“I can still hear it at night,” he said, “the thunk of the blade on the wood.” That sound, Rayne thought, was Old Sim’s own curse. “It is my greatest shame, to have done nothing. But it’s easy not to pick a side when you live in the shadows.”
Finally, one night after she had eaten the slop that Old Sim served her for supper, Rayne worked up the nerve to ask the one question that she both needed and dreaded to know the answer to. “Is Tierri dead?”
“King has his own problems.” Old Sim leaned against a wooden crate just inside the circle of torchlight beyond her door. “But no, he’s not dead, though he does not enjoy the same freedom as he did before your transgression.” Her transgression. Her fault. Her failure. The torch flame flickered unsteadily in an unseen draft.
“And Edlyn?”
“Locked up tight.” His eyes darted around her small cell. “Not quite so tight as you, though I doubt she'll be allowed to attend the gathering tonight. Not before her coronation.”
That was tonight? Tonight, the families of Hail would gather and her sister would ascend to the throne, and the country would continue on the same disastrous path it had started down after the Malstrom Massacre.
“At least, not if they're wise,” Old Sim finished.
“What?” Rayne asked, swimming back to the surface, trying not to fall back into the pit of despair from which she had just emerged.
“With the way they taunted the Knight King, the safest place for both of you is right here, behind lock and key. Or magical doors.”
“How did they taunt Wido?” she asked.
“They sent him the head of his daughter.” Old Sim pulled a dirty rag from somewhere in his pants and wiped his shining forehead. “Prince Danyll's messenger never came back from Torlan, so we can assume he got the message.”
“No,” Rayne said. “That's not true. That can't be true. My father wouldn’t have allowed it.” The block of ice inside her chest cracked, and the shadows threatened to pull her back under, whispering names in her ear. Madlin, Merek, Tamsin, Imeyna. Imeyna. Imeyna.
“Your father hasn’t been in Orabel for some time, so I couldn’t say what he would have done, though he’s expected back for tonight’s festivities. But it’s true. I buried the body myself,” he said. “A gruesome sight.”
She opened her mouth to object again but instead gagged on the rising bile. She lunged for the corner of her cell just in time. Her empty stomach ejected yellow bile onto the stones, heaving until nothing else came up. She imagined Wido receiving the package, opening it and looking into the dead eyes of his last daughter, of the one he let go off to her own death. She imagined the guilt, the anger, the decision he would make. Sending her head to him was an act of war, a challenge, and Wido would rise to the occasion. Danyll wanted to posture, to show strength, without thinking about what they would be met with. Innis had been trying to avoid an outright war with the Knights for twenty years. He may have had the advantage in numbers and size, but he didn't have the loyalty that Shade had. When Shade came, how quick before Hail turned on its conqueror? How long before the slaves picked up weapons and turned on the Crowhearts? Before the Sons of Enos rebelled against their captors?
Old Sim left, the receding torchlight plunging her back into darkness. Rayne hugged her knees to her chest, feeling small beneath the weight of everything that was about to happen and not knowing if she would be alive when it did.
✽ ✽ ✽
Rayne must have fallen asleep after Old Sim had left her to her own thoughts, because she woke with a start at the sound of metal on metal, followed by a thick, heavy silence. The silence of anticipation, of a held breath, of an empty hallway. She pushed herself to her knees and listened. Without Sim's torch, the dungeon was dark. Her eyes strained against it but couldn't pick up anything.
Then there was a distant shout. Not from the dungeon, but from the world above. Rayne stood and moved forward to where she thought the door was, but two steps in and she hadn't hit the iron bars yet. Her hands groped blindly through the open space and finally found the door pushed open, folded back on itself against the stone wall.
Was this a trick? She took a hesitant step outside of her cell, and then another, shuffling slowly with her hands held out in front of her. A voice, a flicker of firelight, and she pressed herself to the wall. As the light grew closer, her surroundings came into focus. It was as she had suspected. She was in the hall beyond her cell and her door was thrown open. A few yards away, the prisoner that Old Sim had beaten was gripping the bars of his cell, his wide, white eyes trained on her.
