Muir shielded Rapunzel beneath him. The three riflemen knelt to reload while the sword-wielding soldiers surged forward. At that moment, Muir rejoined the rebel offensive. He flew at them, screaming an Oclandic war cry, buffeting them with his wings and tearing with his claws. He took down three at once by overwhelming them.
By the end, Milo had lost five men, one of them crushed by the demolished building, the others slain during the sword battle or gunfight. The rebels hurried away from the area and took shelter behind an abandoned watch station while Rapunzel healed the survivors.
“We can’t stand against hundreds of soldiers. How could she have possibly known?” one of the rebels asked.
“My brother,” Rapunzel said. When Muir turned to face her, she was staring down the road at the still-frozen royal soldier she’d killed. She tore her gaze away.
“Your brother?” Milo asked.
“The queen knew of your plans because my brother was aware. You and he exchanged letters about the rebellion brewing here. My only guess is that she’s gotten into his mind as she did with my father. Now any secrets Joren once held are Queen Gothel’s secrets.”
Milo rubbed his face. “I told him little, only that we were preparing to make a stand. When he last wrote, he asked me to hold off a while longer. He wanted to convince your father to step down first and let him assume the throne.”
“And now she means to crush the opposition,” Muir said. “This is what tyrants do. They make examples—they sow despair and crush the enemy so thoroughly, so cruelly, no one else would dare to ever stand against them.”
Milo grunted. “With that knowledge in hand, it would have taken no time at all for her to send a messenger bird from the castle to Fort Tir de Glace. It’s a day’s march at the most. Two in this weather.”
“We can’t win this,” a man said, shoulders sagging.
“We’ll have to stand down. Surrender.”
“They’ll murder everyone to stop us.”
“I’ll hang before I let these bastards burn the entire city.”
Another crash roared somewhere else in the city, and fire stretched toward the sky. Muir had been a young lad during the battle between Dalborough and Cairn Ocland, but he’d heard stories from older griffins who witnessed the terrifying machines of war in action when they’d laid siege against Mount Benthwaite. They’d come on wheels drawn by horses, the old birds had said, belching flames and screaming projectiles from their iron maws that tore through the castle walls.
These tools and weapons of destruction appeared to be no different.
Captain Milo sank against the light pole. “The revolt has failed. They’ll burn everything before they allow us to win. Kill every man, woman, and child who had nothing to do with our grievance.”
Muir spun to face them. “I’ve seen this before. We haven’t lost this fight yet.”
“How can we win against this? We weren’t prepared for her to arrive so quickly. We should have had time to build a defensive.”
“No. It won’t fail.” Muir glanced at the skies. “I’ve held something back from all of you, but there may never be a better time than now to reveal my other gift.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to put out the fires and save the city before it burns.” He stretched out his wings and dipped low enough for Rapunzel to mount him. “Climb on my back.”
The moment she settled on his back and gained her seat, Muir took off into the darkening sky and called to his fellow griffins. His voice echoed across the skies and no doubt traveled for miles to where Vandry had moored the Twilight Witch.
Smoke had filled the misty air with the odor of gunpowder, burning wood, and scorched stone. There was indeed an army at Floren’s outskirts, lines of soldiers manning siege machines while squads marched the streets and battled members of the resistance.
As they soared above the ravaged city, Muir reached into the heavens and seized the clouds with his thoughts. They didn’t yield to him at first, but he persisted and plucked at them with his concentration until cool moisture grew heavy in the air.
Not enough. Not hardly enough.
Muir circled above them and tapped into his gift again. The gentle mist intensified to a drizzle. Lightning struck in the distance—he’d missed. Too long had passed since he’d needed to call it from the sky.
“They’re loading up again!” Rapunzel cried. “Whatever you intend to do, please do it now, Muir.”
A sizzling bolt lanced down from the sky and struck the siege weapon. Wooden splinters blew out in every direction, taking down the soldiers in the immediate vicinity. When the smoke cleared, only a burnt crater remained.
Muir glanced back to find a pair of awestruck blue eyes staring at him, her mouth agape. Something about her stunned gaze stirred his pride and made him wish she could always look upon him with such profound respect.
“You’re an elementalist too!”
“I’m no mage. It’s merely one of the talents granted to the twelve shifter clans of Cairn Ocland. We each have a different talent, a different magical element granted to us. Your kingdom and legends know of us as sea hawks, but to the people of Cairn Ocland, we are thunderbirds.”
The rolling clouds darkened gray, lit by streaks of blue and silver lightning. The rain began gently at first, having little effect on the fires below. Due to whatever the soldiers had used to create their explosives, instead of quenching the flames, water spread it further and created oily lakes of liquid fire.
Somewhere in the clouds, one of the other griffins called to him, the shrill cry sounding like Faolan.
Below them, people scurried around trying to throw snow and slush onto the fires to smother them.
“If I turn this into a thunderstorm, could you make it snow?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then be ready.”
When Muir returned his fellow griffin’s cry, Sòlas answered him, and a flash in the clouds revealed their silhouettes not far behind him. They were ready.
