“That’s right. You want out. Trust me, you aren’t going to want to stay here.” She used her most coaxing tone of voice, but the horses didn’t look convinced, and Lorelai was out of time. Any minute, the patrol would be back, and they needed to see the kind of situation that required the attention of every soldier in the barracks.
Sasha, help. Get the horses out.
Lorelai reached the ladder that led to the hayloft as Sasha flew through the open doors. Her bird swooped through the air, pecking at hindquarters and shrieking as she drove the panicked horses out of the barn, and Lorelai raced up the ladder and into the loft.
Horses clear. Leo?
Yes. Tell Leo he can start.
Sasha flew out of the barn, and Lorelai shoved the loft doors open, letting in a slap of air that still carried a bite from the previous day’s late autumn snowstorm. The patrol was approaching the section of the wall that flanked the barracks, but their attention was locked on the horses that milled about the stable yard. With a shout, the two guards broke into a run, heading for the barn.
“That’s the least of your worries,” Lorelai said as she assessed the stacks of hay that surrounded her. The bales were stacked three high and eight deep. More than enough to burn the whole thing down.
Another shout drifted up to the open loft doors, and Lorelai snatched her tinderbox from her pocket and flicked the lid open. Flint struck the glittering black stone inside the box, and a brilliant white flame leaped to life. Moving quickly, she swept down the line of hay bales, shoving the flame into the dried grass and then racing on when that bale caught fire. Soon, the loft was ablaze, fire greedily chewing through one hay bale and then leaping for the next.
The heat was nearly unbearable. Her skin felt dry and crisp as she hurried to the open loft doors. Flames crawled from the hay and raced up the wall. She grabbed the edges of the opening and peered out.
Soldiers were pouring out of one of the barracks while horses reared and shied away from those who tried to catch them. In the barn beneath Lorelai, someone shouted, and footsteps pounded up the ladder. She looked at the ground to assess her jump and locked eyes with a soldier who stood directly below her.
“Thief!” the woman yelled, pulling her sword and pointing it up toward the princess. Soldiers rushed to her side.
Lorelai’s heart thudded against her chest, and magic burned in her palms.
She couldn’t stay in the barn surrounded by fire.
She couldn’t leap directly to the ground.
She had to improvise.
Sasha, help! she sent, and then she swung her body out of the loft doors, balanced on the edge of the opening, and prayed salvation would hurry up.
A sharp pain seared her neck, and she slapped her gloved hands against her coat as the fire that was consuming the barn wall came for her. Another pain, this time above her ear, had her ripping off her cap and throwing it behind her as flames chewed into it.
Hurry! She scanned the skies, but Sasha was coming from behind the barn, and Lorelai couldn’t see anything but the steadily growing sea of soldiers below her, their swords ready to impale her when she fell.
“Surrender in the name of the queen!” the woman who’d first seen Lorelai yelled.
It was either burn to death or leap into the throng of soldiers. Lorelai was out of time. Grabbing the edges of the loft doors, she muttered a prayer and chose a landing spot to the left that appeared to have the smallest concentration of sharp weapons ready to punish her for her treason.
I’m jumping. She sent, and shook with relief when Sasha exploded over the top of the barn and dove for the soldiers.
Protect. Hurt. Kill. Sasha’s thoughts vibrated with fury. She screamed her battle cry and swooped below the line of swords. Crashing into the soldiers closest to the barn, the bird tore at them with her beak and talons, sending them staggering back into those behind them.
It was all the opening Lorelai needed. Launching herself into the air, she tucked her knees, aimed for a soldier who’d turned his back to defend himself against Sasha’s next attack, and slammed into him.
They went down hard, and Lorelai rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the wicked slice of someone’s sword, and then scrambled to her feet. Soldiers filled the stable yard and more were coming. Lorelai needed to get out while she still had a chance.
Wall, Lorelai screamed as Sasha tore into another line of soldiers, nearly getting impaled by a sword in the process. Path.
