by Shae Ford
Ulric cried out when Crevan grabbed him by his face. Red seared the edge of his vision and madness swelled inside his veins. He was going to crush Ulric between his fingers, snap his skull into pieces and grind all of the little bits of bone into the mortar beneath his feet …
“… the Dragongirl!”
A cry swam through his ears, followed by a pressure on his arm. Someone grabbed his wrist. A man’s full weight dragged him down, pulling his hand away from Ulric … stopping him, slowing the pressure …
Crevan swung out against the force that held him back and struck a steward across the face.
His slight body flopped onto the ground. Crevan’s blow had broken his nose, busted his lips, and must’ve knocked out at least one of his teeth: there was a large, black gap at their front. The steward’s mouth parted around his swollen lips and he moaned: “The Dragongirl … escaped, Your Majesty. Have to move … had to warn … coming …” Blood poured in a renewed trickled from his nose as he raised himself up. “She’s coming for … the throne room!”
The madness fled Crevan’s eyes in a blast of cold. Shouts filled the hallway, shadows scraped across the walls. Ulric lay curled upon the ground at his feet, clutching piteously at his face.
“Get up and follow me. Now!”
But no matter how Crevan barked, Ulric wouldn’t move. Bruises welled across his head and gashes marred his face. In his rage, Crevan had wounded him: the archmage could no longer feel the shackle’s curse above his pain. Now the madness was gone … and his sword was broken.
He feared what would happen if Ulric realized he was free.
“Seal the doors,” Crevan managed to gasp as he backed away. He kept a wary eye on Ulric while the stewards rushed to do as they were told. The moment they’d turned their backs, he bolted for the passageway.
The tunnels through Midlan were his only escape, now. There was a tapestry hanging at the back of the throne room. He ripped it aside and slid through the door behind it. Crevan stumbled for a moment, feeling along the wall until he touched a familiar track of stone.
He’d traveled this path so many times before that the darkness hardly slowed him. The stairs and passages twisted beneath his feet. They would carry him away from Midlan. He would escape with his life. But before he left, he had to retrieve the sword.
He couldn’t let her have it. He couldn’t let her carry it again.
I’m going to teach you, Crevan. Let me show you —
No! He shoved her voice away and clawed the stone door aside. Crevan tumbled out into a well-lit passage and staggered to his chambers. His fingers numbed against the door’s handle. When he finally managed to get it open, he fell inside.
The room beyond was dark. All of the windows had been sealed with stone and mortar; the hearth fire burned out days ago. Crevan rushed to the table beside the hearth and gasped in relief when he saw that the sword still lay upon it.
He snatched it up and had gone to turn when he noticed the scabbard was strangely … light.
An orange glow flickered from beyond the opened door — one thin beam to see by. He turned the scabbard’s mouth into the light, hands shaking. It was empty. The sword was gone.
All of the blood plummeted from his body and gathered in the bottoms of his feet. The line of orange light thinned considerably as Crevan stared down at the scabbard. He watched it shrink into a thread, a scratch … until it finally disappeared with a click of the closed door.
“It’s been a long while, Crevan.”
Her voice scraped down his spine with a dagger’s edge, deepening to a growl at his name. The scabbard slipped from his hand. He stumbled in the pitch black of the room until his back struck a wall. Crevan was pinned inside the darkness, blind and helpless as her words filled the chamber with cold:
“I had a feeling I’d find you here. This is where it all began, isn’t it? This is precisely where I found you the last time we … talked.”
Crevan’s tongue swelled inside his mouth, drying even as a cold sweat drenched his face. “Please …” he managed to gasp.
A hum started in the darkness before him. It was the moan of a vengeful spirit, a sound that crushed his bones: the whispering of that cursed white sword.
“No.”
There was a hiss through the air before him and Crevan went blind against a flash of pain. His head slammed back against the wall. Warm lines of blood poured down his face, weeping from the fresh tear though his scar. Her blade split that line a second time. She’d carved him exactly where she’d carved before.
