Confusion clouded his features, but she’d never thought more clearly. For weeks in the House of Paradise, she’d felt useless. As Xander had spent hours in discussion with the queen, as he’d ordered shipments and evacuations, as he’d helped them prepare for the inevitable, she’d lingered in the sacred nest, hovering by the god stone, waiting futilely for the answers to come. But they never had. She hadn’t stopped the rift from breaking, or the egg from cracking, or the isle from falling, and she was starting to think no matter how much time she spent in the other houses, the outcome would be the same.
Xander didn’t need her help convincing the rest of the royal families. In fact, he might have better luck without her. But the mages she’d gathered into her small army, they needed her. And Rafe, he needed her. And somewhere within the fog was a man she wasn’t ready to face who needed her too.
“I’ll come with you,” she said again. For once the answer was clear. “I’ll go to the House of Song and gather my mages, and we’ll come with you to the House of Peace. They can learn magic from your crew. We can figure out the meaning of the prophecy together. I don’t want to leave you either.”
He reached up to grip her hand and threaded their fingers together, then paused. “What about Xander?”
“He’ll do better without me. We can tell him together—”
“No.” He stepped back and turned to the side, disentangling their palms as a haunted look passed over his face. The fire in his wings flared, spurred by an inner demon she didn’t know how to cast out. “You should do it alone.”
“Rafe, he—”
“Does he know, Ana? Does he know what I am?”
“No,” she whispered, silently cursing herself. Cassi had been right. She should have told Xander—right away, she should have told him, if for no other reason than to avoid this moment with Rafe and the humiliation burning in his eyes. “He loves you. He won’t care.”
“I don’t want him to see me like this.” The words were gruff and jagged, as though ripped from somewhere deep inside his chest. They made her heart pang.
“All right, Rafe.” It was his body, his brother, and his choice, no matter how wrong she thought that choice might be. “All right. He won’t. I’ll go to him. I’ll explain. And then I’ll meet you in the House of Peace. Those creatures are gone for now—you said so yourself. They’ll be back, but not right away. We have time. Wait here while I search for survivors, while I explain what’s happened, and then we’ll fly to the world above together. You can drop me off at the House of Song. We won’t be apart for very long.”
He nodded, still choked up and torn.
She leaned forward. As though drawn by magic, so did he, until their foreheads dropped together, and they stayed like that a few moments, just breathing in each other’s presence.
Lyana rose to the tips of her toes and pressed a soft kiss on his cheek, wishing to do so much more. For now, the simple touch would have to do. He remained behind, her faithful guardian, as she flew into the wreckage of Hyadria to search for wounded souls to heal.
28
Cassi
Lingering high above the broken branches of the sacred nest, Cassi watched Lyana leave, unsure if her queen had even noticed her presence. She and Rafe had been consumed by each other, as they always seemed to be, the rest of the world fading whenever they were close.
Maybe there was a reason for that.
She thinks I’m the King Born in Fire.
His words crashed across Cassi’s mind like a boulder through glass, shattering her every belief, leaving nothing but broken shards behind. He’d been speaking of her mother, Captain Rokaro. It explained so much. Why she’d turned her back on Malek to ferret Rafe from Da’Kin in the dead of night. Why she’d been avoiding Cassi for weeks. Why she’d risked so much for a man who wasn’t even blood.
She must believe it.
Cassi knew her mother. She wouldn’t have told Rafe unless she thought it was true, not when it was obvious he’d tell Lyana and both of them would hope beyond all else for it to be real.
And I don’t think she’s the only one.
Malek knew or at least suspected. He’d been crazed the past few weeks, manic even, not like himself, losing his composure and letting his emotions take him. Cassi had thought Lyana’s absence had been his undoing, but this was a far more convincing reason. Everything he’d ever done, every order he’d ever given, every ruthless mission he’d ever carried out had been in the name of saving the world. He believed without a doubt he was the King Born in Fire. It was his foundation. His rock. The role upon which he’d built his entire life.
