Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
ALLERIA
Dawn comes too quickly. All night, the sea threw its strange turquoise light up the cliff face. I lay against Cairn’s side and watched it pulse through the dark until it sent me to sleep. When I open my eyes to the violet sky, the water is still glowing.
Cairn and Therin are already mounted by the time I’m on my feet, yawning and rubbing eyes gritty from too little sleep.
Selveryn shifts restlessly beneath him, and he watches as I focus on calling Nytheros and my armor with a shuttered expression.
The bond between us is just as blank. Once again, he’s completely locked down, making it impossible to read his mood.
I press my palm against my chest.
Ice. I’m supposed to be ice.
Once all the Guard are mounted, Cairn turns Selveryn toward the edge.
“Which way are we—” The words cut off with a scream when Selveryn launches off the cliff and dives toward the sea.
Oh gods. Oh gods. What is he doing?
Therin goes next, with a shout the wind catches and throws back at him. Then Vel. Then Brael. One after the other, each steed throws itself off the edge without breaking stride and vanishes into the drop.
My turn is coming. I can feel it.
Every instinct I have digs its heels in and screams that the water is a long way down.
The fall will break me. No one sane rides a horse off a cliff into the sea.
My hands clamp on the reins. My thighs lock against Nytheros’s sides when he surges forward.
But he ignores every attempt I make to stop him.
The ground vanishes from under us. The wind tears at my face as we free fall toward the water. I brace for impact, for the water to fill my lungs and drag me down.
For one weightless, screaming heartbeat, there is nothing but air and glowing water rushing up to meet me. My stomach drops. A sound I don't recognize tears out of my throat.
Before we strike the surface, the ocean folds around us and swallows us down. The descent is fast and dark. The light from the surface vanishes. And the cold … with every intake of breath, it feels like my lungs are freezing from the inside.
And then it doesn’t matter, because I stop breathing anyway.
Rising from the seabed before us is a sprawling fortress of luminous pearl, jagged sea-glass, and pale ice. Its towers spiral upwards like whirlpools, frozen mid-turn, and wound so high I lose their tips in the water overhead. Nothing about it seems to cast a shadow.
The light comes from inside the walls themselves, a cold pearlescent glow that seeps out through the stone.
The longer I look the less I can make sense of it.
There are no straight lines anywhere. Walls curve and fold into one another like the outside of a shell, ridged and ribbed.
Arched bridges of clouded glass span the spaces between them, dark shapes moving across.
Spires branch off other spires. Whole wings spill away into the gloom, studded with windows glowing deep blue, on and on until the fortress fades into the water too far down to see.
It is beautiful and wrong.
The sea presses in on either side and above our heads, curving into a tunnel that leads directly to the palace ahead. Long, slow shapes swim past, turning to watch us and then sinking back into the dark.
I feel small. Smaller than I have ever felt. A mortal girl on a steed made of magic, following eleven fae warriors into a court that, if Cairn is to be believed, could kill me on a whim.
Cairn doesn’t slow at the gates—an arch of pale bone and clouded glass tall enough to sail a ship through—and the rest of the Guard follow.
We pass through in the same, tight, unbroken line we’ve held since the seabed. Hooves ring on stone that shouldn’t be dry, yet somehow is. We enter a courtyard that swallows the sound.
Then I see them. The Sea Court.
They line the courtyard and the galleries stacked above it, hundreds of them. They all possess the same beauty as Cairn and Therin. That same too-perfect, lethal symmetry that makes my eyes want to slide away.
It is terrifying.
They’re draped in silk the color of deep water, and strung with pearls. They hold themselves with a stillness I've only ever seen in one other place—in a predator the instant before it strikes.
A sound moves through them as we ride in. It isn’t quite a murmur. It’s lower than that, a vibration I feel under my skin. Recognition, awe, fear, and threat—it all ripples out from among them.
My heart races, my pulse hammering against my throat like a trapped bird, and the very human urge to shrink beneath the suffocating aura of violence is almost overwhelming. But Cairn’s warning echoes in my head.
Give them nothing they can use.
I pull the terror back and lock it behind a wall in my mind. I straighten my spine. I lift my chin. I empty my face of every expression. I look at the Sea Court the way I used to watch petitioners file through my father’s hall, when I didn’t want to be there. I let them be beneath my notice.
Ice. I give them nothing but ice.
