The eagle king sneered.
Xander continued before he had a chance to interrupt. “And to answer your question, we will fight. If Vesevios sends his dragons, we will fight them. And if he sends his flames, we will fight that. And if he tries to trick us, we will fight his lies, just as we’ve started to do now by stopping the executions of our mages. They will help us when the day comes, just as Lyana will be there when she is needed most, to save our world from complete ruin. So no, she is not here now, but don’t mistake that to mean she is cowering in fear. Every moment she spends fortifying her power is a moment she spends fighting for us.”
In the wake of his words, silence lingered. Xander used the pause to meet each and every eye turned on him now. Some looked on in doubt such as the King of the House of Prey, some in solidarity such as the Queen of the House of Paradise, and some in gratitude such as the King of the House of Peace, whose daughter had yet again become the talk of the kingdoms. Then his focus shifted to the two empty seats next to Lyana’s, their leathers the rich amber of the House of Wisdom.
“Now,” Xander said, “where are the owls?”
“They refuse to abandon the libraries of Rynthos,” Queen Zara said, her tone tired.
“Did anyone explain to them that evacuating as many people and volumes as possible in the time they have left wouldn’t be abandoning the library?”
“Yes.”
“And that the books will survive the fall far better than their citizens will?”
“Yes.”
“And that the isle will fall, regardless of whether they stubbornly remain behind to protect it?”
“Yes,” she answered more softly this time. “They understand that is what you believe.”
Xander sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “It’s not what I believe. It’s what will happen.”
“They believe that if they display enough faith, Meteria will save them.”
He ground his teeth. Faith in the gods had always been something he prized, but there was a difference between faith and folly. The owls, for all their intelligence, were choosing the latter. “Was this communicated through letters?”
“We sent emissaries while you were in the House of Flight. They were unsuccessful.”
“Who did you send?”
“Myself and the Queen of the House of Peace.”
Xander bit back a curse. After spending so many hours in close conversation with her before the House of Paradise fell, he knew Queen Zara was as convincing as they came. If the owls had ignored not only her but also Aethios’s queen, then who would they listen to?
Me.
His heart sank as he looked into the queen’s dark brown eyes, her solemn expression only confirming the truth. He’d convinced the House of Song. He’d convinced the House of Paradise. He’d convinced the House of Flight. Now he would need to convince the House of Wisdom too. “I’ll leave tomorrow. There are some matters I must attend to for the ravens first, and then I will try my best to convince the owls to see the one thing they so pride themselves on—reason.”
“Very well,” the dove king said, no surprise in his voice. They’d all known exactly where this meeting would lead. “Now, onto the other matters at hand…”
Xander half listened as they continued down the agenda, reviewing the evacuations, the food stores, the housing requirements, the crowds, and the many other challenges that came with merging the people from seven thriving houses into one, especially on an isle made almost entirely of ice. In the back of his mind, though, he thought of what Cassi had told him in his dreams the night before, while they’d sat by the warm fire in his now-drowned study, the flames casting her in an orange glow, illuminating her already luminous features.
Do they know which house will be next? he’d asked.
Not yet. I just pray it won’t be the House of Wisdom.
Why?
When she turned to face him, he’d expected to see memories of their time spent together in the library reflected in her eyes, something warm and nostalgic, a bright light fluttering across those silver depths. Instead, he saw iron. Because the god stone in the House of Wisdom is made of light magic, and when that creature hatches, we’re doomed. It’ll be even faster than the shadow beast, and if they work together, I don’t know how Rafe will stop them from getting to Lyana.
Just thinking about the conversation made his shoulders writhe, a discomfort that stayed with him the rest of the day, throughout the remainder of the meeting and during his flight back to the raven quarters nestled in the city of Sphaira. He was greeted by Helen, who waited with folded arms and a frown just inside the door.
“What news?” she asked.
He shrugged out of his furs, already growing overheated now that he was back inside. “I leave for the House of Wisdom come morning.”
She snarled. “You’re leaving again? Your people need you.”
“They have you—”
“No,” she interrupted, unmindful of rank or protocol, a fact that under normal circumstances would have brought a smile to his lips. “You’re not traveling without me or a personal guard again.”
“I won’t put raven lives in danger.”
“We’re already in danger!”
“Be that as it may,” he said as he walked past her, positive she would follow as he made for his room, his stomach already rumbling for a meal. “This is the safest place for you right now, and the owls would never harm me. I’ll be perfectly safe—”
“Then why can’t I come?”
He turned and stared at her, one hand on the door. “Helen.”
“My king.”
With one brow raised, she practically dared him to speak. The woman was small but exasperating at times, though he couldn’t get too angry. She was, after all, acting out of misguided loyalty and a deep-rooted fear for his life.
“I’ll be all right,” he murmured, his rigid stance relaxing.
“Now, where have I heard that before?”
“And am I not standing before you, alive and well?”
“If you keep flying heedlessly into danger, one of these days you won’t be.”