His blood spilled with such a resigning weight that it dragged him to his knees. Crevan barely heard it when she drove her fist into the bricked window beside him. He moaned and shut his eyes when she began to claw the stone aside, as the gray dawn came spilling in through the window behind it.
The madness was gone. He would’ve given anything to have it consume him, to have its red fury cover the world. But she’d taken it from him. She’d taken everything from him. Crevan had never been made to cower before she struck him. He’d never known fear. He’d never lost. But the Dragongirl stripped him of his blood, his pride.
The day she’d split his face was the day he’d first tasted death … and now, it was all happening again.
“Please, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Can you give me the lives of my wolves, the lives of their pups?”
“The curse is broken! They’re free to go,” Crevan said. He pressed a sleeve against his wound and dragged himself to his feet. “Your wolves can leave this very —”
“Those aren’t my wolves, Crevan. Not anymore. You’ve taken all the life from them, destroyed their souls with your hate. Had you released them when I first asked — when I first begged you to — they might’ve gone on to live happy lives. But now their only happiness will be in the peace of the eternal woods.”
She ripped the last chunk of stone from the window and glared out into the coming dawn. Her eyes raged against its light. Their fires clenched his chest in a pitiless, aching cold.
“Please …”
“Do you remember the day I asked you for them?” she said quietly, her eyes distant. “Do you remember what you said to me?”
“No — I don’t,” he said when her hand curled into a fist. “I don’t remember!”
“You said …”
Her voice trailed into a groan. Red bloomed across her throat for a moment as her collar flared — and Crevan saw his chance.
“End yourself, beast,” he said as he sprang to his feet. Her face twisted against the pain of the blazing collar; sweat filmed her brow. “Yes, drag the blade across your throat. Do not stop. Coat the floors with your blood.”
The curved white sword rose against the shaking of her arm. It came to within a mere inch of her neck. The Dragongirl growled and her glare tightened as she clenched her fist again.
There were raw, red blisters across her fingers. She pressured them, her face paling against the pain even as her burning stare stayed locked onto Crevan. Slowly, the red began to fade from her collar.
He bolted for the door.
She caught him around the throat.
The world shook as she slammed his body against the wall. Crevan fought to stay conscious. “Don’t run from me, coward. You were always so brave, as long as you had someone else around to fight for you. Midlan, the mages, the Sovereign Five — they were only too happy to do your bidding. But they aren’t here anymore, are they? No … it’s just you and I.”
Crevan couldn’t breathe. It was happening again. It was all happening again. This room, those words, the blood pouring down his face — the unforgiving strength of the hand wrapped about his throat.
“You said you’d never understand it,” the Dragongirl whispered. “When I asked you to set my wolves free, you said you’d never understand why I would possibly waste my time on them. You said it was baffling, the idea that any man could choose to become less than human — and that being chained to yo
ur service was a far greater honor than they deserved.
“You said you’d never understand how so lovely a woman could possibly care about such a mindless pack of barbarians. You didn’t know my secret, then. You didn’t know that I was one of those barbarians.”
No, Crevan hadn’t known what she was — but he knew what would happen next. He clawed furiously at her hand, though there was no hope of breaking her grip. “Take the shapechangers, if you want them. Take the Kingdom!”
“No, it’s too late for that.”
She dragged him to the window and pressed his face hard against the glass. From where he stood, Crevan could see the entire northwestern reach of Midlan stretched out before him. His army scattered like ants from the force that burst through the western walls: an ocean that writhed with swords carried by men of every region. They tore through his soldiers and swarmed into the keep.
To the north, monsters reigned. His beasts had broken free of their chains and now set upon the soldiers trapped beside them. A mob of animals crushed through the melted gates, led by a light that made Crevan’s eyes ache against its fury.
