by K. Gorman
He reminded her of Treng, the way he stood, though it was a firearm in his hands, not a blade. He was definitely a soldier, and an elite one, at that.
Something in his eyes flashed.
She froze, staring as the flash seemed to lengthen, then slide to the side. It was subtle, like catching the view of a retina at night, only slightly different. More temporary, and… moving.
And his firearm—there was a slight glow coming from a slot in its side. It had done that before, once or twice. What was it? A signal that it was active? She’d heard of goblin tech like that—but human tech?
Elrya. They had to find a way to communicate with him. She had so many questions.
The flash gone, his gaze flicked up and met hers, a question in his eyes—likely wondering if he should back down. She gave a small shake of her head.
Beside him, Doneil’s brows had furrowed in concentration.
“Right,” she said finally, withdrawing the knife a bit further. “What in Temdin’s ten hells happened? You are Volaon’s heartsworn, correct?”
They spoke elven. It’s what he had started the conversation with, and what she had decided to continue. Doneil, she suspected, didn’t have a great proficiency in either Common or High Fey—suns, the only reason she knew it was because her mother had been a stickler for traditional languages—and she wanted him in the loop. Remembering the fey’s difficulty, she code-switched some of her elven into older words, closer to the fey root tongue.
He shifted. A rock-hard shoulder bumped into her thigh.
Suddenly, it felt as though every molecule of air had gone still.
She didn’t tense. Not exactly. But she was keenly aware of how close her blade’s edge was to his throat.
“Volaon li Naine, the sun-sworn prince, is dead.”
His words were soft and dry, like the rustle of leaves in the wind, and oddly formal. The tone pulled at something primal in her—an itch that scratched at her magic.
The runes on her bicep began to ache again.
The fey were made of magic, much more than she was.
“Yes,” she said dryly. “I noticed. Do you still serve him?”
The fey tensed. A slight movement, but one that made the adrenaline spike in her arteries.
“I serve the living, not the dead.” On his thigh, the fey’s spread fingers clenched into a fist—the only indication, apart from his tone, of his emotion. “His soul has been taken and enslaved. It is… heretical.”
“Yes,” she said again. “I agree. Everything about this is heretical.”
The fey made a noise in his throat. Then, he shifted, his attention going to Matteo. “He isn’t Zemiari.”
There was that word again—Zemiari. From home. He thought Matteo was from another world.
She was beginning to think so, too. Just too many things weren’t adding up, from his lack of common languages to the oddness of his weapon—and now, the strange flash in his eye.
She chose to brush off the comment, despite the way the fey continued to focus on Matteo. She narrowed her eyes on the fey as she caught a taste of latent sensing magic, similar in feel to her woodcraft, slipping out.
“He’s with us,” she grunted. “Tell us what happened.”
He shifted, a small motion, but she felt his entire being turn with it. Fey were as magic as the gates. Power leaked from them in spades. The sensing magic she’d felt before swung her way.
Her skin prickled with awareness, and she was suddenly made hyperaware of her entire body. She caught a scent—wood and metal, similar to that of Prince Tarris, whose family could trace their lineage back to the fey.
Then, the feeling passed.
“Ambush,” he said simply. “Demons were all around. Strong ones. We fought. We didn’t win.”
“And you got away?” Her eyebrow arched upward. “That doesn’t seem likely.”
“I did. My brethren covered for me.” Though his tone remained mundane, stilted as he pronounced the elven—he was code-switching as much as she was, and it was a struggle to connect the words—a ripple of emotion shivered through his body, and she felt his energy tense, as if for a leap.
She didn’t react, though something similar passed through her as she understood how the situation must have played out. The word he’d used—covered—had a different root meaning and connotation. Realizing that they were doomed, the fey had sacrificed the team to allow one to escape and continue the mission.
The rnari had similar terms.
“We found the horse,” she said. “You were chased.”
