Wings of Shadow

by Nicki Pau Preto

  “The bell,” the nearer of the two said, and the other hastened to pull the rope.

  Now Tristan would learn the truth.

  He took it as a good sign that Yara flew down the stairs not long afterward—and she came alone. She asked the guards to report, but as they spoke, her gaze darted to Tristan. He nodded. There was no turning back now.

  With sudden, smooth precision, Yara drew the sword from her belt and clubbed the nearest guard in the temple with the pommel. He crumpled, and when the second guard turned and opened his mouth to cry out, Yara silenced him with a kick to the stomach and then another blow with the sword to his head.

  She hadn’t even broken a sweat. “We don’t have much time,” she said. “There were others in the room when the alarm was sounded. They will expect me to return shortly.”

  Ready, Tristan relayed to Veronyka, and almost at once he felt the air shift and become strangely oxygenless while the temperature rose.

  “Barricade the door,” he told Yara, who had sensed the heat as well and swallowed thickly—the first sign of any emotion at all on her face. Tristan noted her burn scars again and realized there couldn’t be two worse people to be trapped down here with a blazing phoenix.

  Still, she nodded and clambered over the bodies of her fallen soldiers to make for the stairs.

  “And stay back,” Tristan added, following his own advice and retreating to the farthest corner of his cell. He tipped his flimsy bed onto its side and crouched behind it.

  His eyes began to water as smoke filled the underground cell, the tiny window not nearly enough ventilation for the fire that was brewing beyond the wall. Tristan’s breath turned ragged, fear and anticipation filling his lungs. He dared to look beyond the upturned cot and saw the center of the wall blacken and shrink, a dark halo of destruction steadily spreading outward until, with an almighty boom, the wall exploded in a shower of plaster and wood.

  Sparks rained down on him, and Tristan raised his arms over his head to protect his face. He coughed and squinted through the smoke, discerning a gaping hole in the once-wall.

  And Veronyka standing silhouetted in the ring of flames.

  The darkness has returned. The strixes rise again from the summit of Pyrmont.

  - CHAPTER 23 - VERONYKA

  THE SPACE BEFORE VERONYKA was filled with clouds of ash and debris, the scent of burning thick in the air. Bars materialized out of the haze to her left, while in front of her was a stairwell. A steady, rhythmic thumping distinguished itself while the ringing in her ears from Xephyra’s fiery explosion faded, and in front of Veronyka a figure rose to her feet, detaching herself from the shadows.

  A soldier.

  Veronyka reached for her dagger, but as she did, she noted two other soldiers—unconscious or worse—on the ground before her. She hesitated.

  “That’s Captain Yara. She’s a friend,” came Tristan’s hoarse voice from within the cell, and Veronyka’s eyes snapped to him at once. It was still hard to see clearly, whatever moonlight that filtered through the tiny window serving only to make the smoke thicker and more obscuring.

  “The keys,” Veronyka said, looking to Yara again. The woman fumbled at her belt, the jingle of a key ring cutting through the echoing bangs that continued to reverberate down the stairs.

  “The door is barricaded,” Yara explained, bending over the lock. As she fitted the key, she glanced warily over her shoulder at Xephyra, who stood behind the ruined wall, doing her best to rein in her fire. “It won’t hold for much longer.”

  Veronyka nodded, turning to the cell door. Tristan stood on the other side, and they stared at each other, his face shadowed and hard to discern, but she felt his gaze like heat on her skin. After a loud clang, the lock opened and the door swung wide, and then there were no more obstacles between them. Veronyka leapt into his arms, heedless of her wounded chest, so forcefully that he staggered back into the wall behind him. She dug her fingers through his hair—cropped close to the scalp—and wrapped her legs around his waist, while he folded his arms across her back, caging her in.

  Her mouth was on his, the kiss deep and desperate. Though the familiar taste and smell and feel of him was an aching relief, she didn’t fail to notice the tremble in his muscles or how thin he’d gotten.

