by S. M. Boyce
Pain. Pain shook the foundations of Kara’s mind, nearly kicking her from the memory. This part of the memory fragmented. The wisps broke apart into shards. They sped by, each showing a fleeting image with no meaning.
The unicorn shifted into a snake and slithered away—a drenowith. Aislynn cursed, the sound booming in the darkness.
Carden’s laughter echoed around her. His face appeared in a shard of glass, wrinkles smoothed into a younger image of himself. A young boy with Braeden’s dark eyes whispered an apology to her. A woman screamed. A dark line creased across Kara’s vision, blotting out all light and all hope. Something wriggled into her mouth and shocked her from within.
Kara screamed and pushed away. Rocks dug into her back as she fell, no longer held against the wall by Aislynn’s hand.
The mountain cave and the table reappeared in blurry streaks. Men’s hands grabbed her, pulling her away. Aislynn screamed again. A guard’s grip on Kara tightened. She looked up.
General Krik narrowed his eyes in a glare that told her she’d done something wrong, something out of line. His fingers pinched her skin, cutting off her circulation. Kara’s fingertips bleached from the lack of blood.
Aislynn glared at Kara. “You should never have seen that! You had no right!”
Hatred pooled in Kara’s gut. Aislynn was a coward. She had hunted drenowith and learned nothing from her experience. Hunting drenowith the first time had cost her days in Carden’s dungeons, and even that had been for a nobler cause than stealing power for a war.
Kara glared back. “The drenowith tricked you because you deserved it! You were hunting them!”
General Krik shook her. “Be silent, child!”
The spikes struck a bone in Kara’s arm, and she buckled under the pain.
Aislynn pushed the guards aside. “Do not slander me! I never hunted drenowith!”
“Your memory said otherwise, you liar!” Kara screamed.
“My lady, the muse is coming! It is close!” a soldier called from outside.
Aislynn balled her hand into a fist. “Then let us welcome her.”
The Blood’s skin rippled, sending waves of red and purple light flashing across the ceiling. She grew. Her hair curled, the ringlets getting tight as her hair shortened and glowed like the moon. She turned to Kara and grinned, eyes pink.
“Is that—?” Kara pushed herself against the wall. This had to be Aislynn’s daru, her soul. If Aislynn’s daru was anything like Braeden’s, even the muses might not stand a chance.
This wasn’t the Aislynn she had come to know—this was the true ruler of Ayavel. Aislynn was insane. Whatever Carden had done to her all those years ago had broken her completely.
Men screamed outside. Kara willed the muse—she assumed it was Adele—to go away. Her brow wrinkled as she focused on the threat of a trap, but without any luck. Their connection was one-way.
Adele broke through a line of men. She dove into the cave, a fury of feathers and talons. But Aislynn braced herself as if she had nothing to lose. She caught the charging muse with both hands. They flew backward into a cave wall. Guards closed in at the entrance, too many of them to count. The tiny room became suddenly smaller, and Kara feared Adele would pay for her kindness with her life.
Chapter 16
Battered
Aislynn ducked a jab from the muse, inwardly wishing she hadn’t let the Magari girl distract her. She was supposed to take the muse off-guard and surprise the wicked thing. This drenowith spun and attacked almost too quickly to see, but Aislynn had to be faster.
Two of her guards’ bodies flew past and slammed into the wall. Their silver blood splattered onto her gown, but she couldn’t falter. She couldn’t pause. This was her one and only chance to steal a muse’s blood and thereby steal its magic.
It was finally Aislynn’s time to be truly powerful.
She dodged the muse yet again. Her daru was a gift, certainly, but it was not enough. Every Blood’s daru was different. She’d heard tales of the dead Queen of Hillside—rest Lorraine’s soul. That woman’s daru was a vicious thing that could barely discern friend from foe. It sacrificed control for power. Gavin’s daru was nothing but focused rage; whatever the object of his desire, it was either taken or destroyed. Carden—that vile man seemed to have focused control and increased power. She had no idea why he didn’t walk around in his daru all the time.
