Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
LYRA
The next morning, Sorsha and Adriel were already downstairs by the time I dragged myself out of bed. The sound of their low-pitched voices rumbled up through the floorboards, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Donning a pair of oversized breeches from the armoire in the corner, I tucked in my borrowed linen shirt and padded down the steps.
The two of them were seated at the small table by the hearth, their heads bent close in intense conversation. They fell silent as soon as they heard the squeak of the steps, and I didn’t think I’d imagined the look of relief that swept across Adriel’s face when he saw that it was me and not Kaden.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking from one to the other.
“Porridge?” Sorsha squeaked, jumping to her feet and spooning up a generous helping of the concoction bubbling in a pot over the fire. “There’s tea as well. I can heat some water if you —”
Adriel cut her off with a scowl. “We can’t afford to hole up here while Kaden convalesces.
If he won’t let anyone remove the splinters from his wings, his healing will be slow.
We need to act before Semphrys does. By now he probably knows we have the hands, and he’ll guess what we intend to do with them.
If his demons get to the Three first . .
.” He glanced at Sorsha. “Then we are well and truly fucked.”
My stomach clenched. He was right. Just because Mirabella was gone didn’t mean her vampires wouldn’t continue to report to the Dark King.
“We have the blood we need,” Adriel continued, jerking his head toward the ceiling. “What we don’t know is how or even if we’ll be able to restore the Death Bringer’s hands.”
“What’s your plan?” I asked, taking the bowl Sorsha offered me and sinking into the seat beside her. The porridge had a rich, nutty flavor and chunks of what might have been baked apples mixed in, but I had little appetite.
“There’s an old Drathen fae who lives in Korkis — about half a day’s journey from here. If anyone would know how to restore Morta’s hands, it would be him.”
“And you want us to go there,” I surmised, looking from one to the other. “Find this fae.”
Adriel inclined his head.
“What makes you think he’ll want to help the half-demon prince who brought about the Ravaging?” I demanded. “The Scolendra faerie certainly didn’t.”
Adriel grimaced. He knew I was right. While Kaden considered the Drathen fae his people, I wasn’t sure they felt the same.
“I am not suggesting that Kaden be the one to go,” he said slowly, his hazel gaze shifting to Sorsha. “Some of the fae may not be receptive to their future king, even the Drathen. Their banished princess, however . . .”
Sorsha’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What happened to you and my brother trying so hard to keep me hidden away?” she snapped. “Or ‘we don’t want to start a war with Alfrigg’?”
The royal guard shrugged. “That was when Semphrys believed that Kaden was still his loyal dog. Now that he knows his heir has been working against him and that Lyra is half witch —” He nodded to me.
“— he’ll stop at nothing to kill her before she can kill him.
If Semphrys manages to sabotage our plan, a war with Alfrigg will be the least of our problems.”
I shivered.
“You and Lyra should go to the village,” he said. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on His Royal Moodiness.”
I shot Adriel a nasty look.
It went against my every instinct to leave Kaden behind, but I didn’t know how I could help him if he didn’t even want to be near me.
Finding this old faerie was something I could do — something that would hopefully bring us one step closer to restoring the Death Bringer’s hands and severing the ties to all those souls bound to Semphrys’s existence.
“Fine,” I said, forcing myself to take another bite of porridge.
“Fine?” Adriel stared at me as though I’d just grown two heads. Clearly, he’d expected me to put up more of a fight.
“Sorsha and I will go to the village and find this fae. When we return . . .” I swallowed.
When we returned, we would have no choice but to move on, regardless of Kaden’s condition.
“Well,” said Sorsha, looking just as surprised. “When do we leave?”
Despite her best efforts, Sorsha could not summon her wings to fly us to Korkis. It seemed her magic was as fickle as mine. So we each packed a bag of provisions, donned the least ill-fitting pair of boots we could find in the safe house, and set out for the village on foot.
It was a damp, drizzly morning, and the cold rain soaked through the wool coat I wore within a matter of hours. We talked little as we climbed, only communicating the few times one of us stopped to readjust our pack or take a drink of water.
Though the princess was normally talkative and upbeat, the aftermath of what Kaden had undergone in Dorthus hung over us like a cloud. Neither of us wished to discuss it, but it was hard to think about anything else.
