by Lily Archer
“Vicious.” I hold his gaze in the mirror. “I’m impressed.”
“Not as much as I am. You are a true beauty. Not unlike your mother was, though you are so much more than she could ever be.” He gestures for me to lift my hair. “You were foretold long ago. Your wings of death and your power to destroy the realms.”
“Tell me the rest of the prophecy.”
“You don’t know it?”
“The Vundi witch didn’t finish it before she was killed.”
“Very well. ‘A child of many worlds, clothed in light, will come home. On wings of death, the child will glide to sit on her throne of bone. The realms will bend to her command, she has but to choose. She alone can start the war and be victorious, win or lose.’”
“That doesn’t entirely make sense.”
“Prophecies never do.” He clucks his tongue and holds the necklace up for me. “But it gives us enough. You are the spark we need to start the war, to end the summer realm and take winter back.”
I lick my lips. “The summer realm will fall. They thought they could break me. My waves of death will roll over them like an unrelenting ocean.” I pull my hair up and he drapes the necklace around my throat. It’s a simple golden vial with what looks like blood inside. “What is it?”
He centers the pendant for me, his cold fingers sending ugly prickles along my skin. “A phylactery.”
I stare at him blankly.
“It contains a small bit of my essence. Something of me that you can keep with you always.” He squeezes my shoulders. “Do you like it?”
For an evil king, my father sure is turning out to be a pussy. I wonder how long it will take me to overthrow him. A day? Maybe two? Or maybe I should keep him around just long enough to take the realms, and then dethrone him in front of an audience. Taking his head will certainly set the tone for my reign. I force a smile.
It’s enough to get one in return from him. “Now, how would you like a flying lesson as we discuss our battle plans?”
“I need lessons?” I scoff.
“I suppose we’ll find out.” He opens the door for me. “Flying is critical, and of course we’ll need to practice reanimation and a few other tricks.”
“I’d prefer to kill.”
“Of course.” He laughs. “That’s the fun part. It’s too easy. Reanimation is where the real work comes in, but you’ll find it quite useful. We have a living army now, but we’ll lose numbers as we march eastward. With our abilities combined, we can bring back quite a few of them to rejoin our numbers. But you need practice. I want you to focus on bringing them back, then the reward will be killing once we’ve begun our march toward Byrn Varyndr.”
I follow him out toward the cavern with the tree, the undead snapping to attention as best they can when we walk past. Cenet stands next to the twisted trunk, inspecting its branches as if he’s not listening to every word we say.
“Father.” He turns toward us, his eyes back to looking almost normal. But he’s a lesser fae. Utter trash. My father should be ashamed that he ever touched a lesser fae female, and even more ashamed of this filthy offspring.
“Aren’t you supposed to be training with the troops?” Shathinor keeps walking past him.
“I would like a word.”
“We’re busy.” I turn on my heel and face him.
“I wasn’t speaking to you.”
“Are we playing the usual sibling games?” I simper and let the darkness ooze from my fingertips. “Because I’m very interested in a contest. One where the winner pisses on her brother’s corpse.”
His eyes change, and his claws lengthen. “Let’s do this, bitch.”
“Stop!” Shathinor roars and steps between us. “I am king here. And you two will obey me. Cenet, stand down. You owe your sister your allegiance just as you owe it to me. She is chosen. She was foretold. On her wings—and mine—we will claim the summer and winter realms, and then all of Arin. She is the key to our victory.” His tone turns icy. “And I will not have you challenging me on any of this. Do you understand?”
Cenet’s lips press into a harsh line.
“I said do you understand?” Shathinor bellows, sending rocks and shards of stalactites crashing to the cavern floor.
“Yes, Father.” He bows his head.
Pity, I would have enjoyed removing it.
“Come, daughter.” He walks to the sheer cliff that looks out over the valley, the sun just barely tipping over the horizon.
I shake my wings, the new muscles sore and unwieldly. The world rolls out before me, everything there for the taking. All I have to do is claim it for my own. I peer over the edge. The fall would definitely kill me, but what if I could soar? The breeze picks up and ruffles my feathers, the sensation sending goosebumps down my back.
“Afraid, dear princess?” Shathinor spreads his wings and jumps, his power on full display.
I hold my breath as he dives a bit, then flaps and shoots up into the air, his dark shape marring the coming day. He makes it look easy.
There is no place for fear, no time for weakness. That was the old me, the one who was made to suffer and die. I am immortal. My reign will be forever. I back away and take a deep breath.
“Yes, walk away. That’s not safe.” The nagging voice is there again. I want to kill it.
I plant my foot and stare out at the coming dawn. This is what I was made for. It has to be. I take off at a run.
“Are you nuts? Noooo!”
I jump from the cave and try to spread my wings. The wind pushes them back, and I plummet straight down like a fallen angel.
8
Leander
Blood spurts from the last viper, its melon-sized head dropping to the sand with a thunk. I sheathe my sword and wipe the sweat from my brow. The foothills beckon, the mountains casting long shadows that promise relief from the unrelenting heat, sand, and cracked dirt of the Barren Lands.
