“Arrows!” she called out. “Arion, go higher.” She reached for her bow and readied an arrow as another whistled by and scraped the sleeve of her coat. “Loop around, I think they’re behind us.”
Arion did as she said, his wings pulsing against the air as they turned. Something whizzed by them, much larger than an arrow, and as Fia released hers, something hit Arion’s wing and he lurched to one side. Fia grabbed a fistful of mane with her free hand.
“Fia, sheathe your weapon and hold on,” Arion bellowed.
She did as he said, ducking low against his back and narrowing her eyes against the wind. They were too great a target. But who could be attacking them? There was no fire, so it couldn’t be Lorn. An angel? Runa’s nephew had betrayed them, so it was likely more could follow him.
Arion banked steeply to one side and Fia dug her fingers in deep. It was a long way down to the cliffs, but they were sitting ducks like this. Something whizzed by them again and Fia caught the distinctive shape of wings, as large as an angel’s. But they were made of metal.
“Arion, I have Noor’s witch knot. We could knock them out of the sky,” she cried out.
Another arrow hit Arion’s wing and he made a pained sound in his throat. “Do it, now!” he called back.
Fia tore at the knot, with no idea how to bind the wind to her, let alone release it. The little piece of leather fell away from her wrist as the wind picked up around them. Arion beat his wings harder against the gust of air that slammed into his side, just as a shimmer of copper flashed by them. Whatever it was, it was back.
“Throw it away, Fia, now!” Arion called out.
She threw the piece of leather into the clouds and watched as it swirled away. Only it wasn’t the strand of leather that was swirling, it was them, spiralling and spiralling around in the winds she had just released with it.
Fia grabbed onto Arion’s mane as tightly as she could and pressed her body low to his back. The wind whipped at her face and they were spinning so fast she couldn’t tell which way was up or down.
“Hold on!” Arion called. “I’m going to try and land.”
They must have been descending, but all Fia could see was a dark mass of cloud and every now and then the unmistakable glimmer of copper.
And then a pair of hands broke through the cloud, stretching out to her. She reached for her dagger and slashed wildly as a figure lunged towards her, its huge copper wings outstretched. Fia took aim and threw the dagger at their leg.
“Pathetic parasite. You will regret that,” a gruff voice called out.
Fia could see the copper wings more clearly now—they seemed to be part of a metal suit the man wore.
Arion reared up in the air, slamming his front legs against a copper wing and the suited figure spun for a moment before righting himself. With one smooth motion, he clapped his wings forwards into Arion’s flank and suddenly Fia wasn’t holding on anymore, she was falling.
She tried to call out to Arion, but no sound came out. She looked up to see him kicking and thrusting his wings at the suited man, but the man pulled Fia’s dagger from his knee and slashed wildly at Arion’s legs. A spray of crimson filled the air.
“No!” Fia screamed. She felt like she’d been falling for an eternity, but barely only enough time had passed for the man to swipe at Arion’s legs. “Stop it, please!” she cried out.
The man looked right at her; his amber eyes locked with hers for a moment. You. And then he plunged her dagger right into Arion’s chest. No sound escaped from Arion as his wings stopped beating and he fell, hard and heavy, tumbling and spiralling down towards the cliffs below them. They were both going to die, but all that mattered to Fia was that there would never be another winged horse, ever again.
“No!” she whispered, but the word was choked back by a sob. She waited for the impact of the cliffs. For the feeling of her body shattering against the rocks. But instead, something hit her hard in her side and she saw a flash of copper as arms reached around her and carried her away.
“Arion!” she sobbed, pushing and kicking against the copper-winged man. She couldn’t see Arion. She couldn’t see anything except for metal wings and the straps and buckles fixing them to the man’s suit. Fia pulled at them furiously as tears blurred her vision, scratching and pulling until her fingernails were bleeding.
“Enough,” the man called out against the wind.
Fia didn’t listen, she kept kicking and grabbing and pulling at whatever she could. She ripped away a fistful of hair and then amber eyes flashed at her.
