Chapter Nineteen
They gave chase without stopping. Not because either of them believed they could simply catch Zuri in open flight.
She was already gone by the time they cleared the throne room, and mirage magic gave a creature too many ways to vanish.
But pursuit was still some type of action, and neither Ina nor Derran was willing to stand still while Zuri carried Lugomir’s heart somewhere they could not yet guess.
They flew hard out of the marsh court and over the reed waters beyond it.
For a little while there was only wind and speed and the fading gold of evening light. Then Derran slowed, as if a thought had given him pause. “The pigeon.”
Ina glanced at him, matching his pace. “What about him?”
“If she told him to carry the two diamonds to the cavern, she had a reason.”
“She might have only wanted to distract us.”
“She might have,” he said. “And if she wanted us confused and distracted, the cavern served that well enough. Still...” He looked ahead, thinking. “She sent pieces of the necklace there on purpose. I don’t like unexplained purpose.”
Ina didn’t either. “You think she may be going back there herself? To go through all the chambers?”
“Or wants us to think she is.” He grimaced. “It’s more than nothing, at least.”
Ina let out a breath. “Then we go that way.”
He nodded.
It was as though Zuri had been waiting for that decision. They had not yet flown far clear of the reed waters when the attack came.
No warning cry. No clear shape. Only movement from the darkening air.
Something came at them from the left, all claws and wings and teeth, but no single arrangement of them that the eye could trust.
A strike flashed toward Ina’s shoulder with the hooked talons of a giant hawk, then seemed in the same breath to have a wolf’s jaws and a snake’s twisting spine.
Mirage creature, again. Some disjointed horror beast made of fragments too quick to hold together.
Ina did not freeze this time. Fire came to her hand before panic could claim it.
She flung it hard. The blast caught one wavering edge of the creature and tore sparks through what might have been fur or feathers or scales.
Derran was already moving, faster than thought, cutting between her and the next strike and sending a slicing line of wind through the thing’s blurred middle.
It shrieked. Or several shrieks came together at once.
They fought in the air.
Derran did more than fight. He guarded her.
Ina saw it even while dodging and striking, the way he kept himself angled to take the worst of the creature’s lunges, the way he watched her position even when he was making his own attacks.
He was very good at this. Too good, in the way one only becomes by having too much cause or too much time.
Ina fought better than she had in the cavern or against Zuri. Anger still helped her. Not the blind kind. The useful kind. Fire leapt from her hands in quick bright bursts, and when the creature came too near she drove it back with heat enough to distort the very air around it.
For a moment, it disappeared, the last of her fire crackling around where it had been. Silence surrounded them instead. Ina and Derran stood there, searching, both wondering if the fight had ended.
Then, with a sudden beastly roar, it dived at her from the side.
She saw it too late.
Derran did not.
He slammed into her from behind and shoved her out of its path with enough force to spin her clear. The creature struck him instead. Something heavy and clawed hit him across the chest and shoulder, splattering blood. The blow knocked him backward out of the air and down.
He fell into the river below them with a splash that seemed far too small for the terror it caused.
“Derran!”
Ina dove after him, flinging fire back over her shoulder in raw rage. One blast. Then another. And another, and another, and another in such quick succession that the creature writhed in the heat, blurred, twisted, and for a moment became fairy again.
Matilde.
Then she seemed to come apart into darkness and mist. Whether she was truly gone or only hidden, Ina could not tell, and she did not care enough to find out.
Below her, the river ran greenish-blue under the afternoon sky.
She saw Derran under the surface.
Not moving properly.
Not drowning exactly, but wrong. Slow. Confused. He was an excellent swimmer. She knew that. But here his arms and wings moved as though the water around him had become something thicker. As though he could not tell up from down or even that he stood underwater at all.
Another mirage, Ina realized with a gasp.
Zuri’s magic was still on him, dragging at his senses where he could least afford it.
Ina hovered over the river in rising panic.
She could not swim.
She knew that with a furious clarity. She could fly, fight badly, turn into a heron if pressed, but she could not go into that water and drag him out in her own shape.
Her wings wouldn’t help in the water. For one wild instant she thought of throwing herself after him anyway and solving the problem by disaster.