Sometimes I think I can sense Taylor, but then it’s gone, like a wisp of smoke I can’t catch.
Selene snatches up the viper’s long, coiling body. “For my collection.” She stuffs it inside a knapsack turned black with blood and filled with bits and pieces of the many vicious creatures we’ve had to slay to simply make it this far.
Ravella wrinkles her nose, but Gray laughs.
Thorn scouts out ahead, his gray eagle’s wings melding into the dark mountains. He’s been gone for over half the day, the burning sun a near-constant companion as we slog through the barren soil. What I wouldn’t give for a dousing of snow and a brush of the bitterest wind. But I would give more for one moment with Taylor.
“We’re getting closer.” Selene stares up at the craggy peak ahead of us. “The darkness grows, and I can feel the drums.” She thumps her chest in a steady rhythm. “Can you hear it? Can you imagine the treats left behind in the coming battles?” Her mouth crackles into a grin. “So much beautiful offal.”
“Does anything else make you happy?” Valen guides the horses along behind us, careful to keep them on the path we tread lest they stray into the sinking sands. “Anything other than … pieces of things?”
She fluffs her hair and twirls back to Valen. “Why? Do you think you could make me happy?”
“I don’t—”
“Because you could.” She runs her claw along his cheek. “Your guts would please me for days on end.”
“That’s enough.” I shield my eyes from the sun and search the mountainside for any sign of Thorn.
“He’ll be back soon.” Ravella takes a swig from her canteen and hands it to me. “I still can’t go through the vale. I keep trying, but something in this place blocks me.”
“Ravella.” I yank her behind me and cut the head off an enormous black scorpion that was poised to strike. “At least now we know why no one ever returns from the Gray Mountains.”
“By the Ancestors!” She kicks its head into a thorny plant. “I’d rather face ten ice bears than deal with one more of these abominations. A week in
this scorched waste has been plenty.”
One week. I pour a little water on my hand and rub it on my face. One week since I last held Taylor, since I felt her warmth. My teeth grind as I go through a never-ending list of worries, of fears for her. If the king beyond the mountain has harmed her—no matter how little—I will add days, maybe weeks to his suffering. He will die for touching her. That is certain. The only variable now is how much pain I will inflict before I send him to the Spires.
“We’ll find her, Leander.” Ravella squeezes my shoulder. “I know it.”
I nod. Emotion closes my throat. When I told Taylor I had never feared before I found her, I spoke the truth. The fear now? It guts me. Every day, every moment without her is a particular torture, especially when I can’t feel her through the bond. I don’t know if she’s hurt or crying or wishing for me the way I’m wishing for her.
Shake it off. I do. For the millionth time. I keep walking through this ghastly desert, because each step brings me closer to the one my soul loves.
“Ahead.” Gray pulls his warhammer from his back.
Through the hazy heat, a figure approaches, though it’s oddly misshapen, one side higher than the other.
I draw my sword as Ravella palms her knives. “Keep close.”
“Isn’t he a handsome devil?” Selene whistles.
I can’t see the figure, but I know the walk. That deadly prowl belongs to only one fae I know.
“Brannon.” I sheathe my sword as he appears through the waves of heat, Thorn perched on his shoulder. “I didn’t know you gave rides.”
He grins. “I shot him down, so I thought it was the least I could do.”
The eagle screeches angrily and makes a show of his bloody feathers.
“You shot him?” Valen hurries forward. “Where?”
“Just clipped his wing a bit. He’s fine.” Brannon shrugs the eagle off, his broad shoulders bare under the blazing sun, the black ink that snakes around him almost glowing in the light.
Valen takes Thorn and does a quick healing spell on the bloody feathers along his right wing.
“How did you find us?” I clasp Brannon’s forearm as Selene prances up.
“Hi, handsome,” she purrs.
He looks down at her. “Witch.”
She bats her black lashes. “I’m Selene. Let’s have sex.”
Ravella caws out a laugh that echoes across the sandy expanse, and Valen’s mouth drops open.
“Sorry.” Brannon runs a hand through his raven hair. “I’m saving myself for my mate.”
“What?” Selene stomps her foot on the sand. “I demand you fornicate with me forthwith, handsome one!”
The black ink that creeps up his neck pulses. “No.”
Selene crosses her arms and harrumphs, her claws clacking against her sides.
Thorn flashes back into his fae form and doubles over, laughter rolling out of him, which then has Ravella starting up again. Then Gray joins in.
“Saving yourself?” Thorn guffaws. “Are you serious?”
“And what of it?” Brannon’s hands fist, the darkness inside him threatening to emerge.
“Leave him be.” I point at Selene. “Both of you.”
She grumbles but drops back and resumes a one-sided conversation she’s had off and on with Kyrin.
“What did you see?” I yank Thorn upright, and the laughter dies off. “The mountain. Tell me.”
“A cave system at the top of that peak.” He points to the highest one, the same one Selene had described. “Lots of movement up there, but that’s only half of it. I found the missing lesser fae and changelings.”
“What? Are they all right?”
“They’re an army. I’ve been to the camps. Blended in under the cover of night.” Brannon spits. “They’ve joined up with the king beyond the mountain, believed his tales of taking over the realms and remaking them. Most of them are there voluntarily. Some were conscripted, but not many.”