A smile spread his lips. “Are you admitting you miss the prince who spent all his hours alone with his books? I thought you were the one who told my mother it would be good for me to get out more.”
She snorted, the tension easing from her frame. With a sigh, she glanced to the left and to the right, disgust curling her lips. “Where are the servants? I’ll tell the kitchen to bring refreshments, then I’ll gather the advisors. I’m presuming we have a long night of planning ahead.”
“We do.”
He shut the door as she left, resisting the urge to collapse against it. Exhaustion almost overwhelmed him, but it was something a leader didn’t have the luxury of feeling, not in times such as these. If he were being honest, another emotion weighed down his bones, one that was more difficult to face, so his feet dragged as he crossed the room.
Unease.
Knots tightened his shoulders. His insides twisted in coils. Pressure pushed on his chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Doomed. Cassi’s voice played on repeat in his mind. We’re doomed.
Given their luck, he had no doubt which house would be the next to fall, and the knowledge did nothing to ease his fears. The libraries of Rynthos were one of the most majestic places he could imagine, bathed in soft amber light, humming with the subtle swish of wings, filled with the musty scent of vast knowledge, an untapped land just waiting to be explored. Yet when he pictured them now, he imagined the stone canopy overhead and the porous walls, a newfound claustrophobia drying his throat.
I can do this.
I’ll convince them.
The affirmations did little to assuage the fear that, come morning, he’d be soaring directly into the belly of the beast. And this time, he might not make it out alive.
46
Cassi
Cassi landed on the ship at full speed,
her boots slamming into the planks with such force they shook. “By order of the king, don’t you dare lower those sails one more inch.”
The captain arched a brow. He was young for such a position of power, his skin hardly weathered, which meant his magic was undoubtedly strong. Muddled green eyes cast her a dubious look, his expression just as hard as she expected from someone who’d spent his life crossing these dangerous seas. “Do you have papers?”
“There wasn’t time.” And technically, she wasn’t here under Malek’s orders. But if she had consulted him, she knew exactly where he’d stand. “There’s a man on your ship I need to speak with.”
The captain frowned and signaled to his first mate. The creak of wood and ropes told her everything. Cassi reached out and gripped the wheel. “I said, don’t lower the sails another inch.”
“Or what?” the captain drawled. “No papers, no proof. And the only people on my ship are my crew.”
“Oh, really?” A fiendish smile widened her lips as her wings spread menacingly. “Not even the man I watched you smuggle on board last night, foolishly believing you were alone? I’d expected more from the captain of a dragon-hunting ship. You, of all people, should know someone is always watching. The king has eyes everywhere.”
He slowly perused her wings. By the time his gaze settled back on her face, it was sharp with realization. “You’re a dormi’kine.”
“I have business with the skryr.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment, before nodding to someone behind her. Boots stomped on wood then a door opened, the planks groaning. Cassi turned slowly so as not to appear too eager—superiority was her only source of control on this ship. Inside, though, her nerves fluttered.
The skryr had been a surprisingly difficult man to track down, especially considering she’d spent much of her youth hovering in the back corners of his shop, using her magic to watch him work. His spirit was slippery. She’d never quite caught the scent of it, the flavor shifting and changing with each new object his magic touched, as though bits of the souls lingering in those items leaked into his. By the time she’d arrived in Da’Kin a few days before, the city had been in chaos. His shop was located in one of the sectors blown apart by the earthen creature, nothing left but wood shards floating in the canals. It had taken hours of scouring the city to even catch the hint of his name on the breeze, something about money and a debt owed, which was when she’d realized he was on the run. She’d spent the next few nights searching the ships, but in truth, dumb luck was the only reason she’d stumbled upon his being smuggled onto this ship in the early hours just before dawn. She’d been on her way to the ship docked two streets down when she saw a hooded figure creeping through the mist, just suspicious enough to pique her interest.
He wore the same cloak now as two sailors dragged him up the steps, one holding each arm, though it hardly seemed necessary. The man was ancient, his skin covered in wrinkles and his white hair swirling in the breeze. A sneeze would have knocked him over.
“You can’t, please,” he begged as they carried him on deck. “He’ll kill me.”
“Not on my watch,” Cassi interrupted as she pumped her wings twice to sail over the rail and land on the main deck.
The skryr whipped his head in her direction. “Who are you?”
“A person who is very much invested in keeping you alive,” she answered truthfully, signaling for the two sailors to release him. “And in Da’Kin.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“We don’t have time to go anywhere else.”
His thick white eyebrows knitted together, intelligence churning in the depths of his hazel eyes. “Who sent you?”
“The king.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Can you guarantee my safety?”
“Look at the world.” She scoffed. “I can’t even guarantee my own safety. But I can promise this—if you don’t come with me, I’ll never stop looking for you, and there’s nowhere you can run where my magic won’t find you.”