  I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, she said through their bond, but Tristan only drew back slightly, pushing her hair from her face and fixing her with a stare so intense it made her gut clench. He shook his head—he didn’t want her apologies, refused to accept them—then kissed her back slowly, tenderly, cherishing every touch of lips and tongues.

  “Ahem,” came a dry voice from behind them, and Veronyka pulled back, remembering that they were not alone. Tristan’s eyes opened lazily, groggily, as if from deepest sleep. He stared at her as if he had in fact woken up from a dream and couldn’t be certain if this was real, before his attention lifted over her shoulder.

  He stiffened, arms still locked behind her, before gently lowering Veronyka to her feet. He kept a hand on her lower back as if he couldn’t bear to break the contact entirely.

  The commander stood on the other side of the cell. Through their connection, Veronyka knew that Tristan thought she’d come inside the estate alone. She might have done it, too, if the commander hadn’t insisted.

  “You need a lookout,” he’d replied shortly when Veronyka had explained her plan. Again she’d had to give the credit to Rex. Tristan had told his phoenix where to get in and how, not Veronyka. There had been something slightly skeptical in the commander’s eyes, but he’d trusted her, which felt like more than she’d have gotten a few weeks ago.

  The realization caused suspicion to bloom in her mind. Was it because of her Ashfire lineage that he suddenly listened to her opinion and allowed her to contribute? Did he feel like he didn’t have a choice?

  She supposed it didn’t matter. He’d given her the lead but followed at a safe distance behind, knowing Xephyra would need to ignite.

  And now here he stood. Tristan’s expression was wary at first, but then shifted into something soft and vulnerable. He’d been in trouble, and his father had come.

  Veronyka stepped aside, giving the commander room to stride forward. He gripped Tristan’s shoulders, surveying him at arm’s length, before nodding at what he saw and pulling his son in for a tight embrace. Tristan leaned into the hug, resting his head on his father’s shoulder, showing a rare moment of weakness.

  Their reunion was broken up by a particularly loud thump on the barricaded door, and they pulled apart. Soon the whole estate would come down on them.

  The commander shifted from father to leader in the time it took to turn around.

  “How many?” He directed the question to Yara, and his tone and demeanor seemed to put the soldier at ease. Fire and phoenixes were unfamiliar and perhaps unwanted territory, but reporting to a commander was something she would be more comfortable with.

  “Fifty posted at regular intervals around the estate’s walls. Only ten positioned on the prison level, plus these two”—she gestured to the unconscious soldiers on the ground—“and two at the top of the stairs. The others walk regular patrols of the first floor of the building—windows, doors, and other checkpoints. There are more soldiers on the upper stories, but they won’t leave their posts unless an additional alarm is sounded.”

  “Do any of them know of the concealed door we entered through?” the commander asked.

  Yara shook her head. “No, sir.”

  “We have to get out of here and into the sky before that second alarm sounds.”

  “Agreed,” Veronyka said. “Let’s move.”

  “Captain Yara—we could use your continued support, unless you’d rather come with us?” the commander asked.

  She shook her head, looking almost ill at the thought. Veronyka suspected those burn scars had not come from a house fire. “I will stay here. Now go, quickly. You don’t have much time.”

  She glanced down at the soldiers at her
feet, expression grim, and a sense of foreboding settled over Veronyka. There was only one way to make sure those soldiers didn’t tell the truth of how they became unconscious… and that was to make sure they never woke up. It would be easy enough to blame the attack on the Phoenix Riders and to claim Yara had been hurt herself.

  “One more thing, if you wouldn’t mind,” Yara said before they turned to go. She was looking at Veronyka.

  “Oh, right,” Veronyka said, withdrawing her dagger. Yara had to look like she’d been attacked, to avoid suspicion.

  “The forehead, I think,” Yara said, bracing herself.

  Veronyka gripped the dagger in her hand, carefully lining up her shot.

  Tristan hesitated on the threshold of his cell, but only for a fraction of a second. “Thank you,” he said, before moving into the passage after the commander.