“Why would they go?” Valen verges on flabbergasted.
“They want equality, freedom from the high fae.”
“And they think the king beyond the mountain will give them that?” Ravella shakes her head. “I don’t know who he is, but I can guarantee his purpose isn’t peace and equality, not when he’s been amassing a host of warriors.”
“They left my realm to join him.” It’s a kick to the gut, but one I should have expected. When I tried to enforce equality amongst high and lesser fae, the disdain from the nobles of High Mountain may have been what pushed them away. When they saw that no matter what their new king argued for, the old ways still prevailed. They lost faith in me. “How many?”
“Thousands.” Brannon sucks on his teeth. “Enough to take the summer realm with a surprise attack. They’ll have to march long and hard to Byrn Varyndr, but they’ll murder and burn as they go.”
My hopes fall even further, sinking low into the pit of my memories of fallen friends and never-ending bloodshed. Please Ancestors, not again.
“And the king beyond the mountain?” I force myself to continue, to keep going, to do what must be done to reclaim Taylor and defend the realms. “What of him?”
“He’s in the caves, I suspect.” Thorn points. “Lording over it all.”
“They say he has a weapon, a warrior who soars on black wings and who can kill with a whisper.”
“Have you seen this warrior?” I don’t want to think about Taylor in the clutches of a monster like that.
“No.” Brannon shakes his head. “On the night I crept through the camp, I heard the beat of wings and spotted something high in the clouds, but it vanished.”
“Anything else?” I trudge ahead, the sand falling away from my boots in little waves as I parse what information Brannon and Thorn have revealed.
“Leander.” Brannon’s voice is soft, eerily so.
I turn and meet his gaze.
“There’s one more thing I found out.”
“Yes?” A drowning weight settles on me before Brannon speaks, because some part of me already knows.
“The king beyond the mountain … It’s the old evil, the dark one.”
I freeze, winter rampaging through my heart, and turn my eyes to the mountain. “Shathinor.”
9
Taylor
The dead soldier flops on the ground like a fish, his arms splaying at odd angles.
“More.” Shathinor stares as I pull magic from inside me and force it out and into the corpse.
A sweat breaks across my brow, and I concentrate on reanimating his heart, forcing it to beat with black blood. It oozes from the wound in his neck where Cenet’s fangs ripped the soldier’s life away. He flips to his back, and his white eyes open too wide, his mouth rounded in a scream as his body begins to function again.
“That’s it.” Shathinor smiles, his hollow cheeks stretching wide. “You have it.”
I cut off my magic and rub my temples as the creature rises to its feet, its mind empty and ready for orders. “I wish you would stop doing that. This is the thirteenth one you’ve brought back. We need to get out of here. Find Leander.” I squelch the annoying voice that sounds far too much like my own.
“Cenet.” Shathinor glowers. “Next time, make your kill without injuring too much. She needs practice, but not the sort that drains her.”
Cenet sneers. “Too hard for your precious Taylor?”
Shathinor strikes him so hard that Cenet’s head whips around and the nearby soldiers murmur uneasily. “Do not test me, Son. Lest I have her make an example of you.”
Cenet stalks away as Shathinor resurrects another soldier.
I swipe the back of my hand across my forehead and throw my shoulders back, the magic already replenished and ready for more. I’m always ready for more. All these days and nights spent training have honed my focus, and I know what I’m here for. I will fulfill the prophecy and bring Arin to heel.
“Why?” The irritating voice is back.
“Because th
at is my destiny,” I think back at it.
“It doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to do these things. Just because Shathinor is our father, it doesn’t mean we have to be like him.”
“What if I want to be like him? Only stronger.”
“No one wants to be like him. Hate-filled and power hungry. It’s not who we are.”
“I say who we are.” I can feel her trying to wrestle her way free, to be on top again like she’s been since we were born, since our mother cursed us with that stone.
“If you would just let me—”
With a yell, I rush headlong at the nearest cluster of changelings, their eyes widening in terror. Unfurling my wings, I leap into the air and flap them hard, the burn of my muscles a welcome reprieve from the headache I get each time I reanimate a corpse.
The clouds flow around me as I soar. I relish the damp chill, and my wings expand, gripping the air and pushing me up and up until the sun beats down on my face and the valley is nowhere in sight. The voice goes silent. Good.
“You’re a fast learner.” Shathinor follows me up, his black wings beating steadily. “That first day, I had my doubts.”
“I’ve never had wings before.” I shout over the wind. “What did you expect?”
“You’re my child.” He shoots in front of me. “I expect excellence.”
“Does Cenet give you that?” I tuck my wings in tight and dive through the clouds, heading straight to the ground like an arrow from a bow. The roar of the wind is my companion as the valley reappears, the soldiers below running drills and sparring with each other.
Before I get too low, I spread my wings and let myself drift lazily, like a leaf in a stream.
“Cenet has his uses.” Shathinor floats next to me. “You should make peace with him and work together to—”
“He’s a mistake.” I glare at him. “One that you made, and one that I don’t intend to live with.”