No—Aislynn’s was different. Weak. It had very little physical power, only enhanced senses. She could predict movement, hear a branch snap a mile away, taste a change in the weather—she could even smell emotion. But each of those gifts was useless if she wasn’t strong enough to stop an attack.
So today, finally, she would have the power of a god and her revenge, all at once.
The muse’s movements blurred across the cave, always a streak of brown and gold. Limbs flew as it tore through the room, clawing and decapitating Aislynn’s men. There was no telling what it was the drenowith had changed to, but Aislynn didn’t care. All she needed were its wrists and neck.
It. Muses were creatures—monsters that had lived too long and deserved to die.
A black shadow snaked across Aislynn’s vision. Her heart skipped beats. She faltered as the sliver of darkness passed. No other eyes acknowledged the streak; none stopped to gape, or to wonder why their Blood had all but frozen in place.
The slivers from Carden’s torture never left her.
She waited for the telltale shock, the tremor that always rattled her brain when the slivers made an appearance. It came. The agony burned in her neck and raced up to her temples. She closed her eyes, fighting the bile in the back of her throat. Her mind tensed. The veins in her neck bulged. Her breathing stopped. One, two—three seconds, and it was over. Barely enough to even notice.
“MY LADY!” a guard screamed.
Aislynn opened her eyes.
Time slowed as her senses felt around the world, discerning and predicting movement before it happened. The muse, in its human form, stood over a fallen guard. Its copper hair fell over the guard’s face. Its hand blurred, changing shape into a claw. It raised its arm to strike. The soldier screamed.
Aislynn aimed her hand at the muse, focusing her energy into an attack. White light shot from her fingers, arching in splintered lines to the muse. It traced the creature’s body, engulfing it in jagged lines of broken light. The muse opened its mouth to scream, but the sound was a cacophony of heartbreak: splintering wood, snapping bones, sizzling flesh. It was not a scream, but a wail.
A call.
“It’s calling for its mate!” Aislynn yelled.
Aislynn doubled her effort and focused all her energy into slowing time. With her weak daru, it was the only way to get the upper hand. Her body tensed. She called on every ounce of energy from her guards—she needed it all to make this work.
Everything knelt to her: her guards, even the tension in the room bent before her, yielding as she gave forth every ounce of her magic into suspending time. It wouldn’t last long, but she only needed a few seconds.
The muse’s claw hovered in the air, the guard’s face wrinkled in frozen fear. Aislynn walked to the drenowith.
With her free hand, Aislynn pulled a symbol from her pocket. It was the Broken Trinity—supposedly the one bit of magic that could subdue a drenowith. Three lines of silver curved around each other, thickening as they came to the tail end of the line before it. Woven together, they looked something like a triangle.
The Broken Trinity’s silver glowed at Aislynn’s touch and broke apart in her hand. The three curves of the symbol now rested in her free palm, ready to break the monster before her. General Krik had found this thing, and if it didn’t work, Aislynn would kill him herself.
She shoved one of the curves against the muse’s throat. It burned the skin, fusing itself to the creature. The beast’s lips parted in a slow arc as if to scream, but Aislynn slapped it hard across the face with the remaining symbols to silence it. Two gashes marred the dre
nowith’s cheek.
Two symbols remained. Aislynn placed one on each of the creature’s wrists. With a sigh of relief, she saw that they, too, burrowed their way into the muse’s skin. If this worked, the muse would not be able to move on its own until Aislynn removed the symbols.
Time resumed with a hiss. The muse knelt, dropping its weight to its knees with the fury it had just directed toward the guard. It hung its head such that Aislynn couldn’t see its face.
“What have you done?” it asked. Its voice trembled.
“I have put you in your place.”
With that, Aislynn nodded to whatever guards survived. Two rushed forward and lifted the muse into a vacant seat at the table—the giving seat. Aislynn moved the muse’s hands until the wrists settled into the raised platform before the table. With a shove, she pushed the muse’s wrists into seven short spikes in the indents.