  Yara nodded, then glanced to Veronyka. She was ready. Veronyka hit her with the butt of the handle, hard enough to split the skin and cause Yara to stagger backward, but not enough to knock her unconscious or cause any lasting damage.

  Yara blinked, touching her fingertips to the blood dripping down her head. She nodded her approval. “I’ll deal with them”—she jerked her chin toward the soldiers on the ground—“then I’ll have to ‘help’ with the barricade. I’ll try to muck it up as much as possible.” A ghost of a smile flickered across her lips. “You probably have less than five minutes.”

  “Thank you, Yara,” Veronyka echoed, before sheathing her dagger.

  “Take care of Pyra,” Yara said. “That’s all the thanks I need.”

  “I will,” Veronyka promised, then followed the others back into the passage.

  As they approached the end of the hallway, Veronyka edged around Xephyra to peer out the partially opened door. Soldiers could be seen atop the estate’s perimeter wall, pointing toward the prison complex, where no doubt smoke was still issuing from Tristan’s tiny cell window.

  It was night, which gave them pockets of darkness to pass through, but there were enough lanterns to make that a risky proposition until they were in the sky.

  “We could use a diversion,” she muttered. “Something to draw their attention away from the ground level of the estate.”

  “Rex,” Tristan said, and she felt as he reached for his bondmate, directing the phoenix toward the estate’s roof. He brought Maximian with him, and together they alighted upon the steepled roof and burst into flame.

  Veronyka drew back from Tristan’s mind in time to see the firelight flickering upon the ground before them, the soldiers along the wall craning their necks skyward to stare.

  It was now or never.

  “Call them down,” Veronyka urged, but then a loud bang and echoing voices burst out behind them, followed by the clamor of boots on stairs. The time Yara had bought them was over, and the barricade was no more.

  The commander withdrew a short sword from his belt. Veronyka had never seen him carry such a weapon—in fact, she’d never seen him fight. He trained exclusively with his own patrol, and never when any other Riders were in the training yard. “I’ll hold them off.”

  Tristan opened his mouth to argue, but Veronyka put a hand on his arm. Rex would arrive at any moment, and they needed to get Tristan into the saddle as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to point out the obvious and wound his pride, but he was not in the best condition to fight.

  Behind them, a soldier crawled through the hole in the wood-and-plaster wall Xephyra’s fire had burned, but the commander was on him before he could even straighten up. He ran the soldier through in a neat thrust before dodging an attack from another. Their bodies helped to partially block the passage, bottlenecking their pursuers, but surely one of them would have a crossbow in hand before long.

  Xephyra croaked, drawing Veronyka’s attention. Rex and Maximian were circling above, but they were unable to approach because of some soldiers on the second story gallery.

  Then a volley of arrows came out of nowhere, peppering the soldiers along the wall and those perched on the gallery overhead.

  It was Tristan’s patrol. A surge of happiness bubbled up inside him at the sight.

  “Now!” Veronyka cried, tugging Tristan’s arm while he shouted for the commander.

  They burst out of the bushes, Xephyra in the lead, and before them landed Rex and Maximian. Arrows continued to fall from the sky, protecting them as they climbed into their saddles, the commander last to clear the cover of the building.

  They took to the air in a gust of wind, soaring away from the compound and the deluge of arrows into the safety of the sky.

  I have a new Shadow Sister, and she has bonded to an Ashfire.

  - CHAPTER 24 - SEV

  AFTER THE PHOENIX RIDERS had flown over his convoy, Sev wondered what would happen next—to him, of course, but also to the prisoner transport mission.

  They didn’t stop their progress or turn around, and it appeared they intended to go through with the ruse, which made sense, he supposed. Rolan was also traveling, so it stood to reason that the Phoenix Riders might seek the governor out first. The soldiers didn’t know that Sev had tipped them off—he could hardly believe it himself—or that the Phoenix Riders were unlikely to come back. The soldiers had orders, and they followed them down to the letter, including continuing to treat Sev as the decoy prisoner, hauling him out of the carriage when they finally arrived in the fortress in the Spine and dragging him up a narrow staircase to be stored in a tower.

