Chapter Twenty-Two The Villainess Steals a Ride #2
At the brazen admission, Key gave a startled laugh. He hadn’t laughed much since becoming the Emperor. It made him look the carefree guard he’d once been, before all the horror. It made him look as if he could be young and happy again.
In the books, Lady Ninell always could make the Emperor laugh.
The prime minister kept talking, his tone conversational.
“As the younger son in a large family, I preferred to make myself useful in politics rather than getting crucial bits cut off in swordfights, or hanging around on balconies drearily contemplating the gods. The sister I’m closest to married Lord Almassy, and had two beautiful children.”
Rae stared. Pio wore the expression of a man in the midst of a game with a child, done humouring her, amused she’d ever thought she had a chance.
“Did you really think I was on your side? Your naivety is almost sweet, Lady Rahela.” The prime minister shook his head. “Not as sweet as my niece, Ninell.”
The man she had almost begun to like was Lady Ninell’s uncle. Which meant Pio was among the ministers who conspired to kill Lia in the books. He was one of the wicked courtiers the Emperor slaughtered at the Burning Hearts Ball.
And Rae had encouraged Key to trust him.
Rae turned and ran from the abyss path.
Of course Pio wasn’t on her side.
She had to do everything herself. So, she was ready to commit crimes. Key and Glacia had bonded at first sight. The prime minister and his niece wouldn’t get their hooks into the Emperor. Rae planned to shove Key into the good girl’s arms expeditiously.
Time for Rae to get disqualified from the Queen’s Trials in the first round.
Right now, Rae needed to break into the imperial menagerie.
The Emperor’s fated steed was waiting in there, the bloodthirsty roc who would bear him into battle.
Rae needed to borrow her, then deliver her to the Emperor.
Now he was up against a dragon, the Emperor required his legendary flying steed.
Rae just needed a joyride to disaster first.
“Thanks, coming through,” Rae said to the impassive ghoul guard as she made her way into the secret tunnels. He wasn’t on her side either. The dead weren’t on anyone’s side, but if Key had commanded the ghouls not to interfere with her, Rae intended to take full advantage of that loophole.
Rae made her way down the steps, then followed the upward slope of the tunnel where the marks of feet and chains were worn into the stone. Her jewel-inlaid slippers became a bright blur, chasing the deep groove of dragged chains.
Above her head came the trumpet of elephants and the hiss of great serpents, calling her.
Beautiful danger beckoned, and Rae answered the summons.
When she reached the gates of the menagerie, she stood marvelling at the wrought-iron depiction of snarling beasts, coiling shapes of serpents and outstretched wings matching the iron decorations on the Emperor’s black leather vambraces.
Rae gave herself only a moment to experience a sense of wonder, then she marched past the gold-masked guards.
Rae watched the ghouls’ hands twitch by their sides, wanting to clench into claws and grab her. But she was used to death waiting to catch her. You just had to keep moving. As she lifted the latch on the menagerie gates and walked through, the dead let her pass.
The imperial greenhouse was like a glass cathedral.
Rae had expected the menagerie to be built along similar lines.
Instead, it was more a dragons’ cave with a view.
There was a large, costly glass window set at the top of the great circular chamber, the crown of a cupola, but the curved walls were rough stone with vines climbing up the crevices toward the light, curtaining the six smaller windows with delicate green.
Even the menagerie greenery seemed as though it wished to run wild.
There were walkways set among enclosures, stretching out for what seemed like miles. Some creatures were kept behind steel bars, while the more docile were only separated from the outside world by ropes. Rae wasn’t looking for an enclosure at all.
She needed to find a pit for a wild thing.
Octavian the king wasn’t supposed to be dead yet.
Key was meant to be a guard still, about to find the beast who would be his magical steed, lying chained and starved in a pit.
He would tend her, and the pair would form a bond that couldn’t be broken.
As was traditional with heroes and their mystical steeds.
Wonderful monsters tempted in the edges of Rae’s vision as she made her way towards the loneliest corner of the menagerie, but she’d seen unicorns and griffins during Lia’s Queen’s Trials, and a dragon in the sky yesterday. She had never seen the Emperor’s creature.
At the furthest end of the menagerie, Rae found the pit where they kept creatures considered vicious and hopeless.
The pit was deeper and darker than she’d imagined.
It almost felt like standing on the lip of the abyss, to stand on the edge and peer to catch a gleam of chains and the movement of wings.
Rae stepped off the edge and fell, half tumbling and half stumbling, all the way down the dirt and stones at the pit’s sides. At last she beheld the Emperor’s future flying steed, mystical and beautiful, swift on the wing and swifter to come to his call.
The legendary roc was horrifyingly enormous.
This was a bird bigger than an elephant, able to swoop down on an elephant and carry it off in its remorseless claws.
Rae had known the Emperor’s gold-and-shadow steed was a huge bird, but she realized she had pictured it as a shiny mighty eagle or a hawk, something familiar, if magnified.