Thunder cracked overhead, and lightning danced along his wings. The mist intensified into a roaring downpour, creating thick sheets of rain that beat against the ground. Now it was up to Rapunzel, and she didn’t disappoint. The rain transformed, falling in fat, heavy flakes. The snowfall thickened until Muir couldn't see more than a foot beyond his beak.
“It’s working,” Rapunzel cried.
Instead of overwhelming the storm, the blizzard became something else, the two forces colliding, blending, evolving into something new and just as treacherous. Thunder boomed somewhere in the black cloudbank, and then another sizzling bolt descended into the army. It scattered their forces and sent men fleeing for shelter.
Muir was one with the storm. He could feel the fury of the blizzard and the electricity branching through it, but somewhere beneath, there was that same sensation of her calling to him in every snowflake.
A series of wicked bolts swept over what remained of the invaders down below and tore through their numbers like a scythe felling wheat. Sòlas had always been the strongest of them when it came to riding the storms, and he did it expertly. Together, the three griffins demolished the enemy forces as resistance fighters overtook the remaining soldiers barricaded behind Château d’Anise’s gates.
Chapter
Rapunzel observed the city from the château’s balcony. The storm had finally broken on its own after the exhausted griffins landed, leaving nothing but stars and wisps of smoke on the horizon.
Despite their victory, no celebratory fireworks exploded over Floren that night at the conclusion of the battle, breaking with a longstanding Eisland tradition. Instead, bells tolled in Countess Tasia’s memory. Lord Emberlene had lied about arresting her. He’d had her killed that very night in secrecy.
He would answer for his crimes. Soon, like all the others they had apprehended. There were so many wounded that, after they’d taken the city and the manor, she’d spent hours more stitching wounds, mend
ing bones, and relieving the pain of those who couldn’t be saved until she depleted her magical stamina.
Rapunzel should have long ago retired to the room she’d claimed, but she couldn’t take her thoughts off her twin, quite thankful Joren had pleaded with her to take her lessons in the healing arts seriously. Where her father had failed, her brother had succeeded in talking sense into her.
At the time, she’d envied him for attending the collegium, and she’d wanted nothing more than to take his place instead of remaining behind with her dull tutors. Her brother had been wise before his years, however, promising there was no harm in becoming a well-rounded mage talented in multiple disciplines.
Joren, I will save you from her.
Despite her longing to see her little brother safe and sound, freeing him that night was beyond her control.
But there was something she could do.
Rapunzel drifted toward Muir’s door. He’d excused himself an hour ago after taking a bedroom on the manor’s third floor. She gathered her courage and knocked.
Moments passed, but when she strained her hearing, she heard the rustling of sheets. He called out something in his native tongue, and when the door opened, he was barefoot and shirtless, dressed in the accursed kilt she wanted to unravel from around his hips.
Making love to her new husband seemed as fitting a way as any to celebrate their victory.
“Rapunzel?”
“Forgive me for disturbing your rest, Muir, if anyone deserves peaceful sleep, it’s you.”
“You worked as hard as I did, if not harder. There would be many more lost lives were it not for your healing skills.”
The compliment from Muir flushed her body with warmth. “And were it not for you and your clansmen, we would have lost the battle and the city. I…. There are no words able to show my appreciation for what you have done. Thank you feels trite.”
“No thanks are needed.” He hadn’t invited her inside and stood over the threshold to his room, one hand resting on the frame. “You didn’t seek me in the middle of the night to thank me again for joining your war effort. What’s wrong?”
Rapunzel stepped forward until Muir was forced back a step. “I came to ask about us.”
“Us?”
“We are married, but we haven’t yet shared a bed.”
Muir raised one brow. “Are we having this discussion. Really?”
“Yes. We are.” She raised her chin and refused to shrink back. “People will find it odd we’ve taken two different rooms.”
“For one, you had no say in the matter. Would you not like to pick a husband of your own without your brother’s meddling now that you are free?”
Despite spending most of her upbringing and life around irritating men, she’d never wanted to slap one as much as she did when speaking with Muir. The man could be dense, or rather, blind at times. Did he not realize how attractive she found him—not merely in physical traits, but every quality he’d displayed since their initial meeting?
“Perhaps I have chosen and I’m satisfied with what I have. I couldn’t ask for better.”
Muir shook his head. “I’m not doing this now.”
“There is no better time. The battle is behind us, and the night is calm. I want an actual conversation—”
Her husband lifted her from the threshold, set her in the hall, and shut the door. To further the insult, the lock clicked into place, the sound echoing the sharp stab in her gut. A deep cold welled up within her, at odds with the burning heat creeping up her neck.
How dare he? How dare he set her outside like some unruly child placed in the corner on time-out? She raised her fist to hammer on the door but paused before it struck wood.
He was perfectly within his right to decline.
And perhaps that hurt her most of all, because she’d thought there was a connection between them. She’d thought there was an attraction buried beneath the friendly jibes and hospitable diplomacy, thought she saw something simmering between them whenever his gaze lingered too long on her neck or traced the curve of her bosom.
