Breath of Winter, A

by Edwards, Hailey

  Before I lost my footing, an arm linked through mine, preventing the fall.

  I blurted, “Thank you.” I glanced over to find Fynn supporting me while he watched Lailah, wearing the same dazed expression. I extracted myself from him and nudged him aside. “I don’t know if you can understand me or not, but you must stay here. Don’t follow. Don’t give her a reason to remember that you’re here, and she may not forget why she’s letting you live, at least for a while.”

  He stared blankly ahead. I patted his shoulder and stepped onto the stable floor.

  Fynn came two steps behind me.

  “Why is that still here?” Lailah called from overhead.

  “You tell me.” I waved a hand in front of his face. “You’re the one pulling his strings.”

  He didn’t even blink.

  Staring up at her, I called, “Where are Kaleb and Tau being held?”

  She loosed a shrill whistle, and the pair of them shuffled around the corner, risers clutching their arms. Their eyes were as empty as Fynn’s, and I wanted to pluck the wings from Lailah’s back for reducing my family to these mindless drones. But I wanted them to live more, so I played my part.

  “You’re still missing one,” Lailah mused. “Ah. I believe that’s him there.”

  I followed her smirk to a stall guarded by a pair of risers. Malik paced past the door, whirled and punched the wall with a snarl. Thank gods one of us was free from the Necrita’s gruesome influence.

  In a heartbeat, Ghedi’s feverish antics filled my mind. I dared not think of him. In his room, in his bed, he might stay safe.

  “Can we corral them all together?” I asked Lailah.

  “I offer you all this—” she swept out her arm, “—and all you care about are your people.”

  “You promised to keep them safe,” I reminded her.

  “I said I wouldn’t kill them.” She resumed the study of her claws. “It isn’t the same thing.”

  Panicked thoughts rolled through my mind, cluttering my brain until I was at a loss.

  Lailah clamped her hands over her ears. “Must you do that?” she screeched. “Skin them. Wear them as a belt for all I care. Just stop thinking so loudly. I can’t take all the noise. Get rid of them before I do it for you.” Thrashing her head, she staggered away, unable to fly, barely able to flitter.

  Before she changed her mind, I put my hands on my hips. “You heard her. Get in the stall.”

  As a unit, Kaleb and Tau marched to the stall. Fynn lingered near me until I gripped his arm and dragged him. He ambled unwillingly behind me, all the while his pining gaze tracked Lailah.

  Malik scanned our brothers from head to toe. His silvery gaze asked me what he could not.

  “The Necrita are attacking Erania,” I whispered. “Lailah won’t harm you, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop someone else from doing it for her.” I stiffened my spine. “Move aside,” I ordered the nearest riser. It shuffled away from the door, barely hissing at me. Proof my change was underway.

  My stomach knotted, palms going damp where they gripped Fynn. “Take care of them for me, Malik. When this is all over, return to the bastille. Henri is waiting. Tell him that I…” I regretted not having more time with him. Lips trembling while I spoke, I hurried on, “You know where to find Ghedi.” I couldn’t look at him when I touched the sigil at my throat. “Lailah owns me now. Don’t be a hero. Don’t try to save me. You can’t. Trust me. All you can do for me is survive. Do that, all right?”

  The firm set of his jaw told me he had no intentions of honoring my wishes, but I hoped if we met again, I retained enough of myself to let him go without the savage trappings of Lailah and Hishima’s twisted end. Better for this to be how we each remembered the other. While I was still myself, almost, and he was still himself, nearly, and all those we loved were still salvageable.

  Before hot tears sprang to my eyes, I spun on my heel and went in search of Lailah.

  Chittering sounds resonated through my head. I stumbled against a stall and cupped my hands to my ears, but the noise came from a place I more sensed than heard. Once the worst of the disorientation passed, I singled out a voice. No. Two voices. Wait. Were there three? More? Too many. Far too many to count. I couldn’t tell except to say they all held the same melodic notes as Lailah’s song.

