Chapter 59
We cut up into the clear band pinched between the hazy pink clouds and Miel Et Muíem—now blanketing the nesting grounds. Only for a beat before Líri dives back down, just enough that I’m still offered a distinct view of the wall ahead, barely peeking above the waft of white.
Seeing the wall’s jagged, crumbly edge—proof of the collision that impacted this area hundreds of eons ago—it’s hard not to be jolted. Knowing a moon fell with such force it took out chunks of the ancient structure. Bruised the world so deeply it almost swallowed itself.
One moon.
One strike.
What will be left of us after multiple falls?
I push the nauseating thought aside, gaze lifting to the white-stone tower pocked with stout windows. Three stories high, it sits atop the wall like a crowning dome, blending with the crust of gathered snow.
A bastion. And based on the flaming torches flickering within, it’s not empty.
I scan the wall’s flat top, barely veiled by drifting mist. Just enough coverage for what I have in mind, except I’m wearing a dark, mud-covered cloak that’s flapping in the wind like a fucking war flag. A perfect contrast to all that snow.
Oops.
I unhook it from my nape.
Clode snatches it from my grip and whips it beneath the mist so fast I wonder if she’s been poised behind us, waiting for me to catch up.
I rub Líri’s neck, then loosen my hold on the reins and spin so I’m facing her tail, moving toward her hind legs—timing each shift of my body to the silent beat of her wings. Once poised, I pull my shroud up over my nose, tighten my mental sound snare, and pocket my iron ring.
I gently squeeze my knees, urging Líri to hasten her speed. To fly as fast as she can.
We cut through the air like a blade, swift and silent, slashing across the top of the wall—so close Líri’s almost buttering the snow with the underside of her belly. I leap, feeling her silky tail brush from my chest, down to the tips of my toes before I lose velocity.
Tucking my head, I collide with the ground in a tumbling heap, then stamp my boot in the snow and grind to a halt. Head snapping around, I watch Líri dive into the Mist, her wispy tail the last of her to whip out of sight.
I push to my feet and run.
Keeping low, I open my mental sound snare, tighten my neck muscles, and murmur a low request for Bulder to catch my impending fall. Something that feels a lot like grinding stone between my back molars. Sharp.
Gritty.
“Hugh atah duhn. Gurth ahl, Bulder.”
There’s a definite pause in his steady song, like he’s as surprised as I am at my sturdy fluency. Or that I’m speaking to him at all.
Too much of a pause.
By the time I step off the wall, I’m convinced I’m going to plunge to my death, heart in my throat as I plummet for one breath-catching beat … before landing hard on the ledge of stone solidifying beneath my boots.
I wobble, slam my back against the wall, press my hands flat on the stone. Heaving breath, I wait for my heart to kick back into its regular rhythm.
“Too close, sir.”
Too.
Fucking.
Close.
Bulder continues his droning song, like I don’t even exist. I’m about to curse at him when I look down, noticing the ledge has hardened into the shape of a—cupped hand.
Huh. Maybe he does like me.
Nice.
I puff my chest and spin, digging my fingers into the wall’s deep, veinlike cracks. Once I have a sturdy grip, I transfer my weight to the vertical surface and step off the stone hand, descending through the thick mist in steady increments.
Twice I feel the swift, icy breeze of Líri drifting past. Like she can’t help but check that I’m okay despite the smooth flow of comfort I’m pushing through our bond.
I keep moving, monitoring Bulder’s song until it changes.
Hollows.
I raise both brows and still, filling my lungs as I muddle over the perfect sentence structure to impress my new best pal. Tricky, given I haven’t reabsorbed all Kaan’s lessons yet.
“Hallon dóh gruin”—I wince, contemplating—“surin dahn … fu?”
Pretty sure I fucked that up.
My entire body tightens as I wait to be physically flicked off like a parasite.
To my pleasant surprise, the wall dimples before my chest; a vertical sinkhole sucking deep. It opens like a mouth, yawning big enough that I’m able to hang off my hands, lift my legs, and swing through into the dark abyss.
I land softly, hand whipping to the handle of a dagger as I wait for my eyes to adjust. See I’m in a long room, making out numerous hollows in the stone, each stacked atop each other. Each filled with a pallet and blankets and—
I’m in a slumber quarters.
Shit.
Dagger poised, I drop to a defensive crouch. Pointless, I realize, my gaze adjusting until I can make out just how empty each nook is, the blankets tossed back, left in disarray.
I creep forward, head swiveling, taking note of personal belongings, books, items of clothing lumped on the ground, but no actual folk.
Odd, given the time.
Seeing a mug still brimming with mead on the ground beside a pallet strewn with game shards, I pause, a rush of unease making my skin tingle.
It’s like they all upped and left without warning. Ripped off their casual clothes. Donned their armor. Their weapons.
I stuff mine away and jog toward the door. Not sure where everyone went, but I don’t want to stick around to find out. I need to make this the most efficient slaughtering of my fucking existence, because if I get caught off guard in here—
Best not to think about it.
I look both ways down a dimly lit tunnel, something urging me to turn right, then cut left down a twisty stairway. Another long tunnel leads me past more slumber quarters; also empty. Like the entire place is pulseless.
Something that makes my nerves feel sharp as blades.
Another swooping stairway spits me into an area that’s different—the hallways lofty, floors tiled with colorful mosaics, walls brushed with the pastel hues of The Fade.
I move through grand rooms that make me feel tiny, pitched with stone columns carved to look like Moltenmaws perched on their hind legs, holding up the ceiling.
Suggesting this was once a place of art and worship, not molded for military use.
And still, I sense not a single folk. Not until I’m jogging down a vast corridor, struck by the sound of someone coughing.