“—just to see,” an unfamiliar voice said. “The prince wants to be certain that the princess is safe.”
“Of course, she’s this way,” she heard Old Sim's gravelly voice say. Rayne looked at the prisoner across from her, waiting for him to shout, to draw attention to them. But he held a bony finger to his own lips in the universal sign for silence and Rayne exhaled. Old Sim appeared at the end of the hall with a guard in golden Ashsky armor. He glanced at her and then away as if he hadn't seen her at all, then pulled the guard in the other direction, deeper into the maze of the dungeon. “After all these years, and it still feels like a maze down here…” His voice faded away until it was nothing but an indistinct whisper.
“Go,” whispered the other prisoner.
Rayne nodded. When she was sure they weren't coming back this way, she slipped around the corner and found the main gate cracked open. It must have been him. Old Sim must have opened her door and given her this chance, but why? Then she remembered his words to her, just before giving her the grim news of Danyll’s challenge to the Knights: It is my greatest shame, to have done nothing.
A door had been left open for her, and she would walk through it. She would not feel the regret of doing nothing again. She squeezed through the cracked door and took the winding staircase two steps at a time before finally emerging into the abandoned corridor above. She paused, listening. A pair of guards in iron armor marched past her so quickly that they didn't see her where she blended into the shadows of the door frame, and then servants carrying trays bustled in the opposite direction.
“Damn the poisoner,” one of the women was saying in hushed, urgent tones. “Having to take each course to the taster.”
The other woman nodded in agreement. “Cook will have our heads for serving cold dishes.”
The women prattled on as they scurried down the hall and out of sight. Rayne fell in behind them. As they moved through the palace, a sound like the roar of the ocean grew louder until she realized it was the gathering—laughter and conversation, music and dancing feet, all mingling together to create a noise that took her back to her childhood. To dark Duskan parties where nobles in fine, black dresses danced in the firelight, and Rayne and her siblings caused endless mischief even though they were to be in the nursery.
“Oh, you mustn't,” Madlin would beseech them as they stole ladies’ hats and stuffed pilfered pastries in their pockets.
Rayne followed them through a servant's entrance, stepping out of the way of a woman who pushed past her with a pitcher of mead. The woman raised her brows at Rayne but said nothing, and Rayne looked down at herself for the first time. The dress had been black once but was now brown with dust and mud, and the torn sleeve exposed her burned arm. Even the servant woman was better dressed in her simple gray smock.
Before the door could close, Rayne slipped in and kept close to the stone wall behind the columns that encircled the ballroom. There were some other wallflowers nearby, but they were so absorbed in the dancing that none of them turned her way. At first, she didn't see anyone she knew in the swirl of gaudy Hail colors, but then she spotted a dark, still figure in their midst, a crown on his head. Her father watched the dancers, and beside him, a head shorter than the king, was Danyll, wearing a tunic with the Ashsky sigil—a snake ready to strike—on its front, his golden wielder’s mask pushed up on his head. But her eyes skated past both of them, drawn to the figure
behind them.
It was Tierri, but somehow also not him. Gone were the armor and the weapons and the straight-backed posture. His shoulders were slumped and his hair fell around his down-turned face. He wore a dirty tunic with a sleeve cut to show the golden slaver's band, a tradition to which he had never been required to adhere before. His wrists were bound in front of him by a rope that, to Rayne's horror, led to Danyll's hand. When Old Sim had said he was on a short leash, it hadn't been a figure of speech. Danyll had no more regard for Tierri than he would a dog, and her father allowed it. In fact, neither of them even acknowledged the man who had once held an esteemed position in their ranks. It was as if they had erased him from their minds completely.
Couples twirled between them, her father and his entourage disappearing from view. Rayne slumped back against the wall. What was she supposed to do? Wido was coming, Danyll wanted her dead, and her only allies were an old jailer, a prisoner, and a down-trodden wielder.
