by Mary Weber
A movement catches at the edge of my vision. The biggest Bron guard is hoisting something from the forward rim. Lord Wellimton. They’re giving him food and water, and he looks rather frozen, but beyond that—his mouth is moving so fast and his face so red that his temper’s clearly none the worse for wear.
Draewulf steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “It repulses you, yet given the chance you’d embrace whatever it took to live longer too.” His piercing words feel aimed at my skull. “In fact, you have. I suspect even now you can feel it. The power you took on—the way it flows in your veins—scratching and begging to make you more. To live longer. Stronger.”
Keeping my eye on the soldiers I narrow my gaze. “The power I took on was to save Eogan.”
“Careful, Nym, or your arrogance will deceive you. Because if you truly believed that, you’d have tried to die in this room two days ago when you realized Eogan was truly gone.” He unfurls from the windowpane and pads over to me, his movements much like the dog owner number ten used to own. I hated that dog.
If he notices my tightening jawline, he doesn’t acknowledge it. “When I took on this spirit, I believed it was with the intention of delivering my people from oppressive rule. It’s what I told myself for years every time I morphed. Until the day I realized what it was costing me. In that way you and I aren’t much different, you know. Except what I’ve sacrificed is more than you can imagine.”
“How pathetic then that you’ve failed. You can use the kings’ blood to become human again, but in the end it won’t save you from dying.”
He snarls and starts to reach for me but stops. He retreats and folds his arms. “True, there’s always a price. But who wouldn’t give anything for what I have—for what I am? My abilities allow me to dissolve like a spirit and invade a person’s body.” He leans in. “And what I’ve learned since then . . . well . . .” His mouth twists into a cruel smile as his gaze drops to my owner circles.
I lift a hand toward him. It won’t help you if I kill you now . . .
A challenge glints in his eye just as there’s a shout from the other room. “They’ve seen us,” the boy captain who is not Kel yells, making me hesitate at the youthfulness in his voice.
Draewulf jerks his head toward the window where the clouds have parted to reveal Faelen’s mountains to the right of us.
What’s left of Faelen’s warboat armada is on the side of the pass we’re travelling through. We’re too high to see in detail beyond movement on the decks, but with this many ships in the air, I doubt the boat captains have to guess our intention. And from the straight aim we’re flying, they’ll get it soon enough. My chest tightens for my home.
Our airships don’t even dip or shudder toward Faelen. We simply keep on course for Tulla’s cliffs looming up from the white froth waves like flat polished tombstones in front of us.
“So you will destroy everyone,” I mutter bitterly. “Is that your plan? The Tullan people? They have loved ones and children just like Bron and Faelen. And you’ll end them for what?”
“At some point you learn that the love of another is iffy at best. At worst, it will destroy what you thought you were. You should be thanking me for sparing you that discovery firsthand.”
His voice is cruel, but it’s the look on his face that grabs me. I don’t know why but it strikes something in me. Isobel’s words come back. “I will remove the thing that pains you, Father. I will make it so you won’t feel her betrayal anymore.”
I stare at the tall, snow-frosted mountain tips of the Fendres. Then glance away as a wave of confusion lashes against my ache and my anger, with the words Draewulf said earlier—that he’d originally only been trying to save his people too.
I press one palm flat against my legs as if I can force away that thought. This is different. He’s different. He’s a monster whom I’m fated to destroy.
“You could choose differently,” I say through tight teeth.
“And why would I want to do that?”
“It’s not like being evil has seemed to go well for you.”
He smirks even though his eyes are still staring out over the ships. “Evil is in the eye of the judger. What you judge as evil, I see as progress.”
“Progressive for whom?”
He waves a hand. “There’s an entire army out there—”
“Half of whom are following Eogan, not you.”
His expression darkens and he turns his face to stare directly into mine. There’s the barest hint of a shaky undercurrent as he growls, “They’re following my guidance, my planning, and my army.”
I smile. I’ve angered him. Perfect.