  Tamping it down, I pushed from the wall. Without thought, I found my way straight to Lailah.

  It was as if the path had already been determined. I had only to walk it.

  “There you are.” She grinned. “I was calling you.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Is that what you were doing?”

  She prattled on, “Did you stable the others?”

  “I did.” I hated admitting as much to her, but her awareness was burrowed deep in my head. She knew the answer before asking. That she had bothered was some odd politeness on her part.

  Moving forward with her agenda, she didn’t seem to care. “Can you use a sword?”

  “I had basic training.” I admitted, “It’s not my best weapon. I lack the form for it.”

  “Oh.” She flicked her wrist, and a riser scuffled off, sword in hand. “What do you prefer?”

  “I’m best with a net, but a glaive will do.” Mine still leaned in the corner of my bedroom.

  “A net.” She blinked at me. “Surely you are more mercenary than that.”

  “Hishima paid me for what I could do,” I snapped, “not how I chose to do it.”

  “Temper, temper.” Lailah hummed under her voice. As my patience threatened to snap, one of the risers appeared, dragging a hefty glaive I bet Braden had used when out with the ursus. The riser, who once had been female, was now little more than sagging meat decaying over a hobbled skeleton.

  Without lifting its head, it tossed the glaive to me. The familiar weight in hand soothed me.

  “This show is one best watched from the outside,” she said. “Bring your weapon.”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I wasn’t about to wade through a sea of risers unarmed, no matter how courteous they behaved for me now that I wore Lailah’s mark and kept her company.

  “What about a coat?” I asked.

  She scowled. “Are you cold?”

  I thought about it. “No.” I hadn’t been for some time now.

  “Good. Then you’ve answered your own question.” She plucked at my gown. “This will do.”

  Even if key pain receptors had been dampened by the sigil, it wouldn’t save my toes or feet from frostbite. All it would do was to ensure I was comfortable while my extremities blackened.

  Figuring that the worst had already happened, I took Lailah on faith and hoped she was right.

  The climb up the incline to the outside was harder. My ankle worked, but…it was wrong. It didn’t hurt, didn’t bother me at all, except for the mental image I kept seeing of the bones grating against each other as I walked. Luckily for me another wave of sound crashed through my mind, leaving me breathless and disoriented, which meant I no longer cared about my ankle. Not now when my brain felt as though it had been ground to pulp and was leaking from my ear. I dry heaved, but it had been too long since I had eaten for me to do more than wish I had food in me to purge.

  Lailah wrinkled her nose. “I wonder if all spawn are so delicate.”

  “I can’t— There’s too much noise,” I groaned. “In my head.”

  “Consider yourself fortunate.” Her lips twisted. “There is a mental link between each spawn and her mother, and all her siblings. My mother is Idra, the mother of our race. Can you imagine what that must be like?” Her head tilted, listening a moment before her eyes shone with familiar madness. “No. You can’t. Be grateful that in your head there is just you and me and her when she wishes to be.”

  New respect for Lailah blossomed in me, no doubt aided by the venom her drone was pumping in me. That she retained any shred of her sanity amazed me. That she evidenced any compassion was a testament to the morals she once held and an echo of the per
son she had been before Idra.

  At the top of the ramp, we stood overlooking the summer stables. When my brothers and I had first arrived in Erania, there were no footprints, no indication we weren’t the only visitors the northlands had ever seen. During a handful of days, everything had changed. Erania was no longer pristine.

  Deep grooves carved her cheeks. Her face was bruised, her virtue stolen by risers who had burst down her doors, devouring her livestock and plundering her stores while slaughtering her people.

  The proud citadel, the frozen heart of our nation, Erania was falling.

  She just didn’t know it yet.

  “Ah. There you are.” Lailah gestured toward a line of risers marching steadily into a swirl of snow obscuring their destination from me. “Have the others arrived? Are our forces in position?”

  Wiping flakes from my eyes, I started at the sight of Asher. His black eyes were sunken, and the same vacant stare Henri wore masked Asher’s face while he nodded his assurances to Lailah.

