew in underneath me, wrapping his arms around me so we began to corkscrew through the air. I had never been so exhilarated in all my life. Together, we flew across the sky, racing one another, twisting and turning in each other’s arms.
We flew until I felt an ache beneath my shoulders, telling me that the serum was wearing off. Not wanting to risk being in the air when it happened, I flew downward, landing with a thud on the ground. Walking off my less-than-graceful touchdown, I felt a rush of wind as Navan landed beside me. I could already feel my wings receding, their magnificence fading away, though the pain of their disappearance was nothing compared to the pain of their arrival. It was a dull ache, followed by a few sharp jolts, then nothing more.
“Are they gone?” I asked sadly.
“For now.” His hand slipped into mine, and we headed toward the back entrance of the training center. On the way, I picked up my fur coat and put it back on, shivering against the Vysanthean cold, the heat from my wing serum all but gone. Instantly, I felt warmer, especially since the fur covered the two holes that had been torn in the back of my shirt and revealed the bare skin of my shoulder blades.
“Do you think we can get back to our chambers without being interrupted?” I wondered, flashing him a knowing look.
He smiled, staring at me with such desire I thought I might burst. “I think we can try,” he whispered, his voice low and thick.
Still holding hands, we sprinted through the hangar and into the main hallway of the training center, our minds on our chamber and the bed that beckoned to us. We tore across the gap between the center and the palace, feeling smug that we had managed to get away without anyone noticing, or anyone calling us in to do something else, when a sight in one of the windows of the gleaming building distracted my attention. I skidded to a halt, knowing it wasn’t accidental. There, written on a rectangle of paper stuck in the pane, was the word LIBRARY, written in big, bold letters.
“Rask,” Navan muttered.
“Rask,” I concurred.
It looked like the promise of some alone time would have to wait.
Chapter Six
We hurried toward the library, knowing the note had to be for us. It was written in crude, bubbly lettering that I couldn’t imagine a Vysanthean using. I had seen Lauren use it before, though, as she sprawled over school textbooks and secret journals.
Reaching the familiar door, I knocked. Lauren answered a moment later, ducking her head out into the hallway before yanking the pair of us inside. The armchair Queen Brisha usually lounged in was empty, though the fire was still roaring in the grate. In fact, it was absolutely roasting in the library, and beads of sweat started to form on my forehead. Realizing the thick layer of fur wrapped around me probably wasn’t helping, I shuffled it off my shoulders, putting it to one side.
“You got my message, then?” Lauren asked conspiratorially as she led us through a network of bookshelves, heading for the back of the vast room.
I nodded. “On the window.”
“Good. I was worried you might miss it. I didn’t think it was big enough, and when hours passed and you still hadn’t arrived, I figured you hadn’t seen it,” she explained rapidly, pulling us down a long passageway of particularly tall stacks filled to the brim with dusty tomes. At the end of it stood a strange circular nook, which appeared to be hewn from the inside of an old tower. There, a circular banquette hugged the nook’s outer rim, and a table sat in the center, though both things were difficult to make out, given the quantity of books scattered across every surface. Lauren had certainly been a busy bee.
“Nope, we saw it,” Navan muttered, flashing me a look of remorse.
“I’m glad. I wasn’t sure it could wait until I saw you this evening.” Lauren sighed anxiously, ducking into the nook. Navan and I followed, taking a seat wherever we could.
“How are you even reading all of these?” I asked, picking up one of the nearby tomes. The writing was in a language I couldn’t decipher, though there seemed to be texts in several languages lying about. Hardly any of them were uniformly one kind or another.
She smiled shyly, tapping the side of her purple-rimmed glasses. “When I first showed an int
erest in the books here, Queen Brisha installed a device in the lenses of my glasses. It links up to the language center in my brain and transforms the writing into words I can understand.”
Navan looked stunned. “She gave you one of them?”
“I think she saw how desperate I was to read this entire library,” Lauren said, glancing around with an expression of contentment.
“And I bet you will! So, what’ve you got for us?” I asked, gesturing to the texts that lay in haphazard piles all around me.