And now, maybe, he’d been wrong.
I have to know.
Cassi shot out of the sacred nest, up and into the misty sky, her spirit cutting through the fog with haste. She’d told herself she wouldn’t be the first to break, not this time, but she had to know, and one look into Malek’s eyes would tell her the truth. It was time to face him. It was time to dive inside his dreams and turn his waking world to a nightmare.
Last she’d seen him, he’d been on his ship in the middle of the sea—but as she followed the tug of his soul, she found herself back above the familiar streets of Da’Kin, making for the stony castle in the center of the city. He was asleep when she soared into his bedchamber, his face cast in shadow. Shock tore through her as she neared. If not for the familiar scent of his spirit, he’d be unrecognizable.
Bruises marred his pale skin. Bloody red lines were carved across his face. One of his eyes was completely swollen shut, and his lower lip was twice the normal size. And that was just his face. Buried beneath clothes and sheets, the rest of him, she had to imagine, looked the same. He’d been beaten—but how? He was an aethi’kine. He was untouchable. No one could even get close.
No one except Rafe.
Cassi retreated as the realization burned through her. In all the time spent focusing on freeing Elias, it seemed she’d missed a lot. That was why Malek had been out to sea. That was why her mother had finally fled to the House of Peace.
Malek had gone after Rafe…and he’d lost.
Was that proof enough?
No, she thought. Lyana deserves the truth. The world deserves the truth. And I can uncover the truth. All I need to do is face him.
Determined and unafraid, Cassi dove into his dream. She didn’t know what propelled her, but as the scene came together, they were standing on the outskirts of the House of Whispers. Howling winds whipped over the edge of the isle, riffling through the forest. Her clothes were moist and sticky, her hands stained red. His cheeks held a spattering of freckles and his skin shone golden in the sunlight. They were back in the place where they’d last faced off, in the moment right before he’d stolen her sky.
Maybe it was Cassi’s way of trying to change her past.
Maybe it was just a message—this time, don’t back down.
“Kasiandra.”
He addressed her with his arms crossed, smug as always, as though they weren’t fully aware that outside this dream his body and spirit were broken. Cassi didn’t give him time to say anything else. She marched across the distance between them until their noses almost touched and his midnight eyes were all she could see, giving him no space to hide.
“Is Rafe the King Born in Fire?”
Malek flinched. His walls crumbled, revealing the terrified, lonely man underneath the royal title. It was all she needed to see to know the truth. A sound escaped her lips, half a gasp, half a laugh, as she stepped back, knocked off balance by the revelation. “He is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Malek snapped, trying to recover, but it was too late.
“He is,” she repeated, voice airy with shock. “Rafe is the King Born in Fire.”
“Kasiandra—”
She snapped her attention back to him, a sneer pulling at her lips. “How could you try to hide this, Malek? How could you try to cover this up?”
“It’s not—”
The smack of h
er palm against his cheek rang through the forest. A red imprint stained his sun-kissed skin, lingering as he lifted his fingers to the spot, his eyes wide.
“You who ordered me to cut off his wings, who ordered me to kill a man, who let countless people suffer and die all in the name of saving the world—you knew this, and kept it to yourself? Why? Because you might not be the hero of the story anymore?” She spat at his feet, her anger like a dragon unleashed, making her want to spew flames across the sky. “I followed you because I thought you would do anything to save the world. I believed in you. I trusted you. I gave you everything—”
“Not everything,” he cut in, matching her fury with his own. “If you’d given me everything, if you’d done what I said, Lyana would be with me right now.”
“To what? Stand by your side as you watched the world burn?”
He opened his mouth, the veins in his neck thick and pulsing. No sound came out because he had nothing. No excuse. No explanation. His words were as empty as his soul.
