Briar
THE GROUND SUDDENLY ROSE UP TO MEET ME AND THEN I WAS standing in a giant room, vaulted ceilings of marble and midnight pennants rimmed in gold.
High stained glass windows cast the glittering floor in a rainbow hue.
I dreamed of one day traveling to the floating palace of Rikesh, but I had never imagined it abandoned.
“You see,” Maez said, gesturing around the empty echoing space. “There’s no one here anymore. He’s defenseless.”
I was still wobbly on my feet as her black boots clicked across the floors. The place seemed frozen in time, like the stillness after a hurricane.
“You think Tadei is the only survivor? They can’t all be gone,” I murmured. “The whole pack? They didn’t leave anyone behind to guard their King? Surely some survived.”
Maez’s eyes roved the walls. “Where do you think the King of these ruins is now? My guess would be hiding in a tower,” she said, not really listening to me.
My trailing footsteps paused. “Are you going to kill him?”
“I’m debating it,” she replied coolly. “It would certainly help the Golden Court for him to be gone.”
“It would help the Golden Court more if we joined them in their fight,” I pushed.
The urgency of the looming battle of Highwick made my nerves spike.
“Let’s kill Nero first. And once we win, then I will happily watch you gut Tadei.
” Maez shot me a look, clearly annoyed we were having this argument again.
“If not for that, then why did you bring me here?”
“You said you’ve always wanted to see Rikesh.” She flourished a hand down the dusty hallway. “Welcome to Rikesh, Princess.”
We wandered the vacant halls, spilling into an atrium. The doors to the gallery beyond were thrown open, the walls bare and the pedestals empty. Shattered glass covered the floor, the place clearly looted. The eerie stillness made the hairs on my arms raise.
“I’m glad the humans got to take some part of this place,” Maez mused, staring up at a splintering hole in the trellis that looked like a rock had been thrown through it.
“I’m surprised they haven’t taken up residence here,” I said. “There must be dozens of rooms—”
Maez swept her foot through a pool of dried blood, smearing the burgundy stain across the tiles.
“Why would they want to live in the location of a massacre?” Maez asked.
She spoke of it as if the massacre were a long time ago, as if it didn’t happen recently by her hand.
“This palace is cursed. Better to level it, I think.” She flicked her wrist, and her emerald magic appeared. “Do you think I should help them?”
“Wait!” I said, holding my hand up to her. “Listen.”
I tipped my head to the far hallway where I heard the scuffle of sandals. Maez and I followed the sound to a dead end with only a single door beside it, buckets and crates stacked on either side. Probably a closet.
Maez moved toward it first, but I grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back.
“Let me handle this,” I whispered. “I’d like to get some answers without anyone pissing themselves.”
She looked absolutely smug, her static magic crackling around her as she said, “Am I really that scary?”
I rolled my eyes. “That wasn’t meant to be a compliment.”
“I’ll still take it as one.”
I held a hand to her stomach, trying to hold her back. Maez scoffed and took another step, my sandals skidding across the tiles as she easily moved me just to prove that she could.
“Okay, you’re a very scary sorceress,” I said mockingly. “What if I promise to let you murder them if they’re an enemy? Then will you stay put?”
“I have a lot of ideas running through my head right now about ways to change that tone,” she said, her eyes hooding with lust. She nodded to the door behind me.
“But go be the diplomat first, Princess. Then I’m going to pile together every last bit of treasure in this abandoned palace and fuck you atop it. ”
My mouth went bone-dry, my cheeks burned as my body filled with heat at that promise, one I was suddenly desperate to fulfill.
She made me ravenous and wild. It took me several moments to regroup enough to turn back toward the door and my original mission.
Maez snickered at me as I smoothed down my dress.
Gods, she loved to rattle me. I put an extra swish in my hips to make sure she felt equally as rattled and was rewarded by a little groaning sound lodging in Maez’s throat.
I turned and sauntered to the door, trying to contain the wild version of myself that Maez pulled out of me.
The second I opened the door a human woman appeared on her knees, her hands clasped and pleading. “Please, please don’t hurt me,” she begged. Ice doused my libido at that. “I will take you to the pups. Please.”