A full-grown gyrfalcon in hunting mode was a terrifying force to be reckoned with. As big as a buzzard, twice as fast as a cougar, and viciously focused on her prey, Sasha’s shrieks batted the air as she dove, tore, and collided with anyone between Lorelai and the wall. Tucking her head, Lorelai raced behind her bird, somersaulting beneath a soldier who lunged for her and then flipping to the side to avoid another’s sword.
The wall loomed in front of her. Soldiers were running behind her. Sasha surged upward seconds before a thin black arrow streaked through the sky, just missing the gyrfalcon.
Danger. Flee. Lorelai willed the bird to obey as she approached the wall without slowing. She aimed for the corner, the joint that marked the meeting of north and west.
“Stop in the name of the queen!”
“Kill her!”
“Forget the bird. Shoot the girl!”
The shouts rose behind her as Lorelai gathered herself. Planting her left foot, she launched her right foot toward the wall. The second it touched, she kicked outward, gaining height and leverage. Her left foot hit the wall, and she kicked outward again, forcing herself upward, defying gravity. Using the corner for additional leverage, she reached the top of the wall in four leaps. Slapping her palms onto the edge, she pulled her legs beneath her, touched her toes to the wall, and then leaped for the closest tree.
Sasha landed hard on her shoulder, talons gripping tight, her mind filled with furious worry for Lorelai.
Watch our backs. Lorelai took off running for the northeast corner where Gabril and Leo were finishing the job of emptying the garrison’s storehouse. The wagons gathered in the forest were laden with bags of grain, beans, apples, dried vegetables, and spices. Gabril took one look at Lorelai’s face as she sprinted around the corner of the wall and barked a command at those around him.
By the time the soldiers secured the horses and opened the garrison’s gate to search for her, Lorelai, Leo, and the rest of the robbers—along with over half the food kept in the storehouse—were gone.
SIX
“BRING ME ANOTHER.” Irina stood outside the castle’s dungeon, a pile of bodies at her feet. “A younger one this time.” The dungeon master hurried to comply.
The air was damp and chilly, but the queen was warm beneath the weight of the coat she wore. She ran her hands over the coat’s thick gray-white fur and felt the hearts of the wolves who’d given their pelts surge against the magic in her palms.
Magic that still flowed easily through her veins, but that left her drained and weary at the end of every spell. Magic that caused her heart to stutter and her chest to ache with the strain of it.
“Your Highness.” The dungeon master stepped out of the doorway, pulling a skinny girl of seventeen or eighteen behind him. Her dirty brown hair brushed the sharp edges of her collarbone, and her eyes were dull. The dungeon master yanked the girl forward until she stood in front of Irina.
The queen grasped the girl’s chin and examined her face under the fading light of the early evening sun. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“And what crime sent you to my dungeon?”
“I was hungry.” There was a thread of defiance in the girl’s voice, though she wouldn’t meet the queen’s gaze.
Irina’s long, polished red nails dug into the girl’s face. “Being hungry isn’t a crime. I will only ask you this once more.” Her voice was hard. “What was your crime?”
“Stealing food,” the girl whispered.
“And whom did you steal
from?”
The girl swallowed audibly but didn’t answer.
The queen’s nails punctured the girl’s cheek and tiny crescents of blood bubbled up. “Answer.”
The girl’s voice shook. “From my lord’s kitchen. I was a maid in the Ranulf household.”
Irina let go of the girl’s face and rubbed a drop of blood between her thumb and forefinger. “Ungrateful peasant. If you steal from my nobility, you steal from me.” She leaned close, her mouth a breath from the girl’s ear. “Do you know what I do to those who betray the ones to whom they should be loyal?”
The girl’s body trembled, and her knees gave out, but the dungeon master held her firm.
A thief. A betrayer. A girl who deserved her fate. And one whose heart might be strong enough to save Irina from her own.
The queen’s open palm slammed into the girl’s chest, her nails curving over the space that held her heart. “Ja`dat,” she whispered, and the power burned in her hands. “Take what is hers and give it to me instead.”