“Toyed with,” he corrected. He shifted, his head turning slightly toward her, jawline brushing her wrist. “This demon—he is very strong.”
She shivered, remembering Grobitzsnak’s predatory gaze.
Yes, that was a being who liked to chase down his victims.
“And the fire?” she asked. “Yours?”
“Some yes, but mostly not. It nulled our attack. Some sort of shield.” He shook his head. “It felt ground-fed?”
Ground-fed? She considered that. It hadn’t felt demonic to her. Heck, if anything, it had felt fey. Who else would wield such power?
Her lip curled as an idea came to her. “Nales said this demon could corrupt ley lines.”
Doneil’s teeth flashed in the dark as he mirrored her grimace. “Ten hells, are you fucking serious?”
“Apparently.” She took a breath. “Maybe that’s why my woodcraft is acting up.”
It made sense. If the forest had been corrupted, it likely wouldn’t feed into her perception anymore. She wasn’t a demon.
She looked down at her captive. The paleness of his hair kept catching her attention. Milk-white under the dirt, it reminded her of the moon. A few stray locks strayed free from the tail, splaying over his pauldron. Below, his body gave a faint, rhythmic shudder, stiffening with every breath. His only concession to the pain of his injuries. The smell of dry maple wood came to her again, along with something else.
He was still on a mission. The same mission the rest of his team had been on before they’d been killed.
“The priestess?” she asked.
He gave a short nod.
In the back of her mind, the memory of Prince Tarris rose in the dark.
For the first time in a while, she didn’t tense up.
Her vacant runes prickled at the fey’s closeness, itching to bleed.
She studied him a moment. Then, she eased the blade from his neck and stepped back.
“Heal him,” she said to Doneil.
“Finally,” the elf muttered.
Matteo glanced up at her sharply, a question in his eyes, but she gave him a short shake of her head that the fey couldn’t see and stepped back, easing her blades back into their sheaths.
No, she didn’t trust him. Not fully. And Matteo’s foreignness allowed him to be rude.
The fey stood up smoothly, only a slight hitch on the leg with the bandages. She kept her face calm and relaxed her shoulders as Doneil took over, kneeling before the fey to place his hands over the wound. Magic stirred the air, the gold glow rising from under the cuff of Doneil’s sleeve. The fey turned to her as he worked, lifting his face to hers for the first time since they’d fought.
“You lost your prince?”
She grunted. “He’s alive.”
“I know,” he said. “I saw him being taken to the fortress.”
Doneil went still at that. Though he kept the healing magic working, she could tell he was listening a little extra hard now.
“Really?” That confirmed Nales’ location, at least—provided the demon hadn’t used the gate to transport him back to the demon world. She blew out a breath and tried to keep it casual. “What else did you see?”
“Lots of things. I’ve been scouting.” He turned slightly, gaze slipping beyond her to view the fortress in the distance. His black eyes glittered in the darkness, striking against the paleness of his skin. “You planned to go there, correct? I heard you talk
ing.”
She grimaced. They hadn’t been very loud, but fey clearly had keen ears. “Yes, that’s the plan.”
He nodded. “Then I will come with you.”
“Will you, now?” She considered him, an eyebrow arching into her forehead. He would be useful. Any fey would be useful, and this one was clearly very skilled. If he hadn’t been injured, and she hadn’t surprised him with her strength and willingness to attack, she didn’t doubt that he would have come on top in their fight. He was, after all, the fey version of her, and the fey simply had better biology and magic on their side.
But she still didn’t trust him. And he could see it in her eyes.
“My brethren are all dead, their bodies desecrated, and I need to see my mission through.” Doneil, at that moment, finished his healing and stood, stepping away from the fey who disregarded him like a servant. Once again, his gaze slid to the fortress in the distance, and he took a few steps toward it, brows furrowing. “My priestess, and my vengeance, both lie in there—and so does your prince. Our paths are linked. Let us help each other.”