I held up a gentle hand and lowered it, moving extra slowly so she knew I meant no harm. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her wide saucer eyes darted over my shoulder and then back to me, my blue eyes, my red hair. “Are you . . . the Crimson Princess?”
“Wow, that name has really stuck, huh?” Maez muttered from behind me. “Tell her what it means now, love.”
I offered the woman a gentle smile, ignoring the comment. “I am,” I said. “Please stand. I won’t hurt you.”
I would probably need to say it at least a dozen more times before she started to believe me. Then I remembered something else she said.
“The pups?” I asked. “Where are they?”
“Are you going to put them with the others?” she asked, trembling. “Are you going to hurt them?”
“No,” I said, cocking my head at her. “You . . . you are protecting them?”
She nodded. “I am, Your Highness.”
Maez appeared beside me and the woman cowered again. “Why?” she snapped. “Why help the Wolves?”
I rolled my eyes and turned toward Maez. I put a hand on her side and forced her backward, hissing, “Let me handle this, please?”
“They’re only children,” the woman was responding. “They aren’t responsible for the evils of their parents.”
“And the parents? Where are the rest of the Onyx Wolves? Have any survived?”
“All those old enough to fight are gone,” she said. “Broken up into two factions by order of King Tadei.”
“How do you know all of this?” I asked.
“I worked in the nursery, Your Highness,” she answered. “The walls have ears in this place and the staff likes to talk. Well, that was before . . .”
“And where are the pups now?”
“Most of them gone, the staff took them, left to their homes in the city and on other islands.” She looked embarrassed as she added, “They took what treasures they could carry as well and left.”
“Two factions, you said,” I continued. “We know of the one going to Taigoska. The other?”
“West,” she said. “They are sweeping up toward Highwick to join King Nero’s war.”
“Gods.” I swallowed thickly. “The pups?” I asked, my mind snagging on something the woman had told us. “You asked if we were going to put them with the others—what others?”
Her eyes flared and she pointed a shaking finger to the ceiling. “King Tadei has taken them.” Her voice cracked. “They’re barricaded in the southern tower with him.”
My stomach curdled and Maez took a decided step toward the stairwell. I grabbed her by the wrist to stall her.
“Go back to wherever it is you came from,” I told the woman. “And send word. There will be more young ones to look after soon.”
The woman scurried past, keeping her eyes locked on Maez until she was far down the hall.
“Let’s go find the tower,” I said, pulling her wrist from my grip. “We’ll rescue the pups and then we head to Damrienn to join Calla’s fight.”
“Damrienn?” Maez sidled over to me and swept her hands up my curves. “I’ve made other promises to you.”
“You can’t be serious.” I looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “Those promises can wait,” I muttered. “I know you don’t want to face him, but we must help in this fight.”
“We have no business in Damrienn.”
“Maez,” I snapped. “Grae is your cousin. Sadie is your friend.”
“I don’t have friends anymore,” she said. “I am not so weak. I have told you I won’t intervene in this, Princess. I will do what I can from here and be happy of it. It is more than any sorcerer has done before.
“I am not fighting for the Golden Court.”
“But you have to!” I blustered. “People we love could die.”
“People you love could die,” she countered, then sighed, almost weary.
“How many times do I have to tell you all this?” She shook her head.
“Do you want me to go drop you off on the battlefield like I did in Taigos? I offered you a chance to join your twin and take up arms against Damrienn and you chose to stay with me. This,” she said, gesturing up and down her body, “is me.”
It was. And yet despite everything, it wasn’t.
I was changing, yes. But not so completely that I was a whole other person.
I didn’t think it was the same for her, either.
The darkness she embodied—the darkness I was starting to embrace—could be strength and bravery and justice, too.
The righteousness of a sharpened blade. This power didn’t need to equate to indifference. I just needed to make her see it.
“I chose you,” I said. “I still do. But damn it, Maez, we need to go help them!”
“I am never returning to Damrienn again,” she said definitively.
“You returned to save me,” I countered.
“Because you are mine, Briar,” she said. “And I would go to the ends of the world for you. But don’t ask me to return again.”
I rocked back on my heels at that. She would go to the ends of the world for me. That should be enough. It had to be enough. She loved me, even if she didn’t have the words to say it. I was hers and she was mine, and still . . . still I needed more from her.