Irina’s palm, wreathed in brilliant light, pressed hard against the girl’s chest.
Her heart surged to meet Irina’s magic, and the queen could feel the strength of her remaining years stored inside her like an apple ready for the plucking.
Her magic leaped into the girl and surrounded her heart. The girl cried out in agony and resisted, but Irina’s will was fierce. Indomitable. Stronger.
Irina was always stronger.
The queen threw her head back as the girl’s youth poured out of her. It was a flood of heat and need and restless ambition that abandoned the girl and rushed through Irina’s veins instead. The girl’s face aged, her hair grayed, and then she collapsed in a heap beside the other bodies.
Irina stood panting, her hand still outstretched, and waited for the band of tension around her chest to dissolve. For the weakness, the ache, to wash away.
The pain still throbbed dully along her sternum. Her pulse still fluttered like a bird trying to break free of its cage.
Nothing had changed.
If anything, the pain was worse—the heat of the girl’s youth turning from something that energized into a poison that scalded the queen from the inside out.
The queen stared at the bodies before her—a man with the muscles of a blacksmith, a woman whose fierce attitude was written in every line on her face, a stable boy, a teacher, and the maid. All of them had submitted to Irina’s will. All of them had given up their remaining years to the queen’s magic.
And yet none of them had strengthened her failing heart.
“Clean up this mess,” she snapped at the dungeon master as she turned on her heel and strode back toward the castle.
The spell wasn’t the problem, she was certain. She’d had no problem sucking the remaining years out of her father’s flintlike heart nine years ago and absorbing their strength and vitality. Doing the same to the criminals in her dungeon should’ve been an easy solution to her problem, even with the residual weariness that came from forcing another’s heart to submit to her will. Instead, she felt weaker and the pain stronger, as if the youth she’d consumed was a slow-moving poison thickening her blood.
Taking the remaining years from the hearts of her prisoners wasn’t the answer, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find one. She always found one, because she never flinched from doing what needed to be done.
Waving pages, maids, and guards out of her way, Irina entered the east wing of her castle and strode toward her rooms. The plush ivory rug beneath her swallowed her footsteps, and all she could hear was the sudden hiss of candles being lit in the sconces along the walls as twilight fell.
Her personal guards opened the door to her rooms. She walked into her sitting room and turned toward the fireplace where her viper was coiled, his serrated black scales glowing red in the flickering light of the flames.
Come. She pushed the thought at Raz, and the viper uncoiled himself from his bed. Swiftly, he slithered across the gleaming cedar floor. When he reached her feet, she bent down, extending a hand. The viper moved up her arm and settled around her neck, his long black tongue flicking toward her face as if he meant to taste her. She ran a slim finger over his blunt nose, and he pushed his head against her hand.
Ssstill hurt, his rough voice whispered in her mind. Ssstill weak.
For now, but the spell will work. I just have to find the right person. The right heart.
And while she searched, she had a kingdom to run, a spate of violent peasant outbreaks to subdue, and an increasingly contentious nobility to bring into line. Moving to her vanity, she looked at the oval mirror hanging above her bottles of perfume. It was the size of a dinner platter with serpents and gilt-dusted brambles surrounding the glass—a gift from Irina’s long-dead mother. The most valuable thing she’d left her eldest daughter, unless you counted the magic running through Irina’s blood.
Magic that had taught her father and sister the terrible price of betrayal and that had removed every obstacle standing between Irina and the Ravenspire throne.
Unbidden, the thought of the white monolith resting in the center of the castle garden and her sister’s body buried beneath it filled Irina’s mind. Her heart lurched, tapping against her breastbone like an impatient fist. She pressed one pale hand against her chest and focused on the mirror.
It didn’t matter what she’d done to secure the throne that would’ve been hers all along if her sister hadn’t betrayed her. It only mattered that she remained strong enough to keep it.
Raz lifted his head and stared at the mirror with her, his golden eyes unblinking.
