by Elise Kova
With the speed of a creeping mouse, she began to stroll the floor, bending her knees and releasing, looking for give. Still, there was nothing.
Raylynn leaned against the wall in thought. The lead could take her to a dead end, she was forced to admit. Her eyes scanned the room. Something still reassured her that she wasn’t wrong—she couldn’t be. She’d learned about this inn from a Knight of Jadar in the moment before she killed him. And men were never more honest than in the moments right before their death.
As the noise in her mind grew, she relaxed her focus on the world around her. By the time she heard the crash, it was too late.
Raylynn turned in the direction of the shattering glass. Yes, it had been still. Yes, it had been quiet. Too still, she realized now, and too quiet.
She cursed aloud, realizing the Knights had bested her.
Instead of heading toward the sounds of a fight breaking out, she sprinted for the bar. Gripping bottles in her fists, she smashed them against the wall and the floors, coating the wood in alcohol. It’ll be a long time before I come back to Yon, she thought as she tipped the candle over.
Fire flared and bellowed up the walls in a wave of heat. Raylynn guarded her face against it instinctively, already headed for the hall. The sounds of grunting, cursing, and clunking coming from Baldair’s room reassured her. Dead men couldn’t make so much noise.
“What in the Mother is going on?” Baldair exclaimed when she kicked in the door. Two attackers advancing on him from the shattered window. One of them was badly wounded, cut up on both sides and near death.
“Where is it?” she demanded of the two.
“We’ve heard about you, Southern halfling.” The man who spoke bore a symbol stitched upon his arm in thread as dark as blood—the blazing Phoenix of the West with a sword clutched in its talons.
The symbol of the Knights of Jadar.
“You have acted against us for the last time.”
“Give me my mother’s sword, and it will be!” She drew her own blade, casting a quick look to see if Baldair had their things gathered. Lucky for both of them, he did.
“Mother’s sword?”
“The sword you stole before you killed her!” The words practically foamed with anger and hurt. “The sword bestowed upon her. The sword that is rightfully mine!”
It clicked for the man. Comprehension dawned on his world-worn face. “You—you’re the daughter of Zira Westwind.”
Raylynn adjusted the grip on her weapon as if to guard against the man’s realization as much as his sword.
“And here we thought you were just a no-one Imperialist causing problems.”
Shouts rose in the street as smoke billowed into the room.
“Do you hear that?” Raylynn sneered. “Your precious outpost for your underhanded deeds is going up in smoke. Everyone in this town is coming.” She would not only burn their safe house to the ground, but would ensure the Knights couldn’t escape without their secret existence being exposed.
“So you will have an audience for your death.” The man sheathed his weapon, but Raylynn kept her stance.
Baldair’s eyes looked between them, but he rightfully kept himself out of the conversation entirely.
The Knight of Jadar turned and started for the open window. “If they want to burn, let them burn,” he spoke to his unarmed companion.
It all happened so quickly that Raylynn barely had time to realize her error.
The other Knight waved a hand through the air as he retreated behind his master. Fire shot from his fingertips, catching the bedding and trimmings of the room in flame. The Firebearer jumped from the window, screaming behind the man, “Fire, fire! Two people are still in there! Someone call for a Firebearer!”
“What is going on?” Baldair roared.
“We have to get out of here.” She frantically started back at the way she’d come, only to be met with a fire of her own creation. It had grown so fast, she had no doubt magic was being applied to it.
They called for Firebearers, certainly. But the men had called for Firebearers loyal to the Knights—Firebearers to keep the flames burning. It would take an impossibly strong sorcerer to break through their command. She wheeled on the prince in frustration, at a complete loss. “Why didn’t you kill them?”
“Is now the time?” he shouted back. “We have to get out of here.”
Panic and sweat beaded on his forehead. The royal idiot, how had she not seen it sooner? It wasn’t that he didn’t want to kill them… it was that he couldn’t bring himself to land a killing blow. The man was as green as they came.
“We have to make a run for it.” Before the flames got any bigger, they’d have to try to jump through the window.
“Through there?” He followed her determined stare. “We’ll be burnt alive.”
“We’ll be burnt, but we may live.” And then they’d likely have to fight off the valid accusations of starting the fire. The Knights were determined to see her dead now, and Raylynn had never expected the measures they would go for it.
“A Firebearer is coming!” the prince said hopefully.
“No one is coming!” She wanted to throttle the man. He wasn’t thinking clearly, was letting panic get the better of him, and it was pushing her toward the same spiral.
But before she could explain why—or just jump through the wall of flames for the shattered window without him—footsteps skidded to a halt at the door to their room.
The flames arced around a woman, pushed away from her person by an unseen force. They crowned her head as though the Goddess herself descended. Her black eyes picked up the glow of the fire—no, they were alight with their own force, a shining red that betrayed the turn of fate she represented.
It was all breathtakingly impressive. But none of it was responsible for stilling the chaos around her. Who the woman was took credit for that.
