Chapter 52 #2
The creature pries from the shadows, its face swathed in red plumage curled at the tips, the glittering tone jolting me. As though it’s lifting free of one of the picture tomes Kaan read to me as a youngling.
I still. Breath caught.
Mind toiling.
I’m seeing things … Or maybe I died in the cold plains after all, currently being feasted on by the crowls. That, or this raging fever is making me hallucinate.
Because that’s an Elding Bird. A creature that only exists in legends anymore, painted by storytellers or staining the walls of ancient caves. Hunted to extinction. The few remaining were believed to have fluttered back into the Book of Voyd from whence they came—born of another world.
Or at least that’s what a southern-born harper told me phases ago. But she was high, puffing an herbal smoke stick pinched between my fingers. I was equally high, and quite frankly, more interested in watching her pretty lips move, imagining how they’d feel pressed … elsewhere.
Now I’m wishing I’d paid more attention.
The Elding Bird screeches, boasting a maw of slitting teeth wedged with bits of meat and bone. It stretches its massive wings, the gold-dusted tips brushing the enormous cavern’s sides. Perfectly framing Arkyn, as though the wings are his.
They whump forward, encasing the dais as the beast dips its head, nuzzling the Scavenger King.
I stare, a thousand words knotted on my tongue.
Arkyn digs his fingers into the beast’s ruddy plumage, scratching deep. The Elding Bird croons, eyes closing. A vision of content devotion. The sort of love I don’t have in me to dream up … making me realize I’m not hallucinating. Nor am I dead.
Though I am—quite possibly—fucked.
“Do you want to hear a story, Veya?”
“No,” I rasp, watching his skeletal hand tangle with those beautiful curly feathers. “But I doubt I have a choice.”
The throaty sound he makes confirms my suspicions.
“There was once a young bastard,” he murmurs, digging his hand deeper into the beast’s mane, his tone leading me to believe he’s talking about himself.
“Though his mah was little more than a null servant, his pah hoped he’d inherit his strong blood and be able to wield three elemental songs.
You can imagine his disappointment when the boy reached his tenth phase and could only hear Ignos. ”
My bones lock, the story … familiar. Like the strike of an instrument shaped from the essence of my being.
“Not long after, his pah met someone hailed as the most beautiful fae to walk the lands north of the wall, from a long-standing bloodline artfully gifted with Bulder’s song.”
The Elding Bird lifts its crest, making it look as though it’s wearing a crown of flames, its gold-flecked eyes narrowed on me in such a way I’m sure it’s imagining how it would feel to peck out my eyes.
“Her, he bound with, bringing her north to sit beside him on his bronze throne.”
My breath hitches.
Bronze … Throne—
“Not long after they were bound, Kovina began to swell with fresh life,” he says, pronouncing Mah’s beautiful name with a languid tongue that muddies it. Disrespects it. “A legitimate male heir.”
Kaan …
“As you can imagine, Ostern’s interest in the bastard’s mah dissipated. While she fell into the rigors of her previous existence, once again preyed on by brutal members of Ostern Vaegor’s armada, Kovina flourished.”
My throat constricts with the urge to retch.
“Kovina … well, Ostern protected her. In a way that was never offered to the boy’s lowly mah.”
“Stop.”
My voice blasts through the cavern, chased by a hungry silence. Not that it lasts—Arkyn’s next words hard like the stone I’m knelt upon.
“The boy had only just buried his mah when he was tossed a bucket and given the title of servant, forced to scrub grime from the floors while his brother was nurtured.”
Stinging pain bursts across the backs of my eyes.
“Kaan Vaegor was given the title of son.”
Arkyn smooths the crest on the creature nuzzling his chest while my tongue aches with the need to set him straight.
Tell him Kaan’s favor only lasted until he failed to hear more than two elemental songs.
That he was fire-lashed. Buried in tombs he was forced to stutter free of, ridiculed for his broken language.
That once the twins were born, Kaan was tossed to the plains.
Told to toughen up or die.
“In spite of everything, the stupid boy so desperately wanted to make his pah proud. For him to see that he was worth something. Perhaps even earn the same title.”
My heart ruptures beneath the words.
