Behind Dari stood her thinner, frail-looking twin. Lord Ross kept his big hands on Kate’s shoulders. His dark face was streaked with dirt and sweat, and his sharp eyes seemed sad beyond measure. At his side was a man Nic didn’t recognize, but he knew him for a Stregan by the blinding hues of graal lifting from his powerful shoulders. This would be Platt, Dari’s cousin, and the Stregan king. Iko and Blath formed an honor guard on either side of him, and Iko was supporting an obviously weakened and wounded Stormbreaker.
Lord Cobb and Lord Baldric were nowhere to be seen, and in his depths, Nic understood that those two heroes had fallen, and were lost to Eyrie forever. His anguish sent fresh racking pain through his back and limbs, but he couldn’t move, even to escape the burning torture his body had become. Only his eyelids and mouth obeyed his commands, and not without rebellion.
“Be easy, love.” Dari’s fingers stroked his forehead and slipped through the edges of his matted curls, and he tried to be easy, if only for her sake.
Snakekiller’s energy was oddly absent from the landscape, but Nic didn’t believe Stone’s viper was dead. Just gone. Hiding herself away from him, perhaps because her rage had driven her to attack his mother, and wound him by accident.
Dari’s energy eased into Nic’s awareness, bolstering him, but he refused to take too much. There would never be enough spare graal force to sustain him. He understood that, even if his beautiful wife didn’t.
With the fragment of strength he allowed her to grant him, Nic focused his thoughts on Stormbreaker, and let the Stone Brother know to get word to his sister when she came out of hiding that Nic loved her, and forgave her. That he owed her too much to ever be repaid.
I will, came Stormbreaker’s simple reply, as soft as a summer wind through the Veil.
Aron, Nic tried to say, with his voice and his mind, failing at both.
Aron was who he needed to see.
Aron was the only one who could help him now.
“A prince among killers,” Dari whispered, her sweet scent of spice and apples soothing him for a moment as her lips pressed against his forehead. “You never belonged in this battle, did you? Come back to me. Come back to the son who hasn’t had the chance to know you.”
Her warm tears fell across Nic’s face, and he wanted so much to grant her this gift, this boon that was far beyond his reach. He knew he’d have to face her and say his good-byes, but he couldn’t do that to her or himself.
Not yet.
He accepted a bit more of her offered energy, and this time, he addressed Lord Ross.
Lords, he managed. Ladies. Provosts. Commanders will do.
Lord Ross’s composure fractured, and the big man’s lips trembled as he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Nic knew he understood what Nic wanted him to do, but he could scarcely face the task.
“They’ll come,” Dari told him as she gave him another gentle kiss on the forehead. “They all know you’re Eyrie’s king now, and dynasts who have no heirs or rulers present to speak for them will learn soon enough, from their surviving Guard captains and messengers.”
Lord Ross turned to his nearest Guardsmen and whispered instructions.
The man straightened and bowed, then hurried off to do his lord’s bidding.
Nic closed his eyes and fell into oblivion, only to jerk awake some time later, coughing down another mouthful of elixir so strong he might as well have been swallowing burning tallow oil. All the people who greeted him before were still present, along with a brawny, bearded man dressed in Cobb’s obsidian and ruby robes. Nic assumed this would have to be the new Lord Cobb. An Altar warbird carrying a broken arrow in his fist as a sign of surrender had joined them, along with an old man garbed in the colors of Cobb but wearing a sash of Brailing blue. He introduced himself as Dolf Zeller, the new commander of Brailing’s devastated Dynast Guard.
Beside Zeller stood a tall, thin woman with stark silver hair and bright silvery eyes. Nic felt a jolt of surprise as he realized she had to be Lady Rakel Seadaughter, Vagrat of Vagrat. Since citizens of Vagrat never took up arms in any conflict, Nic realized she must have brought her people across all of Eyrie to help with healing the wounded. Lady Vagrat had her hand on the shoulder of a scrawny boy who looked to have Vagrat heritage, bearing Thorn’s cardinal red badge on his chest.
