by Gwynn White
Lynx knew from Axel that, while a covert supporter of the alliance, Malika had tried many times to forge a reconciliation between him and his parents.
Axel licked his lips, a tell Lynx knew well.
They seemed to be at an impasse.
She longed to be away from Felix, safe in Axel’s airship, making plans to rescue Talon, but she would not try to influence Axel in this. His hurt at his father’s many betrayals ran too deep, cut too painfully for that.
But she also understood how conflicted he must be. He wanted her as much as she wanted him, but he also cherished his relationship with Malika, Stefan, and their children, his only remaining family.
Felix shouted, “Do we have a deal? Can we sit and talk in the hours before Morass returns?”
Axel hesitated and then replied, “You have not fully explained your terms.”
“Simple. I will give you Lynx. And I will ensure you safe passage out of Chenaya. Just come down here and speak with me.”
“Not a chance—given how untrustworthy you are,” Axel shouted, but his voice was muffled under a loud crack.
The dust kicked up at her and Felix’s feet. Lynx had no idea what had happened.
Axel’s father jumped back, loosening his hold on her. Lynx took the gap and kicked Felix in his groin. He buckled, and she raced away from him through her chickpea crop to reach Axel’s ladder.
Another two cracks sounded behind her, and she looked back to see Felix clutching a bleeding hand. His gun, nothing more than a twisted chunk of metal, smoldered on the ground at his feet. The keening coming from his mouth was blood chilling.
Lynx almost tripped over her feet at the accuracy of Axel’s marksman. And if that was the range and accuracy of these weapons, she wasn’t sorry that she had erred on the side of caution—no matter how much it had irked her to do so.
“Get over here now!” Axel shouted at her. “I don’t want Clay pumping any more lead into my father. Malika will never forgive me, no matter how much he deserves it.”
She started at the name of her brother but forced herself to keep moving. Her manacled hands made negotiating the tangled lines of crops difficult.
Behind her, Felix gasped, “You forget the ice crystal in her neck, Axel. She cannot leave here with my help.”
Lynx froze.
But almost a lifetime of doubts came rushing back to her. Felix—and Lukan—had gone to such great lengths to guard her, but why had they, when there was supposedly an ice crystal in her neck? Too many instances flooded her mind, more than she could ignore. She turned slowly to Felix.
“Years ago, after Tao and I escaped from that dungeon you and Lukan locked us in, Morass guarded me with a crossbow. And today, you have used a gun to contain me. Why?” She took a step closer to him. “Is it because my ice crystal never worked? Am I one of the people who have proved immune?”
“You will never know, will you?” Felix snarled, clutching his blood-slick hand. “You will leave here with Axel, not knowing if my son has condemned you to death.”
Lynx glanced up at Axel. His face was as placid as a moonlit sky.
“You know something, don’t you?” she asked.
“The first thing I did after Nicholas was born was to search the grid for your and Tao’s ice crystals. As hard as I looked I could only ever detect one. Tao’s.”
Lynx’s jaw dropped, but she snapped it closed. “You mean I could have left here at any time?”
“Without Tao?” Even shouting down from the airship, Axel’s voice was gentle. “As hard as it was to leave you, my Lynxie, I knew you would never abandon Tao. Not even for me.” He shot her a derisive smile. “Honor, or some such thing.”
Of course Axel would think that. For the sake of honor, she had married Lukan instead of him. Also, he was right; she would never have abandoned Tao.
But that didn’t change the fact that he had known the truth and hadn’t told her. Didn’t he understand that she had spent her life fighting against Lukan for robbing her of the right to choose her own destiny? How could she now trust Axel not to withhold vital information from her again?
But this was not the moment to tackle him on that.
Axel had already started down the ladder. He intercepted her before she had crossed the vegetable garden. His lips crushed down on hers.
Despite her frustration with him, she opened her mouth to taste his tongue for the first time in sixteen years.
It was sweet and loving. Axel was as hungry for her as she was for him.
