Three water sprites rolled from a doorway, crashing headlong into the corridor’s opposite wall. I drew my sword, prepared to dispatch anyone who tried to stop me, and felt the surge of frozen air behind us as Grey battled with a pair of frost monsters. Anvil stumbled from the room, head down as he thrust power into the small pale bodies of the fey sprawled across the floor. Blood dripped from Anvil’s brow, his leather breast-plate torn and hanging loose from his massive frame. I shot past him, entering the room with Grey hard on my heels.
The library was chaos—books and pages, precious scrolls and ancient casting ledgers strewn over the wood plank floor. I’d never seen this room molested by their madness and the shock of it had me stumbling to a standstill. They had lost all regard for it, broken their own rules. They were a wild people, but they did have at least some barriers.
If there was one thing the fey respected, it was knowledge.
Fire lit the stone before me, orange spikes of heat that licked at my boots. There was ice behind me, and the peal of Grey’s blade. Smoke and the stench of sulfur filled the room, mingling with burned flesh, singed hair, and the sweetness of ripe summer fruit. Something sticky dripped from the ceiling to land on my arm, but I didn’t look up. I didn’t move. All I could see was Steed’s prone form on the shattered bits of wood that had once been a mahogany table. A high fey stood before him, his liquid gold eyes shining in challenge as they met mine.
I raised my hand to strike the fey, but my sword was still there, the heft of the metal all that kept me from the grandest fault: magic.
My blade came up, my arms poised for a killing blow, and I stalked toward him.
His wings were short and jagged, his muscled arms braced with fey steel. It was not metal, but magic. It would flex with his movements and cut like the sap of a gum tree. But it was only covering his torso, and I wasn’t aiming for that.
He hissed. I swung.
Magic shuddered through the air between us, but it was not mine. I could not let it go, not without an anchor, and I took the strike. As my blade came across the base of his neck the power shoved me backward. I only managed to slice the fey’s wrist as I was knocked away. Tremors rocked my insides, the power roiling through my chest cavity as it worked to tear me apart. I stared at the ceiling, willing it away, and the bronzed fey came once more into view. He stood over me, raising his hands to strike, and whispered words that sounded foreign. My sword was lost to me; I could barely feel my hands. There was a short blade tucked into the scabbard at my hip, a quick-release that I would only need sensation to get. My power was screaming, wanting to tear free. I could fight this. I could draw on that power and push his from within me. But if I left myself open, there was a chance I’d be releasing it to the fey. I had to keep it tied within me. For the safety of the realm. When it came down to the end, it was better that I die.
I knew that kind of thinking was a terrible way to live, that I needed to focus on finding my reflexes before it got that far, so I closed my eyes, forcing myself to still. The air was hot around me, blood dripping from the high fey’s wrist to splatter the ground and my skin. The scabbard belt pressed into my back, the dagger’s crossguard tight against my hip. It was formed of metal, cold, hard, and only inches away from the prickling heat that was my palm.
With every ounce of my being, I gripped the dagger and thrust it into his thigh. He screamed, his energy crackling through the room, and I tried to make myself breathe. My teeth rattled, my ribcage felt as if it had been crumpled, and I wasn’t sure my legs worked. I would risk falling. I clambered to my knees, but the fey grabbed me, jerking me up to face him by my shirt. One hand shifted to the skin of my neck and his long, impossibly strong fingers tightened into a noose. His magic within me gathered there, boiling beneath his palm, ready to end me.
Over the fey’s shoulder, I could see when Grey stepped up behind him. I smiled. The fey opened his mouth to speak again, but I never heard his words. Grey was quick, his knife going deep. We fell to the ground, the bulk of the fey hitting my outstretched legs as Grey was attacked from behind by a feathered fiend who’d somehow managed to get a club. My stomach dropped; it wasn’t a club, it was a broken half of Rhys’s staff.
