Chapter 46
My lips twitch, thoughts turning to all the folk I’ve had escorted to The Flourish over my phases in The Fade working under Sereme.
Younglings. Nulls. Vulnerable folk beaten down by the world, in desperate need of a soft landing.
I look back over my shoulder. “Explain.”
The Elding Squire pulls a parchment lark from his pocket and gives the wriggling thing a blow.
It darts straight for my chest, bumping against me until I snatch it, cutting a glance at the Elding Squire before I get to work unfolding the pleats. Catch a second, smaller fold of parchment that falls free.
I open it, revealing a map.
Of Bhoggith.
Frowning, I set to reading the note, my lips pinching at the sight of Sereme’s scrawled text.
Raeve.
I hope you’ve enjoyed your time off. Such a shame you failed to make us aware of your survival. Had you not been so selfish, we wouldn’t have lost so many green recruits. There’s a lot of innocent blood on your hands.
I grit my teeth, seeing the words for exactly what they are: emotional manipulation. Sereme’s second-favorite weapon, right alongside her lust for making me crawl for her in crippling agony whenever she feels slighted.
Seems she’s been honing both against a whetstone while I’ve been away, sobering from the serpent’s poison.
To atone, the Elding has given you a job.
You’re to travel south to Bhoggith where a fae with silver hair and silver eyes is camped out deep in The Fade’s western outpost, behind yellow double doors carved to look like the sun. For your convenience, I’ve inserted a map of his supposed location and the miskunn’s sketch of the doors. You’re
Sereme.
This bitch.
I refold the map and note, pressing each seam viciously tight, making them sharp as blades. “Is this fae beaded? Politically corrupt? A rapist or child abuser? And how exactly is he a threat to The Flourish?”
“Uncertain on all accounts.”
I snort-laugh. “New rule: I need more to go on than a simple note and a slit down the spine.” Not sure what’s come over me, but this … doesn’t feel right. “Aren’t you the Elding’s squire? Does he not trust you with important details?”
The glare I receive is so hard it would bludgeon most folk to their knees.
Perhaps it’s the slower, sturdier beat of my heart—bolstered by my bond with Líri—but it doesn’t so much as dent my current state of mind. In fact, my instincts prickle like there’s a predator in our midst.
“The miskunn foresaw this individual would bring an end to the refuge we’ve worked so hard to build. That’s all the information you require to do the job that’s been ordered of you.”
I tilt my head to the side.
Bet this guy’s pillow talk leaves a lot to be desired. Throwing around words like ordered and do the job.
He’s exactly the sort of shit staining this world. And where there’s one, there’s more, because if there’s anything I’ve learned since I clawed free of the mountain I woke beneath all those phases ago, it’s that attitude spreads like a disease, good or bad.
“And if I don’t comply?” I ask, waving the note about. “If I decide I’m done being ordered to do the Elding’s dirty work without a lick of proof that the blood I shed is making a difference, rather than simply making the world more bloody?”
The squire stares at me for so long I start to wonder if he heard me correctly. Or at all.
With a click of his tongue, he reaches deep into his pocket and pulls out a curly quill that’s unlike anything I’ve seen before—bold red and glittery, almost like Essi’s hair. A thought that strikes like a shiv, catching me unawares.
Next comes a small silver bottle that makes my heart still, the ornate chalice a near-replica of the one Sereme wears around her neck.
I barely have a chance to pull breath before he presses the quill’s sharp tip against one of the filigree engravings and drags it down.
A slash of pain shreds my spine.
I fall to my knees, eyes bulging, mouth agape. Though my seizing lungs fail to gasp even a sip of air.
“Should you not complete the mission, The Flourish will fall. A weight you’ll take to your grave, eliminated by those you once called acquaintances. The Ath have too many secrets for one such as yourself to be untethered.”
The pain slits around me and hooks on something in my gut, as though he’s flaying me from belly button to sternum.
“We expect you to deliver the package to Sereme’s office in seven rises. Blink if you understand.”
I do as he asks, the motion feeling too much like a bow.
Like yielding.
But bad feelings and prickly instincts aside … maybe this isn’t the right time to make a stand. Put another target on my back when I can simply do the job, save The Flourish from damnation, then pick my bone when I deliver Sereme’s bloody package.
Is this fucker ever going to let up?
Still bound in a taut, convulsing knot, I blink again … again … AGAIN—
He clicks his tongue and lifts the quill.
Immediate relief.
I fold forward, fist my hands into the snow, and repress the urge to spray my stomach lining all the way to the river, trying to imagine a world where I don’t wake to a fresh serving of spangle shit every dae.
Crushing Sereme’s note in my fist, I glare at the male now spinning with a dash of his cloak, giving me his back. Rage licks at my ribs like a brewing flame as he saunters over the bridge, leaving heavy prints in the fresh powder.
I grind through tight breaths like a huffing dragon, crack my neck.
Press down my thrashing desire to leap up, grip his head, and whip it around so fast he glimpses me standing behind him before the light leaves his eyes …
reminding myself that murdering the asshole is probably not the best course of action.
Though I could steal the vial. Relieve him of his ability to torture me via Sereme’s bind—
A cold disruption in the air slams my heart to a halt.
I look through the foliage in time to see Líri spearing toward the bridge. Wings tucked, she plummets quieter than a puffed breath, right up until the moment she’s almost on the fae. Then she flicks out her wings, claws splayed, a predatory leer in her bold black eyes.
The Squire doesn’t have a chance to scream before she snatches him off the bridge—there and gone in a blink.
All the gathered snow blasts from the canopy and gusts about as Líri thrashes her wings, climbing the air. She drops her head, maw splayed before she clamps down on the male and, with one swift jerk, rips him in two.