But all too quickly, Axel pulled away from her. He scooped her up in his arms and raced her through her garden to the ladder.
“Wait! Axel, please,” Felix wailed. “Lukan plans to kill us all. A second Burning. We have to talk so that we can stop it.”
Axel faltered. Over his shoulder, he said to his father, “Give me Nicholas, and I will talk with you about the crazy emperor you chose over your son.”
Felix dropped to his knees. “You ask too much. Lukan has him. If I let you have the Light-Bearer, then before this day is out, Lukan will kill your mother, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.”
Axel snorted a laugh. “I thought you said he wanted to kill us all? Now it’s just my mother? Sorry, Felix, but you are not to be believed.”
Magridal cast down a rope. Axel quickly wound it around Lynx’s waist. “I will support you from behind.” He held her close to his chest. “You just set your feet to climbing.”
Useless hand clasped to her chest, Lynx let Axel guide her up while Magridal kept a gentle pressure on the rope attached to her waist. She had almost reached the hatch when she looked up into the eyes of another familiar person she had not seen since before Talon’s birth—Clay, her favorite brother.
A man now, Clay still hopped from foot to foot in his excitement at seeing her.
Lynx smiled at him.
His imp-like face, scarred from his first ostrich egg raid, beamed right back at her. Blond braids and feathers completed the perfect picture.
Lynx looked over her shoulder at Axel. Had he handpicked this crew just for her? Little had any of them known it would be her and not Talon who flew away with them.
Axel hugged her and leaned in to kiss her cheek, but she pulled away.
“Thank you. Despite failing to tell me about my ice crystal, you have made the unendurable bearable.”
Axel snorted. “My Lynxie, I did what I thought best for you, Nicholas, and Tao. And don’t thank me too soon for rescuing you. We still have to escape the Heartland.”
Chapter 11
Lukan unlocked the steel door to Nicholas’s cell and flicked on his flashlight.
It was the only light source in this room apart from an air vent, no bigger than Lukan’s fist, which stretched up through the wall until finally opening to the sky. It cast a grayish light across a tiny corner of the room.
A scrubber in the vent would cleanse the air until Axel was confirmed dead. Then a canister in the vent would be triggered, spewing Dragon’s Fire in this dank, dark space.
Nicholas would be dead in minutes, and Lukan would finally be free from the Dmitri Curse.
Or that was the plan.
Nowhere in Lukan’s scheming had he factored in Nicholas arriving here unconscious.
The bastard had yet to stir.
Lukan stepped aside to allow Morass to carry his son’s limp body into the forbidding space.
Morass placed him carefully on the filthy stone floor. No one had bothered with cleaning for a boy no one cared about, a boy wanted dead by everyone who mattered.
The building had stood derelict for almost sixteen years—the last time this icy chamber had been used was for storing meat for the Cian food market. On Lukan’s instructions, Morass had cleared out both the owners and the residents of this village outside Cian in preparation for this day. In all that time, Felix’s holograms of the Dreaded and an electrical current had protected the building from intruders. He doubted anyone even remembered the village existed or
what the building was once used for.
Once, water from the Thurban River had been diverted between the double stone walls to chill the room. It still dripped, the sound deafening in the silence. To ensure that no air leaked through the porous stone walls to thwart his Burning, a layer of concrete encased them.
The water and the darkness had been part of the plan. Until Lukan received confirmation of Axel’s death, Nicholas’s extraordinary ears would amplify that sound until it drove him crazy. Fitting that the bastard should suffer the way he had made Lukan suffer for almost two decades.
Would Nicholas wake in time to hear it? Or to see the darkness blacken the grayscale of his vision?
He grimaced. Lynx had never told him about Nicholas’s two sensory deformities. It had been left to his cameras to reveal these critical details about their son.
“He’s still breathing, sire,” Morass mumbled, as if that made everything better.
“I know that, you idiot.”