At one point, Sorsha stopped under the shelter of a jagged rock outcropping and began peeling off her sodden coat. A ripple of power nudged at my skin, and I realized she was trying to dry it with magic.
The movement caused the neckline of her tunic to dip, and my gaze snagged on a line of tiny, bruised puncture marks marring her flawless skin.
“What the —”
Sorsha followed my gaze to the spot just below her collarbones and tugged her soggy tunic back into place. “It’s nothing,” she said, readjusting the neckline.
“It’s not nothing,” I protested, snatching her arm.
The princess didn’t move as I shoved the fabric aside to examine the purplish marks. The tiny circles imprinted in her skin would have been impossible to identify if it weren’t for the half-moon shape they formed.
“That’s a vikkarni bite,” I said in a low voice, terror lodging in my throat.
“Yes, and I’m fine now,” the princess huffed, jerking out of my reach and throwing on her coat.
For several long seconds, the patter of rain was the only sound between us as my mind flashed back to the Demon Woods. “That’s why you were in such bad shape after leaving the in-between. It wasn’t the vampire attack. You’d been bitten!”
Sorsha’s jaw clenched, but her silence was answer enough.
“This bite could have killed you,” I said, my voice shaking with horror. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“There was nothing to be done,” she muttered, yanking her coat tighter around her and hauling on her pack. “And I didn’t want him to leave me behind.”
The hiss of rain roared in my ears as her words sank in.
Him.
Adriel? Leave her behind?
“You can’t truly believe he would have done that,” I said, stomping after the princess. “Or that I would have let him!”
Her shoulders hunched as she shrugged. “You heard him. He already considers me a liability. Injured, I would have been even more useless.”
Catching up to Sorsha, I grabbed her by the arm, wrenching her around to look at me. “Nobody thinks you’re a liability,” I said fiercely.
Something flickered in the princess’s expression, but she quickly tucked it away.
“And I don’t think Adriel sees you the way you think he does,” I added quietly.
Sorsha blinked, her bottom lip twitching, but she fixed her stoic gaze on the bruised, weeping sky. “I’ve known Adriel for five centuries, and in that time, he’s made it very clear what he thinks of me.”
I swallowed, unsure what to say. I felt I needed to say something, but before I could, Sorsha turned and continued along our winding path up the mountain in silence.
We didn’t speak again for more than an hour, and by early afternoon, I began to yearn for the distraction of conversation again.
My feet ached from traversing the rough terrain in a pair of boots that were not my own.
The backs of my heels throbbed where new blisters had formed, and I could feel the shredded skin sticking to the inside of my socks.
I was relieved when I saw bands of chimney smoke rising over the ridge and Sorsha announced that we were nearly there.
I hissed as my foot rolled over a loose rock the size of my fist, and the princess climbed up ahead. A few rays of anemic sunlight cut through the clouds as she crested the mountain and stopped dead in her tracks.
When I finally came up behind her, I understood why.
The plumes of smoke I’d seen rising over the mountain weren’t coming from chimneys. The village had been burned to the ground, and the charred skeletons of a few crumbling structures were all that remained of Korkis.
My stomach twisted as I took in the wreckage. Not a single home or shop had been spared.
As the wind kicked up, huge flakes of ash floated up like snowflakes, carrying the smell of charred wood and scorched flesh.
Sorsha didn’t speak as she approached the village, coming to a stop in the middle of the street. Her boots crunched over broken glass. Scattered throughout the burned shells of homes and shops lay the bodies — females and younglings, the old and infirm, lying facedown in the dirt.
The villagers lay everywhere, modest clothing stained and torn, some sprawled in pools of their own blood. One old fae still had a battle axe lodged between his shoulder blades. Others looked as though they’d been run through with a sword.
Birds of prey circled overhead, a few already pecking at a corpse whose entrails were spilling onto the dirt.
I tried not to look at their faces. I knew I would see them all the instant I closed my eyes.
“Alfrigg’s army did this,” growled Sorsha, her voice trembling with the force of her rage.
“How do you know?” I couldn’t help thinking of Semphrys’s demons scouring the mountains in search of Kaden.
Sorsha pointed up ahead, and I saw what had filled her with such immense fury.
A red banner fluttered from a metal stake, which had been driven through the corpse of a tiny fae boy.
Bile rose in my throat too quickly for me to stop it, and it was all I could do not to splatter my boots as I bent over and heaved.
