Chapter 74 #2
Lifting my head, I watch numerous folk push runed shrouds off their shoulders, emerging from invisibility. Garbed in black cloaks and bronze beaked masks, they surround us from all angles, some looking down the scope of bows with their springs notched.
An ambush …
Shit.
I slam a wall between myself and Rygun. Launch over Ahvi and Raeve, shielding them as a series of strings loosen.
Twang-twang-twang-twang-twang-twang-twang—
Pins pelt the stone, pelt me—piercing my unguarded bits while a volcano of blistering rage brews beneath my ribs.
It takes too long for the pins to stop spraying.
I lift my head, narrowed eyes slitting from folk to folk while I solidify the wall keeping Rygun out with another hardened scale.
Anything to stop him from charging south into the cold.
All the while, I gather the bit of flame he gifted me when we became Daga-Mórrk, feeding it.
Feel its surging might split my skin, scalding me from the inside out—
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I whip my head around. Look back over my shoulder in time for two of the masked folk to shift, like curtains drawing to reveal a fae with pale hair pulled back, a long purple coat tight against her curves.
A white bead dangles from her lobe, swinging with each clipped step she takes in my direction.
She stops three long paces out of reach, lips curling at the corners as she looks down at me from beneath lowered lashes heavy with black paint. “Not if you care for the well-being of your niece, that is.”
The mention of Kyzari reels me, snatching every bit of breath from my lungs.
My next words taste like dragonflame. Charred and roiling, they scald my tongue on their way free. “Who are you?”
Her smile grows. “The one who was just relieved of that spiteful bitch you’re protecting. Keeping such a beast on my leash has been tiresome, I assure you.”
Sereme.
I snarl, muscles bulging as my skin splits with violent threat. The masked folk pull spears from their sides, jolting them forward. Over thirty sharp points homed in our direction.
“Careful, King.” Sereme ticks her head to the side, gray eyes narrowed. “I’m not afraid to use force.”
“Neither am I.”
The lie is so bitter I almost choke on it.
Though I’d very much like to leap up and slash through her decorated contingent—cave their skulls until I’ve painted the tunnel in their brains—I refuse to expose Raeve or Ahvi to any of the fuckers surrounding us.
Raeve didn’t want to come here. Didn’t want to risk dissolving the bind for fear of putting the kid in danger. If anything happens to either of them, I couldn’t live with myself.
They’ll have to cut me off in bits.
“My niece,” I growl between seethed breaths that shift my entire body—two very different words echoing in my mind:
Raeve’s daughter.
Raeve’s daughter.
Raeve’s daughter.
Sereme lifts her chin. “What of her?”
“What do you know?”
She raises a pale brow, then pulls a lark from her pocket, dangled from pinched fingers as she casts an order to her left. “Take this to him. And grab the book.”
A spear is lowered, the order abided.
I snatch the lark from meaty fingers, noting the slight tremble in the male’s grip before he gathers the Book of Voyd amongst the folds of his cloak and slinks back into formation.
Maintaining my defensive stance, I unfold the lark, slash my gaze around, then quickly skim the text—my heart thumping harder, faster with each word I choke down:
Sereme pulls a vial from her pocket, shaking it. “Princess Kyzari will die if you don’t drink this potion, and if the three of you don’t come with us,” she says, her words distant, hard to grasp over the roar in my ears. Over the feral panic gnawing on my ribs. “The choice is yours.”
“You’re fucking mad. Kyzari bears the Aether Stone,” I hear myself speak, barely feeling my lips move as my gaze homes on her signature.
On four small words hidden within the swirls that boil my blood.
“Yet none of us really know what that does, do we? Rumored to protect the world, yet here we are, staring down the blade of an impending moonfall unlike anything the world has previously seen.” Sereme shrugs. “Come or stay. It’s your conscience.”
I snarl, crunching the note in my fist as I tighten my grip on Raeve.
I won’t risk the life of her daughter.
“If you give me your word that Ahvi and Raeve will not be maimed, I’ll come quietly.”
Sereme rolls her eyes, laughing as she says, “We were never going to hurt the child. We simply require him to protect The Flourish. Ordering Raeve to do what she does best—to kill—was the only scenario in which the miskunn foretold this particular outcome.” She cracks a gleaming smile.
“Had I not been going to great lengths to torture her over the past seven cycles, you would not have accompanied them to this very spot.”
Her words claw past my skin.
I’m the prize Raeve was employed to deliver …
For some reason, the Ath are after me.
“Why?”
Another click of her tongue. “You’ll see.” She holds out the vial full of purple, swirling liquid, looking down her nose at me as she waits, still smiling.
The grin of someone who’s won.
“Take this to him,” she orders one of the guards.
I seethe as the vial is carried to me, dropped in my hand. Still holding Sereme’s smug stare, I pop the cork and drink the smoky contents in a single loathing gulp.
A cold seeps through me, blunting all my edges until everything feels smooth, bare, and … numb. Dulling my sense of Rygun’s flame until I’m left clawing at my internal darkness, blind and senseless while I search with panicked desperation.
Though I feel it’s still there—somewhere—I don’t know where. Can’t pull from it.
Weald it.
Snarling, I toss the vial so hard it shatters on the stone.
“Contain him,” Sereme purrs, gray eyes glinting. “You’ll find him quite amicable, I’m certain.”
I growl as six folk step forward, grab my arms, and jerk them behind my back, snapping a pair of runed shackles around my wrists. I’m hauled to my feet, lifted off Raeve and Ahvi bunched together like hatchlings suddenly exposed. Looking too weak.
Too vulnerable.
Raeve’s slumbering face—smooth and without strain—is the last thing I see before a sack is pulled over my head. Something hard collides with my temple, and then—
Nothing.