A man moved beneath the light, his figure turned to shadow. Weapons and armor broke beneath its power; soldiers fell helplessly before it, their bodies engulfed in flame …
“The burning sword,” Crevan moaned in disbelief. He twisted against the Dragongirl’s hold. “Please, I’ll give you anything!”
She leaned to whisper in his ear: “There’s only one thing I want from you … I want you to understand.”
“No!”
“I want you to know what it feels like to have the world ripped out from under you, what it’s like to be made to watch as everything you know and love goes flashing by — what it’s like to be utterly, and completely helpless.”
The window groaned as she pressed him tighter against it. A hairline crack webbed across the glass. Crevan’s eyes twisted to the chamber behind him.
“Ulric … Ulric!” he cried, but there was no answer.
Crevan begged for the door to open, begged for the Dragongirl to be stopped. But there would be no stopping her, this time. Ulric couldn’t hear him over the pain of his wounds — wounds left by Crevan’s fury. And the man who’d burst through the door nearly twenty years ago wouldn’t be able to save him again …
Crevan had ordered the beastkeeper to skin him alive the night before.
As the Dragongirl pressed him against the shrieking glass, he could do no more but stare out at the ruins beneath him. The fortress of Midlan had fallen: its walls had given way and its enemies stormed into its keep. Never mind the catapults or the archers — this army didn’t need them. All of the wards upon his tower were useless.
From this highest, insurmountable point, King Crevan paled against the view of a man who’d lost everything.
“I think it’s time you understand what you did to the shapechangers, to the whisperers … to me. And I can think of no better way to explain it than this.” She jerked him back and slammed his head through the glass, forcing him to look at the world below. “I’m going to teach you, Crevan. Let me show you how to fly.”
CHAPTER 54
A Strange Lot
A monstrous army crushed its way across the northern courtyard.
Kael could hardly focus on the soldiers when he saw the horde of beasts pushing in behind them: wolves, lions, bears, and foxes — all twisted into hideous giants beneath the King’s curse. They towered above men on two legs, and hefted claws that looked capable of snapping entire cages of ribs.
No sooner had the monsters come pouring from the keep than the shapechangers arrived. Graymange howled at the sight of them, and the other shamans added their cries to his.
They tore off before Kael could stop them, weaving their way through the soldiers. Most of them were slight enough to slip between the ranks unnoticed — though the bear shaman left a considerable mess in his wake.
Kael knew he couldn’t keep up with them. So instead, he struck the soldiers hard. He fought to keep their eyes turned upon him and away from the shapechangers.
Daybreak roared through the air in a storm of flame and sparks. It devoured every last drop of moisture in the air above him. Against its power, the heavy flow of rain was reduced to nothing more than a thick, damp cloud.
The blade’s heat slid between the scales of Kael’s armor and bit his skin with all the unforgiving force of the sun. Though he could feel himself turning raw, he never once slowed his pace. Each new wave of soldiers staggered back from the white-hot blade in surprise — and the moment they were off balance, Kael melted them through their armor.
The monsters bellowed with fresh life when the shapechangers reached them. Though their bodies were massive, they didn’t move as one. All it took was a dog’s bite or the swipe of a badger to anger them. Kael watched a lion charge away from its companions, only to get dragged down by a horde of the strange, striped creatures who followed the fox shaman.
“Abominations!”
Kael swiped a cluster of soldiers out of his path and saw the bear shaman standing at a corner of the fray. He held the wooden medallion from his chest and it burst with a strange white light.
Three more bursts answered it, each rising from a corner of the fight. The lights swelled into pillars as they rose and fell back to earth in something that looked like a blinding white net.
The net’s cords draped over the monsters’ heads and for a moment, they clawed desperately against the trap. Then all at once, they fell silent.
The rain stopped. Kael watched in shock as the clouds above them broke, shattering like a clay pot against the stone floor, evaporating into the pale sky beyond. A red shadow crossed his boots. He turned in time to see something that looked like a mist of blood spray above the western wall.
