Star swished her head toward him, white hair flinging against his chest. “And what is that?”
“I ride out toward the field of cocoons and set them on fire, causing a ruckus to draw the workers away. You sneak into the machine and destroy it.”
“But that’s too dangerous. It’s suicide. There’s no way you can make it back to the ridge. If you succeed, it will blossom to a blazing inferno, and if they catch you—”
“How do you know this is the only way out?” Leer countered, but his words were empty. Both of them knew of the slim probability.
“No.” Star jutted out her chin. “I won’t do it.”
Leer spread his hands out, palms up. “It’s the only way.”
She locked her gaze with his. “We ride together.”
His eyes widened. “Then we both die.”
Star turned away, her cheeks hot with tears. “I can’t…I can’t let you go.”
Leer sat forward, his body only inches from her own. “And why is that? We both know I was a dead man back in Ravencliff.” He reached across the distance between them and took her chin in his fingertips, raising her face to look him in the eye. “Why’s it so hard to let me go now?”
Star felt a rush of emotion at the touch. Leer was such a mystery to her, all rough around the edges but passionate and soft at the core. The one thing she was certain of was that he would never kill Valen. “Because I know you’re innocent.”
He leaned in so close his breath fell on her lips. “And is that all?”
Star pulled her head back from his hand. She wasn’t ready to deal with her rising emotions head on. “Isn’t that enough of a reason right there?”
Leer looked away, disappointed. “It’s getting late. Let’s try to get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”
Unable to come to any agreement on the plan, Star and Leer rolled themselves up in their travel blankets and the cave fell silent. Star drifted off to sleep as night closed in. Her dreams were feverish, her mind ranting about secret passages and wings, sleeping monsters and ominous machines. In each dream, she battled hard and lost every situation, leading to only one possible outcome—their own demise.
* * * *
When Star woke, light filtered from the crack in the stone face. The mist had crept into their hiding place during the night and it gathered around her sleeping form, watching, waiting and biding its time. Star waved it back, swinging her arms in front of her face until the substance thinned and she could see the rest of the cave.
Windracer and Wildfire slept soundly, unmoving. But Leer was gone. She shot up from her travel blanket, eyes scanning the cavern back and forth. Stupid rogue! Star cursed under her breath. Had he already gone without her? Still numb from restless sleep and her legs full of anxious energy, Star strode to the cavern entrance to have a look for herself.
On her way, she bumped into a dark figure and almost screamed. The man held her close and put a gentle hand over her mouth. It was Leer. “Shh, let’s go back inside.”
“What were you doing out there?” Star felt like a mother scolding her son. “You could have been killed!”
Leer smirked. “I was scouting, looking for the best possible way down and across the cocoons.”
“You’re not going out there by yourself again.”
But Leer seemed like he wasn’t listening. He went straight to Wildfire, fastening the reins on tight. When he spoke next, his words were heavy and solemn. “All my life, I blamed myself for Valen’s mother’s death.” He adjusted the stirrups and Star stood shocked and unable to move. Leer meant to tell her the truth. “I felt undeserving of his good will.” He turned to face her. “But now I can make it up to him, to the entire population of Ravencliff.”
Star gritted her teeth. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to create the distraction you need in order to break that hideous machine. Then the rest is up to you, Star. Destroy that contraption, make it back to Ravencliff and marry Prince Valen.” Leer gave her a smile more wistful than anything else. “It’s a lot on your shoulders, but I know you can do it. All you need is time and a decent diversion.”
Star stumbled forward, barely able to speak. “No.”
But Leer’s resolution was much stronger than her meager attempt to stop him. He walked to meet her, pulling Wildfire behind him. “The truth is, I don’t know who was behind the assassination attempt. I was involved to try to find out and clear my name and reputation with Valen forever. You caught me before I was able to pinpoint the person at the top of the chain of command.”