Uh huh. Her finger tapped against the outside of her armguard. “Right. Well, at this point, I’m not even sure we can get inside, so—”
“I can get you in,” he said.
“What?” Her attention snapped to him. A surge of hope flooded her chest.
“Yes,” he said, raising his arm to make a gesture. “There’s a small crevasse around the side with some stonework. Leads up the mount and inside close to the front.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really? And we’re just going to waltz right up to it and walk in?”
“Yes.” He shifted. It was a subtle action, but she felt his whole being shift with it. “With my glamour, we should be able to get in.”
And, with that last sentence, the whole idea came crashing down on her and stunned her into silence.
“Here we go,” Doneil muttered. “That’s the look of a scheming mind.”
Glamour. Of course. The fey could make them invisible. Hells, the fey could even mask their sound and scent, if her encounter with them back when they were still alive was anything to go on.
It had only been her woodcraft, and the stillness in the air, that had detected them that first time.
She smiled.
This might just work.
Chapter 19
“Elrya’s bright tits,” Doneil muttered. “This is fantastic.”
Grit scraped under Catrin’s boot. She grimaced, resisting the urge to skewer him with a look at his words and instead focus on her footing. Gods, she’d never been up this high before, not on a mountain this open, anyway. The enormous amount of space behind her was trying to suck her in—as if it wanted to pluck her right off the mountain and send her reeling back.
Temdin, she hadn’t realized heights were an issue for her. But clinging to a patch of scraggy rock, well aware of the several hundred-foot fall that filled most of the space at her back and side, really put some things into perspective for her.
They’d made it thus far, though. And the glamour was holding.
She let out a breath and glanced ahead. The fey—Caracel, he was called—led the way, his steps as sure and graceful as if he’d been born a unicorn. Calm, quiet, smooth, as if the marble his body was sculpted from carried into his mannerisms. Though blood and dirt smudged his skin and clothes, he still looked the part of a living statue, or a descended god.
Then again, some of her magic was derived from the fey. Kodanh was as old as the glacier, and although for all intents and purposes he was a deity, he was still fey first.
The line between fey and deity blurred after the first thousand years of life, she suspected.
Caracel, she thought, might only be in his first hundred, maybe two. He had more maturity than she’d expect for a younger fey, and his glamour was strong and holding well over all of them.
She shivered at the reminder. That was another thing—his glamour. She’d been doing magic for nearly her entire life—ten hells, half her rnari training was founded in it!—but she’d never come close to how Caracel used it. It was like breathing to him, or a first language. It had taken him all of ten seconds to weave it across all four of them, and, as far as she could tell, cost him almost nothing to maintain. At least, it didn’t seem to. He was easily outpacing the rest of them.
Every so often, the glamour’s magic would prick at her skin.
She hated it.
The glamour also, worryingly, didn’t seem to block scent as well as she’d thought. They’d passed several demons near the trail earlier—flyers, by the look of their leathery wings, sitting stoop-backed in nests that reeked of ammonia—and they’d all lifted their heads and grown agitated, sniffing the air to catch the origin of the scent.
They’d moved on before the things could do more than a sniff or five, but she could see that causing problems for them later if they ran into hellhounds.
Still, it was better than nothing. Much better.
A scrape of a boot snapped her attention toward the back of the group. A sheen of sweat coated Matteo’s face and arms, enough that its smell touched her nose. His firearm was tucked away into his belt, the red light off, which she took to mean it was in its dormant mode.
He’d certainly been wary of the demons. The weapon had come out immediately upon sight, but Doneil had been hasty to wave it down, press a finger to his lips, and motion for him to creep by. He’d complied, but his normally neutral expression had shifted to concern and concentration until they were well past, his head turning back to keep track of the nests.
Smart, that one. She felt bad bringing him along. This wasn’t his fight, not even remotely. He had zero reason to be here.