“Oh, sorry about the mess,” she mumbled, picking up a large, cream-colored book. “This is the one we’re going to need,” she explained, flicking to the right page. “So, I was doing some research, as you can see, and I came across this. It’s not a textbook, per se, but the journal of some horticulturist here in Northern Vysanthe. No idea who he is, but he seems to know his stuff. Now, he says that the poroporo fruit I was talking about still grows in remote ice caves up in the Fazar mountain range. They’re pretty much at the pole of Northern Vysanthe, but they’re reachable, by his understanding.”
“How come they’re still there, then? Surely, those addicts would just have harvested it all?” Navan asked dubiously.
Lauren smiled. “That’s where it gets interesting. In order to protect the fruit, the old royal family put safeguards in place. They used to do that a lot, apparently. There are loads of instances of it happening with precious gemstones, ancient relics, sacred sites…” She trailed off, flipping to another page in the book.
“What kind of safeguards are we talking about?” I wondered. “Are there actual guards, or some sort of barrier?”
Lauren shook her head. “Nothing so simple, I’m afraid. The horticulturist describes beasts of some sort, though he didn’t stay long enough to find out what they were. All he says is there were ‘vast shadows in the darkness’ that killed his two partners soon after they ventured into the caves, judging by their screams. He muses, later on in the passage, that these creatures might have been bred for the purpose of security.”
Navan and I exchanged a look. “What, so they’re like guard dogs?” he asked.
“Not dogs—think bigger than dogs,” Lauren replied, giving a reluctant shrug. It seemed like, whatever these beasts were, we were going to have to discover them ourselves. “Like I said, it’s hard to tell from the horticulturist’s notes, but they sound pretty massive, whatever they are, and even more dangerous.”
“Does he say anything else about them?” I pressed, the thought of vicious, unknown Vysanthean creatures filling me with dread.
“He says that, whatever they were, they took his partners unawares. The horticulturist ran before he could be captured, too. He mentions a strange sound, and a sudden feeling of immense heat and extreme cold, both at once, but that’s all he describes,” Lauren said apologetically, closing the book. “But he says the fruit is still there, ripe and ready for the picking. You’ll just need to get past whatever is lurking there.”
I frowned, envisioning a coiled dragon nestled atop piles of gold and jewels, or a troll with a wooden club standing in front of a gaping cave mouth. Whatever it was we had to face, it sounded like something straight out of a fable. Saying that, nothing surprised me anymore. Vysanthe was full of things that wanted to kill me, so why not these mysterious creatures, who crept out of the dark and made strange sounds? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that had happened to me this summer.
“Anything else we need to know?” I asked anxiously.
Lauren tapped a passage. “The poroporo fruit only ripens at certain times of the year, and always at night. From what I’ve gathered, it happens during what is known as the Alignment of the Queens, which is when eight stars align every other month, for a week or so.”
I sighed. “Let me guess, that’s weeks from now?”
“No, actually. That’s this week,” Navan cut in, his tone intrigued.
“You’re right,” Lauren confirmed. “In fact, it started two nights ago, but the sooner you can harvest the fruit, from the beginning of the Alignment, the more potent the juice will be. That’s why, when it was used recreationally, there was never anything left to replant by the end of the Alignment. Whole crops would be destroyed by desperate people tearing off the fruit.”
“Okay, so we need to go tonight then,” I said firmly, looking to Navan. We didn’t have to be in training again until tomorrow evening, for night combat training and night flying simulations, which gave us plenty of time to leave Nessun and get the fruit.
“If we want the good stuff, then yeah. I’ve drawn out a map for you to follow,” Lauren said brightly, handing me a folded piece of paper.
“Wait, how are we supposed to get all the way to the pole of Northern Vysanthe?” I asked, the thought coming to me in a burst of panic. “We don’t have a ship anymore, and I doubt we can hitch a ride.”
Navan smiled. “The serum, Riley. It makes you less vulnerable to the cold, and you’ll be able to brave the harsh air.”
My heart thundered at the prospect. “We’re going to fly there?”
“We’re going to fly there,” he repeated, “but we’ll have to leave as soon as everyone in the palace is asleep. It’ll be too risky in daylight. People will see us leave and wonder where we’re going.”
