by Shae Ford
The lion’s eyes were closed. Its lumpy back rose and fell with sleep. Elena hoped that Jonathan wouldn’t see. But when he started gripping the life out of her shoulders, she knew it was too late.
Elena twisted to glare at him. If he so much as thought about gasping, she would murder him where he stood.
Jonathan must’ve read the warning in her eyes, because his grip loosened immediately.
There were hundreds of creatures trapped beneath the fortress. They passed many cages of lions, each sleeping alone. There were chambers filled to their ends with wolves, and several with creatures who kept their heads tucked beneath blood-red tails. But the ones that frightened her most were the bears.
They were monsters among monsters — beasts with heads larger than a man’s chest and claws that looked as if they could tear through steel. The growling snores that rumbled from between their fangs shook the slime off the passageways.
Elena began to fear that the walls would split beneath the noise. She stopped at the next chamber they came to: a bear slept heavily against the door, its hideous face pressed into the bars. Drool spilled out from between its teeth and drenched the cobblestone at her boots in a sticky puddle.
Eveningwing took several paces before he seemed to notice that Jonathan and Elena were frozen behind him. He crept back and dragged Elena forward by the arm, a finger pressed tightly against his lips.
They’d just managed to slip past the bear when Elena heard a noise that froze her again:
Thump … thump … thump …
They were heavy footfalls, the sound of something monstrous moving about the chambers. The thumping echoed so badly off the stone that Elena couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from.
Eveningwing picked up the pace. He was tearing them through the passageways, now. His hand tightened around Elena’s wrist. Jonathan’s feet splattered so loudly through every puddle that she knew it was only a matter of time before whatever monster this was found them.
She ripped Slight from his sheath and focused on the dark turn ahead. Her eyes peeled through the shadows, trying to catch a glimpse of the creature’s warped flesh.
Eveningwing sped around the next corner and collided with something hard. It jolted Elena backwards and sent Jonathan onto his rump. The creature had its thick, scarred limbs wrapped around Eveningwing. Elena drew Shadow and coiled to spring for its throat.
But when the creature raised its head, surprise stole her breath. It wasn’t a monster they’d run into.
It was a man.
The man looked as if he’d once been a giant: the thickness of his bruised arms and the tufts of white hair that sprouted from the scars atop his head made him look like a giant. But his face had been so ravaged by tooth and claw that it was impossible to tell.
As he held Eveningwing, his crack of a mouth split in what could’ve easily been a snarl or a grin.
“Our beastkeeper,” Eveningwing whispered, patting the man’s ruined chest.
Jonathan had pulled himself from the ground and was bent nearly double in an effort to hide behind Elena’s shoulders. “What’s a beastkeeper?”
“He’s good to us. He feeds us,” Eveningwing said simply.
The beastkeeper didn’t seem interested in harming them. Still, Elena couldn’t help but keep an eye upon the curved dagger clutched in his meaty hand.
“We need to get into the castle. One of our friends is in danger. I promise we’ll be careful,” Eveningwing said when the lump above the beastkeeper’s one remaining eye slid low. “We’ll be gone before the King finds out.”
The beastkeeper’s mangled face swung over to Jonathan and Elena. His scars made him impossible to read. After a moment, he stepped backwards and beckoned them with a finger — one that was quite noticeably missing its tip.
Elena gripped her daggers tightly as they followed in the beastkeeper’s thumping wake. There was a heavy ring of keys swinging from his belt. He stopped at the next chamber and slid one of the keys into its lock.
Elena stepped back against the wall, flattening Jonathan behind her. “What’s he doing?” she hissed.
Eveningwing swatted a hand at her. He had his face pressed against the bars and one arm stuck through them, waving excitedly at whatever it was trapped on the other side.
Jonathan let out a moaning curse when the door swung open. “Please don’t let it be a monster. Please, for Fate’s sake, don’t let it be —”
“Are they here?” a voice rasped from within the chamber. “Have they come for me?”