The roc wasn’t like any bird she’d ever seen or dreamed. The roc was a nightmare.
The terrifying wingspan was far more shadow than gold, pitch black and dark, grave-dirt-brown feathers with only a golden lining beneath. The feathers made an unsettling rasping sound as the roc’s half-unfolded wings dragged along the ground, more like great dead ferns than soft feathers.
Nobody had taken off the roc’s cracked saddle and trailing reins.
They had barely managed to get them on the first time.
As Rae recalled, Octavian had intended to ride the roc one day, since the birds were a symbol of power and majesty in distant lands.
Someone else died trying to ride her, and the idea was given up.
Chains rattled ominously as the roc strained against them.
The way the roc moved reminded Rae that birds were descended from dinosaurs.
It – she – had a long neck, scaled with dark gold, winding through the air as a lethal serpent did upon the ground.
The bird’s sharp black eyes bored into her.
Rae remembered old dinosaur movies, the shaking of water within glasses as a predator passed, the way the bloodthirsty enormous reptiles could barely see you unless you moved.
Could the monster – she, the Emperor’s fated steed, she – see Rae?
The roc snapped its powerful-looking jaws at the end of its chain. Its – no, her – mouth seemed more a sharply pointed snout than a beak. Rae suspected the gleam of teeth in the dark cavern of that mouth were sharp as well.
It seemed a very bad idea to let the roc loose. But Rae didn’t have any others.
“Pretty birdie,” Rae told the roc firmly. “Don’t kill me, pretty birdie.”
The roc, being a mythical being, was far smarter than most birds. She and the Emperor had a telepathic bond, as usual with animals magically bonded to heroes. One day the roc would even learn to speak a few words.
Rae lifted the keys she’d stolen off the ghoul guard’s belt, with which she’d opened the menagerie gates. She rattled them enticingly.
“Polly want sweet, sweet freedom?”
The roc’s jaws ceased snapping. She let Rae step in without trying to eat her, and watched as Rae fitted several keys in the massive lock binding her chains. The roc waited until the click came to prove Rae had the key that worked.
The roc didn’t wait for Rae to ease the chains from her burdened body. She shook off the heavy steel and lunged at Rae, all in one heart-stoppingly fast movement.
Then she hesitated, seeming to sniff at Rae’s dress. Surely fantasy monsters weren’t interested in boobs, Rae thought in bewilderment – then she saw the red glint reflected in the creature’s eyes.
The roc was looking at the Abandon All Hope Diamond. Finally, Rae’s evil jewellery was earning its keep and influencing the mind of men and beasts.
Rae seized the moment of hesitation to duck, and grab the roc’s reins with one gauntleted fist. Her orichal steel gauntlets gave her the strength of ten men, which was just enough strength to hold on and haul herself gracelessly into the saddle.
The roc screamed in fury, a noise between a bird’s screech and a banshee howl, snapping wildly in the direction of its own body.
Teeth snapped an inch from Rae’s heels, but stopped as if Rae were encased in ice the roc could not break.
Rae thanked her wicked stars for the protection of the Abandon All Hope Diamond.
Rather than catching Rae, the roc went into a frenzy, biting the air and clawing the dirt.
Its frustrated attempts to rend her limb from limb created a storm of its own feathers, their dry rustle filling the air as if she were trapped inside a dead tree losing all its skeletal leaves at once.
Rae clung onto the saddle and cowered beneath the dark feathery rain.
Unchained, the roc left the pit and took to the air.
The ceiling proved no obstacle. The great bird smashed through the vine-clasped circular window at the crown of the cupola.
Glass shattered with a crash ringing throughout the menagerie, and for a moment they flew through razor-sharp hail.
The jewel didn’t protect Rae this time. The slicing of shards into her skin stung like frost, then the wounds burned.
Her gauntlets’ grip went slippery with blood.
Rae’s terrified screams joined the bird’s raucous calls.
She knew how this was meant to go. The hero risked trying to fly the dragon or ride the unicorn or the giant wolf. In return, it accepted them, rewarding their bravery. She’d seen this succeed every time.
She had never thought about the unseen failures, those who weren’t heroes trampled by the unicorn or burned to a crisp by the dragon. The doomed ones, who only existed to underline the eventual triumph of the hero. Villains, of course, deserved to be crushed or eaten.
The roc’s wings made a sound like thunderclaps with every beat.
Rae was flown into a seething cloud, wind driving into her face, and her stomach dropped far behind, on the worst and most unsafe roller coaster of all time.
The roc banked and dived with furious force, trying to shake off the rider it could not eat, and even Rae’s gauntlets couldn’t maintain their grip.
A hero would hang on through sheer grit.
Rae slipped and tumbled from the saddle, clutching desperately at the reins as she fell.
Screaming in triumph, the bird flew through the black cloud towards the wicked beacon of abyss flames. Rae dangled helplessly in the air, her grip on the reins already failing.
Not the chosen one, not the hero, and about to die.