She didn't get a chance to formulate a plan, though, because in the next moment, there was the sound of crashing glass and a whoosh as the drapes of one of the giant picture windows overlooking the courtyard caught fire. The music screeched to a halt as the musicians scrambled away, and the dancers gasped and shrieked in retreat. For a few terrible breaths, there was stillness, and then men began to climb through the broken window, and still others poured through the main doors.
Not men, Rayne realized, watching the way the invaders moved, swift and dark, cutting through the revelers without mercy or regret. Not men, but Knights.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Rayne
Madness erupted in the ballroom. The servant’s door behind her swung open and she saw one of her father's guards lying in a pool of blood. In front of her, a Knight grabbed a noblewoman by the hair and threw her to the ground. The woman shrieked until the man silenced her with a slice across the throat. It spurred Rayne into action and she moved into the room, hiding behind columns and men with swords, doing her best to remain unnoticed.
In the middle of the room, Danyll was calling the fire from the drapes to him in a great, burning whirlwind. He had dropped Tierri's rope, but the wielder was on his knees, grimacing as Danyll drained his energy. Behind him, a guard was ushering her father out a side door, shoving panicked nobles out of his way. The king made no protest, no move to stay and help. Rayne was a few feet from Tierri when she saw the black and blue splotches coloring his face and the way he held his arms close to his ribs. He had been beaten, but Danyll still called on his power. Maybe it was part of his strategy, to keep him drained and weak so he couldn't fight back. Too valuable to kill but too powerful to possess.
Rayne dropped to her knees beside him as Danyll moved away, backing two of the Knight invaders into a corner behind the flaming cyclone, shouting for guards and not paying a bit of attention to the wielder.
“Tierri,” she said, her hands on his face.
He looked up, his eyes dull until they seemed to register what they were seeing. “Is it really you?” Together they stood, his eyes not leaving hers. They were wide and earnest behind the bruises, vulnerable in a way she had not seen before. She knew she was seeing the real Tierri. Not the general or the slave or the Malstrom, but the man. “I’m so sorry,” he started to say, and the words brought back the memory of his hand around her throat.
To keep herself from lingering in that moment, she dropped her hands to his wrists and began to pick at the rope there, working the knot with her nails. There was a twisting in her gut that she had learned to hate, and when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw only Danyll's dark gaze zeroed in on her. Behind him were the charred bodies of the Knights he had been battling. The fire had burned out, the ballroom lit only by moonlight streaming in through the broken window. But he didn't need fire. She already knew he could manipulate all the elements, and with Tierri's energy feeding him, there was no telling what he could come up with.
“Quick,” Tierri said. “Quick.”
“I can't,” Rayne said, her hands fumbling uselessly at the rope, panic rising in her throat. Her stomach was twisted in knots and suddenly she was looking at Imeyna through her prison bars. I can't, she had told her, begging her for an excuse, permission to give up. And Imeyna hadn't given it. It cannot be all for nothing.
The rope loosened finally just as her panic reached its peak, her hands shaking violently as the marble floor quaked at her feet. Danyll was going to bring the palace down on top of her if it meant stopping her. He wanted the kingdom, even if it was in ruins. But so did she.
Terri threw them sideways as the floor split open, his arms, now free, going around her and holding her close as they fell. People still in the ballroom screamed, and over Tierri's shoulder, Rayne saw a Knight in his black leather stumble and fall into the opening rift, his head cracking on the marble floor before disappearing. As the ground shook, Tierri wrapped himself around her and she held on tight, but there was no time to relish the feeling. As soon as the ground stabilized, he rolled her off of him and stood in one fluid movement, putting himself between Rayne and Danyll.
Danyll stopped, looked at the two of them, and smirked, his lips twisting into a mockery of a smile. “What do you think he can do?” Danyll asked, his eyes on her instead of on Tierri. “He is mine. His magic is mine, his life is mine.” Danyll lifted a hand and squeezed it into a fist. Tierri went back to his knees, clutching his chest, his teeth bared. Rayne scrambled up behind him and braced herself against his back.
She was weak from her imprisonment and unarmed. Without him, she was no match for the prince. “Tierri,” she said. “What do I do?” Wind whipped around her, tossing her hair and her dress, but she grasped Tierri's shoulders.