Blood sprays.
A severed arm thumps onto the bridge, its gory splat chased by a red rain that sprays the snow.
I groan, still stomaching the punch of shock when I catch sight of a familiar figure standing on the other side of the bridge, draped in a rust-colored cloak, her long auburn braid hanging over her shoulder.
I note the small bundle bound against her chest behind a linen wrap as Siharna moves across the arch, smudging the splats of red with each tender, leaden step.
My cheeks heat.
I’m done for.
I push to my feet and swiftly pocket the note, still breathless, brushing the snow from my cloak as we come face-to-face.
“Congratulations,” I rasp, nipping the swiftest glance at her young. “Valliant effort.”
She dips her chin, and an awkward silence ensues. Goes on and on and fucking on.
“I—ahh …” Creators, swallow me. “How are you standing?” I blurt, figuring it’s a better way to break the ice rather than addressing the severed arm she just booted off the bridge.
She arches a brow. “Because I don’t have time to sit.”
Fair.
I’m trying to think of a way to respond—my gaze bumping from her stern eyes to the bloody footprints she left behind—when Líri releases a screech of savage joy from somewhere amongst the clouds.
My lids sink shut.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, not that I think it’ll make her feel any better about the situation. My dragon just snatched someone off the bridge in the guts of her beautiful, beloved village. Is probably eating him this very instant.
Siharna lifts her chin, a faint posturing I certainly don’t miss. “Will it implicate my village? My folk?”
Her younglings.
She doesn’t say the words, but I hear them. Feel them in the pit of my soul.
“No. I swear on my life and on the Creators themselves.”
With the coming moonfall, it’s likely my conscience is the only thing that’ll need reconciling.
While Líri digests the secret of how that fucker perished, I’ll be down here with my eyes pried open, battling the prospect that the Ath might no longer stand for the things it once did, or that I was led to believe.
How can it when it appears Sereme’s not the only venomous, high-ranking member with a lust for blackmail and a sprinkle of torture?
Silence prevails as Siharna watches me, her arms firmly bound around her slumbering babe I can’t quite bring myself to take a good look at. Despite it—or maybe because of it—I know I’d do anything in my power to ensure no harm befalls either him or his sister.
“Good.” She drops her chin a little. “Does Kaan know you’re blood bound?”
My head jerks, like she just put her whole body into the motion of planting a slap on my cheek.
I stare, blinking. Happy I slept most of this dae away. It’s obviously intent on force-feeding me nonstop spangle shit until I check out again.
She raises both brows. A quiet chastisement for my continued silence.
“It would only worry him,” I grit out.
“I see.” She glances past me to Líri’s plinth, back again, seeming to have trouble maintaining my eye contact. Strange, given she’s held it so firmly this entire time. “Well, take it from someone who never asked enough questions … don’t keep this from him.”
I open my mouth to speak, but she cuts me off.
“I’ll never know Zior’s final resting place because, in his stubborn desire to protect my delicate disposition, he never told me where he was going the dae he disappeared.”
Her babe starts to squirm against her, making a soft gurgling sound.
She bounces, rubbing his back in the same smooth circles I witnessed her doing to her belly before she gave birth.
“He’ll never meet his son. Will never see Korie grow and find love of her own.
I’ll never get the chance to avenge his death.
” Siharna’s voice breaks against the statement, and she glances away, swallowing before she meets my gaze and continues.
“Find the strength to let him all the way in, Raeve. He deserves nothing less.”
She turns, halfway across the bridge before I pull a shuddered breath, realizing I refrained for so long I’m parched for air.
Choking for it.
Siharna disappears between the vibrant buildings. Even so, her son’s cries fissure me from a distance. Rattle something inside me with such knee-buckling force I grab the handrail to stop myself from dropping.
Chin to my chest, I gulp big bouts of crisp air that slowly drug me into a head spin.
She’s right, of course. Kaan deserves nothing less than every bit of my truth. But with the coming falls, he’s got too much to worry about without adding my shit to his already laden plate.
There’s an entire kingdom resting on his shoulders.
A small, pesky blood bind resting on my own.
I dig Sereme’s crinkled note from my pocket and spread it across the handrail, rereading the poisonous words.
One final job. Then I’ll find a way to rid myself of Sereme for good. After which, I need to find the Elding. Speak to the male I’ve been blindly obeying for the past ten phases, given he’s willing to drop to similar lows as those he’s supposed to stand against to keep me in line.
If he’s doing this to me, who’s to say he’s not treating others the same way? Who’s to say these threats won’t eventually impact the folk I’ve helped send to The Flourish? The friends I’ve made?
The male I love?
Something within me snarls as I come to the startling realization that I’m vastly unequipped for everything we’re up against; cowering behind a clip in my ear that shields me from expectations, hiding from a Creator who could help me become the sturdy dual-bead beast nobody fucks with.
Not Rayne, of course. She can keep her sulky sadness to herself. But Bulder—
I think back to when we were in Bothaim. When Kaan crushed a swarm of militants with a few blasted words.
Bulder could bash me into something stronger …
Problem is, his language takes phases to master. Some never do. But Kaan had already gone to the great effort of teaching Elluin to be somewhat proficient. He said so himself.
Meaning—theoretically—I have the same knowledge within me.
Somewhere.
If I can just gather the courage to find the memory of those lessons, I could fast-track my learning. Or perhaps there’s a stone with Bulder’s entire language conveniently packaged within. Like the teardrop but less depressing.
Resolve hardens my features.
I stretch the anxiety from my chest and drop my grip on the handrail, stalking across the bridge to the tune of my dragon’s satiated screech.
I’ve been melted down and reshaped by a Creator before—against my will.
At least this choice is mine.