“He’s a sanctioned messenger,” Dari told him as she rested her palm against his forehead. “This is the best we can do, since Brailing has no heirs, and Lord Altar and his sons have been taken to the House of the Judged, as have any Thorn Brothers not dead on the fields around us.”
“It’s enough,” Lord Ross said. “No one will challenge what you say here, Nic. Your word is our law, and all dynasts and guild leaders, or their nearest representatives, are present to accept your commands.”
Nic closed his eyes for a moment to muster his strength, and accepted yet more energy from his wife, until he could raise his voice enough to be heard by all who stood near.
“Come forward,” he told Lord Ross. “Kneel beside me, please.”
Lord Ross did as Nic asked, crouching to the ground on the side opposite Dari.
Though Nic thought he would die yet again from the brutal stab of the movements, he used graal energy, his own and that which he borrowed from Dari, to move his left hand enough to lay his fingers in the blood on his chest, directly over his heart.
It was at that moment Dari seemed to realize what he was doing, and why.
She cried out and would have stopped him if Kate and Platt hadn’t seized her arms and hauled her back from him. The sound of her anger and grief stabbed him deeper than any physical pain, but this he did as a king, not as a husband.
Lord Ross didn’t flinch as Nic raised his bloody, trembling fingers and touched the man on both cheeks.
Every witness in the circle drew a sharp breath as they recognized the passing of power in the oldest of known ways—blooding the victor on the field of battle.
“Rule in my stead,” Nic told Lord Ross. “Protect my queen and help her serve as regent for my son, until he, in turn, assumes my throne. If my bloodline doesn’t live to adulthood and to sire his own legacy heirs, then it will be your heirs who guard and protect this land.”
“My great-grandson will survive.” Lord Ross took Nic’s hands in his and held them to his massive, muscled chest as he made his oath. “On that I stake my honor and my dynast. On that I stake my soul.”
“Stop this,” Dari shouted as Lord Ross folded Nic’s hands atop his broken chest and got to his feet to the deep bows of many of his watching subjects.
“I won’t have it.” Dari’s voice was muffled by Kate’s relentless embrace—then it turned louder and sharper, a new sort of screaming, fresh and angry and desperate. “No! Don’t let him near my husband. You stay away!”
And Nic knew, at last, that relief had come to him.
Platt’s graal and Kate’s arms restrained Dari as the crowd parted to admit Aron Weylyn, who once was Aron Brailing, and always would be, in some distant corner of Nic’s heart. Nic’s dimming vision saw not the Stone Brother in his soiled and torn gray robes, but the skinny, terrified boy Aron had been when Nic first saw him through his spirit-eyes, the night of Harvest, when Nic tried to die and Aron used the full force of his burgeoning Brailing legacy to order Nic to heal himself.
Nic’s body was still following that command, all these years hence, beyond his own wishes, and beyond any reason.
Just as he had done that fateful night, Aron turned loose his own graal and let his essence flow into Nic’s. Unformed thoughts and words rushed between them. Love and pain. Victory and defeat. Damnation and redemption.
“I will never forgive you,” Dari said to Aron, “Never, Aron.”
Aron kept his connection to Nic as he lowered his head.
“I know,” he said, but Nic didn’t feel Aron’s resolve weaken.
You’ve wanted to make amends, Nic told him. Now is the time. You know it’s the truth, just as I do.
I don’t know if I can, came Aron’s sad mental whisper, but already, he was massing his graal energy to right the worst—and best—wrong he had ever committed.
Dari was pounding her fists against Platt and her grandfather and trying to reach Nic. Nic knew if they turned her loose, she would kill Aron, so he reached out to her with his mind, with the strength that Aron’s legacy shared with him.
I love you, he told Dari, who broke down and sobbed her own love back to him, on both sides of the Veil, over and over, as if she understood he could never hear the words too many times.
I love you, Nic said again, this time gazing at her, and at Lord Ross, and Stormbreaker and Aron.
He felt the soft press of Aron’s hands on his chest, then the unbelievable cool force of Aron’s graal.
The command was simple enough, and perfect to Nic in every possible way.
Peace, Aron said, his voice as loud as a mountain’s heartbeat, and as soft as a tide in a tiny pool of rain.