“Very well then, dormi’kine.” The words came out sounding like a sigh. Clearly, it wasn’t the first time in his long life he’d been threatened. “But first I need proof of your connection to the king.”
“I don’t have papers.”
A sly grin crept across his face. “That’s not the sort of proof I require.”
Cassi swallowed. Guarding her secrets had long been her way of life. Freely offering them to a stranger went against every fiber of her being. Still, she reached for the dagger at her hip and offered it to the mage. Of all her possessions, it held the strongest connection to her spirit. After all, what was it she’d told Xander all those weeks ago?
Your weapon is your best friend.
The skryr snatched the blade from her hands. As soon as his pale skin touched the metal, bronze sparks circled his flesh. His hazel eyes glittered with his magic, and his expression went blank as he sank into a world where no one else could follow. Cassi’s heart pounded in her chest.
What was he seeing?
What parts of herself had she given away?
What would he know?
A few minutes passed in silence before the power fizzled. With a blink, he returned to the present. She snatched the dagger from his palm and slid it back into its sheath. He looked up at her slowly, his head tilting to the side as though he was seeing her in a new light.
“Well?”
“Lead the way, Kasiandra.”
A shiver rippled down her spine, but she tried her best to ignore it as she ushered the old man off the ship.
“Stay close and keep your hood low,” she whispered. “With any luck, people will be too focused on my wings to even notice the man walking slowly before me.”
He nodded and retreated farther into the cloth. Cassi mumbled directions, letting him set the pace. It was early, but the docks already bustled with life. People gawked as she passed by. The occasional single-winged avian, such as her mother, was a rare enough sight in the world below, but one with two working wings? That was unheard of. If Malek didn’t know she was in the city, he soon would. Though she doubted he would tell Lyana, if for no other reason than to keep her focused on him.
By the time they reached the inn, she was eager to get inside. Her mother had given her a purse full of coin before she’d left Sphaira, and she’d been renting a room since her arrival. The skryr didn’t lower his hood until they closed the door behind them.
“What did you see?” she asked, the words practically shooting from her lips the moment they were alone.
“You don’t work for the king,” he said—a statement, not a question.
“Not anymore.”
“But you want to save the world.”
“More than anything.”
Her answer must have reassured him because the angles of his face softened. “I saw your last clear memory of the king. You were yelling at him, threatening that you were going to tell the queen who the real King Born in Fire was, a fact I’ve recently suspected myself.”
He’d seen the dream when she confronted Malek, before he’d healed her and tortured her and kept her locked in his dungeons. Disgust curled her lip. “I didn’t think your magic worked so quickly. I used to come to your shop and watch you. It took hours for you to glean information.”
“On a grand scale, yes,” he explained as he dropped onto the edge of her bed with a grunt, his old body giving out. Cassi pulled a chair over from the other side of the room to sit beside him. “If I’m trying to absorb all the information an object can offer, it can take hours, days, even weeks to learn every secret the soul housed inside has to give. But I was just looking for a single moment, and thus directed, my power works quickly.”
Suspicion needled at the back of her mind. “What else did you see?”
“Why do you ask?” A delighted sparkle lit his weary eyes.
“Call it a hunch.”
“I guess someone who's spent their life learning other people’
s secrets would recognize a half-truth when it’s offered. Let me see it.”
She frowned. “What?”
“My girl,” he murmured, his voice amused. “The diary. I saw you take it from the library of the owls. I sensed your spirit sing as soon as your fingers grazed the leather binding. You want to know what it says, and with any luck, I can tell you.”
Cassi reached inside her jacket, then paused. “What makes you so eager all of a sudden?”
“Is it so incredible to think you’re not the only one interested in saving our world?”
“In my experience, altruism doesn’t rank high on the list of human motivations.”
“It’s what drives you.”
She flinched as though struck. It was the sort of compliment she might have paid Xander, not the sort reserved for people like her—people who lied to their best friends and betrayed nearly everyone who had ever been kind to them.
“Perhaps you’ll understand this more, then,” the skryr continued. “Curiosity. You believe the answers to all the questions that have ever plagued our world might rest in that book, and I’ve touched many compelling objects in my life, but I’ve never touched one as powerful as that. Or maybe my reasoning is even more banal. I don’t want to die, not before I’ve seen the blue sky beyond the fog or felt the sun warm my cheeks. Everyone who lives in Da’Kin can see the time of prophecy is drawing near. If my actions can tip the scale—if they can grant me a few more years—I’m sure as magic going to take them.”
All three were convincing reasons, yet Cassi still didn’t quite believe him. Regardless, she had no choice. She needed his magic, a fact he clearly knew. And he needed her, to keep him alive if nothing else.
“Who were you running from?”
“A woman came to my shop about a month ago with a trinket she said belonged to her father. I realized too late it belonged to one of the most powerful mages in the city, and now I know a secret of his he very much wants to keep quiet. If I tell you what it is, he’ll want to silence you as well.”
The Dragon and the Queen (The Raven and the Dove Book 3) Page 33