Sorsha’s nostrils flared, but the princess was an immovable pillar of fury.
“Why?” I choked, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve. There was no reason — no explanation for the sort of evil at work here — and yet, my mind still groped for understanding.
She shook her head. “Alfrigg is determined to eradicate the Drathen people. He believes the Euroshean fae are the pure ones. Chosen by the gods.” Her voice wavered on the last few words, and I knew she must be thinking of her mother.
“These are my people,” she murmured, her eyes shining with tears. “It doesn’t matter who sits on the throne. It is my duty to protect them.” Her bottom lip quivered. “And I have failed.”
“You were exiled,” I reminded her gently.
Sorsha shook her head. “I have stayed where my uncle put me out of fear. Cowardice.”
“You aren’t a coward.”
“I failed them, Lyra.” Her jaw clenched. “But I will not fail them again.”
“What do we do?” I asked, my stomach roiling as I beheld the carnage.
The destruction was unimaginable. There was no telling if any villagers had survived the massacre. Any who hadn’t been slaughtered must have fled down the mountain. And the slain . . . There were too many to bury.
But more than the need to lay the dead to rest, I felt a thrum of warning in my veins.
The bodies were fresh, the homes still smoldering. This attack had been recent, which meant Alfrigg’s troops were likely still nearby. Perhaps flying to —
“Bijult,” I breathed, terror clawing its way up my throat. “Kaden . . . Adriel. We have to warn them.”
Sorsha blanched, and I closed my eyes, searching desperately for the once brilliant golden thread that linked us. I hadn’t felt even a shred of connection from Kaden since the Demon Woods, but it was the only way I could think to deliver our message quickly.
I found the thread tangled among the thorny brambles that wound around my mind. As before, it felt cold and lifeless in my hands, the connection either dormant or broken. Still, I had to try.
Cautiously, I reached down our mental pathway, feeling it hum beneath my touch. So it wasn’t broken.
Heartened by that realization, I sent a surge of my own essence down the thread, hoping he would answer.
A pulse of what was unmistakably Kaden surged down the bond, and I mentally opened the pathway between us.
The second I did, an electric jolt seemed to course into my mind. I hissed.
Kaden, I growled. I need to—
But then the connection between us seemed to yawn wider, and I was gripped by a sudden, searing pain.
It wasn’t coming from Kaden. At least, I didn’t think it was. It seemed to be emanating from the golden thread itself, and I released it with a yelp.
My knees slammed into the earth as I fell, fighting the bolts of agony that were still pulsing through me. Though I’d released the thread, it hadn’t let go of me. The pain held me in an iron grip, my temples searing as though someone were stabbing my skull with a white-hot poker.
Distantly, I became aware of Sorsha crouching in front of me, but I couldn’t seem to free myself from the bond.
Belting out a furious yell, I wound my thicket of vines tighter around it, choking the thread until the pulsing ceased and the outside world came rushing back.
I was kneeling in a street blanketed in ash, the scent of burned flesh clogging my airways.
“Lyra?” Sorsha’s voice was panicked, her wide turquoise eyes staring into my own.
“I-I’m fine,” I choked. “But Kaden —” I shook my head.
This didn’t feel the way it had when he’d been trapped in Dorthus and I’d sensed his pain. That time, I’d experienced what he was feeling in disjointed flashes, as if he’d lost control of what he was sending down our shared mental pathway.
This was . . . something much worse. It had charged down the bond as if it had been sent for me.
Was it possible that Alfrigg’s army had already sacked the village and taken Kaden prisoner? A mere soldier wouldn’t have been able to tamper with the demon prince’s mind, but one of his own . . .
My blood went cold at the thought.
“We have to get back,” I managed, my whole body still trembling from the pain and terror. “Can you . . .” I trailed off, my heart hammering in my throat.
Sorsha sucked in a breath and gave a stiff nod, though her face was lined with concern.
Getting to her feet, she closed her eyes, concentrating on summoning her wings.
This time I felt the magic rolling off her. The princess’s rage had taken on a life of its own, seeping out of her in waves of immense power. Turquoise wings fanned out behind her, and relief flickered in my chest.
She held out her arms, and I gripped her neck as she launched us into the air.
Glancing over my shoulder, I took one last look at the decimated village, where smoke still rose in sickly plumes. The only sound was the howling of the wind –– the villagers’ voices silenced.