Wishful thinking, she thought, deflating more with each passing second. He’s stuck with me, and that’s all there is to it.
Understanding the truth didn’t make it hurt any less.
She turned from the door, shoulders slumped and eyes burning. Before she’d made it more than three steps, Muir’s door opened again.
“Rapunzel, forgive me.”
His soft words made her pause, but she remained with her back to him, her spine stiff. “I’ll respect your wishes, Muir, and leave you be.”
“That’s not—will you come in and let me explain?”
“All right.” Careful to dry her cheeks before she turned, Rapunzel returned to his room and stepped inside. Muir had the curtains drawn back from the windows so a cool breeze snaked through the room. Hints of smoke from the fires hung in the air.
He paced back and forth across the floor, and since she had never seen him so agitated before, she kept quiet and allowed him the time he needed to gather his thoughts. She took a seat on a trunk beside the bed and folded her hands in her lap.
“It’s different for my kind,” Muir said after a long pause. “For shifters, for people of the twelve clans, joining two bodies is no different than joining two souls. It is joining two souls.”
“I’m not sure I understand. How do souls join? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Perhaps it is because we are touched by the gods. I do not know why, only that it is how things are for us.”
“This soul joining… what does it do?” she asked.
“It means that for as long as we both shall live, when we’re apart, I would think of no one but you. That when we’re together, no one else in the room will matter.” As he spoke, he grew quieter, his voice barely above a whisper. “And it means if one of us should die before the other, the survivor will live a miserable half-life, each day joyless and filled with sorrow. It rips the heart from a man’s chest and crushes his soul until every breath is an effort and each subsequent day after her loss is a trial to endure.”
She stared at him, alarm raising the fine hairs on her nape and spreading goose bumps down her bare arms. “Always? That would be… that would doom many of your people to a sorry existence. Husbands lose wives frequently to sickness and childbirth. Wives survive their spouses lost to sea, battle, and other disasters. But to remain forever unhappy, in emotional limbo….” She shook her head. “That is no blessing, Muir, that is a curse.”
“Far from it. Because there are the happy moments before it, and it makes all the heartache, all the agony, worth every second to have seen their smile and known you were loved by them.”
“I wonder how your people tolerate such a thing at all. Are you certain it’s so… intense?”
“Quite. Experience is quite telling.”
Rapunzel stared at him. The raw, unconcealed pain on Muir’s face answered every question she had, every inquiry on the tip of her tongue. She’d never seen him so exposed. So open. It was no wonder he didn’t want her if he’d already had and lost a wife. Her hand hovered out to touch him, only to withdraw in uncertainty. “Is there no way to temper it?”
His bitter smile ran ice down her spine. “I’ve met some shifters able to escape it, but they were blessed with children. When one loses a mate and wee ones remain, they become the stars in our sky.”
“But you had none.”
His fragile smile diminished altogether. “Not one. Some days, it feels as if I’m drowning without her. Others, I keep on for my friends and loved ones. For Sòlas and Faolan.”
“I’m so sorry. I know that must seem so trite to say, but I cannot truly begin to imagine what you must have felt.”
“Though it may seem a curse to you, Princess Rapunzel, our bonds are as much a gift from the stars as our animal halves. I’ve come to terms with that, and perhaps, gods bless me, one day soon I shall join her. Those few and precious days I had with Fion
a were the brightest moments of my life.”
Rapunzel moistened her lips, searching for anything appropriate to say. Stepping closer, she set her palm on his arm. “Fiona is a beautiful name. If… if it is not prying, may I ask what happened?”
“The war. There was a dark fae corrupting much of our kingdom, and when King Alistair sought our help, my clan flew to his aid. I wasn’t yet alpha then, but we gathered our strongest warriors and crossed the kingdom.” He shook his head and gazed out the window.
“How long had you two been together?”
“I had known her since we were both fledglings, but she only became my mate a year before her death. Scarcely enough time for babies….” He sighed. “Scarcely enough time for anything I suppose. I said goodbye to many friends and family that day, including my mum, but losing Fiona... she was the one death I’ll never overcome, Rapunzel. I don’t think I can be the husband you deserve.”
And yet, he had been forced into a marriage with her despite his wishes.
“I understand,” she said in a quiet voice. “I hadn’t meant to press you. Of course, once there is peace in Eisland, we’ll seek a priest for an annulment.”
“A what?”
“It means he will dissolve our marriage in accordance with our laws. You’ll no longer be bound to me. In fact, it shall be treated as if it never happened at all, and you’ll be free to carry on as you like.”
“And you?”
“I will try to salvage the kingdom my mother ruined.”
* * *
Sleep remained elusive for Rapunzel, something she grasped in fleeting moments before sunbeams filtered through her bedroom windows and she surrendered the battle.
Disgruntled, she enjoyed a morning bath and picked through the clothing at her disposal. Dresses had become impractical, so she tucked a pale ivory and pink blouse into rich, caramel-hued riding leathers after rifling through Lady Emberlene’s belongings. She and her wretched husband no longer needed them, as they would be living in prison burlap until the end of their miserable lives.
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