11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
C hains bound Aurelia’s hands, thick metal cuffs with sharpened spikes on the underside that cut into her wrists, burning and biting with every movement.
Her waist was lashed to Ven, who sat behind her on the dappled grey courser. The grip of his thighs around her was a small comfort as she glanced to the white riders surrounding them, melting away into the snow-dusted forest.
The sleeve of her shadowskin was sticky with blood. The bite of the serpent didn’t carry the same sting as demon venom, but she wasn’t healing. The gritty feeling in her throat only increasing since the fight with the silver sirens, and the thirst that had been a gnawing irritation for the last few days had become hard to ignore.
She risked a glance behind them. Karro’s limp form had been slung over the back of a horse. Unconscious, but alive. She had heard them say as much when they’d hauled his large body from the clearing and strapped him to a mount.
Looking down to where Ven’s long legs wrapped around hers, she could see the tell-tale shine of fresh blood weeping from his wounds. He had put on a good show in the clearing, but the grimace of pain had been written clearly on his face when one of the white-haired archers had pushed him back to his feet.
They needed blood.
Leaning back against Ven’s chest, she tried to ignore the fire burning up her throat as she whispered, “Where are they taking us?”
“To Mountveil, I’d imagine,” he uttered. “To their king.”
Velvet night stretched over the mountain peaks as they made their journey through the Shades.
The narrow back of the female leading their posse was far ahead of them at the front of the group. Her destrier was black as night against her white gear, her blood red boots and the crest marked above her left breast the only spots of color in the grayscale winter night.
Her pale skin glowed against the flurries of snow that drifted lazily through the pines, a longbow slung across her back, made of some silvery white wood that matched her sheet of long hair. The top half of it was pulled away from her face in intricate braids, falling down her back, swaying like threads of silk with every movement from the large beast she rode.
The rest of the Nostari looked the same, their hair varying shades of white, platinum, and silver. Skin so pale that it was nearly translucent, the only color from the webbing of blue veins at their porcelain throats and their bright red eyes. Not the ruby and garnet varieties she’d grown accustomed to at Ravenstone.
Everything about these people seemed drained of color. Of life.
It was difficult to believe that the onyx-haired, bronze-skinned Solari and these had once come from the same people. Then again, it had been millennia since the Nostari had looked upon the sun.
Black cliffs loomed ahead as they followed a roughly cut path carved into a ravine. Her eyes traveled the sheer rock faces on either side until they could see no further up into the snow that dusted the mountain peaks. They were so deep into the Shades that the sun wouldn’t reach this place.
And that’s when she felt it—a prickle of heat creeping up the base of her skull.
Looking down, light softly crackled between her bound hands. They must have passed through the wards of the Nostari Kingdom . . . which meant their magick had returned to them. She closed her eyes for a moment, pulling at the golden threads of her power. Reaching for the heat that was buried beneath her skin.
It answered, faint and flickering.
Ven’s thighs pressed into hers. “Not here,” he warned, “The shackles suppress magick," he lifted the metal bands around his wrists. "and their weapons are coated in demon venom."
That explained the burning along her wrists, why her cuts weren't healing as quickly.
Their party slowed, and Aurelia lifted her head. The horses followed the curve of the rugged path, and the cliffs fell away into gaping darkness on either side of a narrow bridge.
A sheer mountain face rose above them. The black stone was cut and carved into a fortress. Cleaved from the very mountains as Ravenstone was, Mountveil was all harsh lines and hard edges—none of the meandering beauty that she had come to know. Smudges of white and red moved along its narrow walls, guards patrolling the ledges cut into the cliffs.
Dark arches disappeared into the mountain at intervals, but there were no windows to be seen. Everything about the fortress seemed to swallow up the darkness as they passed under the black gates. Snow white banners snapped above their heads, emblazoned with a bright red crest—a bleeding fist clutching a dagger.
The Court of Flame.