But they’d explained, best as they could, where they were going, and presented him with the option to stay behind, and he’d given them a resolute ‘no’ on that, and solid ‘yes’ to the mountain.
Just what kind of soldier was he? Half the guards she knew at Pemberlin would have taken that, or at least balked.
Fuck us. We’re a ragtag group.
If they ran into the demon lord, they might manage to escape—he’d likely be laughing too hard to try and keep them.
They passed another hump in the ridgeline, and the small fissure Caracel had pointed out for them came into view. Her shoulders relaxed down as they turned inward around a wedge of rock and the sudden, sheer drop on one side vanished from sight.
Soon, a different type of tension prickled at her. She slid her gaze up to the crevasse, watching it loom closer.
Gods, this is really happening.
It was surreal. Just days ago, she had been training with Severn Treng on the dusty gravel of Pemberlin’s front drive. Doneil had been braiding patterns into dough. The atmosphere had been light, lazy. Spring had been in the air, the first buds on the trees, the cold impression of winter only lingering in the shadows of the forest and the higher altitudes.
Now, it was like the world would never be the same.
But… she wasn’t afraid. She should be afraid. Infiltrating a demonic fortress was not a safe activity, and there was a good chance that one or more of them would die in there.
She let out another breath, trying to read the shiver that kept fluttering through her nerves. Adrenaline? Anticipation, too.
But not fear.
She was surprisingly okay with the idea of infiltrating a demon’s lair. Excited, even.
I’ve trained for this. Maybe not this, specifically, but something like this. I was never meant to sit guard for a pompous prince—I was meant to kill.
A slight, leathery rustle grabbed her attention upward. The messy edge of a nest was visible over the ridge of rock that now blocked their right sides from the fall, and the jutting, naked form of one of the demon birds came into view. The smell of ammonia clotted her nose like a poison sting. She stared at it, taking in every curve and jut of it. Birds were already ugly without their feathers, but these had a grotesqueness that caught a
t the eye—part vulture and part southern cassowary, with a huge and pointed beak and claws fierce enough to cut stone.
The bird lifted its head and tilted it to the side, its eye flashing in the light from below.
She stared at it.
An awareness prickled across her skin in a wave. The mercari on her shoulder turned to ice. A low, rumbling sound came from deep in the earth below. Both Doneil and Matteo gave cries of alarm as the mountain began to shake.
Everything cracked open.
A shock wave slammed into them—it hit her chest, made the soft tissue between her ribs vibrate. She cried out a warning, put her hands up in defense as a bright light flashed across the ridge, burying deep into the earth. Magic crackled in the air like a storm cloud, grazing their skin with static.
Her ice runes stabbed into her shoulder with a sudden vengeance, burning with cold.
Ahead, Caracel looked back at her, wide-eyed.
“Catrin—the glamour!”
It was gone. Its absence crawled at her skin.
And, with that flash of light, they were completely exposed.
She cursed as a chorus of surprised squawks lifted off. Leathery wings rustled to life, claws scratching on rock as the birds took to the air.
A glance up told her they were headed for their group.
“Fuck!” she swore, casting an eye up to the crevasse. It wasn’t far, only a hundred feet up.
She made a snap decision.
“Go! Run!”
Ice burning in her shoulder, she switched back and dodged around Doneil. The first bird dove, razor-sharp claws aiming for Matteo.
She smashed into it, shoved it into the rock, and stabbed her blade into its rib cage.
Something hard turned it aside. Black blood spilled over her arm and shoulder, burning in the air, and the bird lifted off with a screech, wings beating furiously.
She yanked her knife out before it got stuck. Snarling, she stepped back as it flapped away, tracking it in the sky. Ice gathered in her arm. She pulled on her power, aimed with her mind, and—
Five red darts of light shot past her head and slammed into the bird, burning hot.
She jumped. It screamed. Its flight faltered. Blood spilt from its wing, enough that she could see some of it drop through the air.