Lukan had spent the return trip from the cottage flipping between the screens showing Nicholas’s slow pulse and the news feed on the sky battle with Axel as he headed for the cottage.
The traitorous Axel had not only proved evasive, he had managed to shoot half a dozen of Lukan’s airships out of the sky. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was yet to receive confirmation of a sure kill from the captains of the remaining craft.
All that made Nicholas’s dangerous inertia even more terrifying.
Morass wrung his hands and then bowed low. “Sire, I have seen this type of coma many times before when I have interrogated people for you. Most survive.”
Most? That was supposed to give him comfort?
“Until I hear about Axel, you are responsible for the boy. Make sure he survives. Nothing more, nothing less.” Lukan tossed Morass the key to the cell door.
As much as Lukan would have loved to punish Morass, the man was his fallback plan in the event of a malfunction in Nicholas’s Dragon’s Fire. Morass would wait here to ensure nothing went wrong with Nicholas’s execution. Then he would be gassed, too.
“Lock up. I need you to take me back to the palace, and then you must fetch my wife. She and Felix need to be in the bunker by lunchtime.”
Lukan left the cell and strode along the dusty corridors, through the slaughter room with its rusty saws, axes, and grappling hooks, and out into the bright morning sunshine.
He took a deep breath, eager to flush from his nose the terrible stench of death, decay, and fear that lingered in the awful place.
As soon as he reached the palace, he would bathe. He fingered his black silk shirt. The collar was stiff with blood from the bite mark Nicholas inflicted on his neck.
The vermin will pay for that a hundred times over.
His mind wandered back to the night of the birthday dinner. It would take a lifetime to forget Nicholas’s frigid eyes drilling into him as he’d played that fiddle. Never before had Lukan seen anyone watch him with such analytical detachment. A detachment that came only to those who could pour their physical selves into one complex set of actions while their minds computed another, equally complex, series of commands as effortlessly as breathing. Lukan had never been more confident that he had made the right decision about Nicholas.
He was about to climb into the steam carriage when his informa beeped. Heart pounding, he pulled it from his pocket and thumbed it to life.
Felix’s face appeared in the air.
The man looked terrible, even paler and gaunter that usual.
Fear gripped Lukan. He couldn’t stop his voice quavering. “Lynx? Is she safe? You destroyed the farm as I commanded? Burned my brother?”
Only the Norin burned their dead. In the rest of the empire, including the Heartland, people buried their departed. Lukan had wanted a Norin cremation for Tao, even if his brother couldn’t have a eulogy. Maybe then he would feel that Tao had forgiven him for everything he had ever done to his brother.
Felix held up a bloody hand. “Help me, sire. Send Morass to rescue me.”
Lukan shook his head, unsure he had heard correctly.
“Sire,” Felix said, through gritted teeth, “I need help. Axel shot me! My own son! Look at my hand! And now Lynx is gone.”
“Gone?” Lukan’s stomach dipped, leaving him physically ill.
“Axel took her.” Felix’s voice raged through the informa. “Didn’t even offer me a bandage! Took her and vanished. Unless we shoot him down—”
But Lukan had stopped listening.
With Lynx floating free above the Heartland, how could he release the Dragon’s Fire?
But if he didn’t, Axel and that confounded airship would escape. To Treven. To the mines.
With Lynx.
While she breathed that air, there could be no Burning.
No way of killing Nicholas.
Fear, visceral and debilitating, made him stagger against the steam carriage. Back pressed against the metal side, he slid down until he hunched in the dust. He buried his head in his hands, kneading his eye sockets.
Why does everything to do with Nicholas always have to be so hard? And why do I still love her when she has never loved me?
As always, when he asked these questions, there was no answer.
“. . . took all my strength just to contact you.”
Lukan vaguely heard Felix yelling at him, but his uncle’s voice sounded distant, meaningless.
“I am not a young man anymore, Lukan. I don’t have the physical strength for these adventures of yours.”
Lukan flicked his thumb across the informa, cutting Felix off.