“But if they knew who you were?” I allow a hint of mockery in my tone. “You had to take on another man’s persona just to get others to follow, and now you’re dependent on a power you needed me to absorb. And why? Why couldn’t you get it yourself?”
“You would do well to watch your step.” His voice is shaking harder now.
“Until what? You kill me?” I snort. “No wonder your wife left you.”
He whips toward me so fast, I press against the window frame preparing for him to slap me, but he seems to have frozen in the moment. Staring at me as if terrified of what else I might know. Of what I might say. Even through the hatred and aching bones and muscles and energy cracking inside me, I can’t help but feel the smallest flicker of suspicion. It stirs that hint of compassion blossoming without consent in my soul, swearing that the root of who he is still exists. Is that the betrayal that pains him? That he made himself different—better, in his mind—but in the end his wife couldn’t accept him?
I open my mouth. The realization abruptly pounds through my soul—she couldn’t accept who he’d become. My eyes connect with his and stumble across something there I don’t want to see. The smug awareness of how easily that could be me—not accepting the curse I was, always hoping for better. And didn’t I take the “better” when it was offered—by Eogan and then Myles? What if Colin or Eogan had suddenly decided they couldn’t tolerate me? I swallow and feel my expression soften.
The window frame behind me begins shaking. I look down and the quaking is from Draewulf’s hand shoved against the wall beside me as his body’s shivering, as if building into a rage. I stiffen and start to scoot away just as a beam of sunlight glances off his face. He doesn’t look angry, he looks in pain. What in—?
I reach toward him, but he utters a bark and bends over just as a black wisp uncoils around his feet and winds itself up his legs and around his chest. As if protecting him.
From what?
I look at my no-longer-gimpy hand. It’s pulsing, pumping with the blood hounding beneath my skin and bleeding black into my veins. I inhale and his wisps start to curl around me. And then my spine begins to shudder, then burn, and my head screams that now is the time. Now is my chance.
I could kill him before it’s too late.
I reach for him.
The horn overhead blares.
I shove my hand against the side of his neck.
“We’re nearly there,” Kel’s voice rings out beyond the door. It sounds strong and angry.
Draewulf spins and slams me into the wall. He snaps his fingers and the door flies open before he barks at the wraith waiting beyond. “Get her downstairs,” he growls. “Tie her up along with the princess, and if she even lifts an eyebrow, slit the half-breed’s throat.”
CHAPTER 37
LAPPED BY THE ELISEDD’S BLUE WATERS, TULLA’S CLIFFS shoot straight up on the horizon. The ship lurches and soars higher in the same way I’m lurching against the cords the wraith used to lash my wrists to the deck railing beside Rasha. It takes a second for my stomach to catch up.
“Where’s Myles?” I yell above the wind and airship’s drone.
Rasha squints and tips her head at the dining area as strands of her brown hair thrash about. “Still alive. So is Draewulf I’m assuming?”
I nod and don’t tell her that I tried to kill him. Tha
t I hesitated because I couldn’t do it just yet. “Eogan was already gone,” I choke out.
Her gaze whips around to meet mine as the sadness and fury pull at my gut. I can feel it spreading to my lungs. “Oh love,” she mouths.
I blink and look away. I’ll weep later.
The peaks we are approaching are covered in snow, but without any forest or greenery beneath. Just layers and layers of ice-dusted rock.
The few men and wraiths on deck are growing restless, and I can feel the dark whispers in my blood, in my ears. “Come to ussss,” the undead say. “Come to ussss. Come—”
I turn around. “Shut the kracken up!” I yell at them. But they don’t stop, and the only ones who seem to notice anything are the Bron soldiers who frown at me. The large one looks at me with an unreadable expression. I hope they haven’t gotten to him too. But no, his skin is still black as night, not gray, and his eyes are clear as day. Not that it will make much difference soon anyway.
The entire fleet of airships is flying twenty terrameters above the first peak when a spark flashes and a swell of smoke rises into the air. It’s followed by another, two mountains over, and then another, like a chain.