Sapphire light filled Nic’s awareness, and for one brief and blessed moment, he felt no pain at all.
Then he was standing at the edge of a forest much grander than the Adamantine, sensing the strength of his healed body and his thick, powerful wings. The air was splendid and warm, and a fine breeze ruffled his curls and flight feathers. The scent of flowers and cedar tickled his nose, putting him at ease in this wondrous, beautiful place.
His sister Kestrel drifted out of the trees on her own golden wings, arms wide and smile broad as she called out, Welcome, brother.
Nic’s father joined her, beckoning toward the forest. Come, my son. Come fly with us.
How he had missed them! And now they were here, his father, his sister—and all of his brothers, too.
Nic leaped off the ground and spiraled into the sky, leaving all the worries and agonies of his former life far behind him, and already forgotten.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
ARON
Aron worked quietly beside Stormbreaker in Stone’s now deserted infirmary, where the new Lord Provost was placing flowers in a vase beside the bed Nic had so often occupied. Raaf was not with them, or Zed, for Aron had continued to keep himself apart from them, knowing they would understand and thank him for it someday, if only in their prayers and visions.
Too many funeral pyres had come and gone, and so many tears since Stormbreaker had taken on Stone’s mantle of power, then given his blessing to a young Vagrat girl who rose to the title of Lady Provost of Thorn, once Eidolon had been purged of its oathbreakers.
Rakel Seadaughter, her daughter, and some of her people were still at Stone, assisting with repairs, healing, and the sowing of the year’s crops. Darielle Ross-Mab, however, had withdrawn to her new home in Can Rowan, to the castle in the Tree City that her Stregan ancestors had once claimed as their own. For now, and until her son reached the age to rule, Lord Ross would be with her, and upon his death, Dari would assume control of the Ross Dynast. Now that the Stregans had come amongst the Fae again, no lord or lady in the reformed Circle of Eyrie seemed inclined to challenge her rights to inherit.
For his part, Platt had returned to Stone with Kate, and the two were making ready to journey to the as-yet hidden and secret stronghold where the Stregans had rebuilt their ranks and power. Kate had recovered from her captivity, and Aron had used his mind-talents to help her find a stability of mind and thought she had never known before. Lord Dunstan, once known only as Stormbreaker, had assisted his own people and Thorn’s, and rectors all over the land, in identifying the few orphans and children who needed to go with Platt and Kate for their own safety. The Stregans would train these children and protect them until Eyrie was better prepared to handle the newly resurgent and far more powerful dynast legacies, and the newer—or older—mind-talents, some forgotten even to those who kept histories about such matters.
“I’m sorry Snakekiller hasn’t returned,” Aron said to Stormbreaker, trying his best to find the courage to say what he knew he had to say.
Stormbreaker arranged another bunch of flowers in a vase. “I don’t believe she will. It’s something I sense, though it pains me to say so aloud. My sister may have moved beyond anything Stone or I might offer her.”
Aron thought about the giant snake he had seen on Stone’s battlefield, the creature who had struck down Lady Mab and left her vulnerable to Kate and Dari’s killing fire. He hoped that wherever Snakekiller was, she understood that most people in Eyrie viewed her as a hero, even if her own guild might be forced, after trials and Judgment, to hunt her as an oathbreaker.
That would not be Aron’s fate.
His heart felt so heavy he didn’t know how he would make his confession to Stormbreaker, but he was determined he wouldn’t put his guild through the spectacle of a trial and combat involving a Stone Brother. He would confess his crimes to his Lord Provost, who in turn would be compelled to mete out the immediate punishment prescribed by the Code of Stone.
Sten il’dur Sten.
“A stone cannot be undrawn,” he whispered to himself, translating the Language of Kings, and filling in its meaning. “To let a Judged go free is Unforgivable.”
Aron lowered himself to the nearest cot, and as Stormbreaker clipped flowers ever more slowly, then finally began to drop the untrimmed stems and petals on the infirmary floor, Aron described what had taken place in the Shrine of the Mother. He explained how he had found his father and why he had let him go and broken his vows to the guild he loved so dearly.