Raylynn had only met Princess Fiera a handful of times. But the princess had served one of the most important roles in any Western child’s life. She had been the one to tell Raylynn of her fate—a fate that was no longer something she could deny as the woman returned from the lands beyond to see it through.
“Baldair, Raylynn, come with me,” she spoke.
“Who—”
Raylynn grabbed the prince’s hand, tugging him behind the princess, who was already on the move. She wanted to ask why the royal had faked her death, why she let the world think she had vanished. But the words stuck in her throat, and Raylynn could only focus on keeping a close step behind her.
She led them down the hall to a far wall. Magic sparked around her outstretched hand and up her wrist in a ribbon of fire. It burned white hot and carved a hole in the wood at the end of the inn for them to escape through.
They spilled out into a side alley, the heat of the flames still coating their skin and clinging like their sweat-soaked clothes. The princess, however, was as composed as she had ever been, utterly unaffected by the heat with the protections her magic granted her. Raylynn tried to croak a word into existence.
“Take the horse.” The princess pointed to a beast that stood saddled at the ready. “Take it and go. Do not seek out what has been lost.” Her voice faded as she looked toward the tall fence that concealed them in the alley from the commotion growing in the street. “Protect, instead, the weapon that has yet to be found. Do not seek the tomb. Do not let anyone seek the tomb.”
“Do I know you?” Baldair advanced toward the princess. “Wait, aren’t you... Nox?”
“This isn’t the time,” the woman scolded them both. “My control will waver soon. Go, go now!”
Baldair cursed and quickly mounted the horse. Raylynn continued to study the woman before her. She had a youthful glow, as if truly reborn from the Mother’s flames. Far younger than a princess who, by all counts, should be in her forties.
“Princess Fiera—”
“Go,” the woman commanded again.
“Damn it, Raylynn, we have an opportunity and need to take it. Let’s get out of here!” Baldair held out his hand for her.
Her pulse roared in her ears, drowning out all other sounds. It suffocated and isolated her. She could no longer hear the crackle of fire or cries of town-folk, all preferable to the huffing of the beast the prince sat upon.
“Raylynn.”
She met the prince’s eyes and allowed herself to see him, truly—the man fate had guided her toward with a literal helping hand. She gulped away her irrational fears. She was better than that which scared her. She was stronger. And, at the very least, she was out of options.
Raylynn took his hands and allowed his strong grip to half-pull her into the saddle. She clutched his middle tightly, appreciating how sturdy the man felt in contrast to the unpredictable steps of the beast. Baldair looked back, and his hands stopped the snap of the reigns mid-motion.
“She’s gone,” he observed.
Raylynn followed Baldair’s attention to where the princess had just been. As mysteriously as she had appeared, she vanished. The tall fence that had obscured them from the townsfolk had likewise dissolved into thin air.
“Look, look there!” A man pointed at them.
Baldair snapped the reigns, and the beast lunged to life in the opposite direction of the still-raging flames.
Raylynn’s throat closed, and she gave a soft croak as the giant horse began to pound over the sand. She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the prince’s back. She didn’t want to trust him blindly, but she had no other choice. Princess Fiera had predicted they would meet and then ensured the fate came to pass. Raylynn repeated the prophecy she’d heard as a little girl in her head, determined to focus on anything but the rising sensation that she was about to retch all over the prince’s back.
11. Baldair
He rode hard.
He rode like a dark night rushing toward the dawn against a lover’s every instance. The reins slicked under his palms, and the night stuck to the corners of his vision, creating shadow monsters out of pure fear and lack of reason. Baldair clung to the unknown, judging it better than the chaos they’d put at their backs.
Nox.
The woman had only existed for him briefly the past summer, during their odd affair chasing lost treasure and the ghost of a pirate queen. She was dead, fallen into a watery vortex from which there could be no escape… Baldair shook his head, adjusting his seat, pressing back into the woman who was clutching him with all she had. It couldn’t have been Nox; the resemblance was surely only by chance. Raylynn seemed to have some other idea about who the woman was anyway. He needed to focus on the present, on the circumstances that could mean their deaths if they didn’t outrun the people trying to kill them.
And who exactly were they? He half-glanced over his shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Raylynn, but her face was too flush against his back to see her state. Still, he could feel the quivering in her arms and legs, the usually strong woman reduced to shakes. Whoever pursued them had a deep and frightening effect on his companion.
Baldair rode a bit longer for good measure, until the Warstrider huffed heavily, no longer as eager to heed the snap of the reins. Baldair pulled the animal to a stop, taking a breath. It was a long time since he’d ridden that hard, and his thighs had a few words of protest for him when he finally began to shift in the saddle.
Raylynn hadn’t moved, which made dismounting awkward. But Baldair managed, the woman clinging to the leather seat beneath her as she’d clung to him, her eyes pressed closed.
“Come here.” Baldair placed a gentle palm on her tense thigh, urging her to dismount.
“Is-is it over?” There was a quiver to her voice.
“Yes, yes,” he soothed. “Now, come down.”