I pushed the leaden weight off me, dragging my legs free and drinking in a painful breath. Grey dispatched the fiend quickly, but there were more and more every moment.
“Go,” he said, and I did. These lesser fey weren’t here to kill us. They were a planned distraction.
I got to my feet and a lithe ochre form leapt at me, bony hands searching for purchase, some bare spot of skin to make best use of its power. I punched at the thing’s stomach, cracking bone, and then fell as my legs gave up what little strength they’d gained. That put me close enough to my sword, and as the beast clawed at me again, I cut it into separate pieces. I sucked in air, crawling clear of the chaos before I pushed to standing with the help of my blade. I felt suddenly disoriented; in the fighting I’d managed to make it to the opposite wall.
There was movement around me, Grey and Anvil and a handful of sentries fighting the lesser fey that shot through the space, leaving pandemonium in their wake. I didn’t see Rhys, but couldn’t let myself think of that, of anything, because Steed’s full form had come into view. He hadn’t stirred in the slightest, arm hanging limply over shattered timber, bloodied fingers empty of either motion or sword. Blood caked his hacked-up shirtsleeves, leather armor shredded by claw and blade. I moved closer, but was afraid to touch him. Terrified of what I’d find if I were to see his face.
I knelt beside him, palm against the laces of his guard-issue breastplate where they were already loosened by the cuts to his other side. My hand slipped beneath it, waiting for his chest to rise and fall. And I waited. My throat went thick, eyes and heart hot with emotion, and then I choked on sudden hope when the smallest, weakest swell rose beneath my palm.
“Steed,” I breathed, rushing to shift him onto his back. I lifted one side gently, forgetting somehow that I had the magic to elevate him. My skin was wet with blood—his blood—and I trembled and struggled until I could see his slack face. He was so pale, features soft and unfamiliar. “Steed,” I said again, certain that he was in there, firm in the knowledge that I needed him to reply. Some strange part of me wanted to smack his face, to wake him up from this nightmare.
I tore the breastplate free, slicing open what remained of his tattered shirt. The wounds had bled freely, but now they were thick, weeping slow red tears. I didn’t know what to do for him, how to help. A terrible notion was clawing at me, wanting to scream that it was too late.
I wouldn’t let it.
I glanced over my shoulder, searching for anyone who might be able to help. Ruby, my mind kept saying, Ruby can heal him. Ruby was gone. I could see none of the chaos that was this room, only the long, thin gown of the now pink-skinned high fey. I was fairly certain she’d stolen the gown from one of Asher’s old rooms.
I didn’t care.
Liana stared down at me, arms crossed over her slender chest. She tapped a finger where it touched her biceps. “I warned you, lordling.”
“Help him,” I said.
She flicked her hand, gesturing me aside, and folded her long body to kneel over him. “Go,” she ordered, but did not move to touch him. Her head tilted sideways, eyes narrowed as she listened for something deep within.
“Is he—”
She cut me off with a snap of her fingers. I let my gaze trail down the side of Steed’s still face, but I did not touch him either. This was not how I would remember him. He would stay alive.
When I rose to leave, Liana spoke to me, her voice suddenly gentle. “Do not search for the halfling. Save the others. She will have her own path.”
My chest squeezed. I stared at her, hoping beyond hope that she could be trusted, and knew that I couldn’t let this keep me from what had to be done. I turned to face the room, but the fey were gone.
They’d served their purpose.
Gr
ey stood midway between me and the entrance, his face gone pale at the changeling’s words. His hands were scratched and bloodied, armor smeared with the glitter of so many of Veil’s disciples.
“Where is Anvil?” I asked, and he pointed to the hallway. I followed him out, both of us glancing at Steed and the fairy one last time, and found Anvil leaning against the damped stones of the corridor, panting heavily and stabbed with what appeared to be thin shards of glass.
“Ice fairy,” he wheezed. “Devilish beasts.”
I stooped beside him, my own body protesting as I drew the shards free. He winced, but was too exhausted for much else. “I don’t think they hit anything important,” I offered.
