Chapter 87
CHAPTER 87
Ezryn
S and pelts my face, whipped by the wind so hard it slices my skin. My eyes are blurry with grit, and my mouth tastes of dust. Each step forward is a fight, but I keep moving.
It came upon us suddenly as we were traversing our way back across the Ribs toward Hadria. First, it was the wind, tearing at our clothes and making it nearly impossible to open our eyes. Then a red haze thick as clouds wafted over the horizon. Now, I can barely see a foot ahead of me.
“Ezryn! We can’t keep going!” Delphia calls from behind me.
“Don’t stop,” I say back.
There’s no other option. One foot in front of the other. If we stop, we die. If we go back, we die. There is only deeper into the storm.
There’s a malice to this wind, something beyond the natural world. I wrap my cloak tighter around my face, but I can still feel it with each bite of sand. Like a malevolent voice stirs the wind to a riot.
“We have to take shelter,” Nori says. “It’s the only way to survive a sandstorm.”
“There is no shelter,” I growl. There’s nothing out here: just the dunes and the wind and the damned sand. I hate sand. We can’t go back to the Huntresses. Even if they would take us, I’ve lost sense of north or south. We can only keep moving.
Keep moving toward what? a voice asks in my head. To Hadria, without the aid you promised? To Rosalina, with only your failures?
This is all my fault. Of course I’m not a worthy representative of the Queen. I had fooled myself into thinking I could escape the Prince of Blood, but his legacy follows me everywhere. Now, I’ve shadowed Delphia with it.
If Dayton had chosen any other protector for his sister, would the Huntresses have given their support? I stagger forward a few steps. One of the girls calls my name but it’s distant. “Keep moving,” I rasp. Even though the only reason to do so is because I don’t know what will happen to us if we stop.
“Ezryn, look ahead,” Delphia snaps.
I squint, shielding my eyes from the stinging grains of sand. There’s a dark shape within the swirling dust. A person, staggering toward us.
“Help,” a man’s voice cries. “Help me, I’m lost.”
“Someone needs our help,” Delphia says, catching up to me. “Hey! We’re over here! Follow our voices!”
I stop, the wind threatening to bowl me over. “Shush.”
She doesn’t. “We’ll help you!”
The man stumbles closer. His movements are heavy and clunky, weighed down by armor.
Golden armor.
A member of the Queen’s Army.
Every muscle in my body tenses. The only members of the Queen’s Army in Summer are those who left the monastery to follow Kairyn. Like the soldiers he left in Queen’s Reach who nearly killed Rosalina. Like the troops sent around the Summer Realm to harass and intimidate the people.
These traitors are one of the reasons Kairyn’s been able to cause the harm he has.
My chest heaves. All the rage and grief and frustration of failing our mission floods through me. I can’t help Rosalina and Dayton in Hadria. I can’t sway the Huntresses to fight for us. But I can still protect the girls. I won’t let this renegade hurt them.
The frenzy surges up my blood. I no longer feel the sting of the sand or the bite of the wind. All I feel is hatred for this man and what his order has done. Murderers, invaders, traitors—
I cut through the storm and throw the man to the ground.
He gives a yelp that’s cut off by the sound of my fist against his cheek.
“Stop, please!” he cries. I slug him and his nose sprays with blood. “Help!” The man starts to cry.
He needs to pay for what he’s done, like Kairyn needs to pay. If the only thing I’m capable of is enacting justice, then so be it. I raise my fist again—
Something holds back my arm. Delphia wraps her arms around my bicep and stares at me unblinking. The wind whips her hair above her head like a crown. I grit my teeth and yank my arm free. When I turn back to the man, Eleanor covers his face with her body. There’s a fire in her gaze.
“Ezryn,” Delphia says lowly, “how will this help us?”
I take in a heavy breath, the dust coating my throat.
I want to kill him. I want to kill him because I’m so fucking angry, and I’m terrified he’ll hurt you. The only thing I can do to help anyone is kill those who could wrong them.
None of that answers her question.
I stagger backward, collapsing in the sand. What … what was I about to do?
I hold my bloody hands up in front of my face. Was I right? Is this all that I am, all that I will ever be? What would Rosalina think of me? She looked into the eyes of a beast and found goodness. I looked at a set of armor and saw evil.
Delphia kneels beside me and takes my hand in hers, wiping the blood off with her sleeve. “You don’t have to be afraid,” she says. “Nori and I will look out for you.”
She offers me forgiveness without a second thought. A childish, foolish decision—
Or am I the child? Too wrapped up in my own twisted sense of justice. Who am I to pass judgment on others when I have strayed so far from my own path?
The wind is too strong; I can’t lie here anymore but I can’t move either. The storm within me is painting my blood black.
“I don’t mean you harm, sir, or you, madams,” the man says, sitting up and adjusting his jaw. “I need shelter. This storm’s going to eat us alive!”