“I can't,” he whispered. “I'm sorry. I can't.” And then she was lifted off the ground, and the air was sucked out of her lungs. Her vision swam and she clawed at her throat, her nails scratching burning lines down to her chest.
Below her, Tierri roared his frustration, veins bulging in his neck as he struggled to regain control, to fight against Danyll. Tierri tried to stand, but every step Danyll took drove him back down again. The prince was playing with them. While the palace was flooded by rebels, while her own sister was likely in grave danger, he was here, fighting a fight he knew he would win.
Rayne was so tired, then. Tired of fighting and losing. She was a princess. An assassin. Maybe she couldn't control fire, but she didn't have to sit by and watch this tyrant prince take what was rightfully hers and destroy it. He had no right to any of this. Not the kingdom, not her sister, not her father, and especially not her. She was a Crowheart, after all.
But what did she have to use against him? Nothing, not a single weapon, not a lungful of air. All she had was a roiling knot of magic in her stomach that she could never reach. Tierri hit the floor again, his already bruised face slamming hard against the marble, and that was enough. If all she had was this gut feeling, then she would use it. She turned herself inward, tried to open herself up to it. The tightening had always been a feeling she dreaded but what would happen if she welcomed it, let it in? There were no women wielders, but she didn't want to control the elements. She wanted to control Danyll. She wanted to control herself.
He lifted her higher and higher, his mirthless laugh the loudest thing in her head until it was drowned out by the sound of air rushing by her ears. Air and water and fire and earth. Chills raced down her arms as she imagined herself gathering the ball of glowing heat inside of her. Madlin and Merek and Tamsin and Imeyna. She sucked in a thin bit of air and it made a horrible wheezing noise as it fought her, and then she exploded.
Or that was what it felt like. Everything rushed out of her at once, like she had become a bottle of firewater and someone had dashed her against the wall. Rayne crashed to the ground, landing painfully on her arm, her head smacking against the stone just short of the chasm that Danyll had opened in his tantrum. It took her a second to get her bearings, and when she did, she saw Danyll
sprawled on the floor, Tierri not a foot from him. Both men were wild-eyed, looking at their hands and then at the disaster around them. Weapons that had been glowing with spellwork had been extinguished and Rayne's breathing came with no trouble.
Something had happened to the magic. It was gone.
Danyll and Tierri seemed to both realize it at the same time. Tierri lunged for Danyll as the man—smaller now without the power of his slaves beneath his belt—scrambled backward. But he wasn't fast enough. Rayne couldn't look away. Her head rang as she pushed herself to her feet. She blinked and shook her head to try to clear it. The world had narrowed to just the three of them, everyone else fading away.
Both men were on the floor, a tangle of limbs. Tierri snatched the knife—her knife, she realized—from Danyll's belt, his fingers certain around the hilt. Rayne saw the moment Danyll knew it was over. He balled his fists, begging Enos to give him back his power. But Enos did not oblige, and Tierri sliced the knife across the prince's throat.
Danyll gagged and spewed blood, opening his mouth to talk, only to find that his vocal chords had been severed. Rayne watched his eyes and for the briefest of moments felt sorry for him. He was the hero of the story he told himself, wasn't he? And he had just lost. He fell forward in a pool of his own blood. Tierri knelt over him, panting, and as Danyll took his last breath, the golden armband, the one that had bound Tierri's magic for years, kept him captive and made him a mere shadow of what he could be, cracked.
It split jaggedly down the center as if it were nothing more than a piece of stone, and fell away to the floor with a clatter. Tierri watched it fall and then raised his hand in front of him, looking at it as if it belonged to a stranger. Then he snapped his fingers and fire flared to life around his hand, licking his fingers and trailing up his arm. He made a fist, and the fire died.
The world came back in a rush. Tierri's eyes darted around the chaotic ballroom. The Knights were working their way through the resisting guards. Bodies littered the floor, noblemen and rebels, guards and servants. No one had been spared.
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