The beastkeeper’s head bobbed up and down. Eveningwing tried to rush inside, but the beastkeeper grabbed him mid-dart. There was some grunting and a good deal of waving the curved knife about. Then Eveningwing nodded.
“All right. I understand. Of course we’ll take him,” he said, grinning into the chamber. “Come help me, Jonathan.”
The fiddler edged out from behind Elena and stepped up to the door — careful not to brush shoulders with the beastkeeper. He leaned his head around the arch and let out a sigh of relief.
“You had me worried for a second, mate,” he whispered as he followed Eveningwing inside. “I expected there to be an eight-legged terror asleep in here. But it’s just some wrinkly old fellow with a moppy beard.”
“I can hear you,” the voice rasped testily.
Elena swore under her breath when Jonathan and Eveningwing emerged, toting a frail man between them. His beard stretched down to his chest and had gone silver with age.
“Where are we taking him, exactly? We won’t make it far dragging an old man around,” she warned, ignoring Eveningwing’s frown. “We’ll be spotted for sure.”
“We cannot leave him here. The King has ordered him to be dealt with — but he didn’t say when,” Eveningwing added, grinning at the beastkeeper. “So we can bring him along with us.”
“I won’t be much trouble,” the old man insisted. His gaze was clear and incredibly deep. Elena felt as if he could see through the windows of her soul — and she didn’t like it.
“Who are you?”
“Argon.”
“Well, Argon, you’d better find your feet. I’m not slowing down for anybody.”
Elena stepped past them, following the beastkeeper as he led them towards a door she hoped would take them into the castle. While they traveled, she couldn’t help but hear Jonathan and Eveningwing whispering behind her:
“What’s that mean, the King wanted him dealt with?” Jonathan wondered.
“I’m not sure,” Eveningwing said. Then he jerked his chin to the blade gripped in the beastkeeper’s hand. “But that’s the knife he uses for cutting up our dinner.”
CHAPTER 50
A Fight for the North
“There it is,” Graymange whispered, his teeth bared into the pale light of the coming dawn. “The King’s great den.”
Kael barely heard him. Midlan’s northern wall leered at him from behind a shroud of mist. A rain cloud swelled above its onyx towers and spat thick curtains of moisture down upon the stone. The soldiers that paced across the wall were too distant to hear; the black creatures that swarmed above the courtyards too numerous to count.
There was nearly half a mile of empty land between the shapechangers and the edge of the wall. Midlan would see them the moment they stepped out from beneath the trees. It would be ready for them. The King had every advantage.
But none of that could stop Kael from grinning.
“I’m going for the wall. Don’t follow until I’ve opened the gate, all right? There’s no point in getting shot at before you have to.”
A thick hand slapped across his shoulder. The bear shaman dropped his voice to a whispered boom: “We will wait for your call.”
The other shamans wished him well. They reached out to touch him as he stood. The hawk shaman ruffled his hair, an excited glint in the bed of her strange, yellow eyes.
“Fight well,” she said.
Kael promised that he would.
> He stepped out from beneath the shadows of the trees and into the field beyond. His armor had been ripped away during his plummet into the swamps, and his clothes badly torn by Dorcha’s tail.
Fortunately, a Midlan patrol came looking for him not long after he’d healed — and they’d proven rather useful. Now Kael wore armor made from a patchwork of their leather jerkins: he’d stitched together the pieces that weren’t too badly burnt or torn, until they resembled another worn set of armor he’d once seen.
He kept Daybreak sheathed at his hip as he walked. A shield hung from his other arm — a meld of some of the breastplates he’d scavenged, beaten into shape. He didn’t exactly need a shield. He didn’t need the armor, either. But he thought Crevan needed to see them. He needed to stare into the eye carved across Kael’s shield and know that his death was marching into Midlan. He needed to understand that his time as King had ended.