After a long moment of staring into space, he fired up the device again to track Axel’s progress.
The squadron leader reported to the high command controlling the mission, “Sir, the Light-Bearer has outrun us. It’s heading south away from Cian. Permission to launch a squadron of airships from—”
Lukan’s voice cut in. “Stop all fire.”
How could he let them fire on an airship carrying Lynx?
His head thumped onto his knees. He threw the informa against the slaughterhouse wall. It shattered into a dozen pieces. Feeling decades older than his forty years, he stumbled to his feet and made his way back to Morass.
Whatever happened, Nicholas had to survive.
Chapter 12
A gentle wind stirred the dust and ashes in which the hand axe lay. The one that had robbed Tao of his life. Tao watched the gray eddy, unsure of where the physical dust ended and he began.
It was disconcerting.
Disconcertion . . . that was not an emotion he had ever thought he would feel after death. In truth, if someone had asked him what he would feel after death, he would have said that once the Winds claimed him, he would feel nothing at all.
That turned out not to be the case.
He felt many things—surprise, curiosity, relief, and sorrow. But mostly sorrow.
“But no physical pain,” a familiar voice said from behind him. “That is one blessing that comes with a noble death.”
Tao tried to turn to his visitor, but he didn’t know how to maneuver his fragile—
What was he? A ghost? A thought? He didn’t know.
How odd.
A voice that sounded like his spoke to the visitor. “Dmitri?”
“Aye.” The seer moved around Tao, his steps light in the smoky remains of the cottage. “Welcome, my friend, to the fourth dimension.” He stirred the dusty axe with his boot. “You’ll be wanting your body.”
As he spoke, the powdery ash caught Tao.
He sneezed.
Or rather, that’s what he thought happened.
His eyes widened. Then his jaw hung in surprise. How was he even conscious of his eyes moving? They had burned in the fire along with the rest of his body.
“Look at yourself,” Dmitri suggested.
And so he did.
First at his hands. The many nicks and scars he had accumulated over the years had vanished. His si
lky-smooth skin glowed.
He looked down his front all the way to his feet. They were clad in familiar leather moccasins, just like the rest of his body wore the comfortable leather trousers and a tunic he remembered dressing in for Talon’s farewell dinner. He scrutinized his chest where the axe had fallen.
It looked whole and complete.
Marveling, he brushed his dreadlocks and feathers from his face. Even they seemed to have returned to him.
“How—” he started to ask.
“It’s the why, not the how, that is important, Tao. I have a task that only a resurrected being can perform.” He waved a hand at Tao. “In fact, not just any resurrected being—you, in particular.”
Tao wasn’t sure what to make of his new status. Or the proposed task, whatever it was that required a dead man to perform it.
Dmitri smiled, as if humoring him. “And you will be pleased to know your ice crystal has been incinerated. You are finally free to leave this forest.” Dmitri took his arm and led him away from the ruined cottage. “Your diamond, too. You won’t be needing that where you are going.”
Tao wondered if he should ask where that was, but a movement caught his eye. He blinked. It was like he was looking at the world through the faded silk curtains that had once hung in his home. He looked again, finally making out a man.
It was Felix.
A very mortal, very angry Felix.
He stood in the middle of Tao’s vegetable garden. Strangely, his hand appeared to be bleeding. He shouted at someone through his informa.
Tao found that mildly interesting, but not enough to stop and listen. Something else captured his attention. The mews where he had kept Bird had collapsed, leaving nothing but blackened rafters.
Another new emotion swamped him: anguish.
He stopped, tugging Dmitri to halt. “Bird—”
“Lynx and Felix freed her.” Dmitri eyed him speculatively. “Reach out into the mortal plane, and you should feel Bird. Lynx, too.” He gestured to Felix. “And you do not need to see him through a haze.”
Tao wasn’t sure what that meant. Did Dmitri know he’d seen Felix through a haze? Could Dmitri read his thoughts?
