Once in the halls, it seemed every way they turned was blocked. They couldn’t get to the passage out. Even when they managed to find their way into the courtyard, the heat was so terrible Aislinn’s skin had started to blister, and her head spun as she took in lungfuls of black smoke instead of clean air.
She was on the verge of unconsciousness when she saw Ashley look up at the sky, then shut her eyes with an expression of desperate concentration. The last image Aislinn saw was the pair of wide golden wings growing from Gabriel’s slave’s back.
I woke, unsurprisingly, in another cell.
I was getting to be quite a connoisseur of prisons. This one wasn’t nearly as nice as Midnight’s now-molten marble trainers’ cells, or anywhere near as vile as the bloodstained hole Misha had thrown me in. It was simple, dry, and clean, with an earthen floor covered by a woven mat, a mattress, and a cubby set well away from the sleeping area with a basin for waste. There were no windows in the walls, but there was one—set with bars—in the heavy wooden door.
I debated breaking out, but in Shantel land, that seemed unwise. Instead, I approached the door and called, “Hello?”
I expected a guard.
Instead, another barred door diagonal to my own swung open, revealing a lithe, golden woman in a simple woolen dress.
She approached cautiously, her bare feet soundless on the dirt floor. When she pulled on the door to my cell, it opened without protest. It had never occurred to me that it might not be locked.
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t find a single word. I wanted to cry. I wanted to beg her forgiveness for everything—for selling her, for not saving her, for leaving her to the fire. I wanted to thank her for everything she had done for my brother. I wanted to weep for her, for everything I had experienced with her in the trainer’s cell.
I had been raised to hate every example of royal blood, but she had shown me what a queen should be, and could be: brave, wise, and compassionate. She had taught me that there were people who were worth following.
I couldn’t speak, so I let my body speak for me: I went to my knees. As a child of Obsidian I bowed to no master…but as a child of Obsidian, I also had the right to choose my own path. This woman had earned my loyalty. Alasdair didn’t pull away when I took her hand, silently pledging her everything. My faith, my love.
“My queen,” I whispered.
She shook her head.
“Are you all right?” I tensed at the cold, protective voice I heard behind us. Hara hadn’t had me killed in my sleep, but her tone suggested she wished she had.
Alasdair nodded, though I felt the slow shudder that passed through her. I remembered the time Jaguar had asked her the same thing. She had lied for me then, protecting me.
Now she protected me again. “I am fine,” she said to Hara, her musical voice making the words echo in my head. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
Fine.
Fine.
Everything will be okay now.
I looked up at Alasdair and Hara…and suddenly, I couldn’t help but laugh, because I knew what came next. Hara had every right to hate me, given what my guild had done to her mother, father, and brother, all on the basis of my prophecy. I doubted she really wanted my help, but I needed to make that right somehow. And Alasdair should hate me, but somehow didn’t.
Either way, there was only one thing left for me to do.
I, Malachi Obsidian, creation of Mistress Jeshickah, prophet and inspiration of the Obsidian guild, who had conspired against the greatest empires in the world, now had a goal: I would see not just one but two queens to their rightful thrones, or I would die trying.
THE WINTER WINDS are bitter tonight. I had forgotten how frigid and biting the air can be outside the protection of Midnight’s stone walls. This shelter is as comfortable as a structure made of wood and leather can be, but the howling wind makes the walls flutter and my bones tremble.
I stare at the notes in front of me, trying to make sense of them. One of the few things that Hara and Malachi agree on is the fact that I cannot ignore the world. It is hard for me to believe that anyone truly needs me, but they keep insisting. So I read reports about food scarcity, riots, and how the serpiente and avian armies continue to grow as they struggle to contain their own people, and turn wary eyes to each other. I know that the Shantel have refused to see anyone since the day we left—even Kadee gets turned away when she tries to enter their forest—and the Azteka have not returned to the marketplace since the equinox. Malachi says he suspects the sakkri knew she would not return from the attack, but also that they could not succeed without her.
Hara rails that I must attend to these messages, because it is my right and my responsibility to return to the avian people as monarch.
Malachi calls me his queen, but would let me be anything I want.
He would let me do anything I desire, would follow me into court intrigues or into exile. When, in an hour of weakness and desperation, I took my hawk’s form and sought the small port town where I first met Gabriel Donovan, Malachi did not stop me. He followed, and his blue eyes watched without judgment as a half dozen different people told me that no one had seen Gabriel for months. When I came home to camp, he let me sit silently, mourning a man I know I should hate with every fiber of my being. And when I was ready, he put his arms around me, and I wished I could remember how to cry.
The only person who better understands how difficult it is to go through each day, needing to make the decision for myself to get up, dress, and put one foot in front of the other, is Aislinn. I didn’t think she would survive the injuries she took from smoke and fire in our escape. By the time she had recovered enough to tell us anything, it was far too late for us to find Nathaniel, and we have no way of contacting him now. None of us have heard anything from the vampires; Silver’s line has kept to their word to leave the shapeshifters alone. So Aislinn, too, will have to learn what it means to live without a master.
Privately I wonder how things might have been different if Nathaniel had gone to Gabriel to enlist his support. Gabriel worked hard to make sure that no one saw the cracks in his façade as a perfect, ruthless trainer, endlessly content with his brutal work. I do not think he knows how to be anything else, but sometimes I think he wanted to be. I don’t think he would have actively assisted Nathaniel, but I think he would have walked away and let the winds blow where they would.
He would have taken me with him.
I know that thought should terrify me. Some days, when I can pull myself from the fog, it does.
Hara plans to move against Aaron and Misha soon. Malachi says his guild is behind her, even those who currently live in the palace. We haven’t been able to find any sign of Miriam or her son, though one of the other Obsidian serpents says they think Misha may have had my sister killed when she refused to condone the new serpiente queen’s plan. Hara has made me promise that, when she returns to the throne, so will I.
I have no desire for the avian crown, but I will do what must be done. How could I do any less, when I look around me and know the sacrifices that each member of our band has made in their effort to usher in a better world?
Life is not easy, but as the Obsidian guild says, a life lived in hardship and freedom is better than one lived in comfort and captivity. I have been a younger princess, raised in luxury, with minimal responsibilities and little common sense. I have been a captive songbird, held in a cage by a man I believe wanted me because I reminded him of something he lost long ago, something he did not know how to hold without destroying.
Can I be a queen?
Can I be Alasdair?
Can I be responsible for myself, answerable to my own conscience, as I step forward and try to lead?
I look around, and know I am not alone in wondering. We are all starting new lives now. We are all learning, through hardship and determination, what it means to be…
Free.
Alasdair Shardae
December 1804
AMELI
A ATWATER-RHODES wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, when she was thirteen. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator, Persistence of Memory, Token of Darkness, All Just Glass, Poison Tree, and Promises to Keep. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra: Hawksong, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and a VOYA Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection; Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry, an IRA-CBC Young Adults’ Choice; and Wyvernhail. Her most recent novels are the Maeve’ra trilogy: Bloodwitch, Bloodkin, and Bloodtraitor. Visit her online at AmeliaAtwaterRhodes.com.
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Bloodtraitor Page 20