  She dug in her tattered pocket, withdrew a key I had never seen before and tossed it to him.

  Henri’s key. It had to be. She must have lifted it off him before we locked him in the bastille.

  Asher caught the key in his fist and transferred it to his pants pocket without even a glimpse. “They came as you said they would,” he mumbled. “They are where you asked them to be.”

  Twirling in the air, Lailah kicked up flurries that pelted Asher and me. “Then let it begin.”

  Pounding his fist over his heart, Asher bowed to her, then set off in the same direction as the risers were trudging. He passed through their ranks, vanishing from sight. I took a step that way.

  “You won’t see anything from down there.” She waved me on. “This way, dear.”

  Panic seized my heart when my limbs leapt to obey her without pausing for my consent. My strings were being pulled before I fully realized how well Lailah had tied me. Grunting, I did my best to follow her up a sheer rock face that may have been part of the wall. Perhaps a new section since no guards peered over the edge to check our progress. That or the risers had handled them.

  Abandoned sounded much better to me. Too much death burdened my conscience as it was.

  When I pulled myself up over the wall to a flat section at the top, I got my first good look at the city of Erania. The sight buckled my knees. In all my travels, I had never seen a city as coldly beautiful as this one. Black stones in the wall under my feet matched the distant mountain range.

  More buildings rose from their vast and glorious city than I could invent purposes or names. Houses more palatial and grander than the quarters my clan’s paladin kept dotted the landscape. To hear clans murmur that the Araneidae had more gold than the gods was one thing. To behold the evidence of their unimaginable wealth made my head spin. No wonder the Necrita wanted Erania shoved to her knees. If the Necrita commanded the Araneidae’s veritable fortress of ice and rock, then who in the southlands stood a chance against their might? No one would endure their wrath.

  Lailah sat on the wall, swinging her legs over its edge. “Let the entertainment begin.”

  Below us, armed risers surged through the valley. “How will they breach the nest?”

  “Your friend Henri is so fond of his hatches. There are several we plan to employ, those I believe will lead us straight into the heart of the nest.” Her heels banged on the wall. “I knew your attachment to him meant I couldn’t use him in the field, but his master key will suffice.”

  Angry shouts from the risers snapped my attention to the starting point of the battle.

  Raven-haired warriors loosing war whoops and swinging their mighty swords poured from the stable’s mouth. Risers were cut down, walked across, pushed back and left oozing yellow onto the snow.

  “Why are you smiling?” Lailah asked, shoving me out of her way.

  “The battle’s started.” This time I didn’t bother hiding my grin. The Mimetidae poured from the stables, where my brothers and Henri were. If they had fought their way up the ramp and into open air, then the others were safe. It was over for me before it had begun. Safe. Thank the gods.

  “Grin all you want. It doesn’t matter.” She spat. “We’ll take them soon enough.”

  I knew I didn’t see the whole picture, but I saw enough to be wary. The risers were a vast army. Despite the skill of the Mimetidae, I doubted even they could bring down so many risers while their harbinger presided over the battle from a safe perch.

  Slowly, I turned toward Lailah. Without her direction, her corpse army would crumble and the Mimetidae guards would hold the advantage. Without Lailah, all those I loved would survive.

  Framed that way, the solution was obvious. The second my thought formed, Lailah hissed at me.

  She leapt onto the wall and shouted, “You are mine, my spawn, and you will obey me.”

  My throat burned, the sigil setting fire to my nerves while she raged at me.

  “Not yours.” My voice rasped. “Not yet.”

  I lunged. My shoulder slammed into Lailah’s gut, knocking her from the ledge. Linking my arms around her waist, I trapped her frantic wings flush against her spine. Then we were falling.

  Lailah’s shrill screams pierced my ears. Wind whistled through my hair, deafening me. I imagined someone called my name, but the top of the wall loomed too high above us now.

  The other voice—Idra—laughed. Sensing my awareness, she said, “Pity you chose this end.”