For a time, Stormbreaker stood in silence, with no hint of motion or thought, or even the weather Aron so often sensed when the man was distressed. His greener-than-green eyes gazed out of a window, seeing nothing, yet seeming to see everything too much, and all at once.
“Lord Ross and Dari are likely to pardon Wolf Brailing,” he said at last, his tone too even and quiet as his fingers flexed then released near the hilts of the daggers at his waist. “His actions were born first of the madness that comes with grief, after a horrible crime perpetrated against his family by his own dynast lord. After that, he showed an abiding desire to help the goodfolk his name and bloodline bound him to serve, even though it cost him his son.” Stormbreaker finally looked at Aron, at least long enough to say, “I think that your father may be the only true heir to the dynast seat at Can Rune, and the Circle will be much relieved to hand that seat to him, since the Brailing people already trust him.”
This scenario had never occurred to Aron, but it felt both right and wonderful to him. His father was the only person bearing the Brailing name who fought for the goodfolk, and the people of Brailing, warriors to a one, weren’t likely to forget it.
“It won’t be easy to find him in the Adamantine, or to undo the force of the command I gave him,” Aron said as he made himself stand, “but I think Eyrie’s new Circle and the Stregans may be up to the task.”
Fear wasn’t part of Aron’s mix of emotions as he approached Stormbreaker and knelt before him, lowering his head to expose his neck. He was able to name fatigue and sorrow and shame, but also curiosity, and even hope that he might meet Nic in the next life, or Lord Cobb—even Lord Baldric.
Aron’s heart was beating, beating, and he tried to ignore the wild flow of life through his body, since it so shortly would be brought to an end. It would be messy, doing this here, but also private and less painful for the apprentices who used to be his friends. In the end, it was the right thing, and Aron knew that he at least could be proud of himself for facing the consequences of his actions.
The sharp edge of one of Stormbreaker’s huge, jagged blades bit into the back of his neck, and Aron knew that the Stone Brother was measuring his stroke, so he would need to make only one swift, strong cut.
The cool steel against Aron’s flesh trembled and stung him again, then retreated.
Aron closed his eyes, hoping he would feel little before oblivion claimed him.
When no killing blow sent his head rolling, Aron glanced upward to s
ee Stormbreaker standing, sword raised, tears flowing down his pale white cheeks. His arms shook, and the new benedet on his chin trembled as he said, “I cannot do this.”
“You must,” Aron told him, preparing to use his graal to force the issue rather than let Stormbreaker join him as an oathbreaker. “Stone needs you. Eyrie needs you.”
“And I would wager Eyrie needs you, too, Aron, Son of the Wolf.”
Both Stormbreaker and Aron startled at this new voice.
Platt entered the room as quietly as any Sabor, his black boots making no sound on the polished infirmary floor. As always, he was dressed in simple stitched leathers, and he carried no weapons save for his powerful mind-talents and the dragon-form always waiting to burst free of human essence.
He raised his hand, and his graal froze Stormbreaker in place, making certain that Stormbreaker didn’t change his mind and strike Aron’s head from his neck.
“I didn’t bring my people out of hiding just to save Dari and Kate, as I told you on the battlefield.” Platt sounded almost angry, or at the very least, worried. “We came for Nic, and for you, too, Aron. Now Nic is lost to us, but you—this—this doesn’t have to be. How can our alliance with the Fae survive if you all go about killing your best talent, and your strongest warriors?”
Aron’s cheeks heated.
He couldn’t believe he was feeling flattered, here on the floor of the infirmary, waiting to be beheaded.
“Stormbreaker—I mean—Lord Dunstan can’t let me go, or he’ll be as much a criminal as I am.” He pressed his fingers against the floor to keep himself in position for his own execution. “I know it may make little sense to you, but like the trial at the Ruined Keep, Stone’s strict codes of justice serve a deeper purpose.”
Platt didn’t seem persuaded. “Cayn spare me from Fae honor. Especially that of Stone.” He let out a breath, and then his lips twitched into a smile more dangerous than five of Stormbreaker’s swords.
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