It screamed again. When the shriek faded away, the muse spoke in a whisper Aislynn didn’t hear.
“What now?” she asked.
“Let Kara go.”
Aislynn laughed. She hadn’t been expecting that at all. She turned to face the Vagabond, who leaned against the wall. The girl’s eyes flittered open and closed again. Her chest rose and fell in an irregular pattern. Weak as she was from the cuffs, she would survive another few hours at least. Aislynn didn’t need to hurry.
“The Vagabond lured you here, and you would have me release her?” she finally asked.
The muse nodded. “I vowed to protect her. Though faith means little to your kind, I will not break my promise.”
“My kind? You ridiculous thing. Your people have done nothing but torment and destroy for eons! Every natural disaster has been your doing! The lot of you practice magic you could never hope to understand and unleash the fury of nature on the innocents who happen to get in your way when you make a mistake!”
“A few of us are so foolish, yes, but not all!”
Aislynn grimaced. “I’ve heard enough.”
She waved her hand, and the muse’s mouth shut in response. Aislynn resisted the impulse to smile in surprise at yet another ability of the symbols. She had done that quite by mistake.
Aislynn walked to the other end of the table and sat at the opposite seat. She set her wrists on the platform and took a deep breath. This would hurt.
She pressed her hands into the spikes on the platform. Her blood trickled over the table’s surface, but she closed her eyes to keep from being distracted. She spread her fingers, calling to the magic in the table. Humming filled the cave. Warmth spread over her shoulders and spilt down her back.
The ritual had begun. Only Aislynn could stop it now, and she wouldn’t stop until the muse died.
Crickets chirped in the forest below, singing to Garrett as he stalked his prey through the night.
Drenowith rarely got orders to kill. These tasks came from Verum himself, the master of their drenowith Council, and were only levied against those who would harm the drenowith race.
It was an honor to be chosen to hunt, but Garrett could only think of Adele. They were weak when apart. He and Adele were the only muses to love—the rest thought only of themselves. But Adele was Garrett’s world. When they were together, no force alive could touch them. When they were apart, they were susceptible. They could die.
But Verum made himself clear. Garrett was to do this—alone. Adele could not join him, likely because they suspected she was still helping Kara. Garrett had no need to make things worse by questioning authority.
No, he would run this errand and be done with it.
A twig cracked a quarter mile off. He stifled a chuckle. Every drenowith possessed incredible senses. They could even taste water in the air or hear breathing two miles off. Luckily, only the muses themselves knew that. Such was the benefit of keeping their existence mostly secret.
His prey thought it was the hunter. He finally allowed himself a grin. This would be too easy.
An isen made its way up the path, creeping along the trail at a pace that would rival a turtle. Garrett could smell the lilac scent pooling on the sporadic breezes, and it made his hair stand on end. Even drenowith hated the isen—soul stealers could take any soul they pleased, even an immortal one.
Garrett lost himself to thought as the isen approached. He would know when Niccoli came too close.
Niccoli—it made sense that the Council would want him dead. The man was a terror. He had survived fifteen hundred years and built the strongest guild known to Ourea. He openly hunted drenowith—and that was where he went wrong.
None hunted drenowith and survived.
A boot crunched the earth beneath it in a footstep that would have been too slow for human ears to recognize. Niccoli stood perhaps fifteen feet away now.
About time.
Garrett leaned forward and used the movement to loosen up his hand. Centuries ago, Adele had taught him how to summon a sword from the air without using his own energy at all. He had never again carried a weapon. There had been no point.
A leaf scraped against the linen of a shirt. Weight shifted to another leg as Niccoli prepared to lunge. Garrett didn’t move, preferring to let the isen think he’d truly snuck up on a muse.
Niccoli dove forward. Garrett rolled away from the cliff edge, half-hoping the isen would simply run himself off the cliff.
He didn’t.
Garrett summoned the sword and dove for the isen’s heart.
That should have been it. Garrett rarely missed. He rarely made a mistake. But tonight, he was without Adele. He could be easily distracted.
