I blinked, and saw Esmaris’s blood-flecked face.
Saw golden hair and bloody fingernails and a room of white and white and—
Reshaye’s terror almost overwhelmed me. It took all of my mental strength to force it to the back of my mind. I managed to dodge another strike. Land a blow, one more vicious than I had intended, rot blooming over the chest of a soldier. He staggered close, and I saw that his facial hair was patchy, eyes wide and afraid above acne scarred cheeks. It was a young face.
No time to doubt. No time to question. More soldiers were on me in seconds. With Reshaye’s rage in my veins I cut through them one by one, my dark magic mingling with the flames of Max’s.
I whirled around, looking through the fighting to the sea, where the ship waited — still carrying all of our innocent passengers. Two of the sleek warships were leaving the docks. Panic spiked through me.
Leave, I wanted to shout, as if my voice could reach across the sea. Leave as fast as you can!
A force tackled me, knocking the breath from my lungs. My back slammed against the ground. Elias leaned over me, gripping my wrists, his armored weight too heavy for me to push off. His eyes searched my face, narrowed with curiosity.
“Who are you?”
I answered him by calling more magic to me, focused around my wrists. He let out a grunt, jerking away palms that were now black with decay.
I staggered to my feet, taking in the battle. Max was handling four of them at once, and barely succeeding. Nura was overrun. Sammerin had seven in his magic’s grip, each slowly breaking free of his control. And Eslyn was surrounded by bodies, prying her spear from a corpse, barely avoiding a strike at her back.
There were too many. Too many.
My fingers curled.
{We can end it,} Reshaye whispered.
I didn’t want to.
{We have enough power to end it all.}
No.
{Why?}
No.
And yet, I was still lingering at that final thread of restraint—
An explosion rocked the ground.
My knees hit the floor, ears ringing. Someone yanked me up, pulling me back towards the blast. I was already starting to strike when a woman’s voice hissed in my ear, “I’m helping you.”
The smoke finally cleared enough for me to realize what was happening.
Syrizen. More than a dozen of them, stepping out of the air as if surging through invisible doors. One grabbed Max and yanked him away from the fighting — others stood with Sammerin, Nura, Eslyn. More still flickered from nothingness. There was so much blood on the ground that my feet slipped against the pier floorboards.
“Hold on,” the Syrizen said into my ear.
“The ship—” I started.
I didn’t get to finish. The world unraveled, and we were gone.
The sudden silence was deafening. The next thing I knew, my knees were on the ground, wet not with blood but with dew from damp grass, my palms pressed to the earth.
“She fucking burned me!” an aggravated-sounding voice was saying.
“She wouldn’t have if you’d given us a little warning,” Eslyn’s voice grumbled back. “I was two seconds away from taking Vivian’s head off myself.”
I turned my head. Max was beside me, also crouched in the grass. He’d barely scrambled to his hands and knees before he looked to me.
“Are you alright?” he panted, and I nodded.
I pushed myself to my feet and turned to the Syrizen. The one who had saved me, a blond woman with freckled cheeks, was sneering at a dark wound on her wrist. My fault, apparently.
“The ship,” I said. “The refugees were brought back with us—”
“We have the ship,” she said, a little impatiently. “We sent a few Syrizen there, too. They’re bringing it down the coast. Was this really necessary? It’s—”
“Why are we here?”
There was something in Max’s voice that made my head whip around. He had risen to his feet, and now stood completely still, all color drained from his face, eyes locked straight ahead.
For the first time, I noticed our surroundings.
Before us was a mansion. It was beautiful, the exterior crafted of smooth, white stone, covered with gold-plated decorations and sculpture. Gold columns lined its front, cradling a wrought-iron balcony that extended across the whole exterior, breaking only to make way for the massive set of white, arched doors at its entrance. We stood beyond its gates — massive, extravagant things befitting the property that they protected — and a bronze lion stared down at us appraisingly.
Beyond the mansion were mountains. I could barely make out a wall, dotted with large, square buildings, in the distance. Forts, perhaps.
I knew this place.
I knew it, even though I had never been here. Knew it, and couldn’t place it.
I felt Reshaye shift through my thoughts, as if unnerved.
{It has been many days,} it whispered, {since I have seen this place.}
A Syrizen stood at the center of the gates. She was wearing a red sash, wrapped around her waist and pinned to her shoulders so it flowed down her back. She was older than most Syrizen, her hair grey-streaked and bound tightly.
“Come,” she said. “The king wishes to see you.”
The king?
“The king?” Sammerin said.
Even he looked unnerved, eyes slightly wide as he stared at the building before us.
Max looked as if he wasn’t even breathing.
“Why are we here?” he said again.
“The king will explain everything,” the Syrizen said, lightly. “Come.”
“I’m not going in there.”
Max turned his gaze to me, his jaw set and eyes bright with fury, and all at once, the memories flooded over me.
Max’s memories.
Memories of dark-haired siblings running to meet him here, at these gates. Memories of his father’s grin and his mother’s embrace.
Memories of Reshaye’s rage, and their corpses.
All here, in this house.
We were in Korvius. Max’s childhood home.