“They’re sending off warning pyres,” one of the soldiers calls out.
Good.
“Too bad there’s not enough warning time,” Rasha murmurs.
I frown and glance down. We’re flying over the peaks and pyres too fast, too soon. The snow-tipped mountains fall away beneath us, sloping into colorful canyons sun-spotted and mineral-painted in pinks and lavenders and bluish-greens. The airships around us shudder and dive down, too, approaching a series of jagged rock formations that dot the landscape in giant twisted spires and arches, hovering over dirt that is as red as the sun on a summer day and freckled with clay-looking houses. I wince. It reminds me of the hue of Colin and Breck’s skin.
Something softens in my chest at the thought of my friends.
As I watch, people emerge like ants from those houses to stand and point up. I twist my hands against the straps holding my wrists to the railing. “Run!” I think to scream at them, but they seem too confused. I’ve snapped at the straps another five times trying to break free before a few people begin rushing to assemble in strategic patterns. A minute more and it’s clear they’re preparing to fight even as parents scurry about, scrambling for children playing among the boulders.
My stomach lunges.
“Oh hulls,” Rasha murmurs.
Exactly.
I peer up at Draewulf’s quarters again and allow the grieving and anger burning my insides to churn, pressing it up toward him, as if I could reach claws up there and tear him from his safety.
He won’t be safe for long.
The black hunger in me gives a tiny ripple with the abrupt sense that he’s watching me. Are you thinking the same thing, Draewulf? That only one of us can win? Vengeance. Justice. I’m not sure what it is boiling in my blood, but I narrow my gaze as if to challenge him. Come down and let’s find out.
He doesn’t. Just stays up in his room while I stay down here watching the land splay out in front of us. Waiting for it.
Rasha shivers and I glance over. Can she sense it too? The air of heightened anticipation. It’s feeding the resource lust of the Bron warriors and the bloodlust of Lady Isobel’s army that will annihilate this place.
Unless we destroy both Draewulf and Lady Isobel for good.
Rasha points a finger to indicate mounds of squiggled lines forming shapes farther ahead. Beautiful designs of raised earth. As we get closer I see one is made to look like a snake, another a bolcrane, and still another, one of the beautiful Elisedd sea-dragons. Alongside them lie even deeper divots that appear to be carved out of the earth in purposeful strokes.
“They’re mineral mines,” Rasha says.
Peeking up from a few of them are treetops. Underground forests? My fist stiffens. Colin’s people created these. If his home life had been different, if his father hadn’t been a drunk or his mother had survived longer, or perhaps if his gift had been discovered earlier, he would’ve been one of their miners. He would’ve stayed here rather than restart his life in Faelen.
He’d still be alive.
I tense my hand and hold it against the airship’s metal railing. And feel the slightest shiver in response as the metal seems inclined to bend toward me. Toward the vortex. What the—? I swallow and will this thing in me to grow stronger.
The people below are scrambling to gather their forces and wits. I see pile after pile of rock beginning to shift, shoving up into walls and caves—to cover homes and land. Only . . . I don’t see any weapons. The rock formations they’re creating all appear to be for defensive purposes.
Horror dawns at the base of my chest.
These people are unused to fighting. I doubt they’ve even been trained for warfare seeing as there was no need. For the past one hundred years, the war never touched their shores. But now, for as secure as their defenses would be against any foot soldiers, the bombs on these ships will break through them like pebbles on water.
My mouth turns sour. We’re going to annihilate them.
The ship begins rattling and jolting so hard I have to grab the rail again to hold my balance and keep my wrists from being sprained as we soar over a cliff.
Does Kel see the people too? Is he struggling with having to fly the ship here to destroy them? Or is he, like me, hoping to help them?
We’re suddenly coming in fast over a city where all the airships seem intent on converging. The capital of Tulla, I assume. Beautiful rich brown staircases and covered tunnels built into the side of the sheer rock wall. The stones have been swirled in such a way that it’s impossible to tell where the cliff ends and the city begins. As if the Terrenes carved each tunnel and portcullis from the mountain itself.