The sword plunged into the isen’s side. Niccoli doubled over and fell to the ground with a thump. Garrett sighed. Niccoli fought to push himself up, to recover, but even an isen couldn’t ignore a wound that deep. His arm shook and gave out each time he tried to stand, always sending him face-first into the dirt.
Garrett needed to put him out of his misery. He lifted the sword to the isen’s neck, to sever it and be done with the whole affair. He applied pressure, aimed, and—
A wail flew by on the wind. The sound broke his heart, made it flutter. Panic raced through him, though Niccoli continued in his fruitless endeavor to stand.
That was the call. Adele was in danger.
Garrett ran to the cliff edge and jumped off, shifting as he fell. Leathery wings broke from his back. Hair sprouted on his hands and face. He had only envisioned the wings; he had no idea what he’d become. Only finding Adele mattered.
Aislynn dared open her eyes only when the first string of pain burned in her wrist.
The muse’s clear blood filled each crevice in the table’s surface as it made its way closer. Very soon, Aislynn would have magic known only to the most powerful creatures in Ourea.
The muse’s head drooped over its hands. Its hair hid its face. It leaned forward, most of its blood already in the tiny chasms comprising the table’s surface.
Pain splintered up Aislynn’s arms. Her chest rose and fell faster and faster, but no air reached her lungs. Her wrists stung as the muse’s blood crept into her body, and the pain grew each second. Her veins tightened. Her arms shook, and every fiber of her being told her to pull away. But she would fail if she stopped the transfusion. She would lose the power. The glory. She would never be able to use her new magic to forever end the bickering in Ourea.
Even if this failed, she didn’t fear death. She had an Heir; though Evelyn still had much to learn, at least the bloodline wouldn’t die out. Aislynn had nothing to lose but Niccoli.
She faltered. Niccoli: her one light in life.
Memories flittered by in glimpses: the moon framing his silhouette; the brush of his hand on her face; his breath on her neck; his first words to her. She was only sixteen when he found her on the edge of Ayavel, looking into a pond.
“It would be torture to never again see that face of yours, and that alone saved you tonight,” he’d said.
She took a deep breath, expelling his rough voice from
her mind. He was immortal. He would live forever; she would die. To him, she was a toy. As much as she loved him, he would forget her when she died.
Unless—unless a muse’s blood made her immortal, too. She could be with him forever.
Aislynn grinned. She wouldn’t stop the transfer. This would either work or kill her.
Garrett flew too quickly to be seen. In a matter of minutes, he’d covered hundreds of miles. It was unsafe, unwise even, but he might already be too late.
If Adele had called to him like that, it was life or death.
His panic pulled him toward a mountain that first appeared as a blip on the horizon. He could sense her in a cave, likely dying. He would kill everything in there until he found her. Not even the spiders were safe.
He reached a row of guards long before they realized there was danger. A guard scratched his head, the arm blocking Garrett’s path at the wrong moment. Garrett took the arm with him into the cave. The owner screamed in agony outside.
He only caught glimpses of the room: a table, the chained Vagabond girl, the Ayavelian queen, blood—Adele.
He landed first on the Ayavelian queen’s neck. His momentum pushed her against the cave wall before she could scream. Something popped. He ran his claws down the queen’s neck, spilling her iridescent blood down her dress. Guards rushed forward, but he tore off their heads and limbs until nothing remained. Blood pooled on his hands.
Garrett stopped only when Adele came into view once more. He knelt beside her and lifted her into his arms. She slumped, unable to even hold up her own head.
He paused. His senses numbed until he couldn’t smell or hear or feel anything. The world returned to its normal pace, as he could only stare at his love. His life. He lifted her head to his and brushed his nose on her cheek, but her eyelids didn’t even flutter.
Someone sobbed. He looked up to see the Ayavelian queen, crumpled against the wall. She reached out blindly with her hands, as if she couldn’t see.
Not far off, Kara watched him with wide eyes, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t plead, and it almost seemed as if she didn’t hope, either. She did not ask for forgiveness, which was for the best—he figured this was somehow her fault and could not yet forgive her.