Anserra tilted her chin towards Max.
“He said that you wouldn’t like being here,” she said. “And to tell you that the sooner you come speak to him, the sooner you can leave.”
Max stared forward with a jaw set so rigid it trembled.
“He?” The word rolled out between clenched teeth.
And it was Nura who answered as she stepped past us. “Who else?” she muttered. “Zeryth fucking Aldris.”
Chapter Four
Aefe
Once upon a time, I was a princess.
I was just a child then, of course. Too young to know better than to wear that power — that safety — carelessly. Like most children, I saw my circumstances as constant and unmoving. I did not question whether I deserved what I had. I did not question whether I could lose it.
But then, I’d have no reason to think such a thing. I was the Teirness of the House of Obsidian, the heir to the greatest power in the greatest house of all the Fey nations. If there was anything to make one feel untouchable, it would be that. I lived in a beautiful room crafted of polished black stone, high at the top of the cliffs that housed the House of Obsidian, and I’d look out over the most incredible view and take it all for granted.
I lived so far above the ground, and it never even occurred to me to look down.
For ten years, I lived that way — gluttonous on comfort and power and, above all, love. Now, it seemed like a whole other world, a cruel dream invented by a lonely mind. Perhaps it was a dream, because when it ended, it ended fast, like snapping awake to a crack of lightning.
It was all stolen time, anyway. I never should have held that title. My blood was tainted, cursed. Unsuitable.
One night, I went to sleep the Teirness, and I woke up with my father’s hands around my throat. Perhaps he should have killed me that night, for what I am. But instead of tak
ing my life, he took my title.
What had amazed me the most was how simple it had been. By morning my sister occupied all the spaces of my old life, as if one princess could be seamlessly substituted for another, and the world went on as if nothing had changed, all while I was still falling, falling, falling from the heights of my power, with nowhere to look but down.
Once upon a time I was a princess.
But that was a long time ago, and I’ve been hitting the ground ever since.
My head smashed against the stone floor, teeth tearing the inside of my cheek, vision darkening, sound dampening.
My lips curled into a smile. Thick warmth seeped between my teeth and dribbled down my chin, pooling in purple smears. For another second, the world was slow, silent.
Then the rest of it hit me all at once. The smell of sweat and spilled wine. The raucous shouts of drunken spectators, the shift of the grit beneath my feet. The rough ground under my hands as I pushed myself back up, the cool air across my skin as I whirled —
And the pain, waking in my knuckles as they smashed against a bony, angular face. He staggered. My opponent was larger than me, but skinny and out of shape. I threw myself over him and bared my teeth, my razored incisors sliding from my gums.
He turned away, but not fast enough. I caught the point of his ear. He howled.
I spat his ear onto the ground, followed by a mouthful of his blood. And before he could rise—
“Aefe!”
That voice made me stop short.
I looked over my shoulder just long enough to catch a glimpse of a familiar, deeply unhappy face in the crowd.
That distraction was more than enough for my newly-lopsided friend to stagger to his feet and send my world spinning with one decimating blow to my head.
I hit the floor in a pile of limbs. Everything went grey. When my sight returned, I saw Siobhan, my commander, standing over me, powerful arms crossed over her chest. Dark curls dangled around her face as she shook her head.
“If you’re going to get yourself expelled over a pathetic pit fight,” she said, “you’d better at least win.”
“He insulted the Teirness,” I shot back. Despite my best efforts, I was panting.
“And you took it upon yourself to show him the error of his ways?” She cast a dry, disapproving stare to my opponent, who was mumbling a string of vulgarities while groping around the bloody floor for his ear. “He certainly looks like a man reformed.”
“I—”
“I don’t need excuses. Get up. Wall. Now.” She threw my cloak at me, and I winced as it thumped against my stomach.
“Yes, commander,” I wheezed.
She began to turn, then cast one more look down at me as I struggled to my feet, crimson eyes narrowing. “You insult your vows by using your training in a place like this, you insult the Teirness by using her honor to justify this farce, and you insult yourself by losing.”
My mouth tightened. I drew my eyes down to the ground, suddenly very focused on adjusting my bootlace.
Yes, once upon a time, I was a princess. Not anymore, and that was probably for the best. I was ill-suited for such things. I was too quick-tempered, too honest, too poor of disposition. And the House of Obsidian would be better, safer, stronger, with my taint far away from the throne. I would write my stories in blood on pub floors rather than in curling script on royal decrees.
But still. Sometimes, in moments like this, I couldn’t help but look to the past and wish.
By the time I scraped myself up off the ground, Siobhan was gone.
The wall was nearly a mile beyond the edge of the Obsidian Pales, just far enough away that when you looked back the cliffs loomed in their full, dramatic glory beneath the cresting sun. They reminded me of a star-dusted night. A black so dark that it glowed.