“What happened?” Grey asked, each of us knowing he meant Ruby. Where was Ruby?
We watched Anvil, the pain that flickered across his face, pain that wasn’t from his injuries. “It was a band of them. Spiders, I think. They must have been waiting on her.” He coughed on a raspy breath. “She’s a feisty one though, left a brute of a mess. I heard the commotion through the hallways, ran up here as fast as I could. She led them to the library, must have thought they’d spare this room. It didn’t work. I caught the tail end of it, noise and light, and then they were gone. I stood here, aiming to picture out which way they could have gone, when the fiends ascended. Swarm of them.” He gestured toward the library. “That’s about when Steed and Rhys showed up, but it was too late for much of anything by then.”
“Where’s Rhys?” I asked him, tucking his armor back in place. I tightened the laces to help staunch the bleeding until someone could stitch him up.
“Tracking.” His sword scraped against the stone floor as he pushed unsteadily to his feet. “He and the wolves.”
My heart quickened and I said thanks to whatever fortune had sent me the ancients that lived inside their silver fur. They must have been here then, with Ruby, or picked up on some sign of the spiders’ approach.
Anvil gestured down the corridor toward Ruby’s suites. “She’d set protections on her room, so there are a few bits of corpses if you’d like to take a look.”
“In a moment,” I answered. “I have a decent assumption there are twenty-seven of Veil’s armed shadow stalkers still lining our east hall.”
“Waiting for your response,” Grey murmured. His voice was subdued, and I knew he was in a worse state than I at Ruby’s disappearance and Steed’s current condition. I needed to give him a task. One that would keep him in line. It was why I’d kept him at my side earlier instead of Rhys. I didn’t stop to imagine what would have happened to him if he’d been in the other’s place.
“Ride toward Camber,” I told Grey. “Find Chevelle and let Rider know. Anvil will stay with me until the rest gets sorted out.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Anvil put in. When my gaze cut to his, he explained, “Chevelle set two hidden sentries outside the castle walls. At the first sign of trouble, they were to report to him in town.”
He’d concealed guards to watch us. Things had been at peace, and yet Chevelle had been waiting for this—for something—to happen. Because even though he was my Second, he was still head of the guard.
And Ruby. Ruby had set protections in her own suite of rooms.
I was the only one who’d felt safe here. I was the only one who’d let down my guard.
“Right then, come with me.”
3
Frey
We entered the east hall to find the twenty-seven high fey waiting. From the height of the sun behind them, and from Anvil’s revelation, I was fairly certain Chevelle wouldn’t be far behind. I scanned the row of shadow stalkers, searching for one who might be in charge.
They didn’t appear to have a leader. I gestured toward the closest one where he centered the line. “You await a message for your master?” The fey hated that word. Veil might have been powerful, might have upheld their law, but he was no one’s master. Despite the slander, none of these fey blinked an eye. They had come expecting to be insulted, I was certain. “I have it,” I said.
The fey I’d singled out moved forward, his dark wings and shadowed skin so strange in the brightness of the room. These were the fey Veil used to conduct missions in the nighttime, not parade in the light of day. That was what his heliotropes were for, his court a spectrum of deadly powers. They hung around his neck like the rainbow tassels of Grand Council had, boasting of what they could do.
But that threat was gone now. Grand Council had fallen at the hands of my Seven and the people of the north. I wouldn’t be cowed by fey on our own land.
The shadow stalker settled on the ground before me, towering and muscled and likely to overpower me if not for my sword. He was half again my size, and that would unquestionably be the outcome without my magic, but I only needed to stall. To think of a response worthy of the fey lord that didn’t involve the death of one of his high court. It was too late to avoid killing a high fey altogether; we’d already dispatched the fire-winged beast that had wounded Steed. In truth, at the moment I had a strong desire to wipe out all of them.