No wonder Colin spoke with such pride about his homeland and of the reclusive people who live here and raise their Terrenes to be heroes here.
A horn overhead blares through my eardrums and is followed by a commotion from the dining room. I whip my head around in time to see Bron soldiers and wraiths pouring out the door and filling the deck.
Rasha’s eyes widen as she looks at me. We’re being squished on all sides by the big guard and a horde of frozen half-dead wraiths with flesh-eaten faces and the claws of bolcranes.
CHAPTER 38
THE AIRSHIP SHAKES AND DROPS BEFORE PITCHING forward to an abrupt stop. Rasha slams into me.
Abruptly the horde of wraiths are crawling over us for the plank.
“Watch it, wretches,” she yells at them as we press against the railing. But they’ve already moved on—a few of the beasts use the plank to disembark, the rest hurl themselves over the airship’s side to drop the fifteen feet to the rock wall surrounding the inner city.
By the time the ship’s emptied, only Bron soldiers are left with Rasha and me.
“So you’re going to let them do the dirty work, then follow when they’re done?” I sneer at the large Bron guard.
“I’m going to lead my men as I see fit, when I see fit,” he says without looking at me.
I follow his gaze to where the other airships are unloading. Their wraiths are slipping down around roofs and archways, busting through houses made of stone and clay, crawling over each other to breach the thickest part of the fortress. It’s like a host of diseased, flesh-eating birds poured out in a mass on the land. And the people living in it are at its mercy.
Except something tells me there will be no mercy. Every person they find will be torn apart by these aberrations, just like Rasha’s guards.
I yank against the wrist straps again, but the cords must have metal woven in because they won’t give and my hands are bleeding from trying. I look around for Lady Isobel who should be leading her pestilent army. Is she still on the ship, or did she disembark in the chaos of wraiths?
And where’s Draewulf?
“We have to do something.” Rasha’s face has gone pa
le. She nods to the cliff face, where standing against it is a line of Terrenes ripping up slab after slab of stone from the surrounding rock and sending them at the Dark Army. They’re managing to crush two or three with each strike as well as some of their own buildings, but it’s not enough. The half-dead beasts keep coming in a swarm.
I keep my tone steady but it’s laced with a chill. “I believe I suggested we dispose of Lady Isobel yesterday.”
She acts like she doesn’t hear me. “We need to stick to the plan. If we can get access to Myles, he can confuse Lady Isobel’s powers, as well as some of the ships’ capt—”
“Myles could have if Draewulf hadn’t taken his powers. And we don’t even know where Lady Isobel is.”
“You could’ve killed Draewulf.”
“I tried. Twice,” I whisper.
There’s a loud yell of, “Find the king!” and when I glance up, Lady Isobel is standing with the wraith general a quarter terrameter away on a rampart attached to the Castle’s main spire.
She’s shouting orders at her troops, sending them like waves ravaging a coastline as they move up from the center streets toward the cliff. When they reach it, they use their bodies to batter against the walls of rock where the Tullan people have sealed themselves in.
The icy poison slips down my spine.
Muffled shrieks break out directly below us where wraiths are pulling a group of men from a broken wall. Two of them are Terrenes based on the fact they’re splitting the ground open and using it to swallow the wraiths. But a fresh group of the half-dead steps in, and before I can look away, they slice the men limb from limb. Lady Isobel’s expression as she watches is sickening. As if she’s enjoying it.
I close my eyes and focus on the energy coming from her, on the energy around me emanating from the wraiths. I allow it—will it—to connect with my blood and rip up my spine as, beside me, I hear Princess Rasha begin to vomit.
A sound across the deck says a door is opening, and suddenly Draewulf is ten feet away, walking to the ship’s edge where he leans over. His face is gloating and proud. Like a father. Except in this case he’s watching his creations demolish an entire civilization with the abilities he birthed in them.