“Look over there,” Nori says. “The winds bending around those dunes. There could be a depression beyond it. We can shelter there.”
“Come on, Ezryn.” Delphia puts her arm under my back and hauls me to a seated position. “Follow us.”
I let the child pull me to my feet, then follow her, fighting through the wind to get behind the dune. Nori was right; the storm has caused a trench to form. We duck down within it.
The lack of wind rushing through my ears is nearly eerie. I shake my head, sand running off my hair.
The soldier collapses to the floor a little distance from us and wipes the blood from his nose. “Didn’t think I’d see another soul out here.”
“We didn’t either,” Delphia says.
“I’m Mozi.” He’s young for a member of the Queen’s Army; many of the soldiers lived during Aurelia’s reign, but this fellow looks younger than me. Signing up for a life of servitude to a monarch who hasn’t been seen in centuries—no one wonder he was so quick to defect to Kairyn’s side.
“I’m Del. That’s Nori, and that’s, uh, well, we just call him Old Man.”
Mozi nods. “Wish we met under different circumstances. Maybe we can help each other get out of this.”
“You’re a defector of the Queen’s Army,” I rasp. “You betrayed your vows to serve a tyrant.” I drag my head to the side to stare at him. “Why should we help you?”
The boy’s eyes flash. “It wasn’t like that. Lord Kairyn protected the people of the monastery. It was filled with corruption; we watched him purge it, help the acolytes. Help us. He said we’d been waiting too long for a Queen who would never come to help the realms. But he’d help it. All we had to do was follow him.” Mozi drops his head. “But it wasn’t like that at all. He sided with the very thing we were taught to fight against. He took over the minds of the people of Spring. I saw it happen. Then he banished Prince Ezryn.”
“The prince deserved it,” I say.
“No one deserves that,” Mozi whispers. “I didn’t want to follow the Green Rule anymore, but it was too late. Yesterday, my squad was chosen to accompany Lord Kairyn out here to the Ribs. He took a whole fleet of airships. Once we landed, I saw an opportunity to escape and thought I could outrun the storm and make it to Autumn for a fresh start—”
“Wait.” I crawl across the trench toward the boy and snag his chest plate. He gives a peep. “Kairyn is here?”
The boy gulps. “He’s looking for his brother, Prince Ezryn, and the Princess of Summer, too. He wants them dead.” Mozi looks into my eyes then to Delphie. “You’re … you’re them, aren’t you? You’re the ones he’s looking for?”
I drop the boy and shuffle away, collapsing back against the side of the trench. I say nothing.
“How does he know we’re here?” Delphia’s eyes widen, and she grabs my arm. “Ezryn, what are we going to do?”
“How many soldiers does he have?” I ask.
“One hundred, Prince Ezryn. Five airships.”
“I am no prince,” I growl. One hundred soldiers to catch me—
Mozi crawls closer, eyes frantic now. “This storm’s his doing, you know. He’s trying to funnel you toward Solonius’s Spine.”
Solonius’s Spine: the bridge at the end of the world. A passage between the Ribs and greater Summer. It had been too far away from the coast for us to take into the red clay sands, but it would be the closest route back to Hadria.
“We’ll have to figure something out quick,” Nori says in her monotone voice. “This trench is getting filled with sand by the second.”
“I know how to get back to the bridge. You’ll be safe from the storm, but his army is lying in wait, sir,” Mozi says. “There’s no way over the canyon but that crossing.”
“No way over unless we take him down,” Delphia says.
“He’s got an army of one hundred soldiers,” Nori says. “The odds are terrible.”
Delphia shakes my shoulder. “Ez, what do we do? Fight or run?”
To run would be to lose ourselves in the sandstorm. If we make it out, we’ll be even farther from Hadria. Rosalina and Dayton are counting on us.
But to fight …
I can’t win against Kairyn. I know this. As much as every part of me screams to demand back my Blessing and to make him pay for what he’s done, I can’t lose myself in that storm again.
I keep expecting the world to change to one where the Prince of Blood isn’t needed. But it’s not the world shackling me to my vengeance. It’s been me all along.
My strength doesn’t come from my sword. It comes from my will to protect those I love. I don’t need to kill to do that.
I don’t need you anymore , I whisper in my mind to that dark shadow, the one I call the Prince of Blood. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to say it to the beast.
I look at Delphia and Nori, staring at me expectantly.
They need me to guide them.
I suck in a deep breath. “We’re not going to fight.”
Delphia starts to protest, but I interrupt her.
“And we’re not going to run.”
I look up at the swirling sands above our trench, the wind that screams and rages and roars. I know that feeling all too well. I picture Delphia, kneeling beside me and wiping my hands clean of blood. I can do the same for Kairyn. “We’re going to talk.”