“The treaty has been broken if one of my Seven dies,” I said. He didn’t seem surprised when I added, “The guard in the library is close, but I will wait for that vengeance.”
A sound echoed through the corridor, the rush of boots on stone, and my decision came easier. I might not have relished the task, but it had to be done. Boundaries had to be kept. Rules the ancients had set could not be broken.
Anvil stayed in his position, but Grey shifted beside me. It would be Chevelle’s place in a matter of heartbeats.
“As for the one who was stolen”—I glanced down the line, wanting each of them to meet my eyes—“your kind has taken my left hand. Until she is returned, the price will be paid by each fey I can find.” I leaned forward, hissing the last words. “And find them I will.”
I felt Chevelle suddenly beside me, his palm brushing my back to let me know I had free rein. The fey would be an issue until I could garner my own control, until this power—too strong—could be contained by me alone. Until then, I needed Chevelle.
And I had him.
I seized the shadow stalker’s hand and sliced it from his wrist. A chorus of screams rose through the hall, the rest of Veil’s army trapped by my power and unable to fight while it was anchored through Chevelle. It was still volatile, too strong and terrifying to wield, so I moved through them quickly, personally taking the left hand from each. This had been an act of war; Ruby was my highest guard, one of the Seven, and I could not let that kind of challenge go unanswered.
“Tell him,” I ordered once the business was done. “Tell. Them. All.”
I shoved with the core of my power, pushing their bodies through the broken wall and beyond. A cloud of dark-winged figures, twenty-seven of the fey’s best fighters, bounded and bobbled before their own power returned.
Veil must have led them to believe I would not use magic. I didn’t know if that meant he was unaware of my bond to Chevelle, or if this too was part of his plan.
I’d been afraid their pride would have them returning, that there would be more blood spilled, but none seemed to have the inclination, their shapes disappearing into the faraway haze of sky.
I turned to Chevelle. “Glad to have you back.”
He didn’t answer, his dark eyes filled with the heat of the attack. He’d been expecting something, but clearly not the loss of Ruby and Steed. There wasn’t a speck of blood on him, and I realized I must look a mess.
“I’m not hurt,” I said. “Grey has fared well and Anvil took a few shots, but Steed is the only…” My words trailed off, unable to come up with an answer that didn’t choke me. “Liana is with him now.”
“Liana,” Chevelle repeated.
I nodded. “She came before the others, offered a warning about not killing high fey.”
“And did we?”
I sighed. “We did.”
Anvil patted me on the back. “Not to fret.
I got some of my own. As did, it appears, Ruby.”
“Spiders,” Rider said.
Anvil nodded. “Did you see something?”
“No.” Rider shrugged his quiver into place; it had apparently shifted during their rush from Camber. “And only a few are capable of leaving no sign.”
I felt my brow rise at his quick conclusion. Rider must have been studying the fey since the attack on the hall a few seasons ago. “Well,” I said. “I guess we’d better check her suites for some message or sign of her.”
Chevelle touched my arm before I could turn to go. “Liana,” he said. “Any other warnings?”
I bit my lip. “That we should not chase Ruby.”
There was a stillness in each of us. I could practically feel the weight of Grey’s stare. I couldn’t make him choose, could I? His oath to the guard and his duty in the castle, or Ruby. It didn’t matter, because even I couldn’t let this go unanswered. No matter what it took, I couldn’t leave her to them. Not a halfbreed among the worst of her kind.
Chevelle could see my decision, and we made our way through the maze of corridors toward Ruby’s suites. It brought us past the library, and my feet faltered before I was able to look within.
I stopped in the doorway, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose and biting back a growl.
“What is it?” Grey said from behind me.
I shook my head. “She’s gone.”
The others glanced in, finding Liana and Steed were nowhere to be seen. They moved on, probably expecting as much from one of the fey, no matter how long this particular one had been dancing across the borders to live among us. But Chevelle stayed.
The Frey Saga Book IV Page 2