Star went to speak but Leer held a finger to her lips. “That’s all right. This has worked out much better. Not only will I be able to help with this threat to Ravencliff, but I’ll take as many of those awful beasts with me as I can.”
She could not hold back the tears flowing in a stream down her cheeks. She knew he had made up his mind long before she could talk him out of it, but she had to try to stop him. “Fallon, don’t do it.” Her professional demeanor had been a barrier she’d held up the entire journey, and now it melted away like ice in the summer sun.
Leer’s eyes brightened when she said his first name. “It is the only way.” He bent down and kissed the hot tears on her face before touching his lips to her own. His hand traveled up her neck to cradle her head as they stood there together, heated bodies pressing close. His arms surrounded her and for a moment she forgot all about the Elyndra, Ravencliff and even Valen.
Then he tore himself away. Before Star could react, Leer exited the cave, pulling Wildfire behind. Her hand reached for his cloak, but her fingers closed on thin air. She ran after him, but it was too late. After all, Leer had been a messenger himself, and he rode faster than her by a landslide.
Shaking, she ran back into the cave and jumped on Windracer. She would not fail him, and he would not die in vain. If she had anything to do about it, he would not die at all.
Chapter 20
Promise
“Funny thing, I’ve always secretly thought of the mist as a blessing.”
Commander Rile stood over the prince with concern sketched in his timeworn features. For Valen, it seemed time had stopped once Star and Leer left only a few days ago. He’d been staring into the mist for hours, his eyes glossed over with opaque shadows and wispy tendrils. The familiar sound of a human voice called him away from the dreamscape, calming his frayed nerves.
“You see, it’s the one thing holding back Evenspark’s army and that dreaded, disfigured queen’s foul rage.”
The hoarseness of his tone surprised Valen. “Sometimes an old enemy is a friend in disguise.”
Just like Leer. The intent of the statement he’d said out loud hit him hard and he swayed back, bracing himself against the stone wall. He realized that he did still have love for Leer. He’d sent the two people he cared about the most into the valley of the beasts. His concern weighed his features down and Commander Rile crouched beside him, kneeling at his feet.
“You’ve been at watch far longer than your shift, my prince.”
Valen rubbed his temples. “I’m not going down.”
“Forgive me, Your Highness, but you must rest some time.”
Valen dismissed him with a wave. “No. Not until this threat is gone.” He squinted, looking back over the battlements like a madman. “Not until she comes back.”
The commander looked at him, confused. “Who, Your Highness?”
Although he’d not meant to, Valen had voiced his last thought out loud. At this point, he didn’t care what gossip ran amuck within Ravencliff’s walls. He would start following his heart, whether it was the right thing to do or not.
“The messenger. She’s going to save us all.” Valen focused back on the foggy nothingness, but his thoughts returned to the last conversation he’d had with Star at the gate. He’d wanted to say so much, and yet all he could do was stand by when she left without another word. How he’d cursed hi
s inaction in the days since. “Commander, I love her.”
Valen turned back but Commander Rile was gone. The prince looked down the length of the battlements in both directions but the commander had disappeared. In fact, eerily enough, Valen was the only one on duty.
“It can’t be. My men would not abandon their posts…”
Suddenly he felt a chill breeze on his back and his body prickled with goose bumps, the hair on his arms standing on end. In a split second, he felt a whish of air over his head. He ducked impulsively, falling onto his back. An Elyndra swooped from the mist above his head, legs grasping frantically for his body. It had missed in the initial assault, but hovered in the open air above him, boldly crossing the fortress’s walls.
Valen struggled, squirming underneath the clawed talons. He managed to get hold of his sword and swung it out of the sheath. With a clang, the metal blade hit one of the legs, but it ricocheted off the hard carapace and the beast pressed on. He wondered how the beast had stolen the commander. These days, everything happened so fast and he wasn’t prepared for any of it. His mind roamed the land of daydreams instead.