“Tonight it is, then,” I said softly, forcing a smile onto my face, though I felt nothing but trepidation inside. The prospect of coming face-to-face with some unknown creatures wasn’t exactly comforting, and that was only if we managed to get out of the palace without being spotted. Even then, there were no guarantees we wouldn’t be tailed.
It was going to be a long night.
* * *
As darkness fell, I stood on the balcony of our apartment and stared out at the twinkling lights of the city below. Navan joined me, handing me a glass of something sparkling that Queen Brisha had sent to our room, while he sipped from a glass of something thick and red. My drink wasn’t alcoholic, as far as I could tell, but it refreshed me in a way no other liquid ever had, tasting faintly like apple, though a little sourer. I drank it down in one gulp, my nerves getting the better of me.
“What do you think these creatures are?” I asked, my eyes drawn to the silver dome of the training center.
Navan shrugged. “Something savage. If they’re anything like the guard beasts we have in the South, they’ll be trained killers.”
I frowned at him. “Aren’t you worried?”
“I doubt it’ll be anything I haven’t fought before,” he said calmly, though I could see a flicker of doubt in his slate eyes. Once again, I realized he was putting on a show of bravery to ease my nerves. “We’ll be fine, don’t worry,” he added, sipping from his drink.
As the hour grew later, we stole out of the apartment and headed down to the lower floors of the palace, thinking we might sneak out through the gardens. From our balcony, I’d spotted a sheltered grove at the back of the beautiful building. It seemed overgrown and forgotten about, like somewhere we could take off under the cover of darkness, undisturbed by prying eyes. Once in the air, we could fly low, sticking to the shadows of the mountainside. Navan had already warned that, if we flew from the balcony itself, we would be spotted immediately, given the bright lights that shone onto the sides of the palace to show off its grandeur, even at night.
Navan led the way as we crept through the empty hallways, ducking into doorways whenever a guard passed by. I knew the overgrown grove had to branch off from one of the older rooms at the farthest edge of the palace—it was just a case of figuring out which one.
“Are we going the right way?” I asked as we entered a gloomy corridor that smelled of dust and decay. It was clear nobody came this way anymore.
Navan nodded. “If this palace is anything like Queen Gianne’s, then all the old halls and galleries will be closed up. They’re a reminder of bygone days, when the planet was unified, and neither queen particularly likes to dwell on that,” he muttered, squinting against the dim light.
“In Gianne’s palace, these halls and galleries were on the first or second floors, where they could easily be accessed by the public, in the old days. Royalty didn’t want members of the public snooping around their private quarters, so everything intended for normal citizens was on the lower floors.”
“There!” I whispered, pointing at a door at the end of the hallway. It still bore the first four letters of the word “gallery,” though the last three seemed to have been swallowed up by years of abandonment.
As we walked toward it, we froze. A figure emerged from the doorway. Her eyes snapped in our direction, narrowing with suspicion.
“Riley, Navan, what in Rask’s name are you doing down here?” Pandora barked, covering the gap between us in a matter of strides. I looked to Navan, my mind racing a mile a minute, yet unable to come up with a suitable excuse.
He smiled sweetly. “You caught us,” he said, with a note of apology in his voice. “We were hoping to sneak out for date night. With training and everything, we haven’t really had much alone time. I overheard one of the guards talking about taking his wife to the midnight artisan market, and I thought I might do the same for Riley, as a little surprise,” he explained, not missing a beat. Even I believed him.
Pandora frowned, though her features softened a moment later. “The midnight artisan market in Paloma Square?” she asked.
“If that’s the one near the old university building, then yes,” Navan said. “I’m still getting used to where things are around here.”
“That’s the one. Do you need directions?”
“Bashrik already gave me some,” he replied, brandishing the folded piece of paper that contained the map to the Fazar Mountains. What if Pandora tried to take a closer look at it? My heart hammered in my throat.
“Fair enough. After all, who am I to stand in the way of true love?” She smirked, although the humor didn’t quite reach her eyes. “While you’re there, do you think you could do me a little favor?”
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