For some reason, wearing the armor and carrying the Wright’s crest made him feel as if this was the end of something else: a War started long ago, a life bought with blood.
Kael had sworn that he would try to forget what Setheran and Amelia had done. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t let the weight of his past destroy him — and it was a promise he intended to keep. But he could remember them like this.
He could walk through the gates of Midlan not as a nameless boy from the mountains, but as a Wright. He could make sure the whisperers dealt the final blow, ended the War.
He could finish what they’d started.
Kael had hardly gone twenty paces from the trees when the soldiers on the ramparts spotted him. One of them went charging down the stairs while the rest gathered in a tight line, readying their arrows.
When the soldier returned, he brought Ulric with him. The archmage held a spell above him that blocked the rain like a shield. His skull-like head twisted upon his neck as he struggled to see Kael through the storm. Finally, he seemed to give up. He thrust his arm out beside him, towards the western wall, and one of the links on his arm woke with a burst of red.
Moments later, red lights began appearing in the clouds. Kael hadn’t realized how many winged creatures had been hovering around the towers until their shackles gave them away. They pulled together in a swarm above the western wall and circled as a voice beneath them bellowed orders in strange, muffled words.
Then all at once, they turned for Kael.
His muscles tensed as the creatures fell in a wave towards the field. When they crossed out from beneath the line of rain, he saw their twisted faces: the beaks of hawks and crows bursting through the flesh of men, their great wings little more than drooping folds of skin covered in feathers.
He saw his reflection shining in each of their black, pitiless eyes. Scales coated their talons and their grayish tongues stabbed out from between their jaws. They might’ve been able to shatter the clouds with the noise of their screams.
But Kael never broke his stride.
Dragonscales popped up across his skin, sharpened to edges down his arm and into points at the tips of his fingers. They swelled to cover his armor and stretched to the top of his head. By the time the first crow fell upon him, he was ready.
Its flesh split around his arm and the scream died inside its throat. The birds swarmed around him madly for a few moments longer: their talons glanced off his armor and their drooping skin parted beneath his blows. Kael’s steps wove themselves into a deadly attack inside the swarm. He moved from one enemy to the next, hacking their talons aside before they could wrap around him — he wouldn’t let them try to lift him away.
A screech sounded above him and the crows peeled to the side. They circled out of his reach as a massive hawk fell from the sky — its talons curled and its shining black eyes locked hungrily upon Kael’s throat.
Though he could hear the wind screaming off the hawk’s massive wings, though its fall quickly swallowed the sky between them, Kael didn’t budge. He didn’t even raise his arm, but stood his ground as the hawk fell — watched his reflection smile inside the pits of the monster’s eyes.
The hawk’s body split against his armor. Its shattering bones felt like leaves as they rolled down his shoulders; its blood nothing more than a spatter of rain upon his cloak. Kael didn’t look down to see the mess it’d made. He didn’t turn to watch the crows as they bolted away from him in a panicked rush. No, he kept his gaze on the ramparts, on Ulric.
He watched as the archmage’s eyes widened in recognition, as his jaw snapped open and he stumbled back. Words raced across his lips as he thrust his arm skyward. Soon his voice had risen above the clouds:
“Stop the whisperer! Move, beasts — you have been summoned!”
Beasts?
Kael picked up his pace when he realized what that meant. He crossed into the line of rain at a jog, searching the onyx towers for the first glimpse of white. But though Ulric shrieked her name, Kyleigh never appeared — and after a moment, his cries grew desperate.
When he thrust the chain higher, its links turned from red to white-hot. He held it up, his arm shaking with the effort — until the chain erupted with one final burst of blinding light.
The tower behind Ulric began to tremble. Soldiers scrambled from the ramparts as blocks of stone rolled down its side. No sooner had they disappeared than the spire ruptured beneath the force of a monstrous set of wings.
Dorcha tore himself from the tower, casting man-sized chunks of stone in every direction as he rose. A spout of yellow flame erupted from between his jaws. It shot into the storm clouds and turned its wet to steam, came down in a rain of fire.