“Do you want to join him?” he asked, yanking Fia’s head back and holding her out at arm’s length in the air.
“No,” she breathed as tears streamed down her face.
Arion was dead. And it was all her fault.
Chapter Thirteen
Alexander
A lexander awoke to blinding pain in his arms, his legs, his wings. His head was throbbing, and he could only open one eye. In the dim light below him, witches poked and prodded at angels with their talismans. The angels were formidable fighters, but even the best fighter could do nothing against magic without magic of their own. And angels had none. There had been no need for it in Ohinyan, not for many, many years, despite what Erebus had said. It was likely another lie anyway.
“He’s awake,” a voice said from somewhere below. Alexander turned his head to examine the splints pinning him to the wooden post. They were ordinary wood. He’d barely slept, but he was a fast healer. Not so fast that his wounds would have healed, but enough to test his strength. This is going to hurt.
He braced his back against the wooden pillar and pushed as forcefully as he could against the stakes in his arms and wings, and with a triumphant cry, his wings and his right hand broke free. He flexed his wings. They were too damaged to fly any respectable distance, not that there was anywhere to fly to from this basement room.
“He’s escaping! Call for Lorn, now!” a witch called out from below.
Alexander ripped out the stake in his left hand and the one in his leg and glided clumsily to rest above the wooden beam he’d been pinned to. Blood slicked his hands and legs and stained his wings into a rusty mess. His breathing was laboured, his head thumping, but he had to think. He had to get the other angels out.
He took count. More than thirty angels and only five witches, but more would be on their way almost immediately. The moment Lorn arrived, it would all be over. Alexander didn’t doubt for a second that no matter what command Erebus had given her, Lorn wouldn’t hesitate to destroy all the angels in an instant.
All of the angels were bound by talismans, and most sat on the floor—it looked as if most had their legs bound too, except for the most badly injured. Halvar was looking up at him, likely waiting for a command. Alexander steadied himself. If only he’d had more time to heal. He could have picked the witches off one by one from above.
The door swung open, but no witches burst through, no sign of Lorn. Instead, a fox bounded in and ran right for the centre of the angels grouped on the floor. Kit.
One of the witches lunged forwards. “Get that fo—” he started, but the wind was knocked out of him as he fell over nothing, and then disappeared. Another witch ran towards the space where the first one had disappeared, and then she disappeared, too. Two down, nicely done, Jo. He assumed it was Jo, rather than Hazel, from the swiftness of the moves. The remaining three witches followed suit—they tried to attack their invisible opponent, were swiftly winded, and then they disappeared, too.
Alexander touched down on the floor of the basement as talismans were pulled from the angels by unseen hands and thrown across the floor to the back of the room.
“Sire,” Halvar began as he approached.
Alexander waved a hand dismissively. “It looks worse than it is.” But he wasn’t convinced, something didn’t feel right. His wounds would heal, given time, but if he had any chance of joining the others out of the basement, it would be on foot.
Halvar spun around, his back to Alexander’s as they prepared to fight. “Perhaps we could—”
Alexander turned just in time to see Halvar disappear, and then something hit his chest and he disappeared, too.
“She’s coming,” Hazel called out from the doorway. Alexander couldn’t see her, but he knew she was there.
“We can’t leave the others,” Alexander said. What kind of leader would he be? What kind of angel? He looked to his hands but couldn’t see them. Of course he couldn’t. This was going to take some getting used to.
“If we’re all dead, we definitely won’t be able to save them. We have to go, now,” Hazel called out from the doorway. “Lorn’s coming, hurry.”
Kit made his peculiar chuffing sound and bounded off in the direction of the door.
“Jo?” Halvar called out.
“I’m here,” she said, from somewhere close by them. “Hazel’s right, we need to leave now. We can come back when you’re not half-dead, Alex.”
He was in no physical condition to help anyone, but leaving them behind, again...