I, too, know the crush of Pah’s antipathy. Difference is, I had a constant role model who made me feel both loved and seen. A brother who raised and nurtured me to be strong and capable rather than lean too hard into unhealthy compulsions to toss my life about like a piece of trash.
“I don’t want to hear any more—”
“The boy—” Arkyn continues, “he remembered a song his mah used to sing while putting him to sleep. A ballad about an Elding Bird who’d built a roosting flourish in the mountains after surviving the huntings that rid our world of her kind. He went in search of the beast, finding three golden eggs.”
My gaze flicks to the Elding Bird trilling in Arkyn’s loose embrace, nuzzling deeper. Like it’s seeking comfort.
“Rather than plunder the nest, he made a deal with the beast, receiving an egg in exchange. An egg he took back to Dhomm and presented to his pah. But Ostern was not pleased as the boy had hoped.”
A tremble starts at the base of my spine, shaking me gently.
Then harder. Faster.
“Do you know what he did, Veya?”
“Please stop,” I whisper, perfectly aware of how deep Pah’s words burned.
How hard his actions struck.
“He ordered the boy to place the egg on the ground, then brought his boot down upon it.”
The statement is a clenched fist that punches me just below the sternum, making a blunt sound heave up my throat.
“His heel was still in the muck as he looked the boy in the eye and told him he could claim every egg in the world, but he would never be good enough for the title of Ostern Vaegor’s son. Then, he told him to run.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, tears slipping down my cheeks.
“Can you guess what he did next?”
Yes …
A stir of wind and ash buffets my face.
“Look at me.”
I do, gasping at Arkyn’s close proximity, now crouched before me, fingers reaching up to flick his hood back off his head. And though I expect it, seeing the puckered, melted flesh on the right side of his face is still shocking enough to halt my heart.
“Hideous, isn’t it?”
I don’t answer, observing the gnarled shape of his lips, his eye half melted shut, ear gone. His nose looks as though the flesh started to drip from the tip before it set, giving the fierce impression of a beak.
The side of his face that isn’t burnt reminds me of Cadok, but finer. Paler. And perhaps with a little less madness in his eyes. More gut-wrenching heartache, carefully veiled.
But I see it.
“If it weren’t for Cliár, I would’ve died that dae. But she saved me.”
I look over his broad shoulder toward the Elding Bird as she fluffs her feathers, the gold specks becoming so luminous they glow in the dark. Igniting her majestic shape.
Boasting just how huge she is.
I swallow, stare drifting. Scouring the piles of scavenged stuff surrounding us. The weapons, bits of armor, helmets—
I remember the story. Think of the brutal evidence of his bloodlust as a terrible truth settles, gouging its claws into my heaving heart.
My next words are a leaden whisper. “You want the bronze throne.”
Silent, he watches me. Letting me drown in the realization.
My gaze flicks to the bloody tips of his fingers, and I picture them ripping into Kaan. Or wielding a blade pressed against his neck, sawing—
“Kaan’s nothing like our pah,” I blast. “Ostern berated Kaan for his soft heart. Snapped it at him like a lash—”
“Coddling compared to the way he treated me.” A darkness overtakes Arkyn’s eyes, his voice becoming an ax that carves through the cavern.
“Kaan grew safe in Kovina’s womb as my mah was raped and beaten blue until she died—alone on her pallet while I scrubbed the privy our brother wasn’t yet tall enough to shit in—”
“Something Kaan would be bereft to learn!”
“—Then he took Pah’s life, ridding me of my Creators-forsaken right to make him pay.”
“To avenge the female he loves!”
Arkyn’s head tips to the side, like a bird—the motion so predatory a chill scuttles up my spine. “Loves, you say?”
I snap my mouth shut.
Fuck—Fuck—Fuck—
“Who does he love?”
I close my eyes. Squeeze them tight.
A long silence strums by before Arkyn clicks his tongue, then shoves up and whips around, charging back to his throne. He settles back in place, lifts the toothy crown, and sets it on his head, cutting me with a cruel smile before blasting an order that rattles me to the core.
“Worin, get me Guíll. Let her know I have a mind I need her to rifle through.”