That effect was only enhanced by the silver, running in twisting rivulets along the stones’ surfaces. From this distance, they looked like ornate metallic shocks of decoration, invisible until the sun hit them just the right way. It was only up close that one would see that they were actually thousands upon thousands of palm-sized swirls and images carved into the stone, painstakingly poured with silver. Each individual strand consisted of many carvings, and the longest of them spanned hundreds of meters of the cliff face, tangling with threads of other stories. Many of them immortalized epics, tales of deities or heroes, the origins of our kings and queens. But many, too, told tales of everyday mundanity. The birth of a child, the record of a wedding, the tale of a family business as it was handed down through the generations. All on equal footing.
The Obsidian Pales were our home, and all Sidneè Fey looked upon them with swells of admiration. But for me, it was less about pride of my home or my people or the grand achievements of our forefathers. No — it was more about the stories. The stories that we valued so much that we carved them onto our home just as we carved them onto our bodies.
“Aefe.”
Siobhan’s voice was so sharp that my horse, Rhee, yanked at the reins in a start, lurching me forward in my seat. I snapped my head up to meet her deeply unhappy glare.
“What?”
“What, she says.” She let out a scoff. “I don’t know what to do with you anymore.”
“I apologize, I—”
“Therein lies the problem, Aefe. ‘Apologize.’ Apologies imply that you have accepted some form of responsibility. It implies that you have remorse, and plan to do better. The first time you said it, I believed you. But now?” She regarded me stonily, with the militant, analytical focus of a predator. “I don’t think you are sorry. I think you regret your actions, yes. But I do not think you have any interest in improving, because if you did, you would have done it by now.”
I swallowed a pang of hurt. I sighed and loosened the laces of my leather sleeves, yanking them up to my elbows, and thrust my arm out to her. Waited.
Siobhan looked at it with pinched lips.
“Put that away,” she said, at last. “You don’t have any room for more anyway.”
“But I—”
“You don’t. Put it away.”
I hesitated, then lowered my arm.
She wasn’t entirely right, but she was close. Every inch of my forearm was marked, a solid wall of black X’s, scars on top of tattoos. One X for every infraction, for every shame, symbolizing another piece of my skin that could not be occupied by tales of heroics.
That was, after all, the greatest punishment among the Sidnee: the erasure of a story, or worse, the potential for one.
Sometimes I looked down at my arm and the sight of it hit me like a physical blow. All of those little misdeeds had built up, every instance of emotional impulse or lost temper. All my desperate desire to be a part of a tale worth telling only ended up chipping away at it, in the end.
Jaw tight, I laced up my sleeve, hiding X’s beneath black leather.
“But soon, Aefe, these matters will be beyond my control,” Siobhan said, quietly. “The Blades cannot keep someone among their ranks who is so unpredictable. It is dishonorable, and it is dangerous.”
A spike of terror rose in my chest. I whirled to her, eyes wide. “I cannot be expelled, Siobhan.”
“Commander,” she corrected, sharply. “Address me properly.”
Her rebuke hung in the air, heavy and sharp, as I struggled to compose myself enough to speak. I could feel Siohban’s stare, even though I couldn’t bring myself to meet it. Of the Blades’ commanders, she was not the flashiest, the most accomplished, the most dangerous. But she was fair and steady, and that made her the most intimidating. If she judged you ill, that judgement was not based in the fickle throes of passion or pride, but earned through the careful weighing of a balanced scale. There were other Commanders who disliked me, and in my anger I could tell myself that they held some personal slight against me. But Siobhan? If Siobhan decided that I was worthless, the only possible reason would be that it was simply the truth. Perhaps this was why I so sought her friendship
and her respect — because I knew it was worth something.
Siobhan’s gaze softened. “There is a part of me that wonders if perhaps you have no interest in being a Blade.”
“Of course I do,” I shot back. “I need to be.”
“Why?”
“No one is more important to the royal family than the Blades,” I said. “No one serves them more loyally. No one better deserves their trust.”
I could have sworn that I caught a glimpse of pity in Siobhan’s eyes. “You do not need to serve the royal family, Aefe. You are one of them.”
“We both know that is not true.”
“It is true. No matter what your father says.”
Mathira. I didn’t understand why it hurt, to hear it said as if it was so simple. I was torn in two, one half touched that she saw it that way, and the other wanting to rise to my father’s defense. It was not his fault, after all, that I was unsuitable for a throne.
But maybe there was a fragment of truth in her words. Maybe I had no interest in being a Blade, and all I wanted was a way to prove myself. Like I was a cat laying dead rats at my father’s feet: Look at what I brought you. Do you love me yet?
I pushed the thought away.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I cannot lose my place. Tell me what I need to do to keep it.”
“It’s not my responsibility to save you from your bad decisions. And even if it was—”
But then, something caught my attention. My eyes snapped towards the forest, to the wall of dense green before us.
“—I cannot force you to reform, or tell you how to do it.”
“Sh,” I whispered.
“You can’t shut this out, Aefe—”
“Commander, listen.”
My brow furrowed, ears straining.
And there it was again: a sound I hadn’t been sure I heard. A low, gargling voice, far enough away that the forest nearly swallowed it. The faintest sounds of movement. Siobhan and I exchanged a glance, our hands falling to the hilt of our swords.
We did not need to speak. Slowly, we slid from our horses. When we pushed through the thicket, every footfall was carefully chosen to be utterly soundless.
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 3