I dance backward across azure tiles, stilling with my back pressed against the powder-blue wall, breath held.
Silence.
Creeping forward, I’m about to peek around the edge of an open double doorway when the distinct clang of metal on metal has me reconsidering my options.
I chew my bottom lip, contemplating my new arsenal of verbal tricks, trying to think of something appropriate.
Something subtle enough to go unnoticed should anyone be on the other side.
Pulling a blade free, I murmur to Bulder—soft and low. “Heil uhn dah … burlin—” Forgetting the phrase for directional indication, I tap my nail against the wall, hoping the request translates.
Almost immediately, a peeping hole the size of my finger forms, quiet and perfectly round—though not in the spot I tapped.
Right beside my head.
How chivalrous.
I’m definitely growing on him.
I close one eye and peer through the hole, blood icing as I look past the helmeted heads of numerous soldiers wearing the bloodred garb of Fade militants. Every folk is armed, still and stoic, looking toward the doorway I was just about to pass through.
“Creators,” I mouth, then wince, noticing three male fae toward the back of the room. All boasting the unmissable white armor of a beaded Bothaimian guard, their pauldrons gushing heavy cloaks that broaden their shoulders and decorate them in formidable grandeur.
Surely it can’t get any worse …
My gaze lifts in unison with my sinking heart, stare sweeping around the second-floor mezzanine that wraps around the sunshine-yellow room; the banister lined with stony-faced archers, their ruddy armor glinting in the firelight spilling off flaming bowls of oil.
Weapons poised and notched, it’s like they’re waiting for something.
Or someone.
I look past the ground guards to an ornate set of double doors on the far wall—also yellow—a sun carved at the base of them, golden rays reaching.
Just like the miskunn’s sketch on the map in my pocket.
Meaning the silver-haired fae I’m supposed to slaughter is somewhere on the other side of all … that.
Unfortunate. I was hoping to get in and out in a blink.
That’s not a blink-sized contingent.
It’s a fuck-up-and-die contingent.
I spin and back my head against the wall, mulling over my options.
Pain hacks down my spine. Like an incorporeal chisel chipping at my vertebrae, splitting each bony bulge in two before moving on to the next.
I arch, balance tipping. Fall to my knees as my mouth opens, Sereme’s name a caged roar welling in the back of my throat.
She’s only halfway to my tailbone when heavy footsteps echo down the corridor.
My gaze drags right, clashing with the bold copper stare of a helmetless Fade soldier—hands poised at his crotch. Like he’s still refastening his pants after a quick trip to the privy.
He stills, looks me up and down, all the color leaving his cheeks. In the same instance, I notice the clear bead dangling from his ear.
Cold dread hacks me through.
I gasp my lungs full of air, open to Clode, and rush through a series of words—panicked recognition blowing his eyes wide as he, too, begins to speak.
Though I finish first—forging an airtight vacuum to swallow our sound and hopefully avoid an impromptu onslaught of guards—he’s quicker to blast out an offensive demand. One I recognize too well.
My heart sinks.
I lash the same words. Swift, but he beats me, ripping the final gusty lyric from my lips.
Clode huffs, then reaches down my throat, fists my lungs, and squeezes so hard I taste metal. Then she pulls, like she’s gripping the trunk of a tree, trying to hoist it from the ground—roots and all.
Fucking.
Ouch.
Sereme continues to chip down my spine as the guard also chokes; mouth wide, clawing his throat and chest in the same manner as me. Like Clode’s standing between us, elbow-deep down both our throats, taking her time to weigh up which of us spoke to her with more eloquence.
Me, obviously. I love that bitch. But I guess he finished first.
Meaning I’m probably done for.
I tighten my chest muscles, trying to grip my lungs and keep them there.
Please don’t kill me, Clode. We have so much fun together.
Most of the time.
Blood bubbles up my throat. At the same time, the whites in the soldier’s eyes flood red, his capillaries bursting, lips turning purple, all the veins in his neck and temples popping to the surface.
A sharp pain shudders through my chest, like fibers ripping. Something I haven’t felt before. Foreboding sinks its claws in me.
Definitely fucked.
I brace, certain my lungs are about to mulch up my throat—
The soldier’s eyes almost bulge free of their sockets, and I’m pleasantly surprised when red flesh explodes past his lips with a gush of blood that pours down his chin and throat, painting his garb in gore. He falls to his knees with a blankness in his eyes. Like snipped flames.
Clode releases me as Sereme’s gouging torture fades, and I crumple, pulling down my shroud just in time to hack and heave. Splats of red litter the azure tiles by the time I manage to drag a breath without coughing up a lung, my lips trembling, muscles cramping.
I groan, Clode’s sound-tight vacuum still snug against my skin as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and lift my head. Look at the guard sprawled across the ground in a puddle of his own butchery.
Icy rage snaps at me like a whip, the tips of my fingers tingling.
That serpent bitch almost got me killed.
I think of the recognition in the soldier’s eyes moments before he lashed his lung-mulching attack, struck with a barbed theory …
Did these folk know I was coming?
Is this some sort of trap?
“Serpent … Bitch,” I drudge out as I shove up, wobbling. Steady myself, then lift my shroud and rip twin blades from my sheath, a rabid amount of energy bursting beneath my ribs. Not wild and unleashed, but cold.
Predatory.
I crack my neck and charge for the open doorway, widening my mental sound snare. So open that Clode and Bulder’s clamor drowns out everything else, each blunt or slit word busting my eardrums with such force blood dribbles from my lobes.
Subtle assassinations are nice, but so is living. And evidence suggests that if I don’t take these soldiers out, they’ll take out me.
I’m not letting Sereme off the hook that easily.