“You’re a fraud,” she seethed. “You’ve spent your entire life claiming you want to save the world, and now, when you have information that might do that very thing, you throw a tantrum like a scared little boy whose favorite toy got stolen away. Well, now I know the truth, Malek. I’m going to tell Lyana. And for once in my life, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop me.”
“Kasiandra.”
He dug his fingers into her forearm, holding her as a golden shimmer rose to his skin, seeping into the air. But this was her dream, and his magic held no power here.
“Goodbye, Malek. Good riddance.”
Cassi tore out of his mind, leaving him sputtering on his bed as he bolted awake, a groan escaping his lips as his body no doubt cried out in pain.
“Kasiandra,” he wheezed. “Kasiandra!”
Not pausing to glance behind, she fled into the fog, only one thought in her mind.
Lyana.
Lyana.
Lyana.
The queen was still in the House of Paradise. Cassi found her kneeling over an injured priest, his green robes stained red with blood as he shivered in her arms. The broken end of a severed branch protruded from his leg.
“Shh,” Lyana whispered as she pressed her palms to the man’s chest, letting her magic do its work before she removed the blockage from the wound. “Shh. I’m here. The gods are here. They’re with us. They never left.”
His trembling eased.
In that brief moment of relief, she yanked the branch out. He screamed, the sound ripping through the forest and echoing across the trees. Cassi sank lower as golden light filled the air, blindingly bright against the gloomy midnight fog. The man passed out, going limp in Lyana’s arms even as she fought to heal him.
“Not now, Cassi,” her queen finally said, sparing a glance in her direction. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
She felt for the priest, for the injured, she really did, but this was too important to wait. Shooting like an arrow across a battlefield, Cassi flung herself into Lyana’s mind, a single demand blaring so loudly from her spirit she had no doubt her queen would hear.
Now!
Magic dug into her soul and tossed her away. Lyana frowned and glared toward where her spirit hovered in the sky.
“Not now,” she repeated, a tone Cassi recognized from so many years of being bossed around by a princess who had more stubbornness than sense. There would be no getting through to her tonight, not while the injured still cried out for help.
Spirit groaning, Cassi spun toward the next closest soul and shot across the forest toward Rafe. He sat in the sacred nest, his eyes closed and his breath even, but he wasn’t sleeping. The flames on his wings simmered. She tried to sink into his thoughts, to take control, but his mind was like steel, impossible to penetrate. His focus was so acute there was no way to break through. He was speaking to the dragons, she realized upon sensing the presence of something else inside his head, something foreign.
This was hopeless.
Xander, then.
Cassi changed tactics. That’s where Lyana said she would go next. If Cassi couldn’t give her queen the message, or her new king, then telling Xander was the next best thing.
Magic carrying her faster than wings ever could, Cassi catapulted through the sky, a weapon unleashed as she broke through the fog and into the clear expanse of the world above. Within moments, she was racing above the House of Song toward the raven camp. The night was silent, hardly any movement between the tents erected across the clearing, the only light the silvery glow of the moon.
Yes, she thought. Yes.
Yet when she burst into the royal tent, Xander was nowhere to be found, not in the bed, not on the floor, not even huddled over his desk. She followed the trail of his spirit back into the woods, seeing the subtle orange glow of firelight long before she saw him. Xander stood with ten others in whispered conversation, Helen and Lyana’s small army listening raptly as he told them of the House of Paradise’s fall. Trapped in her spirit form, Cassi cursed—a silent thing no one else could hear.
Gods alive! Doesn’t anyone sleep anymore?
The ship. The crew. They were her last hope. Surely at least one of them would be dreaming. There were nearly a dozen mages in the group. All she needed was one measly soul to bear witness to her confession. One person, and she’d save the world.
Come on, Cassi urged as she raced across the sky. Come on.
When she burst through the crystal walls of the raven guest quarters, relief surged through her. Captain Rokaro lay in bed, a caramel wing arched back as if in flight, her eyes closed in slumber. After weeks of evasion, her mother was finally there waiting, as though somehow she’d known that tonight of all nights her daughter would need her.