Somewhere in the dark behind the shuttered bond, a small flicker reaches me, warm and steady.
Approval.
It steadies me more than I want to admit, and I hold it against me as the Guard rides on toward whatever is waiting for us in the heart of this place.
Cairn leads us through the courtyard without a single glance at any of the watching fae. A set of doors swing open seconds before he reaches them.
The ceiling arches overhead. The walls curve on either side.
And the floor is a single unbroken sheet of polished abalone, mirror-smooth, throwing the cold blue light back in shifting bands of green and violet and pearl.
It feels like we’re riding out across the sea itself.
It reminds me of the Spear at Nightward, only in reverse.
Pale where Nightward is black, shimmering where the Spear is still.
At the far end, raised on a dais, sits a throne. As we get closer, I see that it’s carved from a single jawbone. Something that must have been bigger than any ship. And on it, watching us come, is a woman who could only be the queen.
Except Cairn said the queen was dead.
A crown of jagged red coral, encrusted with gems, is woven into her dark hair, which drifts loose around her shoulders as though it’s in water.
Her skin holds a faint sheen, and her features are beautiful.
When her gaze lifts, her eyes are a brilliant blue that even I can see from halfway across the room.
Five warriors stand in front of her, blocking anyone who would dare get too close, and they watch us approach with a tense, suppressed violence.
Cairn brings Selveryn to a stop three steps away from the guards, and the rest of the Guard flow out around him.
The silence that falls is absolute.
It stretches, taut and unbearable, until a figure steps out from behind the throne. He is tall, robed in gray-green silk, with a thin circlet of pearl at his brow, and a staff of pale wood in one hand. He looks at Cairn, then his eyes sweep along the line of silent Nightwild Guards.
He strikes the base of the staff once against the abalone floor. The sharp clack echoes through the cavernous hall.
“Brael Vaedráfn.” He pauses, waiting for the echo of his voice to fade. “Prince of the Sea Court. First Scion of Lirael Thalor. Lord of Thirs-Marik. First Shield of the Ninth Tide.”
He strikes the staff down again.
“Cairn Vaedráfn. Prince of the Sea Court. Second Scion of Lirael Thalor. Lord of Cor-Resyn. First Sword of the Ninth Tide.”
What? The words make no sense. Princes? Brothers?
The male who kept me collared in a tent, and the warrior who rides beside him—the fae my kingdom chained, tortured, and treated like rabid animals—are not only Nightwild Guard. They are Sea Court royalty. Sons of a queen. Former commanders of its armies.
My mask almost slips. It shudders, questions clawing up my throat.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Who are you?
What else don’t I know?
I shove the questions down, because every eye in this room is on us, and I will not be the one who breaks.
Instead, I stare at Cairn’s back, waiting for him to dismount. For him and Brael to show some deference to the female on the throne, and the court they were born to.
But Cairn doesn’t move. He doesn’t even incline his head. He remains seated on Selveryn, one hand resting on the saddle, the other loosely holding the reins, towering over the courtiers and the royal guard alike.
“We are not princes here. We hold no lordships. We bend to no throne.” Cairn’s voice is cold enough to freeze water.
He holds the queen’s brilliant blue gaze, the tension between them almost visible.
“We stand before you as the Nightwild Guard. And I am its Eldráfn.”
A ripple goes through the courtiers. The five warriors at the dais turn rigid.
He waits until they fall silent again.
“Nothing more. Nothing less. And nothing yours.”
For a long moment, the female on the throne says nothing. She studies Cairn, her head tilted a fraction, and then her lips curve into a razor-sharp smile.
“Cairn.”
She says his name like she’s tasting it, and her voice is the strangest thing I’ve heard. It’s low and lilting with a current running under it, as though more than one person is speaking at once.
“Always so dramatic.” She leans against the arm of her throne, resting her pale cheek against her hand. “Three hundred years, and your manners have only grown worse. I see your time in the wild has not tamed your arrogance.”
She sighs, and the sound sounds like the splash of waves.
“You ride into my hall and refuse your own blood before the whole Court. I’m disappointed.”
“I refuse nothing.” Cairn’s voice doesn’t change. “This is your hall, Lysaena. Not mine.”
Lysaena. The way he says her name turns the air brittle between them.
“My hall.” She inclines her head. “How generous of you to grant me that much.”
The courtiers shift, but the five warriors do not move at all.