Then sense, or desperation shaped into something useful, seized hold of her.
Heron. Heron! she thought at herself like a command.
The change took her without hesitation. The world sharpened sideways and wide. Her body tipped into that awkward, blessed shape she had worked so hard to learn. She folded her wings and dove, her body big enough now to stand with its feet at the bottom of the river without her being fully submerged.
The river struck colder than she expected even through feathers.
She plunged her head in just enough to reach him, stretched her long neck, and caught the back of his shirt in her beak.
Not too hard. Not too hard. He was still Derran, not prey or a branch or a trinket to be carried by a bird’s thoughtless grip.
He was heavier than she expected, lifting him in that form that towered above the size of a fairy. But fear lent strength where grace failed. She beat upward and got him clear of the water.
He hung limp beneath her beak, coughing weakly once as they rose. One arm moved, then fell uselessly again, his sleeve pink with blood mixing into river water. He was alive. Hurt, half-drowned, and too dazed to do much for himself, but alive.
Ina did not stop to think whether she could truly manage the whole flight.
She flew.
She flew for the sky court because it was the nearest of the safe places they could trust, because Derran’s chambers were there, because she knew the path well enough now even through the long reach of heron sight and the ache building in her wings.
She concentrated on one thing only – do not drop him!
By the time the cloud roads of the sky court came into view, her neck hurt, her wings burned, and she was beginning to suspect that heron dignity had been grossly oversold as a species trait. She made for the balcony of Derran’s chambers with all the speed and care she had left.
The landing was not even a little elegant.
She got him onto the stone. That was the main thing. Perhaps she dropped him the last inch or two rather less gently than an experienced rescue heron might have done. But he landed on the balcony and not off it, and Ina counted that as success.
She changed back the moment she let him go, swaying once on bare fairy feet before her own body fully remembered itself, thankfully with clothes mostly included. She had only lost her boots.
Derran was coughing in earnest now, water and breath both fighting to claim him. He tried to rise and failed. Ina got an arm under his shoulders and half-led, half-dragged him into the room and onto the bed.
He was pale, wet through, and breathing badly, but the wound from the creature’s strike looked worse than the river had.
Blood flowed easily still, and the bruising had already spread under torn cloth at his shoulder and across one side of his chest.
She pressed her hand against his shoulder, at least to slow the bleeding while he got his breath back.
“I’m all right,” he gasped, which meant he was not.
“Shh,” Ina said firmly, still holding him.
He almost smiled at that, then winced and put his own hand over the injured place.
Warm yellow light bloomed there. He healed himself in slow, steady measure, closing what needed closing, easing the deepest damage.
Ina glared at him when he stopped too soon, obvious even to her that he had not spent nearly enough time to help with the bruising and soreness that would follow.
He gave a half-grin at that, and placed his hand back, letting the sparkling light flow a minute longer. When he had done as much as he could, he leaned back against the bed frame and looked at her.
“You were very brave.”
Ina felt heat rise to her face and resented it on principle. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
That earned her the real smile she wanted to see. He held out a hand. “Come here.”
She went at once, and he drew her into his arms, careful of his own side and careful with her too, as though she were the one who had nearly drowned.
“I’m grateful,” he said against her hair. “You saved me again.”
She tucked herself against him and let out a breath she had not known she was still holding. “You’ve saved me more times than I can count. It’s the least I could do.” Then, after a pause, she said, “But I need you to do something for me.”
He leaned his head back enough to look at her. “Anything.”
“Teach me to swim.”
That made him laugh softly, though not unkindly. “Now?”
“Yes, now. You need to rest after being healed. That much I know. And it needs to happen before I lose my nerve or before another monster throws one of us into a river and I have nothing but bird legs to offer. We can spare an hour.”
“I don’t really need – ” He started to say that he didn’t need rest, because he was a very strong fairy prince and silly little things like the need to rest after healing couldn’t stop him.
Then he paused again, considering more carefully what she was saying.
The smile became a smirk. “All right. An hour. You won’t learn to swim that fast, but it’ll be a start. Maybe.”
He stood, dragging his torn and bloodied shirt off over his head, and together they went into the bathing room attached to his chamber, leaving a trail of clothing behind them.