She held her spine straight and kept her voice steady as she asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most powerful of them all?”
The mirror’s opaque surface swirled into a gray mist and then slowly resolved into Irina’s own reflection—pale blond hair, a delicate face, and eyes as blue as the summer sky.
The queen smiled.
SEVEN
IT TOOK KOL, Jyn, and Trugg a little over three days to cross the border between Eldr and Ravenspire. They’d flown as fast as possible, stopping only when absolutely necessary. Kol wasn’t sure how long it would take to fly to the capital, but he knew that they needed some food and rest before they attempted it. Spotting a little village on the road that wound down the Falkrain Mountains on Ravenspire’s side, he signaled his friends to land in a meadow full of yellow, brittle grass just north of the village.
His dragon heart beat fiercely in his chest, but he ignored it and focused on his shift to human form. The spikes that lined his back receded, his muscles and bones shrank slowly into his human form, and his scales softened into skin again. Quickly, he pulled clothes out of his pack and put them on, the grass beneath him crunching with his every move.
“We need a decent meal and a drink,” he said.
Trugg’s eyes lit up. “A drink! I knew there was a reason I agreed to follow you to Ravenspire. Do you think they serve spiced mead?”
“You’re impossible,” Jyn said as she wrapped a leather belt around her waist and pushed her short dark hair behind her ears.
“Look at this.” Kol motioned at the ground. Bending close, he ran his fingers over the ground. The soil was pale and crumbled easily beneath his touch as if it was nothing more than air. The grass that clung to it was a sickly yellow that turned brown with rot at the roots. “If it’s like this across the kingdom, Irina should be looking for a way to save her people.” Kol clenched a fistful of dirt, and it dissolved into a trickle of dust.
“Come on.” He wiped his hands clean and stood. “Let’s go get a meal and a room so we can sleep in real beds tonight and be rested when we reach the capital.”
“Do you think they have a room with three beds? Or will we be sharing?” Trugg raised a brow at Jyn. “I’m good at sharing.”
“You get to sleep on the floor.” Jyn stepped in front of Kol and began moving toward the village.
Trugg moved to Kol’s sid
e. “Somehow my considerable charms never work on her.”
Kol and his friends entered the open gate that led into the village and moved down the main road toward the heart of the town. A handful of children playing in the dirt near the gate stared at the Eldrians, their eyes wide, and then took off running toward the village, yelling something about visitors.
“Their welcoming committee is kind of creepy,” Trugg said as they passed rows of tiny cottages with thin wisps of smoke curling from their chimneys.
“Maybe they don’t see many outsiders here,” Kol said, but as they neared the village proper, a din of voices on the road ahead of them sent his dragon heart pounding. They rounded a corner, leaving behind the cottages for the brick and board storefronts that made up Tranke’s main street, and a crowd of villagers was waiting for them. The children from the gate were standing off to the side, staring at the Eldrians as the crowd surged toward the visitors.
“Need some cloth?” A woman lunged in front of Jyn and held up a length of pale pink linen. “Make a trade for a jewel.”
“I have buckets. And bricks.” A man grabbed Kol’s sleeve. Trugg growled and slapped the man’s hand away. Kol’s dragon heart pounded faster, and the fire in his chest burned.
“I can launder your clothes.”
“I’ll polish your boots.”
“My family is hungry. You can spare some food, can’t you?”
“I have a sword to trade. Please. A jewel from you might be enough to convince a merchant from Súndraille to take my family out of Ravenspire.”
Villagers surrounded them, and more were coming. All of them were calling out, offering services, trying to trade, or simply begging for riches the Eldrians didn’t have to give. Kol had brought a few bronze coins and some small jewels, enough to give them a night or two in an inn with a meal when they needed it, but with his army steadily losing ground to the ogres, he hadn’t had time to make a formal request for funds from the royal purser. Instead, he’d taken what was left of Brig’s monthly stipend and borrowed the rest from his friends.
The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire) Page 5