Cassi raced across the room, reached out with her magic, and—
She froze.
Awareness burned at the edges of her soul, like the dawning of a new day. Somewhere far away, water splashed cold and damp across her cheek. Screaming filled her ears, words she couldn’t quite make out. Pain flared, the sting of nerves firing up after a long, corpse-like absence of life.
He healed me.
No. No. No!
That bastard healed me.
Cassi reached for her mother, clawing at the air with her magic, uselessly trying to grab hold of the captain’s mind. As if she were a puppet on a string, her master pulled and she had no choice but to follow. Her spirit slipped back and back and back, no matter how she fought to move forward, until she oozed through crystal and into the frigid air of the House of Peace.
No!
The next thing she knew, she was back in Da’Kin, groaning on a wet floor as her body spasmed, her mind sputtering awake despite her magic as another icy blast of liquid shocked her skin.
“Leave her alone!” Elias shouted, his voice raw, as though he’d been screaming for a while. “Don’t hurt her!”
Cassi blinked, the world a blur through eyes unused to seeing. A warm finger trailed a path down her cheek, making her wince. She knew who it was before he even spoke.
“Welcome back, Kasiandra,” Malek crooned, the sinister sound eliciting a shiver. “Welcome home.”
Cassi tried to yell, to shout, to scream, but her protests came out as garbled sounds, her vocal cords weak from little use, her body and mind slow to reconnect after such a long separation.
Malek stood, the heat of his skin retreating as the shadowy outline of his face disappeared. His boots clicked loudly against the stone as he walked away.
“Keep her awake,” he ordered, his voice growing softer with the added distance. “Whatever you have to do, for however long it takes, don’t you dare let this prisoner fall asleep.”
The Diary
Twenty-Fifth Day of the Fourth Moon
* * *
So much has happened, I don't even know where to begin. Can it truly have only been a day since my last entry? Since I wrote of that vision in Zavier's arms? I never dreamed what
would come to pass. Even seeing the future, I never imagined this.
I was right—Bastiant made his move at dinner.
As the meal ended, we all stood to make our formal farewells. While I smoothed the wrinkles from my skirt, out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a subtle white shimmer in the air—magic. Magic of a color I'd never seen before.
I whipped my head toward my father to sound an alarm, but before I could speak, a wave of Bastiant's golden magic arced across the room, leaving me mute and the others frozen in place before it slammed into my father's chest. He stumbled back, but recovered quickly, mounting an attack of his own. It's nearly impossible for one aethi'kine to best another, so I didn't see the purpose behind the display, until one of Bastiant's friends stepped forward, his ivory magic spiraling wider and wider, spinning and folding and shifting until a tear appeared in the aether. The very essence of the world split, and behind my father a new scene formed in the hollow, that of fire and rock and barren wasteland, nothing but gray skies filled with white steam and charcoal smoke.
I gasped.
At least, I think I did.
The mage was a spatio'kine, a riftmaker who could bend space to his will. I'd heard of the magic before, but I’d never seen it with my own eyes, and suddenly Bastiant's plan became clear. He didn't need to kill my father. He didn't even need to beat him. He just needed one good strike, and he'd send my father to a place where no one would ever find him again.
My father's attacks intensified as he realized the truth. So did Bastiant's. The banquet hall filled with a maelstrom of aethi'kine power, the rest of us nothing but pawns in the chaos. My father's mages joined the fight, but Bastiant's ferro'kine sent knives to their throats. My father caught them, but it left Bastiant an opening, and a blast of power sent my father sliding closer to the rift. Aethi'kine magic pulsed with orders, mages acting on silent commands, their power hardly their own as my father and Bastiant pulled them into the fray.
The Dragon and the Queen (The Raven and the Dove Book 3) Page 20