  It was basically like putting him on a silver platter.

  They obviously wanted to draw the Phoenix Riders out; otherwise they’d have put him underground, the same as Tristan had been. Instead, their goal was to make the fortress an easy place to approach. They had only a handful of soldiers openly guarding the perimeter, with the majority of their forces inside the stronghold walls. Despite their outward lack of defenses, Sev suspected they’d be ready to spring into action with volleys of crossbow bolts and waves of snagging metal nets the instant the alarm was raised.

  The irony, of course, was that Sev himself had been charged with raising it. They had some lookouts in the surrounding hills, but with darkness falling, their ability to spot a Phoenix Rider approach was severely limited. They were relying on Sev to notify the soldiers posted outside his door should Phoenix Riders descend from the sky, though if such a rescue were to happen, Sev intended to do no such thing.

  But it wouldn’t.

  The Phoenix Riders would be forced to choose, and between himself and Tristan? Well, it was no choice at all. They would get what they came for—one of their own, the commander’s son—and then focus on Lord Rolan and the Grand Council meeting. They could be halfway to Aura Nova by now, or busy chasing down Rolan’s carriage to prevent his attendance.

  They wouldn’t be chasing after Sev.

  He was nothing to them, really. A useful tool that was useful no more. It would be foolish to waste time and resources, maybe even lives, to save someone like him. Someone with nothing to contribute beyond dirty tricks and a weak conscience, and even those petty offerings were moot now that he was locked away in a tower like a princess in a fairy tale. But unlike in the stories, nobody was coming for Sev.

  Instead, he would sit here for the night—perhaps several nights—until he and the other soldiers received new orders. Should he try to escape before then, with or without the Phoenix Riders?

  He choked out a laugh and slumped against one of the cold stone walls, sliding until he hit the floor. As if it hadn’t crossed his mind a dozen times already. As if he didn’t know it was impossible. He was at the top of a tower, at least thirty feet from the ground. Without a battalion of Phoenix Riders soaring to his rescue, the tower might as well be a hundred feet from the ground, for all the difference it made. He couldn’t jump it, couldn’t climb it with his bad shoulder. And even if he could, where would he go without supplies?

  At least he had friends somewhere out there—some place he might want to go. He had
Kade. If Sev could escape, he would make his way north, through Stel, then Ferro, then across the border into Pyra… all as a deserter in the empire’s military. He laughed again. It was a hollow sound.

  He was in the exact same position he’d been before all of this started: trying—and failing—to find a way out on his own.

  He shook his head and rolled out his bad shoulder. He was missing Hestia’s peppermint salve, which numbed the pain and helped him sleep.

  He was missing a lot more than that, truth be told.

  The missing went deep; it stretched all the way back to Kade, to Trix, and farther still, to his mother and father. The missing was like poison in his bloodstream, spreading, contaminating his entire being with every beat of his heart.

  He even found himself missing things he could barely remember—things like home, like family—and longing for other things that weren’t his to have in the first place. Somewhere to belong, people to care about and who cared about him in return.

  He closed his eyes.

  One night of self-pity, he told himself sternly. Just one.

  He had known it would come to this. He had known the risks. And he was alive, which was a small miracle in and of itself… but the goal of staying alive whatever the cost was becoming less and less appealing to him. The price was too high, and the payoff too little. It was amazing to think he’d spent most of his life determined to be alone and alive, and now he was both and yet he’d never been more miserable.

  A light scratching sound interrupted Sev’s thoughts. He thought it was coming from the door opposite him, but then he heard a soft coo, and his breath caught.

  He lurched forward, going for the window next to the door. It was tall and narrow—more a slit than anything else—and found a small gray pigeon picking its way along the short ledge.

  A familiar pigeon.

  His heart soared, lodging inside his throat, practically choking him with joy and causing his vision to swim with unshed tears.