She cracked one eye open, then the other, and turned to him skeptically. The moment clarity crystallized in her gaze, she launched herself off the mount with unexpected fervor. Baldair braced himself, taking the shaking woman into his arms, easing her toward the ground until her legs seemed stable.
“There, there…” He stroked her hair. It smelled of the same oil she used on her sword, of metal and steel sparks. It was such an odd scent for a woman to have, but a welcome one, hard and unforgiving. It suited the unique creature she was. “You’re safe now. They didn’t follow us.”
Raylynn pulled back, narrowing her eyes at him. “You think I’m scared of the Knights?”
Baldair opened and closed his mouth, trying to formulate words. What else would she be afraid of?
“Eesh,” she hissed under her breath, peeling away like leather on a hot summer’s day. “You have no room to talk. If you weren’t so green, we could’ve taken them, and we wouldn’t have had to flee on this monster.”
The woman toed her way back toward the mount, carefully grabbing her bag from where Baldair had slung it in haste. She yanked it away, as though the creature might turn and nip off her fingers at the slightest provocation. He watched the odd exchange, truth dawning on him.
“The horse? Out of everything that just happened, you’re afraid of the horse?”
“I hate horses.” She stalked away from the Warstrider, who seemed to take no offense at the woman’s hostility.
“A mysterious group of would-be assassins just tried to burn us alive, and we only escaped certain death thanks to the help of… someone... and you’re worried about a Warstrider?” Baldair burst out laughing, a rumble that not even her glare could silence for once.
“Horses can’t be trusted.”
“Warstriders are bred for their loyalty and intelligence. Seems like a good one to me.” Baldair patted the creature’s dark muzzle.
“They’re bred too large.” Raylynn rubbed the scar across her nose.
“You got kicked once, didn’t you?” Her look was all the confirmation he needed. Baldair chuckled, grabbing his bag off the saddle. The mount huffed softly but didn’t wander away, which was good, because he had nothing to tie it to. “My brother did, too.”
“Your brother?” Her eyes followed him as he threw his bag down in an arbitrary spot. “The Crown Prince?”
“The same.” Baldair rummaged through his rucksack, as though the reason he had offered a statement about Aldrik could be found somewhere within. The desert was cold, and the sweat from the fire earlier was leaving a chill. He decided to strip his shirt and change—anything to keep him from focusing on the memories of his younger years with Aldrik. Even as his mind avoided it, his heart poured words from his chest to his lips. “We were playing in the stables, too young to be unattended without the master of horse.”
“Pampered princes,” she snorted, throwing her bag down next to his.
For once, he didn’t deny it. “We were running around some of the mounts, and one got spooked.” Baldair tapped his face. “His nose exploded, blood everywhere. It was actually a miracle that he didn’t get more hurt.”
“See? Horses can’t be trusted.” Raylynn sat heavily.
Baldair sat next to her. The blank canvas of the sand was painted with memory.
“Then what happened?” Raylynn pressed.
The woman was too keen for her own good. He ran a hand through his hair. In fairness, he was being quite transparent.
“Aldrik was proud, even as a child. He didn’t want to go to the clerics and admit that we were doing something we weren’t supposed to, and that he had gotten clocked by a horse.”
“Stupid.” Baldair could’ve kissed the woman for the word; instead, he laughed. Even in the middle of the desert with a mysterious, roguish woman, he could commiserate over his brother’s foolishness.
“Everyone sees my brother as brilliant. But he’s really not.” Baldair sighed, looking at the Warstrider. In a way, the creature reminded him o
f Aldrik. Swathed in darkness, aloof, but not fleeing. Just sort of there. “Maybe he is… But his pride makes him foolish.”
“So what happened next?”
“A servant finally noticed the fuss, came rushing over.” Baldair lived in that moment—seeing his proud, regal brother crying, overwhelmed, unsure what to do. The same urge tugged at his gut, a very basic need to protect the brother he had so looked up to as a child. “I told the servant I punched him in the nose, that we’d been fighting over who got to try to pet its tail.”
It was Raylynn’s turn to laugh. “I can’t imagine you punching anyone hard enough to shatter their nose, not even now.”
“Your confidence in my prowess is resounding.” Baldair shook his head in amusement. “I think I’ll have to keep you around so I don’t forget how pampered or weak I am.”
“I can be good for that.” She studied his face, but Baldair looked away before she could discern anything further. It was too late. “You don’t get along with him anymore.”
“The rumors travel that far, huh?”
“You speak about him with sorrow.”
Baldair assessed his tone for the first time, wondering if it was true. Was he sad about Aldrik? He shook his head, objecting as much to the internal thought as the external suggestion. “My brother decided the crown was more important than anything, stopped taking an interest in all beyond him, became holier than thou. Now he’s an ass that not even the most loyal servant can tolerate.”
Raylynn hummed thoughtfully. The sound, followed by the silence, drew Baldair’s eyes to her anew. She looked at the Warstrider, yet wary, but the beast had hardly moved.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
The objection sparked unexpected frustration in Baldair. He had not endured the brunt of his brother’s moodiness for years for her to object. “I assure you, it is.”