“It’s the most logical strategy, sire,” Halvar added.
The other angels were calling out, confused. Seconds had passed, but Alexander knew they were running out of time. “We’ll be back, I promise you,” he said, as confidently as he could, and then limped towards the door.
He didn’t hear their replies. The sound was drowned out by his thoughts. Thoughts that told him he was a coward and a deserter. That he had failed the angels, his father. He stumbled in the doorway and coughed up blood. A hand grabbed his arm. “Sire. We must hurry.”
“This will be my one of my greatest regrets, Halvar,” Alexander said, wiping at his mouth.
Beside him, someone made a clicking sound, and then a hand was around his other arm.
“We’ll deal with the witches later. Let’s get out of here, we left the car running,” Jo said, and together she and Halvar helped Alexander up the stairs.
More shouts came from somewhere else in the building, followed by the unmistakable roar of Lorn’s flames. Silently, with Kit leading the way, they weaved through corridors and staircases until a door burst open in front of them to an empty side street. The door to a small blue vehicle swung open and Hazel flickered back into view. “Get in the car.”
“I will fly above you,” Halvar said as another door to the car opened.
Alexander all but fell onto the back seat, the door slamming shut after him. Then two more doors shut in unison. Where were the spirits? Could only Erebus command them?
“Jo?” Hazel said quietly.
“I’m here. He’s here. Halvar’s up top. Kit’s doing his thing. Let’s get out of here,” Jo replied, but still remained invisible. “I bet you wish you did carry some health potions now, right, Alex?”
Alexander’s vision blurred. He tried to sit up, but his head swam. The wounds on his hands had reopened at some point coming up the stairs, and the backseat of the car was smeared with blood.
He pressed his palms to his eyes. The faces of the angels staring back at him burned into his vision. They deserved better than this. A better leader. And now they were going to die. And Fia, Fia could die too. Alexander couldn’t bear it. You failed them all.
“We had to leave, there’s nothing more we could have done,” Jo said from the front seat.
Alexander didn’t reply. What was there to say? And how could they possibly have any chance of rescuing the angels from Lorn, when she could burn them all to cinders in a heartbeat? He rolled onto his side. His wounds weren’t healing, because chunks of wood were engrained within them, scraping against flesh and bone. He gritted his teeth—he deserved no less.
Jo and Hazel talked upfront, but he didn’t hear their words. He was thinking of Fia. Had Erebus already found her? What then? Alexander felt certain she’d made it to Ohinyan safely. He’d have felt it if she was… if she was gone, wouldn’t he? He dragged a hand through his hair, the fissures of wood catching and dragging against his skin.
The car came to a stop, the door opened, and Alexander was looking up at the sky, and then Jo’s face, her brow creased with concern.
“Oh, there’s… there’s a lot of blood,” she said.
Alexander pushed himself up and swayed. “I’m fine.”
“This will be easier if you remove the charm. It’ll be on your chest,” Hazel added.
Alexander fumbled for the invisibility charm that Jo had planted on him, and as his fingers found it, he grazed against the scar from Lorn’s handprint, right across his heart. Such a twisted way to mark a person. He knew that scar would never truly heal, and if he made it through what lay ahead, it would always be a reminder of this day. Of his failure.
“There you are. Let’s get you out of here,” Jo had already begun to pull him unceremoniously out of the car as Halvar touched down beside her.
“Let me assist you,” he said.
“His blood has been poisoned,” Alexander heard Hazel say as his eyes fell shut, and he felt himself pulled from the vehicle by Halvar and Jo.
Colours flickered behind Alexander’s eyes. He was moving, but not of his own volition. He was certain he heard Kit huffing nearby. More colours flickered, ribbons of azure and vermillion and emerald, all the colours of the sky spirits that protected his home, Alythia. He thought of the night he had first shown Fia the sky spirts, and something tugged at his memory, something else, and he couldn’t make sense of what it was.