It hung for only a moment, all of the crimson droplets trembling in the light of the coming dawn. Then it dropped back behind the wall with a hiss.
Another surge of red light drew Kael’s eyes back to the battle. The King’s monsters had fallen silent the moment the clouds broke. Now they watched with black, deadened eyes as the collars around their throats turned molten. Their shackles slid away in an iron rush, matting into their fur and cooling against their skin in ripples.
The silence lasted only a moment before the monsters attacked.
They scattered in every direction, bursting out from beneath the shaman’s white net and onto the throats of Midlan. Gold-tinged bodies flew through the air; screams racked the walls. A large group of soldiers shoved past Kael and sprinted for the gate — braving the light of Daybreak to avoid the monsters’ jaws.
It happened so quickly that Kael hardly had a chance to breathe. The mass of bodies that crushed for the gate parted against an arc of Daybreak’s molten edge, but there were still too many soldiers in the way. The tide of monsters was coming closer: drool trailed their fangs and their blackened eyes shone with fury. The shamans’ spell flickered as more of the monsters escaped the net.
Then with a pained howl, the light went out.
A wolf monster had Graymange around the throat. Panic shoved Kael forward the moment he saw the wolf shaman’s thin figure hefted above the fray. Daybreak slung through the crowd, devouring flesh and steel. Its fire seemed to burst with renewed fury as Kael’s panic rose. But there were simply too many bodies in the way.
He would never reach Graymange in time.
The wolf monster almost lost its grip when the shaman twisted into his second shape, but managed to catch him by the scruff of his neck. Kael watched them between blinding flashes of Daybreak’s light, bellowing at the tops of his lungs.
A scruffy pack of dogs tried to free their shaman, but a line of monsters kept them back. They weren’t fooled by the shapechangers’ speed: their black, pitted stares wrapped around the entire courtyard, and their warped ears twitched to follow every sound. It seemed to be taking all of the dogs’ focus just to avoid the sweep of their claws.
Grayman
ge and the wolf monster had their faces hardly an inch apart. The shaman snarled viciously, his lips peeled back from his jagged teeth — while the monster’s jaw cracked open for the kill.
Kael was still too far. The shapechangers beat helplessly against the monsters’ line. There were too many bodies in his way, his glimpses between them too brief to line up a throw. An arc from Daybreak would devour them both. He’d spun for the ramparts, hoping the height would give him a decent shot, when something high atop Midlan caught his attention.
He thought it was one of the King’s birds, at first: an object the size of a man plummeted from the mouth of an opened window. It twisted and flailed against the pull of the earth. But it wasn’t until the object crossed out from beneath the shadow of the onyx towers that he saw what it was.
A man — a man in a gold-spun tunic with a black dragon etched across its front. His hands scraped helplessly at the air beneath him; his legs kicked in wild arcs. Kael only caught a glimpse of the terror upon his face, and the deep gouge that ran across his jaw.
The man’s eyes seemed to widen with every second his body fell, until he finally struck the ground.
His death sent tremors across the battlefield. The monsters staggered backwards in the silence it left behind, and Kael saw his chance. He sheathed Daybreak and grabbed a dagger off one of the fallen soldiers. Though its hilt was slightly melted, he thought it still ought to fly.
By the time he made it up to the ramparts, everything had changed.
The wolf monster held Graymange tightly, but its snarl had fallen slack. All of the black pulled from the edges of its stare, swirling away like foam swept out by the tide. The black drained into the monster’s pupils slowly — leaving its eyes a deep, intelligent brown.
Kael’s arm froze above him, and the dagger slipped from his hand. Those eyes … they were the same as Bloodfang’s — the mark of a shapechanger with its mind still intact. Though its body stayed twisted, all of the fury left its gaze. The monster sat Graymange gently upon the ground and called to him with a low whine.