“Kill the whisperer!” Ulric screamed.
Dorcha’s chin shot away from the clouds and followed the line of Ulric’s trembling arm — to where Kael sprinted for the castle. Even from a distance, he could see that the scales along Dorcha’s left brow were slightly swollen. But he didn’t have time to wonder what had happened. He was too taken aback to give the dragon’s wounds a second thought.
All of the yellow was gone from Dorcha’s eyes … replaced by a maddened, shining black.
“Stop him! Kill him!”
The force of Dorcha’s wings flattened Ulric against the rampart’s ledge, but he still managed to hold onto his unsettling grin as the black dragon swooped out into the field. He seemed all but certain that Kael would meet a grisly end.
Dorcha flew low to the ground: claws tucked beneath him and a storm of flame brewing between his jaws.
Kael never slowed. He held his shield out beside him as he ran and balled his other hand into a fist. It would do him no good if Dorcha turned away before he had a chance to strike. He had to stay patient just a moment more.
In half a blink, Dorcha loosed his flame. The shield was gone in an instant: it melted from his hand and rolled in warm lines down his wrist. But the rest of his armor was covered in scales. Kael picked up speed. His legs pounded against the earth as he charged for the core of the flame — towards the patch that shone the brightest. He waited until he was certain that Dorcha was within his range.
Then he tore Daybreak from its sheath.
Though he’d drawn it once before, the sword’s power still shocked him. The heat radiating from its edges tested his armor: it slipped between the scales and burned the flesh beneath. But Kael hardly noticed.
He slung Daybreak towards the center of the flame and a white-hot arc of fire spewed from its molten edges. Kael fell onto his back at the noise of Dorcha’s anguished roar — and narrowly avoided getting crushed to death as the dragon soared over his head.
Boulders rolled away and the earth churned aside as Dorcha fell. His great claws dragged ruts into the ground as he tried to stop his body from flipping; his wings scraped all the grass from its top.
For a moment, Kael thought the battle was over. He leapt to his feet and had taken a step closer when Dorcha’s head whipped around. There was a long, smooth cut down the middle of his face — one that stretched from the crook of his rig
ht eye, across his spiny muzzle, and down to his chin.
The wound steamed as hot blood wept from its edges, and the pain must’ve shocked him: the black broke from his eyes. He watched Kael through portals of flaming yellow, now. The blackened slits narrowed upon Daybreak for half a blink before his great body shot into the air.
Kael swore as Dorcha headed west. He would never be able to chase the dragon on foot, and Kyleigh was still somewhere inside Midlan.
Ulric must’ve been able to read the murder in his eyes. The archmage hiked up his robes and went sprinting down the stairs the moment Kael turned, rushing for the safety of the courtyard.
The front gates were sealed tightly shut. Footsteps tromped behind them as the soldiers braced themselves against the doors. Metal strips covered the wood from top to bottom, hammered into the planks by fist-sized bolts. A series of iron beams were clamped across the doors’ backs, holding them together tightly. Kael could just make them out through the slight gap between doors.
When he stepped closer, the wood groaned. The soldiers pressed their bodies tighter against the gates. They likely watched his shadow move along the crack at the doors’ bottoms, cringed against Daybreak’s blinding light. The gates were far more thick than tall — almost insignificant in size, compared to the wall they sat in. They were designed to foil the ram and make burning through almost impossible.
But most importantly, the gates opened outward instead of in.
This would’ve certainly slowed a battering ram, and it’d likely kept Midlan’s enemies out for ages. But today, it would do them no good.
Kael kicked the gates hard and waited as the soldiers threw themselves against it. Then he drew Daybreak over his head and brought it down between the doors.
The iron bolts melted helplessly against the sword’s blinding flame. They clicked as they snapped into two — and the instant the bolts were gone, the soldiers’ weight did the rest.