He rolled out of its grasp and ducked underneath an old cannon that hadn’t been used in years. He watched as the luminescent beast landed on the stone of the battlements, batting its silvery wings. Two large antennae explored the air around it, searching for its lost quarry. The beast was massive, its wingspan larger than two wagons put together, and Valen wondered how Star had managed to kill one all by herself, hanging from a rope, of all places.
Then he remembered Star telling him the Elyndra feared fire. Holding his breath and digging in his coat pocket, Valen found a match.
A bag of sand rested underneath the cannon. Valen emptied the bag silently and tied the sack around the tip of his sword. Meanwhile, the Elyndra jittered and ticked above him, exploring the structure of the wall. Valen struck the match and lit the sack, watching it spark with flame.
The heat of the fire alerted the Elyndra and it spun around in his direction, antennae raised. Valen thrust the sword into its wing and the flames caught and spread. It tried to fly, propelling itself into the air, but the blaze erupted on both wings. The beast tilted and fell over the side of the fortress to the ground below in a ball of fire.
Valen had a moment of triumph followed by a stinging realization of sheer terror: his side of the fortress was probably not the only one under attack. There would be more of them to come, possibly in greater numbers.
Scrambling down the length of the battlements to the main turret, Valen found the warning horn abandoned at the foot of the sentry’s station, sprinkled with drops of blood. The beasts had picked the watch tower guards off first, and then turned to the lookout guards on the parapet.
Wiping the horn on his coat, Valen watched for signs of other beasts. Taking a deep breath, he put his lips to the mouthpiece and blew into the horn. A long, wailing sound careened through the upper parapet. Although he was not a trained bugler, he had played with the horns as a child and was familiar with the particular rhythm of a battle call. The pitch and tone were rough, but the expressed sentiment was clear as ever.
Just as he finished a long string of notes, Valen looked up at the sky behind him. A wave of dark shapes flew through the mist over his head, and hundreds of wings blotted out the distant sun and cast threatening shadows on the flagstones below him.
His calls did not go unheard. A slew of soldiers poured out of the towers, flooding the battlements deserted only moments before. Valen watched in horror as the beasts lunged, bombing the first wave of recruits pointing their flaming arrows into the sky. Some managed to fire while others were taken away screaming into the mist.
It did not take long for chaos to erupt. Men ran back and forth, shooting arrows while stomping out flames, and others batted at the Elyndra’s clutches. One man stumbled onto the prince, his face and body littered with bleeding scratches from the sharp claws. Valen helped him reach the lower deck and shouted for a healer. Once he knew the man was in good hands, Valen sprinted ahead, flaming sword in hand. Angered by the attacks on his fortress, he ripped through a mass of wings in a single arc.
He felled three Elyndra before claws wrapped around his body and he rose above the flagstones, feet unable to touch the ground. Valen flailed his arms and legs, twisting to stab it with his sword. Three flaps later, his head jerked up and down like a rag doll. Valen watched as the ground grew farther and farther away.
Suddenly, he heard a whizzing sound and then a crunching noise as someone’s flaming arrow hit the beast’s right wing. The Elyndra swayed in the air before dropping him. He felt a moment of numb weightlessness, and then his stomach pitched and he fell hard on the stone of the battlements.
After the initial shock had faded, Valen felt a flaring pain on his left side where he’d taken the brunt of the fall. Wincing, he rolled onto his other side and clutched the sore shoulder, feeling for broken bones. To his relief, every body part seemed to be in place. If anything, a dislocated shoulder was the least of his worries, and he still had his sword arm in working condition.
Valen swerved as he regained his footing and surveyed the upper battlements. The Elyndra clearly outnumbered Ravencliff’s army. For each flying beast the soldiers brought down, two more sprang up. The continuous attacks were depleting the army.
As Valen reassessed the weakest point, he saw a sash of black and red through the crowd. “No. It can’t be him.” But another look in between searing arrows and sparkling wings revealed the king himself, lunging into battle as if he could do more good than sit on the throne.