  A flash of gold blinded my mind’s eye, reminding me of Lailah’s warning of gilded wings.

  Whatever else she might have said strangled when Lailah elbowed the crown of my head. It bloody hurt, and I had no way to defend against her attack without risking my hold on her. If I let go for a second, she would spread her wings and stop her descent, leaving me to splatter alone on the icy ground rushing toward our backs. I held on tighter, digging my nails into her filmy wings.

  Membranous tissue ripped, and her wails increased until my nose bled.

  “You are not worthy,” she squealed, “to wear my mark.”

  Plunging her claws into the sides of my throat, she ripped the sigil from my flesh.

  Blood glistened on her hand. The sigil worked its pronged feet, trying to reattach to me.

  My sight doubled. For an instant, I thought I saw a second set of wings… No. It couldn’t be.

  Impossible.

  Impact jarred my bones. Lailah smacked the wall with a crunch that snapped my elbow. Small hands hooked under my arms and held me dangling in the air as Lailah crumpled.

  Forcing my head back, I stared up into the face of the most beautiful female I had ever seen.

  My lips moved soundlessly.

  “Save your strength,” she said, tugging me up her slender body, pinning me against her so that my chin rested atop her shoulder. “Henri won’t forgive me if I let you die. Hold on tight.”

  Too weak to care that her delicate wings fanned my face, I let their hum lull me to sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Zuri.” Cool fingers brushed my cheek. “Can you hear me?”

  Sound leaked from my ears. All I had heard while joined to Lailah oozed from my memory.

  “Her pulse is steady,” a feminine voice remarked. “She is alive.”

  “But will she wake?” Henri smoothed tickling hairs from my forehead.

  Another voice joined their conversation. “She hears you.” A calloused finger poked the dead center of my forehead. “Look how her brow’s wrinkling. She’ll come to in a second, I’d wager.”

  As much as I hated to prove Edan right, I forced my eyes open a crack. Henri’s worried face filled my vision. Blood smeared his cheek and yellow gunk spiked his hair in places, but there he was, eyes clear as they bored into mine. One edge of his lips twitched then lifted in a tight smile.

  Since they were all together, Edan must have gone back for Henri. Thank you for saving him.

  “You had me worried.” Henri took
my hand and kissed my knuckles, anchoring me to the moment.

  I opened my mouth, but even the flex of my throat sent shocks of pain bursting through me.

  “Don’t speak.” Henri squeezed my hand. “I have repaired the damage as best as I can until it’s safe to return to the laboratory. I could only afford to grab the basics when I escaped the bastille.”

  I made an effort to nod that may or may not have succeeded.

  “Now that she’s stabilized—” Edan looked to Henri, “—we have to move.”

  “She can’t be moved,” the female said. “Surely even you can see that.”

  His frown cut through me. “Can you carry her?”

  The female flexed a wing. “The joint is damaged. I can barely support myself.”

  Edan tapped her chin up with his finger. “All will be well. Henri will heal you.”

  She cast him a halfhearted smile and nodded. “I know.”

  Judging by the fact she wasn’t as disgusted as I would be in her place if Edan were to touch me, I guessed the beauty was his wife, Marne. Smoothing her bloodstained shirt, she noticed me staring openly at her. Her smile was gentle as she swept the long white-gold hair from her neck and exposed a knot of scar tissue as large as my fist. It disfigured the curve of her throat, but hers was a rare loveliness not even such a blemish could reduce. She eased past Henri to speak to me.

  “Hello, Zuri.” She touched my knee, which was when I realized I was lying on a slab of ice.

  I blinked at her, which she appeared to take as encouragement.

  “I am what you are,” she said with palpable relief, as if being two of a kind was comfort. “I wanted to tell you that what the harbingers say about us isn’t true. We can live without our sigils. We aren’t dependent on them. We need not fear our makers’ wrath. We can reclaim our own identities.”

  My confusion must have been obvious. Lailah had no time to tell me any such things.