A burning sensation travelled from his palms up through his arms, across his back and into his wings. His eyes flicked open and he saw Hazel for a moment, but the pain burnt so much he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes again. Hands held him down, but against what, he didn’t know.
Lilac and turquoise flickered in front of his eyes again. How had Erebus travelled to Earth? How had he brought Lorn with him? This time the burning shot through his legs, and something between a cough and a groan escaped from him as his back arched in agony.
All the colours of the sky spirits. Only that wasn’t what they called them here. Here on Earth, where the same phenomenon filled the sky in the north.
The pain eased, and Alexander dragged himself to an upright position. “The Northern Lights,” he said, his voice hoarse and raspy. “I need to pay a visit to the Northern Lights.”
Chapter Fourteen
Fia
F ia’s head throbbed, and a coppery taste filled her mouth. Her wrist was swollen and stiff, but she wasn’t convinced it was broken. A fire flickered somewhere nearby but from her horizontal position, she couldn’t be sure where. Her hands were tied together with rough rope, and her face pressed into nothing but dirt.
“You’re awake,” a newly familiar voice said from beside her.
Fia pushed herself up. “You. Do you know what you’ve done?” Her vision blurred and her voice shook, and she willed herself not to cry. Arion was dead. Because of her.
The man had removed his copper suit and sat between Fia and the fire, his hands resting loosely on his knees. “Strange beasts are plentiful in these parts. That one will not be missed.” He wore a dirty shirt and rough trousers with straps of leather here and there, and Fia was immediately reminded of a pirate. Fresh scratches had crusted on his cheeks and neck. His amber eyes bore into hers, and she noticed, with a flicker of triumph, a tiny bald patch on the side of his head where she’d torn away a fistful of his mousy hair.
“That one was Arion, the last of his kind. The last winged horse in all of Ohinyan, and you killed him.” She jabbed her hands towards him, but the gesture had less force than she’d hoped it would with her hands bound together. Still, anger overrode the urge to cry, and instead, she thought of all the worst insults she’d heard back home. None seemed fitting. “Asshole,” she muttered when he said nothing.
“I would teach you the greatest Himeran insults if I thought you were worth it. But you won’t last long here. Your use of the bow is too weak.”
“I don’t care about
Himeran insults, or how crap you think I am with a bow. What I want to know is, what are you going to do with me, and why did you follow us from Ikothea?” Fia thrust her hands towards him again, flicking her chin at the rope around her wrists. “You drugged me?”
His eyes flickered with mischief, roving from her face, lower, and back up again. Shit.
He clicked his tongue and began picking at his fingernails with her dagger. The dagger that he’d killed Arion with. “I drugged you because you wouldn’t keep still.”
Fia felt the colour drain from her cheeks.
“Not like that,” the man laughed. “I have my orders. But you’re like a wild thing. I had to do something,” he said, pointing to the scratches on his face and his missing patch of hair. “Eat.”
He threw a drumstick of meat into her lap. It was cold, and Fia had no idea what it was, but she hadn’t eaten since she’d left Ikothea, and she saw no use in making herself weak just to protest being held captive. The second he turned his back she was going to dive for her dagger. Why had he pursued them? Only her friends knew she was back in Ohinyan, and those that had seen her at the camp back in the forest. There were too many faces to recall. It was more than possible a traitor could have been amongst them.
He reminded her of the mercenaries she’d fought, alongside her friends, not too long ago. As she ate, she took in her surroundings—anything to not have to think about what kind of meat she was eating or what kind of man she was sitting across from.
They were in a cave. Firelight flickered against the walls—it wasn’t a big space, but a wide opening above told her it was already dark, and the heavy smoke from the fire escaped up into the night.
Her belongings were scattered nearby—it looked as if the mercenary had had a good rummage through her bag, and her bow and arrows were strewn across the floor beside it. Her emotions turned the food over in her stomach, and she fought the urge to throw up. Arion is dead because of you.
The Eternal Dusk (Daughter of the Phoenix Book Two) Page 11