“Father!” Valen shouted until his lungs threatened to burst, but no one could hear him over the ruckus of screams, clangs and the firing of cannons. He jumped past the archers sprawled underneath a cannon raised in the air and pushed through a congregation of healers waiting under the relative safety of the turrets. An entire battlefield sprawled between him and his father. Valen wove through the pandemonium, keeping the red-and-black target in sight. “Father!”
The king turned around, and for a brief heartbeat all Valen saw was rage in his father’s eyes. Then his features softened as he focused on his son. Valen closed the distance between them just as another beast swooped above their heads. They both ducked and several archers fired. The beast fell behind them with arrows protruding from its body like a pin cushion.
“Father, what are you doing?”
“What I should have done a long time ago, son.” The king’s eyes held so much sadness it could engulf the world.
“What do you mean?”
“Helping this fortress. Putting duty ahead of my own personal agenda, even if it means that I have to kill every single one of them.”
“But Father, there is no way you can defeat all them. You are just one man.”
The king smiled. “I want to try.”
Suddenly the sky darkened and both father and son looked up at the heavens. A new surge of beasts hovered over them, thick as a midnight quilt, flying wing to wing. It seemed as though the moment froze in time, a macabre pantomime, surreal in its clarity. For a moment, everyone stood still as if they all stared into their own deaths.
Then the fighting surged again in full force. Valen swung his sword with all his strength, his father at his back. It was the first time they’d been truly together in years, fighting at one another’s side. Valen felt a rush of pride and sympathy for his estranged father, the one man who knew him so well yet stayed so far away. He wished he’d pressed their connection, gone and visited him in the long hours when the man closed himself off in the darkness of the throne room to drink and brood the night away.
His father was an impressive man, big and burly with arms the size of a horse’s hind leg and a chest that rose round and firm above other’s heads. He took down several beasts with one swing and little effort. Valen caught a glimpse of the king that had ridden into battle and charmed the hearts of the Ravencliff townspeople befor
e he had a son.
The battle reached a lull and the endless tide of beasts dwindled. The soldiers cheered, thrusting their swords in the air as others lugged strewn sandbags to rebuild the wall. Valen’s father appeared like a great war hero on the highest parapet, his cape fluttering in the wind. The crowd roared at his feet, chanting the king’s name.
His father held up both hands and Valen saw a rare glimmer of happiness shine in his eyes. For a moment, Valen felt that everything would turn out all right and he’d have his father back the way he was before the accident. Wrapped up in the moment, Valen hollered with his fellow soldiers.
Just as the crowd’s roar died down to hear his father speak, a great Elyndra, larger than the others, rose up from the mist beyond the wall and dove at the king. Valen watched as his father thrust his sword at its carapace. The beast spiraled in the air, avoiding the lunge and circled around for another plunge. The king gripped his sword with both hands and braced himself for another attack.
“Someone help him!” a soldier called out from the battlements, but Valen knew the king was too far up the parapet for anyone to reach him before the next attack. He stood in mute shock as the Elyndra swooped down, its massive wings batting the air.
The king lunged into the assault and his sword stuck in the beast’s belly, but the force of its dive knocked him to the ground. The beast writhed on top of the king, who struggled to avoid its sharp talons.
“Father!” Valen leaped three steps at a time to the parapet. When he surfaced, the beast lay on his father, unmoving.
Valen grabbed one of the Elyndra’s spindly legs and heaved the insect-like body off of his father, who lay on his back. The king dropped his sword and it clanged with finality on the stone. Valen crouched beside him. He could see a deep red blossoming out from underneath the red-and-black tunic, and he knew that a sharp talon had met its mark in the king’s chest.
“Father.” Valen watched as the older man’s breathing grew more labored. He grabbed a soldier by the arm, jerking him away from his duties. “Find a healer! The king is down.”
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